Nothing in the SEO world is slowing down as we approach the end of the year. In this roundup, you’ll get the latest news about Google’s recent big moves, the advance of AI, and more.
It starts with some of the top-trending headlines of the last month. You’ll learn how Black Hat SEOs may be responsible for a big hack on Disney’s website, how Google’s AI mode now launches from search results, and why Google is changing how it enforces ads.
Then, you’ll learn about the loss of even more schema types and the breakdown of all the AI and search changes that have come down this year. You’ll also read Google’s reaction to recent court decisions and learn how they plan to protect users from “parasite SEO”.
After that, there’s even more news. Fresh reporting also shows that Black Hat SEO is back, and may be a larger threat going into the new year.
Did Black Hat SEOs Just Hack Disney’s Website?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMvnEGgSVXQ
Ahrefs brings you this look at a surprisingly high-profile attack by black hat SEOs that targeted Disney. Host Sam Oh takes you through how the attack appeared to searchers, how it happened, and what’s likely to come next.
The attack targeted Google’s search features to make “Black Hat SEO Packages” appear as a link under results for Disney. For searchers, it seemed that this link was part of Disney’s website, and therefore an official part of the company.
Fortunately, Disney is not getting into the backlink business. Using both new and old (90’s old!) techniques, the black hats were able to confuse Google into including their result among the official ones. Sam breaks down how it happened.
Sam shows you how the SEO hackers directed tons of referring pages to a gated log-in page on the Disney site so that Google would associate that page with Black Hat topics. However, this wasn’t caused by the referring links alone. The hackers also exploited a technical glitch.
The issue was that the page was a 302 redirect rather than a 301. A 302 redirect is intended to inform Google that the page is only temporarily redirected, rather than permanently. This keeps the page indexed, and Google continues to try to assess its purpose.
Google appears to have extrapolated the topic of the page from the backlinks alone, but Sam is convinced that this is a technical error rather than a real hack. As of this time, Disney’s results are back to normal.
Black hats aren’t the only rising threat Google-dependent sites are facing. A lot of search results space has been lost to search features, and now you may be fighting AI, too.
AI Mode Can Launch Directly from Search Results
https://x.com/rmstein/status/1995572911093289055
Robby Stein, Product VP at Google Search, brings you this X thread announcing that AI mode can now launch directly from search results. As Robby lets you know, the test is starting now, and the new feature will be available to searchers globally (though only on mobile devices).
As part of the announcement, he includes a video that demonstrates how you can now use Google’s search bar as an AI prompt field. All you need to do is perform a prompt-style search, and the AI mode will automatically launch and replace typical results.
The AI mode appears in the spot where AI overviews do for most typical searches. Searchers will have the option to expand a full AI answer or transition back to typical search results.
If searchers choose to engage with the AI mode, they can continue asking follow-up questions for more refined results.
If it catches on, this could change everything for SEO. Search engines like Google may soon only show results in specific cases. For now, this is only a trial. Advertisers are also getting some attention from Google this month. For them, it may be good news.
We’ve Significantly Improved the Accuracy of Advertiser Account Suspensions
https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/improved-accuracy-account-suspensions/
Keerat Sharma, VP of Ads Privacy and Safety at Google, brings you this announcement about major changes to advertiser moderation. The company has acknowledged a problem with legitimate advertisers being suspended for incorrect flags or unintentional violations.
In the announcement, Keerjat claims that Google has made significant improvements based on the responses they’ve received from frustrated advertisers. Policies have been clarified, AI detection of violations has been improved, and appeals have been streamlined.
Google announced some immediate improvements as a result of the changes.
Reduced incorrect account suspensions by over 80%.- Advertiser suspension appeals are now addressed 70% faster.
- 99% of advertiser appeals are resolved within 24 hours.
The announcement includes a video with some additional details about how the reductions were achieved. If you have been experiencing issues with enforcement actions on your ads, you may find Google to be a more cooperative partner now.
Google is making many more changes in the closing months of the year. As you’ll learn in the following piece, they’ve killed some schema types.
Google Just Killed More Schema Types – Here’s What You Should Focus on Instead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9cQ5xgC7q4
Edward Sturm brings you this breakdown of the schemas that are no longer supported. As he reminds you, Google has been removing schemas going back several years now. SEOs once devoted resources to marking up their content properly. Some of that work was for nothing.
The announcement was made by John Mueller, who is quoted as saying the move was made to “simplify the search results page.” John claimed that features that weren’t being used often were the targets of this action, and that more schema types may be removed in the future.
