June/July Core Update Rolling Out, Zero Click Search Increases & Who's Crawling Your Site in 2025
SEO TL;DR #77 07/07/2025
Core Update
Core Update: June/July 2025 Rollout
Google confirmed the launch of its second core update of the year on 30 June, with the rollout expected to take around three weeks.
So far, early signs suggest minimal volatility, but that could change as it progresses.
No new insights from Google other than it being…
Designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.
As always, core updates are global, affect all types of content, and do not penalise pages; they reward pages Google sees as particularly useful.
SEO X AI
The Impact of Generative AI: Publishers
GenAI tools are eating into publisher traffic, but not evenly. A new report from Similarweb analyses how ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews are reshaping discovery, visibility and referral traffic across US news sites.
ChatGPT prompts for news up 212%, Google searches down 5%
Between January 2024 and May 2025, ChatGPT saw a massive rise in news-related queries while equivalent Google searches dipped. That gap has widened sharply since Jan 2025, signalling a shift in how users access real-time updates.
Zero-click searches hit 69% post-AI Overviews
Since the launch of Google’s AI Overviews in May 2024, more users are getting answers directly in SERPs. Zero-click news searches rose from 56% to nearly 69%, while organic traffic to news publishers dropped from 2.3B to under 1.7B visits.
ChatGPT referrals 25x YoY, but many big publishers are missing out
Referrals to news sites from ChatGPT jumped from <1M to 25M YoY. Publishers like Reuters, NY Post and Business Insider are gaining visibility, while others (like CNN and The New York Times) are either absent or underrepresented due to policy restrictions.
Politics leads growth, finance and sports still dominate share
Topics like politics, inflation, and climate are growing fastest. But in terms of volume, the stock market, finance, and sports still make up most news prompts in ChatGPT.
💡 Takeaway: As AI tools become central to how users consume and interact with news, publishers need to diversify distribution and ensure their content is discoverable across platforms like ChatGPT. We’ve also got to face the fact that zero-click behaviour in Google is growing, and strategic decisions must be made on AI visibility and referral value.
Technical SEO
Search Console Insights Refresh
Google is rolling out a new version of Search Console Insights, as a tab within the main Search Console interface, replacing the old standalone beta. As covered by Barry Schwartz, the redesigned report is more tightly integrated with the Performance report and aims to make it easier to spot growth opportunities.
Insights are now grouped into cards covering top/trending pages, rising and falling queries, additional traffic sources (like Discover and Images) and click/impression trends over time.
💡 Takeaway: It’s still based on Search data only (Google Analytics integration was dropped in 2023), but the new format makes scanning for wins and losses easier. Handy for flagging which content’s quietly decaying, or quietly climbing.
SEO X AI
Google: You don’t need to optimise “for AI”
In the latest Search News video, John Mueller clarified that AI Overviews and AI Mode don’t require special treatment. If your site is indexable and follows existing SEO guidance, you’re already eligible.
We know how AI search is tanking clicks for publications, but Google argues that clicks from AI Overviews are reportedly higher quality, with users more likely to stay engaged or convert. That said, there’s still no structured data, feed submission or LLM-specific markup required.
📺 Watch the full video below:
💡 Takeaway: This echoes my golden rule: if you're only doing something for SEO, then don't. The rise of AI answers is fuelling zero-click searches and reducing overall traffic from Google, so blindly “optimising for AI” won’t solve that. Instead, double down on what works: high-quality content, strong UX and a smart distribution strategy that doesn’t rely on a single traffic source.
Technical SEO
Who’s Crawling your Site in 2025?
Cloudflare’s latest crawl analysis reveals that Googlebot now accounts for 50% of AI and search crawler traffic, up a whopping 96% year-on-year. GPTBot, OpenAI’s crawler, also saw a 305% jump, rising to 7.7% of requests.
Meanwhile, former AI crawler leaders like Bytespider and ClaudeBot dropped significantly in share and raw volume. Across the board, AI and search crawler traffic grew 18% from May 2024 to May 2025.
💡 Takeaway: Google remains dominant, but AI bots are surging. If you care about being found in search, AI chat tools or answer engines, it’s time to start monitoring who’s crawling your site and why. Tools like bots.searchtheory.io or Cloudflare’s new AI Audit can help you manage access more actively than robots.txt alone.
Expect more noise (and bandwidth usage) from AI crawlers over the coming years and act accordingly.
👋 Work with me - I help e-commerce brands grow through technical SEO, smarter content and better UX. If you’re looking for support with a migration, audit or ongoing strategy, get in touch.
“Designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites.” = we’ve seen some very poor results being returned, its still early days but some of the sites we see ranking for ‘luxury’ aren’t luxury at all. 🙄 - good summary, cheers 👍