2025 SEO & WordPress Review: Key Wins & Losses
▼ Summary
– 2025 was a landmark year of transition in SEO, defined by the rise of AI Search and the emergence of GEO as a mainstream, though still ill-defined, concept driven by client demand.
– Google’s Danny Sullivan advised that building a recognizable brand, which encourages direct searches and referrals, is a key strategy for improving search visibility.
– Several Google patents and research papers pointed to advances in AI-driven search, including thematic organization, personalized answers using contextual signals, and methods to reduce AI hallucinations.
– WordPress strongly positioned itself for AI innovation with version 6.9 and the Abilities API, while its ecosystem was rocked by a public feud between Automattic and WP Engine.
– A significant story was the reported decline in search clicks attributed to AI Overviews, alongside the revelation that rank trackers had been inflating Google Search Console impression data.
The past year marked a significant period of transition for SEO and WordPress, shaped profoundly by the rise of AI Search. What began with widespread uncertainty ended with a clearer, though evolving, path forward. The core discipline of SEO reaffirmed its critical importance, even as it adapted to new technological realities. WordPress, meanwhile, solidified its future with a major update in version 6.9, laying a robust foundation for the coming wave of AI integration.
The concept of GEO gained mainstream attention in 2025, fueled by client demand for strategies tailored to AI Search. This created an interesting dynamic where some professionals offered GEO-specific services while still advocating for established SEO principles. Efforts to completely separate GEO from traditional SEO largely proved unconvincing. The trend extended to WordPress, where popular SEO plugins began incorporating features like LLMs.txt generation to meet market demand, despite the proposed standard lacking adoption by any major AI company.
Google’s own contradictory actions provided a moment of irony when it was discovered briefly using an LLMs.txt file, a practice its representatives had publicly criticized. The incident highlighted the sometimes-confusing landscape as the industry seeks new best practices. In more concrete advice, Google’s Danny Sullivan emphasized the growing power of branding for search visibility. He suggested that establishing a recognizable brand helps sites stand out in a crowded digital space, a point that aligns with understanding user behavior signals, a likely component of Google’s E-E-A-T framework.
Technological advances were a major theme, with several Google patents and research papers hinting at future directions. A thematic search patent described how AI could organize results into sub-themes, fundamentally altering what content gets ranked for a given query. Another patent explored using real-world contextual signals, like time, location, and user history, to personalize AI-generated answers. Further research introduced a “sufficient context” signal to reduce AI hallucinations, underscoring the importance of publishing thorough, well-supported content.
For WordPress, the year was defined by its push toward AI. The announcement of the WordPress Abilities API promises a more unified way to integrate external functionalities, setting the stage for extensive AI-driven enhancements. Co-creator Matt Mullenweg envisions a future with hundreds of specialized AI models assisting different parts of the publishing workflow, aiming to democratize online creation by automating routine tasks.
However, the year was not without its challenges. Google’s move to block rank trackers from scraping results had an unintended consequence: it revealed that many tools had been inflating impression data in Search Console. This led to a reevaluation of long-held beliefs about “zero-click” searches. Concurrently, many businesses reported tangible declines in organic traffic, which they attributed to the rollout of Google’s AI Overviews, creating a significant point of contention between the search giant and the SEO community.
Within the WordPress ecosystem, a major conflict erupted between Automattic, led by Matt Mullenweg, and hosting provider WP Engine. Mullenweg launched what he termed “nuclear” attacks against the company, citing a lack of support for the open-source project. The dispute escalated into lawsuits and generated substantial negative sentiment toward Mullenweg personally, with many in the community expressing dismay at the public feud and its implications for the open-source ethos.
Looking back, 2025 served as a pivotal gateway. Both SEO and WordPress underwent necessary adjustments, preparing the digital marketing world for the innovations and challenges that lie ahead in the new landscape shaped by artificial intelligence.
(Source: Search Engine Journal)
