Industry News

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

In this week's recap, we covered that the Google December 2025 core update was unleashed. Google also said more core updates are definitely on their way and one should be coming soon Google also updated its...

Google announced that Gemini can now respond to your local questions with local results in a "rich, visual format." Google will visually lay out the local results to include photos, ratings, and real-world info from Google Maps data.

Brad Geddes dug into how he felt "AI Max can trump your existing exact and phrase match keywords and then claim credit for the conversions and revenue." And then Google's Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin responded to those specific examples on why this happened and what Google is changing in the future with Google Ads AI Max.

Google Maps is updating its share buttons by removing the options to share on X and adding the options to share on Reddit and Facebook.

On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new AI features, which we covered (links below) but one other feature Google spoke about was "AI-powered article overviews." This is an experiment Google News is trying with a handful of publishers.

Google is now sending email notifications for when Google Business Profiles has removed the restrictions on your reviews and ratings. The email says, "Restrictions on your reviews and ratings have been removed" and it comes from the Google Business Profiles team.

Google officially announced the rollout of the December 2025 core update on Thursday at around 12:25 pm ET. This core update is expected to take up to 3 weeks to roll out. Google said this "is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites."

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today...

Google announced it has updated the links in AI Mode to encourage searchers to click more. Google also introduced contextual introductions to embedded links in AI Mode responses.