SEOIntel Weekly News Round-up (Second Week of September 2025)
It’s been another turbulent week in search, with the August 2025 Spam Update still shaking things up. Many SEOs are reporting roller-coaster traffic patterns—sharp drops followed by sudden recoveries—as Google continues to refine results and weed out spammy or thin content. Against this backdrop of volatility, Google has also rolled out several important updates worth […]
It’s been another turbulent week in search, with the August 2025 Spam Update still shaking things up. Many SEOs are reporting roller-coaster traffic patterns—sharp drops followed by sudden recoveries—as Google continues to refine results and weed out spammy or thin content.
Against this backdrop of volatility, Google has also rolled out several important updates worth paying close attention to. This week, we look at the latest changes to the Search Quality Rater Guidelines, insights from a new Chatoptic study comparing Google rankings and ChatGPT mentions, the expansion of AI Mode into five more languages, and Google’s move to remove reporting on several structured data types.
Google Updates Rater Guidelines: AI Overviews + YMYL Clarified
Updated definitions for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) content—particularly clarifying what topics count under areas like government, society, and public interest.
Added new examples for AI Overviews to help quality raters understand how to assess summaries, overviews, and AI-driven content for accuracy, relevance, and trustworthiness.
Minor edits elsewhere: typos fixed, clarity improved in wording, small expansions of examples.
Google emphasized that these are clarifications and examples, not a change in the core guidance. The overall rating framework for raters remains the same.
Why It Matters for SEOs & Publishers
Even though raters’ ratings don’t directly affect ranking of individual sites, the guidelines are a signal of what Google is prioritizing. They help shape how algorithms are tuned, especially in the age of generative AI content and spam updates.
Here are some key implications:
For content to be competitive, AI Overviews (or any AI-assisted summaries) will be evaluated not just on what they include, but how clean, accurate, and trustworthy they are.
YMYL content has higher stakes. With refined definitions, topics around civic or societal content should be treated with increased care in accuracy and sourcing.
Clarity and example-based guidance mean that content creators should look at the new raters’ examples to see how high-quality summaries and overviews are supposed to be handled. That can inform how you write, structure, and fact-check.
What to Watch & Do Now
Audit any AI-summaries or overviews on your site (or content planning to include them), checking for factual accuracy, bias, and clarity.
If you operate in YMYL verticals (health, finance, safety, government, etc.), revisit your content to ensure it meets higher E-E-A-T standards.
Use examples from the updated rater guidelines as a benchmark: how are high-quality overviews defined, what makes them pass vs. fail.
Monitor performance metrics (CTR, impressions, user feedback) in search results—particularly for pages that include AI-Overview content—to catch any early signs of impact.
Bottom Line
This update isn’t a major policy shift, but it’s a refinement of Google’s expectations when it comes to AI overviews and YMYL topics. For creators: consistency, reliability, and trust still matter most. The clarified definitions and examples are guideposts—not new rules, but indicators of Google’s continued direction.
Google Rankings vs. ChatGPT Mentions: What the Chatoptic Study Reveals
Chatoptic’s new Google–ChatGPT Visibility Study set out to understand whether high rankings in Google translate into visibility inside ChatGPT answers. Researchers analyzed 15 leading brands across 5 industries and compared their presence in Google’s organic results with their mentions inside ChatGPT’s responses—both with browsing mode ON and OFF.
The findings show a clear misalignment: brands ranking strongly in Google do not always appear in ChatGPT’s answers. In fact, Google top-10 results only appeared in ChatGPT outputs 62% of the time. That means nearly 4 out of 10 times, a site performing well in search was invisible inside ChatGPT.
Detailed Findings
Low Correlation Between Google and ChatGPT Rankings
The correlation coefficient between Google ranking position and ChatGPT response order was 0.034 (with browsing ON) and 0.022 (with browsing OFF).
Translation: virtually no relationship between where you rank in Google and whether, or where, you appear in ChatGPT.
