The last month was an intense one for online marketing. Not content to snooze through the new year, the biggest players in search, ads, and AI were busy posting updates that you may have missed. Catch up on all of them right here.
In the top headlines for the month, you’ll find out about the details of the latest broad core update, get some insight on why prompt tracking often fails, and learn what to do now that Google has intentionally cut news traffic in half.
After that, you’ll get Rand Fishkin’s perspective on the new search reality, learn why 3rd party content seems to dominate AI search, and get a sneak peek inside a multi-billion-dollar marketing playbook.
That’s not all. Read through to the end to learn what it means that Google Ads is dropping the Active Visitor count to 100 (excellent news for some sites), get helpful ad criticism from experienced pros, and hear the latest perspectives from advertisers on agentic AI.
Google’s December 2025 Broad Core Update
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hWV3DVSRf0
Glenn Gabe brings you this breakdown of the latest broad core update that launched in late December. This video contains all the insights he’s been sharing in his recent X posts, along with some speculation about the update’s future impact.
As Glenn points out, there was some interesting volatility before the update ever dropped. Glenn shares graphs of the sites he was tracking and reveals the pattern of possible tests that may have been underway ahead of the update.
Next, he tackles what’s changed now that the update has landed. First, he notes that it was a big and fast-moving update with a global crater. Massive surges and collapses were trackable across many popular niches the same week the update started.
The YNYL niche (and finance in particular) was among the most affected in the early days of the update. You’ll see graphs showing how large sites in this niche fared as the update progressed.
There was also a lot of activity in the news niche. In this niche, Glenn reveals a pattern of sites affected by the June Update that were also hit by this one. Check out the complete video for more insights on these changes and all the others.
You may need to update your site to prepare for some of these changes. If you’re already planning changes for AI search visibility, you’ll want to hear the advice coming up next. You’ll find out why prompt tracking fails for many marketers, and what it takes to get good data.
AI Search Visibility: Why Prompt Tracking Fails and What Actually Works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0WAnyRZs_4
Mark Williams-Cook joins the AI SEO show as a guest to discuss the AI search visibility. He shares his perspective on how to achieve AI search visibility and the practices used at his firm.
The wide-ranging discussion covers many AI questions marketers are grappling with, including how brands become what LLMs understand about you, why results are heavily context dependent, and the best approaches to extracting and auditing what models believe and deliver.
Marks also tells you more about how his team is connecting prompts to the underlying searches that AI systems run to deliver an answer. In many cases, you can get the model to explain how it arrived at its answer, and this information can yield valuable marketing insights.
What’s next for AI search? Mark argues that visibility in the future will require a multi-site strategy that lets AI gather information on you from many different sources. Visibility will no longer be a matter of ranking a website.
The complete conversation covers even more territory, including how to use People Also Ask data to gather intent intelligence and the most common misuses of LLM that Mark has identified so far.
Next, you’ll learn how Google cut news traffic in half, what it means, and how you should respond.
Google Just Cut News Traffic in Half (51% → 27%) – Now What?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6f9wS_SVcM
Edward Sturm brings you this coverage of recent research into news traffic. According to the freshest data, Google Search has been sending 25 percentage points less traffic to news publishers over the past two years.
Edward takes you through the research, the chatter, and the responses this news has inspired from the rest of the SEO community. He starts with the exact numbers provided by the research and picks out some interesting details. The news mostly isn’t good.
He notes that while Google Search is a poor driver of traffic, Google Discover is now driving the majority of publisher traffic. Unfortunately for publishers, this isn’t an idea replacement for old traffic. Many publishers report frustration with the process of even appearing in Discover.
You still have options if your news site can no longer benefit from search traffic. Edward suggests using your existing domain as a base for topical authority, then launching niche web apps as products rather than content. He explains how products and tools can deliver much more durable revenue than relying on ads ever could.
In the following piece for the month, you’ll get even more insights into the new search reality. You’ll hear SEO veteran Rand Fishkin offer his personal vision of where it’s all going.
Rand Fishkin On The New Search Reality: AI, Zero-Click & The Pinball User Journey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkdu2oglgSI
Sean Barber hosts Rand Fishkin for a deep AI marketing discussion that covers Rand’s audience research and brand visibility tools, and his personal theory for how users journeys because a “pinball machine.”
“Pinball machine” is Rand’s alternative to the idea of the classic marketing funnel. Rand argues that the modern user journey more closely resembles a pinball machine because users search and discovers everywhere and all stages of the funnel happen simultaneously.
