This month underscored a reality we’ve been inching toward all year: search is no longer a single interface. Google’s AI Mode keeps expanding features and languages, while non-Google players push AI-forward experiences into everyday browsing. Meanwhile, Google’s removal of the &num=100 parameter broke a lot of old habits and muddied rank-tracking and Search Console impressions, forcing teams to rethink measurement baselines. And just to keep everyone humble, Google logged an active Serving incident on October 3 — a reminder to annotate before you panic. Google Search Status
Google’s Search Status Dashboard shows an ongoing Serving issue beginning Oct 3, 2025 (13:00 PDT). If you saw odd blips around that date, document and move on — don’t mistake outages for algorithm shifts. Third-party coverage echoed Google’s “data center issue” explanation and advised against knee-jerk changes. Add an annotation in your analytics. Google Search Status
Google confirmed that the results-per-page parameter is not supported, ending a decade-plus workaround many tools relied on. The ripple effects: messy rank tracking, GSC impressions drops that reflect counting changes more than real visibility loss, and a short-term wave of “my traffic broke” confusion. Treat September 12–20 as a new baseline and recalibrate your tooling. For synthesis and on-the-ground analysis, see Search Engine Land’s confirmation, Found’s data read, and Brodie Clark’s forensic write-up. Search Engine Land
Google expanded AI Mode to Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese, elevating India/APAC priority for native-language content. In parallel, Google launched Search Live in the U.S. — a voice-first, camera-aware experience that converses and cites links in real time, without Labs opt-in. Expect more multimodal queries and AI answers with visual elements sitting above or beside traditional results. blog.google
Perplexity’s Comet AI browser moved from premium/waitlist to free for everyone, positioning itself as a daily driver with baked-in assistant features. OpenAI switched on Instant Checkout in ChatGPT with Etsy live and Shopify “coming soon,” teeing up a search-less path from discovery to purchase. Brave added detailed AI answers directly in results, tightening its challenger stance against Google. If your strategy still treats Google as the only front door, October says: diversify. The Verge
AI Mode is explicitly designed to reason across the web and provide linked answers you can probe with follow-ups. That rewards pages that are (a) extractable, (b) trustworthy, and (c) clearly structured with entities and schema. Google’s recent product posts also emphasize more visual exploration inside AI Mode, blending conversational queries with shoppable and image-rich results. Translation: optimize for scannable clarity and multimodal context, not just text blocks. blog.google
Tactical checklist:
With Search Live, users can talk to Search and show it problems via the camera, then receive AI-generated guidance plus links. For local, home/DIY, travel, fashion, and troubleshooting, this short-circuits generic listicles. Invest in helpful visuals, short clips, and annotated images that AIs can reference — and keep Google Business Profile and product feeds immaculate for citations and shopping modules. blog.google
AI Mode’s Hindi support makes Indian audiences a priority for native-language hubs (not blind translation). Meanwhile, EU rollouts remain more cautious due to regulatory constraints; take the breathing room to harden quality, speed, and transparent sourcing that will be table stakes as AI answers expand. blog.google
Workflows that once took a dev now take a template:
ingest GSC → cluster with NLP → brief drafts → QA diffs → publish and log.
The biggest gains come from fewer manual hops and faster iteration cycles — and they’re resilient to SERP volatility caused by AI overlays and parameter removals.
Teams are rolling internal copilots that merge inventory, CRM, CMS, and demand data to propose conversion-aligned content. Microsoft’s evangelism this year has repeatedly underlined AI search blending chat, anticipation, and smarter indexing; the signal for SEOs is to supply clean entity data and fresh feeds a model can trust. Bing Blogs
Blend GA4 + GSC + server logs and annotate Sept 12–20 (&num=100 fallout) and Oct 3 (Serving incident). Expect impressions and average position to look different post-September; orient stakeholders to a new baseline and track AI answer appearances where available (Bing Webmaster, third-party SGE trackers, and your own SERP scrapes). Search Engine Land
Add a portable, source-aware summary above the fold for your primary intent. Use short sentences, cite internal anchors or authoritative external sources, and ensure the section is machine-parsable (clean markup, not inside accordion JS). Measure downstream with annotations around Sept/Oct changes. blog.google
Ship list (2 hours):
Run entity extraction on your top URLs, pick 2–3 high-salience entities each, and add contextual links from semantically close pages. This reinforces topical clusters AIs use to justify citations and helps classic crawling. (Bonus: add short glossary stubs.)
Spend 60 minutes in AI Mode, Bing chat, and Brave detailed answers for your core topics. Log which formats and domains get cited. If Reddit/forums dominate in YMYL queries, augment your first-hand experience and visuals, then participate in relevant communities. blog.google
Create a pre/post comparison dashboard with toggles for before Sept 12 and after Sept 20. Expect impressions to drop more than clicks (counting change), and avg. position to skew better. Socialize the methodology and avoid performance whiplash in Q4 reviews. Found
With Instant Checkout live in ChatGPT for U.S. Etsy sellers (Shopify next), journeys will sometimes skip traditional SERPs. If you sell DTC, ensure product data clarity, up-to-date pricing, and frictionless fulfillment pages that assistants can reference. Reuters
&num=100 removal and impression counting changes altered trend lines. We reset baselines, not strategy. Search Engine LandOctober 2025 wasn’t about one “big update.” It was about systems changing: how results are measured, how answers are presented, and where users start tasks. The durable strategy is the same compass we’ve used through countless cycles — useful, trustworthy content on fast, structured pages — but applied to a map with new overlays: AI summaries, voice/camera sessions, and assistant-native commerce. Teams that blend discipline (process, QA, measurement) with curiosity (new interfaces, new formats) will out-iterate the market in Q4 and beyond. blog.google
Here is an exclusive coverage of the SEO News of the Month – September 2025
See you in next week’s SEO news — Manikandan N
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