Browsing Mode Didn’t Change Much
With browsing ON, ChatGPT included Google top-10 results 62% of the time.
With browsing OFF, inclusion was 61%.
This suggests that even when ChatGPT has live access to Google results, it doesn’t map its answers directly to the SERPs.
Industry Variation
Some verticals saw higher overlap (e.g., consumer tech and retail), while others like finance and healthcare saw far less.
This likely reflects ChatGPT’s training data strengths and trust levels, not traditional search metrics.
Domain Visibility Gaps
In several cases, brands absent from Google’s first page were still mentioned in ChatGPT answers.
Conversely, well-ranked domains were ignored, replaced by sites ChatGPT seemed to consider more “semantically relevant.”
What This Means for SEOs and Marketers
SEO ≠ AI Visibility Traditional SEO signals (backlinks, authority, optimization) are only part of the puzzle. ChatGPT’s inclusion logic relies heavily on semantic relevance and internal model training, not just SERP position.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) Is Rising The study highlights the importance of GEO—optimizing content to be contextually relevant, fact-rich, and structured in ways that generative engines can use. This means clear Q&A formatting, schema, and content that reads like an “answer,” not just a keyword-rich article.
Brands Must Audit AI Presence If you’re not showing up in ChatGPT answers—even when you rank well in Google—you need to analyze why. Is your content too promotional? Too thin? Not structured in a way that generative AI can lift? Tracking AI visibility is becoming its own SEO metric.
Trust and Authority Signals Still Matter While Google rankings didn’t strongly correlate, the domains ChatGPT selected often carried strong informational authority (government, educational, or well-established publishers). Building signals of expertise and trust will matter for both SERPs and AI.
Expect Growing Divergence This study reinforces that Google Search and AI assistants are two different ecosystems. Brands can’t assume dominance in one equals presence in the other. A dual strategy is needed—traditional SEO for SERPs, and GEO for AI surfaces.
Bottom Line
The Chatoptic study underscores a turning point: ranking well in Google does not guarantee visibility in ChatGPT or other generative engines. With only a 62% overlap and near-zero correlation between rankings and AI mentions, it’s clear that brands need to start optimizing for two different but overlapping worlds.
For SEOs, the next phase isn’t abandoning Google, but building GEO strategies alongside SEO—making sure your content is not only ranking in SERPs but also structured, clear, and trustworthy enough to be surfaced by AI assistants.
Google Expands AI Mode to Five New Languages
Google has just announced that AI Mode, its advanced AI-powered experience inside Search, is now available in five additional languages: Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. This marks the first language expansion of AI Mode beyond English. The update is powered by a custom version of Gemini 2.5, which brings enhanced reasoning, multimodal capabilities, and a deeper understanding of local context.
What that means in practice: users who speak any of these languages can now ask more complex or nuanced questions in their native tongue, browse content that’s more culturally relevant, and access search results that better understand local information—not just translated texts. It isn’t just about adding translation—it’s about tailoring the AI’s understanding so that context, idioms, and local knowledge are accurately handled.
This move follows Google’s previous rollout of AI Mode to over 180 countries in English first, as well as earlier experiments via Search Labs and region-specific launches. The latest expansion is part of Google’s broader goal of making its AI search tools genuinely global and useful for non-English speakers.
What SEOs and Web Owners Should Know
Opportunity for reach: Sites with content in these languages now have a chance to perform better in AI-driven queries. Optimizing content for Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese can open up visibility in AI Mode results.
Local relevance matters: It’s no longer sufficient to use generic content translated from English. Messages, examples, cultural references, and localized topics will likely earn more traction. Pages that reflect local intent and clarity will have an edge.
Multimodal content counts: Gemini 2.5 supports reasoning across different inputs (text, possibly images etc.). This means content structured to accommodate images, user queries, or examples may be especially favored.
Watch your metrics: As this expansion rolls out, expect volatility in impressions, click-throughs, and keyword visibility in these languages. Monitor Search Console data to see how traffic from AI Mode evolves.
