Major Updates to ChatGPT and Google and their Impact on SEO Strategy  – SEO News August 2025

We follow news of Google updates because they can have a major impact on visibility and traffic for our websites. The more we think of AI tools as a source of visibility and traffic, the more important it becomes to follow their updates too. August 2025 saw a newsworthy update to Google’s ranking algorithms but also a major update to ChatGPT that you need to pay attention to.

Recent research released by SparkToro finds that over 20% of Americans use AI tools heavily (more than ten times a month), and nearly 40% use at least one AI tool monthly. Despite rapid adoption, traditional search engines remain dominant however: 95% of Americans still use them each month, with 86% as heavy users. Communication from Google insists on the fact that the quantity of traffic from Google to other websites is not going down.

Former Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan encourages us to think that good SEO will continue to be relevant for AI-driven search. There is no need for new tools or new acronyms like GEO, AEO, AI SEO, LLM SEO or LMNOPEO (he made that one up).

August 5^th – OpenAI launches GPT-5 for ChatGPT

On August 5^th, OpenAI announced the release of GPT-5 via a livestream on YouTube and an article published on its website. The previous major update to ChatGPT was in March 2023 when GPT-4 was released replacing GPT-3.5 – the first model available when ChatGPT launched in 2022.

The release of GPT-5 is more significant than a Google Core Update. GPT-5 is a completely new system compared to GPT-4 and has, at its core, new training data. As in previous ChatGPT models, you can activate a Web search feature, but GPT-5 will now also automatically search the web if it feels your prompt requires fresh information.

In its press release, OpenAI says that results from the web are “More accurate answers to real-world queries”. It also says that GPT‑5 is “significantly less likely to hallucinate than our previous models.  With web search enabled on anonymized prompts representative of ChatGPT production traffic, GPT‑5’s responses are ~45% less likely to contain a factual error than GPT‑4o.”

Reception of this new version of ChatGPT, however, has been generally negative. Tom’s Guide reporting Nearly 5,000 GPT-5 users flock to Reddit in backlash. Writing in Futurism, Frank Landymore thinks There’s a Compelling Theory Why GPT-5 Sucks so Much (it is a cost cutting exercise by OpenAI) and SEO consultant Dan Petrovic thinks that poor knowledge demonstrated by GPT-5 has made SEO irreplaceable (because he believes that ChatGPT will depend more on search engines like Google for information retrieval and instead concentrate on improving intelligence).

If you last tested ChatGPT before August 5^th, you should test it again using GPT-5 because results will be significantly different.  You can ask it questions about your website and prompt it for each of your target keywords with the Web search feature active to see if you are mentioned in responses and cited in sources.

Top tip: Check traffic from ChatGPT in Google Analytics, Matomo or other traffic monitoring tools to see if you see a significant change since August 5^th.

Criticism of GPT-5 may make SEOPress PRO users wonder whether they should use this new model to generate SEO metadata based on post content. You don’t have to. Our feature also supports previous versions (GPT-4o, GPT-4o Mini and GPT-4) and you can even use DeepSeek AI instead of ChatGPT (we are working on integrating Claude and Mistral too for the end of the year).

August 26^th – Google Spam Update

A new Google update, the August Spam Update, was announced by Google on August 26^th via its Search Central accounts on LinkedIn and X as well as the Google Search Status Dashboard. The dashboard gives the following, succinct information about the update “Released the August 2025 spam update, which applies globally and to all languages. The rollout may take a few weeks to complete.”

This is an update to Google’s spam detection systems but is unrelated to link spam which has its own type of update. The article Google Search spam updates and your site, updated on August 22^nd, highlights Googles SpamBrain AI technology and reminds site owners that their sites may be penalized in ranking if they do not respect Google’s spam policies.

Commenting on BlueSky, SEO Glenn Gabe says that he saw huge drops in ranking for some sites immediately after the release of the update. His early impressions are that the update concerns “programmatic, doorway pages, spinning content across pages targeting the same/similar topic”. He also reminds us on another post that this update will have a domino effect on other search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. He concludes, “Drop out of Google? You might very well drop out of other search platforms leveraging Google’s results.”

