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SEO Outlook – July 2025

By Daniel Falk

SEO Outlook – July 2025

Welcome to the July edition of Zooma's SEO Outlook. While Google hasn't released any official algorithm updates since March, the SEO landscape is shifting, especially with the growing influence of AI in search.

In this edition, I'll cover:

  • SERP changes and declining featured snippets

  • AI Overview Growth and visibility tracking

  • New Google guidelines for AI Search

  • Screaming Frog’s semantic analysis

  • And a quick peek at ChatGPT and IndexNow

Let’s dive in.

 

SERP volatility and AI Overview growth

Although Google has been quiet on official updates, search results continue to shift. Looking at Sweden specifically, AI Overview coverage on mobile has jumped from 15% to 38%. This growth comes at the cost of features like featured snippets, which are steadily declining.

Interestingly, while featured snippets usually highlight one source, AI Overviews tend to include multiple links, offering more visibility opportunities for publishers.

ChatGPT’s search upgrade

ChatGPT has improved its search capabilities by:

  • Performing multiple searches for complex queries

  • Supporting image-based search

  • Improving instruction-following, especially for longer prompts

However, these features are still developing. For example, ChatGPT misidentified a winch remote as electrical testing equipment. Useful but not flawless yet.

Google’s new guidelines for AI Search visibility

Google's John Mueller recently published recommendations to help your content appear in AI-powered search results. The key takeaways?

  • Answer questions in-depth with useful, specific, non-generic content

  • Ensure a first-class page experience: fast, mobile-optimised, and well-structured

  • Go multimodal: use images and videos to support your text

  • Keep structured data visible on the page—hidden schema can lead to penalties

  • Maintain updated Merchant Center and business profiles

One particularly interesting point:

Google encourages SEOs to "understand the full value of a visit," not just clicks. As AI Overviews reduce the need to click, this shift suggests we should measure success by engagement quality—not just traffic volume.

Screaming Frog v22: Semantic Analysis Is Here

The latest version of Screaming Frog brings semantic content analysis, making it easier to spot overlapping topics, content clusters, and duplication.

This is especially relevant now that LLMs and AI search models use semantic understanding to rank and retrieve results. Visual maps show topic clusters by colour—perfect for spotting weaknesses or gaps in your content structure.

Screaming Frog remains a low-cost, high-value tool, especially if you want to optimise for AI-driven search.

IndexNow and Real-Time Indexing

Microsoft Bing and Yandex are now pushing IndexNow, a protocol that allows your site to notify search engines instantly when content is updated or removed. CMSs like Wix already integrate IndexNow natively.

However, Google is not yet on board, though tests have been reported.

AI Overview reporting in Search Console

Some clarity from Google:

  • All links in an AI Overview are reported as position 1

  • Clicks and impressions from AI-generated answers are tracked

  • However, you can’t currently filter AI Overview data in Search Console

That makes it hard to distinguish AI-related visibility from traditional results but it’s a good sign that this data is at least being captured.

In Summary

No shocking changes but important shifts:

  • AI Overviews are rising fast (especially on mobile)

  • Featured snippets are declining

  • Clicks are no longer the only KPI that matters

  • Semantic clarity and multimedia content are critical

  • Tools like Screaming Frog are evolving to keep up

Stay focused on high-quality, helpful content and optimise for experience, not just keywords.

If you want help understanding how these changes affect your SEO strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out.

Let's talk

You are welcome to reach out if you have questions about these updates or want help applying these techniques to your SEO or content strategy.

 

Explore Zooma's SEO services

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Hi and welcome to Zooma’s

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SEO outlook of July 2025. In this outlook where we go through

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some updates from the search engines, we will look at some news and trends.

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And I will also give you a useful tech.

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First, let's check if there are any recent updates from the search engines.

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Google has not released any new official updates since March.

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This graph illustrates the movements in the search results pages.

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The red bars illustrate more movements, while the green, shows less movements.

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And looking specifically at Sweden.

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We can see that AI

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Overview results are really growing.

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The last time we checked this, the coverage was 15%.

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Right now it's 38% on mobile devices.

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To make room for the overview,

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Google is removing other things like featured snippets.

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This graph shows how,

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the featured

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snippet really is declining over time though.

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And this may be a good thing because the,

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AI overview presents more links than the featured snippet did.

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So there are more possibilities to get traffic from AI overviews.

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And now over to ChatGPT,

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because they have recently upgraded their search capabilities.

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They say that the now automatically can perform

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multiple search queries for complex questions.

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They can also search the web with images that you have uploaded.

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And they're also better at following instructions, especially

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for longer queries.

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So I tested this image search capabilities actually.

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So I uploaded a photo of a known product that I know exists on Amazon and so on.

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And asked if they could describe what it was, but they actually got it wrong.

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This is, remote control for a winch.

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And but they said that this was a testing equipment for some electricity.

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So maybe it's not, 100% perfect yet.

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But it would probably get there.

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And now let's look at some news and trends from a search.