Universal standards still apply: Despite the new languages, Google emphasizes that helpfulness, expertise, clarity, and trust (E-E-A-T) remain critical. Clean content, good user UX, credible sources—these don’t change just because AI is in more languages.
Bottom line: Google’s expanding AI Mode beyond English is a big signal—AI-search isn’t just an English-language luxury; it’s becoming a tool for millions more in their own languages. For SEOs and creators in those regions (and those targeting multilingual audiences), it’s time to assess content strategy for language, localization, and AI alignment—not just translation, but true relevance.
Google Removes Reporting for Several Structured Data Types
What’s Changing
Google is phasing out reporting for multiple structured data types that were already deprecated from Search results. As of September 9, 2025, six of the previously deprecated types—Course Info, Claim Review, Estimated Salary, Learning Video, Special Announcement, and Vehicle Listing—are being removed from Search Console’s rich results reporting, from the Rich Results Test, and from search appearance filters.
The Search Console API will continue to return these structured data types through December 2025, but bulk export users should expect those fields to return as NULL starting October 1, 2025. Queries or dashboards that use appearance filters or conditions involving those structured data types will need updates.
These changes come under Google’s broader Simplifying the Search Results Page initiative, announced in June, where several structured data types (including the ones above plus Book Actions) were identified as underused and no longer adding meaningful extra visual or functional value to search results. Google’s official reasoning is that removing these lesser-used structured data types helps streamline Search, making results cleaner and more useful. Rankings are not affected by this change.
Why It Matters
Visual features change, not ranking: Even though the structured data displays (rich snippets, special appearance filters) are being removed, Google confirms this will not harm your indexed content or your search rankings. What’s being removed are visual enhancements.
Reporting & analytics impacted: If you rely on Search Console reports or dashboards that track rich results or appearance filters tied to these types, you will see data disappear or become NULL. This can affect trend tracking or performance monitoring.
Schema markup becomes more selective: Sites that used these structured data types for visual richness now need to assess whether the effort is still worthwhile. Even though markup won’t hurt, the rewards (extra visual cues in Search results) are being scaled back.
What SEOs & Webmasters Should Do
Audit existing structured data usage Identify where you still use the deprecated types. Know where they show up in your Search Console rich results, and note what dashboards or reports depend on them.
Update dashboards, queries, and exports If your analytics, BigQuery, or other reporting systems filter or condition on these deprecated structured data types, adjust queries to expect NULL values. Use IS operators instead of assuming a boolean or true/false field.
Focus on other supported structured data types Markups like FAQ, Product, Article, Review, etc., remain supported and valuable. Their visual appearance in Search is not being deprecated. Prioritize these.
Keep markup clean but expect less visual reward Even if markups for Course Info or Learning Video are still present, Search results won’t show their visual enhancements anymore. Markup is less risky, but the benefit is declining.
Monitor Search Console & performance metrics carefully Watch for drops in impressions or clicks that might be tied to the removal of rich result appearances. Sites that heavily relied on those may see changes to visibility or user behavior.
Bottom Line
Google’s simplification effort is a reminder that not all structured data types carry meaningful impact anymore. As these deprecated features are removed from Search Console reporting and visual layouts, SEOs need to adapt. The ranking is safe, but the display—and how users perceive your snippet—may shift. For future-proof SEO, lean into supported schema types, adjust analytics setups, and keep your structured data strategy aligned with what Google continues to reward.
As rankings continue to fluctuate under the spam update, the message remains clear: Google is doubling down on quality, trust, and user-first content. The refinements in rater guidelines, the growing role of generative AI, and the simplification of structured data reporting all point to the same direction—focus on what’s truly helpful and relevant for users. While the volatility may be unsettling, staying aligned with Google’s evolving standards will help ensure long-term stability. We’ll be keeping a close eye on the update’s impact in the coming days and sharing insights to help you navigate the changes.
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