Google has declined to say what types will be removed later, but the following schema types have now been removed:
Practice problem structured data types- Dataset structured data types
- Today’s Doodle Box
- Nutrition Facts
- Nearby Offers and Events
- Local Bikeshare station status
- TV season selector
- Vehicles for sale
Watch the complete video to learn more about the schema types that are going away. Edward also gives his opinion on where structured schema goes from here and why Google may have acted.
Next, with so much happening, it’s easy to forget some of the changes that should be part of your strategies in the coming year. In the next piece of the month, two professional SEOs cover it from the beginning to the end.
Breaking Down AI & Search Changes in 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4fIHPtjIMY
Vaenisaa Sandrasagren brings you this interview with Britney Muller, former Senior SEO Scientist at Moz. In it, they cover most of the history of what happened to SEO and AI over the last year.
The far-reaching discussion covers how AI search really works now that most models are up and running, why ChatGPT doesn’t really have algorithm updates (or an algorithm), and what SEOs should really be measuring if they want to improve.
A significant part of the discussion centers on the issue of research and how it has evolved for all SEOs in a relatively short time. Britney discusses how she got into SEO and how she thinks good research can be done in the LLM era.
Britney offers interesting insights from her time at Moz for SEOs who are curious about how that team approached SEO research and experiments. She also covers how she is building AI workflows with Google Sheets, GPT for Sheets, and other tools.
Check out the complete interview to get a great review of the year. It covers most of the topics you’ll be thinking about in your next year’s strategy, including AI citations, Reddit, new KPIs, and more.
Next, you’ll hear more from Google. They’re responding to an investigation into their anti-spam efforts by the EU.
Defending Search users from “Parasite SEO” spam
Pandu Nayak, Chief Scientist of Search at Google, presents a statement on the company’s anti-spam policies. In the piece, he explains some of Google’s motivations for developing these policies and argues that interference will undermine the search experience for users.
Google is facing an investigation from the EU over its site reputation abuse policy, in particular, and whether it is being applied consistently. In response, Google disclosed new information about how it developed that policy and what kind of behavior it considers to be a violation.
Pandu defined reputation abuse as a situation where a spammer pays a publisher to display content and links on the publisher’s website, exploiting the publisher’s good ranking to trick users into clicking on low-quality content.
He claims that it is for these reasons that Google updated its policy in 2024 to ban the use of deceptive measures to improve search ranking.
Read the complete statement to learn more and see some visual examples of how Google defines reputational abuse. Next, a new era of black hat techniques may be beginning with the discovery of AI poisoning.
AI Poisoning: Black Hat SEO Is Back
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ai-poisoning-black-hat-seo-is-back/561217/
Reza Moaiandin presents this fresh research, which demonstrates how black hats can poison LLMs with just a few hundred malicious documents.
As Reza points out, Black Hat SEO has been on the decline for years. Google spent almost two decades heavily investing in sophisticated algorithms that neutralize and penalize these shady techniques. For a long time, most manipulative tactics just weren’t worth it.
Now, Reza argues, AI has opened an entirely new frontier. Black hats are fighting over AI visibility, and there aren’t a lot of guardrails in place yet to stop them. Reza introduces you to some of the new tactics that are showing up.
LLMs have been shown to be vulnerable to attacks as simple as leaving instructions to ChatGPT in your content. LLMs are also vulnerable to older SEO tactics, such as cloaked pages, hidden text, and spammy links, in large quantities.
Now, there’s research on how it’s happening. Anthropic, the company behind the AI platform Claude, published findings of a study into the impact of AI poisoning on training datasets.
Many people assume the amount of content you’d need to poison an LLM would be relative to the size of the training dataset. In other words, the larger the dataset, the more malicious content it would take to poison. Most of these datasets are massive, so they should be safe.
The new study reveals that this is definitely not the case. The researchers found that bad actors only need to contaminate the dataset with around 250 malicious documents to introduce a backdoor they can exploit.
Check out the complete piece for more information on how these attacks are occurring and how site owners can defend against them. In the final piece of the month, Google has one last announcement for you.
(Google Announcement) Search Console, AI, and HTTPs updates Search Console
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0AGWPU96TQ
John Mueller brings you this fresh Google search news, covering everything the company wants to share with people in Q4. He covers minor stories, such as Google Search Console’s new logo and the fact that “achievements” have now been added to the console menus.
In more substantive news, the console has also been updated with what John calls query groups. These are categories of queries that lead to your site, helping you strategize your content. Custom annotations have also been added to performance reports.
John also covers how experimental AI mode and agentic features are being added, and how they can help users navigate your site.
There’s also news about Discover. Creators will now be more visible in this feed, and their content from other online sources can appear in the feed. They’ll also be able to create creator profiles.
Check out the rest of this quick video to catch up with updates across Google’s tools, and make sure you check out future roundups to learn about the latest in all online marketing news.