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and AI.

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Google has recently released an interesting document

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and describing ways to make your content appear

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in Google's, AI experiences.

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The document is published by Google's John Muller, and it's,

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containing guidelines on how to make your content, prepared for,

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AI search some interesting, but maybe not shocking

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bullets from these guidelines are

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that you should create content that fulfills people's needs, right

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In-depth and non generic text a truly answers to users question,

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and you should give your visitors a first class page experience

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so fast loading mobile friendly design and clear separation

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between main content and other content will make AI searches stay longer.

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You should also think in multimodal.

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So supplement the text with relevant images and videos

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and keep merchant center and your business profile up to date

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so that you are visible even when users are searching

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through other interfaces like a camera or voice.

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So my recommendation is to spend some extra time

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on thinking how you can improve your web content using images and videos.

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Try to, include unique, photos taken by you.

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They don't need to be perfect.

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But they need to illustrate, the topic that you're

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talking about in a good way.

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And some more interesting points from the guidelines

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are that the structured data must be visible on the page.

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So if you are using schema markup and the content of this

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markup must be visible on the website as well.

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If not, you may get penalized.

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And an

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interesting passage in the guidelines is this about Google

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saying that you need to understand the full value of a visit.

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They are probably talking about this because, and they know that

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the number of clicks are declining and will continue to declining.

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When you get the answer instantly in the search results page.

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So they are telling you to focus less on generating clicks

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and tailor your content based on that strategy.

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They are also saying that you should try to understand the full value of a visit.

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So you should focus less on generating clicks

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and tailor your content based on that strategy.

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And it's interesting that Google includes this in the guidelines,

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because they know that the number of clicks will decline over time.

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When AI overviews and AI mode is introduced.

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So by focusing on the full visit

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and how your website in total is performing,

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instead of looking at the number of clicks,

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is, the strategy forward.

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They also mentioned that you should continue to evolve with your users

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as the search behaviors are changing.

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You need to more frequently rethink your strategies to adapt.

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And in summary, these new guidelines are really nothing new.

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This is something that Google has communicated for a long time.

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Even before AI existed.

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So, just continue producing really good content.

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And that's kind of the basis.

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It was a while ago since we heard something new from Bing.

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But this is something new, because they are pushing

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the protocol index now, for instance, indexing.

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So index

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now is a protocol that lets websites notify the search engines,

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of content changes, for immediately indexing.

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So instead of waiting for a crawler to visit your website,

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your website can now ping the search engine

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when a page is added, uploaded, or removed.

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However, Google is not yet supporting index now.

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They have conducted some tests, but there are no official support yet.

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It is supported by Bing, Yandex and some smaller search engines.

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IndexNow is also being adapted by some CMS platforms like Wix, making it possible

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to automatically inform about, updates

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and removals of pages and so on.

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And AI search usage grows.

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But Google still leads.

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So ChatGPT is now handling

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roughly 1 billion searches per day, and Google, including YouTube and Google

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Play, still dominates, with an estimated 19 billion queries a day combined.

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So Google is still the leader.

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But what's interesting is that ChatGPT reached this 1 billion

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query milestone 5.5 times quicker than Google.

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So we can probably expect them to continue growing at a high rate.

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Over to a very hot topic.

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And that's about how you track, your visibility

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in the lens and the Google AI overview.

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Google has confirmed that all links in an AI overview result

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will receive the same ranking position in Search Console.

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That means that if you are in the AI overview answer,

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and one of the top positions shown in this screenshot,

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all of them

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will be reported as position one.

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And Google confirms that clicks on any AI generated answer link counts

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as a click in Google Search Console, and impressions is counted

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whenever an AI answer is viewed by the user.

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That means that the data from AI overview,

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is present in Google Search Console.

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However, there is no possibility at the moment

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to filter out, this data specifically.

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You may have heard about Screaming Frog.

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It's a very powerful application that you can use to analyse

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different aspects of your website from an SEO perspective.

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The latest version and version 22 of screaming From allows

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you for more advanced analysis of Page's content, than previously.

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You are now able to do semantic analysis and display it in different formats,

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making it easier to understand where you have overlaps.

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And, duplicated content and so on.

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Semantic analysis are similar to what the LLM’s are doing.

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So it's important to do this kind of reporting,

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to optimise your

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website for visibility in ChatGPT and so on.

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The screenshot here illustrates one report,

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where, different colors illustrate

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different semantic, topics of a website.

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So, for example, the red area that you see here

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illustrates food related content of a website.

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If you already are using Screaming Frog or if you want to make more advanced

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analysis of the content of your website, I recommend you to try this new version.

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There is a license fee involved, but it's not very high

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compared to the value that this tool gives you.

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That was all for now.

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Thank you for listening.

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And, reach out if you have any questions.

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Screenshots showing SERP volatility and AI overview coverage are from Wincher.

Daniel Falk
Experienced marketer and tech expert with a background in agency and company life. At Zooma since 2021.
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