2025

It’s the end of August 2025 and Google is back-to-work with a new update for us to analyse. The August 2025 Spam Update was announced on August 26, 2025, and it’ll keep us focused on data for the next couple of weeks. Data, analysis, and rankings of the affected domains […]...

This month, SectorWatch is bundling up warm and heading off-piste into the frosty world of winter holidays to see which brands are sleigh-ing the search rankings – and which need to give their strategy a warm-up. With the peak season approaching, we’re checking on the travel operators and destinations whose […]...

New features for AI Overviews, a visibility index for chatbots, targeted analyses in generative systems and many minor improvements – SISTRIX continues to evolve with search. Here is an overview of the most important innovations from the first half of 2025....

New data from a SISTRIX study will help you start to assess your strategy for AI Chatbot and AIO visibility. Entity visibility will be key in the future but, as you’ll see in the presentation below, classic search + AIO is the most important thing to focus on at the […]...

The UK grocery landscape has evolved over the past few years, transforming from an industry dominated by weekly supermarket trips to one where consumers expect everything from emergency bread to Sunday roasts delivered to their doorstep within hours. This new resource fromm SISTRIX combines our TrendWatch, SectorWatch and Visibility Leaders […]...

Although Q2 seemed deceptively quiet, with no core updates until the final day of June, much more was unfolding beneath the surface. At the end of Q1, we observed a significant shift from traditional featured snippets to AI Overviews (AIOs), affecting click-through rates and, consequently, SEO traffic. This, combined with […]...

Hema Budaraju, VP of search at Google has just announced that AI Mode is available in the UK along with an eight-page explainer and a few snippets of usage information from tests in other countries....

After five years, the informative content hub at The Times (co.uk , com) website has shut down. It was free and open so one can assume it was an informational content acquisition channel – an SEO project. A new project starts in Autumn and a proportion of the content will […]...

Pew Research, a renowned US think tank, has studied the impact of AI Overviews. It analyzed nearly 70,000 Google searches from around 900 users. The result: While about 15% of search queries in search results without AI Overview result in an organic click, this rate drops by half to just […]...

This month, SectorWatch is trying not to go too wild in the aisles as we wheel back into the world of online grocery shopping, the subject of the very first SectorWatch in 2021. We’re highlighting the retailers whose SEO recipe is catching the eye of shoppers and search engines alike. […]...

AI Mode combines chatbot and web search. It’s currently only available in the US but Google has already announced plans to roll it out to Europe too. Based on 10,000 keywords, we analysed which domains are most frequently displayed in AI Mode in the US. As in the classic web […]...

The June 2025 Core Update was announced on the 30th June 2025 with a roll-out planned for three weeks. This is the second core update of 2025. Helpful statistics and analysis will be provided below including lists of affected domains across various countries....

This month, SectorWatch struts into the world of women’s designer fashion to see which brands are owning the organic runway – and which ones need some tailoring. We’re spotlighting the labels whose SEO style is turning heads with trendsetters and search engines. Who’s stitched together a winning look for organic […]...

Until now, Google has made it easy for itself. The long-standing controls for web search have been the way to control the content in Google’s AI features, both in training and in display. It seems clear now that, internally at Google, this position will not be sustainable in the long […]...

The deal between publishers and Google, at least implicitly, has been clear in the past: Google is allowed to capture content and use excerpts in its own search product. In return, publishers receive visitors via Google if the preview is interesting enough for users to click on. Google has already made efforts […]...

The GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) wave has fully swept the industry. My feed is filled with new GEO agencies, self-proclaimed GEO experts with supposedly years of experience, and a lot of obvious nonsense straight from the person’s favorite LLM. As in the early years of Google optimization, much remains unknown […]...

The year started quietly for SEOs…but the calm didn’t last long. In February, Google ramped up the Search Generative Experience (SGE), with AI Overviews (AIOs) gaining prominence across UK SERPs, particularly for more specific and complex queries. Then, just weeks later, on 13th March, Google rolled out its first algorithm […]...

Google presented numerous new AI use cases and developments at its I/O conference this week. My SEO perspective on some of the key points: AI Mode. In the US, Google will offer AI Mode to all users in the future. This mode is essentially the chatbot version of Google Search. Similar […]...

Documents and presentations published in competition proceedings provide a good insight into how OpenAI and Sam Altman view the market for AI search and AI chatbots. While the OpenAI CEO himself doesn’t believe OpenAI has a chance of replacing Google, the distinction between AI chatbots and AI search is interesting: In the “traditional” chatbot […]...

After US courts have already ruled that Google abuses its monopoly position, the question that now follows is which conditions should be imposed in the future to prevent this. In this phase of the procedure, interesting insights for SEO are coming to light as well. Recently, the testimonials by Pandu […]...

Eddy Cue, Apple’s head of services (which includes the search deal with Google), has spoken out in court about AI search as part of the competition case against Google. Apple noted a decline in traditional search queries in the Safari browser for the first time last month. He attributes this […]...

Google said goodbye to to the year 2024 with a core and a spam update – and didn’t deliver much less during the first quarter of 2025 to keep the world of search engine optimisation on its toes. We weren’t idle either! Next to bigger changes that have already been […]...

This month, SectorWatch is heading back into the world of CRMs to see whose pipeline is capturing prime positions in Google’s search results—and which ones still need a little nurturing to climb to the top. We’re looking for brands whose SEO strategy is truly connecting with both customers and search […]...

Since introducing the AI ​​overview (AIO) answer format, Google has experimented with various details and display options. Now, Mountain View seems to be confident about the outcome and has been rolling out AI Overviews for significantly more keywords in recent days....

The March 2025 Core Update, announced on the 13th March 2025, rolled out over two weeks. This was the first major update of 2025. Helpful statistics and analysis are provided below. Data has been updated during the roll-out with examples and lists of affected domains below....

This month, SectorWatch is dusting off the data to explore the spring cleaning market in the UK. We’re scouring the SERPs for brands with a spotless SEO strategy and shining the light on content that truly sparkles. Who’s sweeping up some top rankings? And who’s lacking the elbow polish required […]...

Where there are SEO winners, there must also be losers. In 2024, many sites that had previously seen consistent success with driving SEO traffic and visibility saw staggering declines in Google’s U.S. search results. ...

We’ve just published our IndexWatch 2024 reports. As part of that work I’ve been looking back at some of our sector data to find the new and rising domains. In this report you’ll find a list of domains from the fashion industry. The sortable list might help you identify blueprints […]...

IndexWatch is our analysis of the top winning and losing domains. In this issue you can learn about the losers of 2024. Through SISTRIX’s Visibility Index, we have identified 200 websites with visibility drop-offs across the UK’s Google search results. 6 domains are analysed in detail....

To kick off 2025, SectorWatch is putting on its best face to explore the cosmetics search market in the UK. We’re uncovering which brands are nailing their search strategy and looking for content with a flawless finish. Who’s contouring their way to top rankings? And who’s missing the foundation for […]...

2024 was a jam-packed year that brought major developments in the SEO space,  largely driven by growing competition between traditional search engines and large language models (LLMs), including emerging challengers like ChatGPT and Claude. Here’s our annual review of the Winners in Google search....

Another year has passed, bringing a new wave of domain fluctuations in 2024. We’ve seen a flurry of algorithmic changes, AI-driven roll-outs and some big, big changes in the top 10 domains. This report analyses some of the significant domain movements and includes searchable and sortable lists of 200 domain […]...