On LinkedIn (in French), SEO Philippe Yonnet says that owners of sites with a significant amount of unhelpful content (AI-generated or not), filler content or fully AI-generated content should be very worried about this update. It is also interesting to note that Google’s John Mueller recently reposted news of sites removing AI-written content written by the freelance writer Margaux Blanchard (article in French).

What does this mean for you? During any update you should be attentive to changes in traffic coming from Google, but you should pay particular attention to monitoring keyword ranking. Traffic drops may happen for various reasons, not just ranking. If you have experienced drops since August 26^th and you are worried that you have been hit by the August Spam Update, we suggest you wait until it finishes rolling out before making major changes to your website. See our guide on Recovering from a Google Update for help.

Google AI Mode released in 180 countries

Before the Spam update, on August 21^st, Google announced AI Mode in Search gets new agentic features and expands globally. The full list of countries is listed here and we still note that France is absent. It is also notable that AI Mode is only available in English.

New features announced by Google’s Robby Stein on X include highlighting useful links and he says that Google is experimenting with “encouraging outbound exploration” (i.e. generating traffic for websites). This will generally mean more links will be embedded in AI Mode responses and the addition of embedded link carrousels.

As we mentioned last month, if you have clients in the 180 countries where it is available, you should test AI Mode with your target keywords.

Adding title tags, meta description, image ALT text and structured data to your pages and posts in WordPress using SEOPress will help you rank in Google and feature in AI responses. Both are potential sources of traffic.

The article Google briefs brands on AI Mode ads ahead of Q4 rollout by Anu Abegmola on Search Engine Land suggest that ads are coming to AI Mode too.

Google at WordCamp US

Google’s Danny Sullivan gave a keynote speech at WordCamp US Portland on August 28^th entitled How (and why!) Google Search keeps evolving.

If you haven’t seen it, we suggest you watch the presentation back on YouTube below. It is a good, quick introduction to the way Google works and how it has changed over time, first to adapt to mobile and again, more recently to add AI features – that it believes users want. Despite the changing times, he says that WordPress site owners should not panic about optimizing specifically for AI. He underlines the opinion that optimizing for search engines doesn’t need a new acronym, saying “Good SEO is good GEO (or AEO, AI SEO, LLM SEO or LMNOPEO)” – we think he made the last one up.

There is not much advice specific to WordPress users (except to install the Site Kit plugin – which we don’t think you need because you can integrate Google Analytics with WordPress using SEOPress). General advice given on optimizing for AI goes over information already given by John Mueller in his blog post Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google’s AI experiences on Search.

• Focus on unique, valuable content for people
• Provide great page experience
• Ensure Google can access your content
• Manage visibility with preview controls (TITLE tag, META Description)

But also

• Go beyond text for multimodal success
• Understand the full value of your visits

He cites Liz Reid (who he says is his big-big boss) in a slide “We’re committed to highlight high-quality content on the web and we will continue to refine how we do it” and he also repeats the corporate message that she published on The Keyword blog, AI in Search is driving more queries and higher quality clicks.

There are two interesting questions from Christina Hills and Angie Drake at the end of the keynote. Christina asks what newbie WordPress users should know about optimizing pages for Google. Angie remarks that her click-thru rates have dropped dramatically since Google launched AI features. Unfortunately, Danny doesn’t have the time to fully respond to their questions, but it does allow him to remind the audience of his main message, “Don’t worry too much about Google. Make sites for people”.

This may have been Danny’s farewell performance as a public spokesman for Google as he stepped down from his job as Search Liaison Officer on August 1^st. It looks unlikely that the role will be taken over by someone else as the social media accounts on X and BlueSky have been closed with the last post saying “This account is no longer active. Please follow Google Search Central at for site owner information and see our Search blog for the latest updates:

By Benjamin Denis

CEO of SEOPress. 15 years of experience with WordPress. Founder of WP Admin UI & WP Cloudy plugins. Co-organizer of WordCamp Biarritz 2023 & WP BootCamp. WordPress Core Contributor.