Rand argues that marketers can no longer silo any topic because user decisions come from more places than they could predict or build an intentional presence on. As examples, Rand discusses how shopping for a wedding suit could come down to sources like Reddit, podcasts, substacks, short videos, social media, or conversations with friends.
How do brands build visibility now? Sean and Rand discuss that and many other topics in the rest of the video. They look at AI tool usage trends, the methods of building LLM visibility and the growing role of PR, reputation and native content in getting attention.
At the end, the hosts discuss what you’ll need to priortize in the new year as you’re looking to improve your user journey. While you’re thinking about the LLM user journey, you may want to look more closely at the brands that are already appearing.
Third-Party Content Owns AI Search for Commercial Queries
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSrnEAnmSEo
Kevin Indig brings you his thoughts on some recent LLM/SEO research that showed 85% of brand mentions originate from third-party pages rather than owned domains.
The report (you can find it here) detailed some other surprising facts about when and why AI Search rewards brands with visibility. For example, only 30% of brands stay visible from one answer to the next, and 48% of LLM citations come from community platforms like Reddit and YouTube.
Kevin focused on the 3rd-party detail in this video because of what it suggests about how LLMs treat brands. The hosts speculate that most top LLMs may be structured to deliver 3rd-party results (such as reviews or independent tests) the closer the user gets to buying intent.
This structure may mean you have to try different strategies to be mentioned. Kevin recommends that you build authority through community and user-generated content. He recommends platforms like Reddit and YouTube for reach niche audiences.
He believes that amplifying user-generated content (such as reviews and testimonials) can increase the size of your brand’s footprint in AI training data. Check out the full discussion and the linked research to learn more about what the data says about AI visibility.
Next, the Ahrefs podcast looks at one of the biggest marketing achievements of the last few years, and how one marketing manager helped a company achieve a $3 billion playbook.
Clay’s $3.1B Marketing Playbook | Bruno Estrella (Clay)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiG6P6RGGIA
Tim Soulo hosts Bruno Estrella, the marketing manager of Clay. Clay went from zero revenue to a $3.1 billion valuation in just 2 years. Was it luck or skill? Tim dives in and gets the answers that are likely to be the subject of many future case studies.
First, the two discuss the unique and large-scale approach that Clay took toward user-generated-content (UGC). The company massively employed content creators as part of their marketing, but they weren’t really satisfied with the lack of control over that content. So, they went their own direction.
Bruno decided to build an ecosystem out of his network of UGC creators. He and his team supported these creators, and motivated them to build content through incentives like badges that marked them as credible experts. The Clay marketing team also heavily promoted the best content that was created to push UGC creators to greater heights.
This marketing plan was managed almost entirely through organic growth without a heavy focus on paid advertising. As the strategy started working, Clay found that it could use releases in its ecosystem to help make all UGC more consistent in messaging across the board.
Check out the complete discussion for more details to learn more about how Clay made and mastered its UGC ecosystem. Next, there’s some big news for marketers who rely on ads.
Google Ads Drops Active Visitors To 100 For Search Network
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-lowers-customer-lists-40648.html
Barry Schwartz brings you this news on major ad policy changes. In short, you’ll be able to build ad segments with much lower traffic numbers than was previously possible.
As Barry reminds you, Google already lowered the size of your data segment customer lists to 100 active visitors for the Google Display Network earlier this year. Now, Google updated the threshold to be 100 active visitors for the Search Network and YouTube as well.
This represents a major change. Previously, you could not generate a market segment for serving ads (meaning, you could not serve ads) unless you could show a minimum of 1000 visitors a month.
Advertisers have speculated that Google may be gradually lowering these size limits across different networks and audience types to balance the requirements and make audience lists easier to use for smaller accounts.
Check out the complete story to learn about your new ad opportunities. The final piece of the month is a little fun. You’ll get advice on better ads from an experienced team.
Meta Ads Expert Reacts To Bad & Great Ad Creative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=487xP7cEP6I
Ben Heath brings you this helpful look at how to build better social ads. He brings more than $200,000,000 in ad spending as experience, and uses what he’s learned to personally review and offer advice on a selection of real ads that have been featured on Meta platforms.
In the video, Ben takes you through a series of ad creatives. You’ll watch each one and then hear his advice on what it does right and wrong. Ben is able to apply his experience to audience targeting, editing, benefits, use cases, and more.
As he rotates through good and bad examples, he shares a lot of the things that get to him as an experienced advertiser. He hones in behaviors that can annoy your audience like noticeably bad production value or bad eye contact.
Check out the complete video to see all the examples for insights you can take to your own ads. That’s it for the biggest news in marketing. Make sure to come back next week for even more about search, AI, ads, video marketing, social media marketing, and more.
