Google's John Mueller Working On Christmas (2025 Edition)

Every year, for the past 18 or so years, Google's John Mueller has been working on Christmas to provide support to those who need help with their Google Search ranking and SEO concerns. This year is no different; John Mueller has responded to several concerns on Reddit and other social media platforms today.

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Google Search Forgot The Holiday Decorations In 2025

For the past 15 or so years, Google would post holiday-specific decorations at the top of its search results for Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. Well, this year Google did not. Google did post an Easter egg in the search results, which they do every year, and it posted the season's greeting Doodle, but not the holiday-specific decorations.

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Bing: Duplicate & Similar Pages Blur Signals & Weaken SEO & AI Visibility

Fabrice Canel and Krishna Madhavan from the Microsoft Bing team posted a useful blog post named Does Duplicate Content Hurt SEO and AI Search Visibility? The short answer is yes, and the long answer is also yes.

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Google Ads Advisor Suggestions Within Google Ad Reporting

Google is testing pushing advertisers to use Google Ads Advisor from within the Google Ads reporting section. Google Ads suggested questions and prompts at the top of the report, which it thinks you would find helpful to chat with an AI bot about.

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Bing Search Tests More Sources Section

Microsoft is testing a "more sources" section within the Bing Search results. This seems to load a different user interface, with long card-shaped search results that you can slide through as a carousel.

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Google Search Bar Tests Teases For AI Mode With Animation In Box

Google is testing prefilling the search bar in a new Chrome tab, with teasers to encourage you to search deeper with AI Mode. Google is putting in the search box, "Research a topic," "Write something new," "Ask Google," and "Make a plan."

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Google Discover Notifications That Go AI Mode Responses

Have you seen those Google Discover notifications that pop up and seem like news notifications from the Google app but what they do is drive you into Google AI Mode. I find them incredibly annoying, because every time I click on it, I think I am going to a news article but instead, I am given an AI-generated AI Mode answer.

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Report: Google Deleting Local Reviews More Than Ever

GMBapi posted data that looks at tens of thousands of Google Business Profiles across multiple countries and showed that review deletions have increased significantly over the year, compared to previous periods.

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Google Expands Ads In AI Overviews To More Countries But Not For Sensitive Verticals

Google quietly updated its AI Overviews ad documentation to say that ads in AI Overviews are supported in Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, and US. Previously, it just said it was available in the US and "will expand to select English speaking countries soon."

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Google Pushes Timeline For Gemini Replacing Assistant Into 2026

Anish Kattukaran, CPO at Google Home & Nest announced in the Google Gemini forums that Gemini will not be replacing Google Assistant by the end of 2025. He wrote, "We're adjusting our previously announced timeline to make sure we deliver a seamless transition, and will continue our work to upgrade Assistant users to Gemini on mobile devices into 2026."

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ChatGPT Gains Local Knowledge Panels

OpenAI has added local knowledge panels to the ChatGPT results. When you ask for local information and then click on a business name, ChatGPT will load a local knowledge panel on the right side.

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Google December 2025 Core Update Volatility On Saturday - December 20

As you all know, Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, we saw some significant volatility hit early on December 13th and then it seemed to cool a bit towards the middle of the week. Now, I am seeing signs of more intense volatility hit on Saturday, December 20th.

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Google Sued SerpApi Over Scrapping Search Results

On Friday, Google announced it had filed a lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping the Google search results. Google alleges that SerpApi is running an "unlawful" operation that bypasses Google's security measures to scrape search results at an astonishing scale.

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Google Business Profiles Verification Issue Support Form Updated

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles verification issues support form. This makes it easier to pick a specific issue you had when trying to verify a business within Google Business Profiles.

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Google JavaScript Doc Now Says Non-200 HTTP Status Code Might Not Be Rendered

Google updated its JavaScript SEO documentation for the third time this week, this time to say that "while pages with a 200 HTTP status code are sent to rendering, this might not be the case for pages with a non-200 HTTP status code."

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Microsoft Tests Underlines In Bing Ad Description Snippets

Microsoft is also testing underlining the text of the Bing Ads search snippets and descriptions. I am not sure if those underlined words are links or not but I assume so.

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Google Search Console Page Indexing Report Now Up To Date

After almost a month delay with the page indexing report within Google Search Console, the report is now back to its normal timeframe. This morning it was reading that the last updated date was November 21st. Now, it is reading December 14th, which is a normal delay for this report.

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Microsoft Tests Search With An Image & Make An Image In Bing Search Bar

Microsoft is testing the ability to upload an image directly within the Bing search bar. You click on a plus sign and Bing shows you "search with an image" and "make an image." I get the search with an image feature but why add generative AI features, like make an image, in this search bar?

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Google Rolling Out Read More Links Search Result Snippets

After several months of testing, Google seems to be rolling out the "Read more" links at the end of some of the search results listings. We saw Google test variations of this back in July and it now seems to be live.

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Bing Tests See More Search Results Button

Microsoft is testing a "see more" button in the Bing Search results, which, when you click on it, loads more search results in the middle section.

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Google Tests Property Listings In Search Results

Google is testing showing full detailed property sale listings within the Google Search results. This is getting a lot of interest from those in the real estate business.

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Google Removing Q&A Feature In Google Maps For AI-Powered Ask Button

Google confirmed it is essentially removing the Q&A feature within Google Maps, and instead, searchers can use the new AI-powered Ask button on a Google Business Profile to get the answers they are looking for.

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Google December 2025 Core Update Intense Impact Early

Google announced the Google December 2025 core update on Thursday afternoon, December 11th, and it already has a significant impact on Google Search results. The most noticeable day of the impact was Saturday, December 13th, but there are plenty of signs it started to hit hard on Friday, December 12th.

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Google Maps Share Button Drops X For Reddit & Facebook

Google Maps is updating its share buttons by removing the options to share on X and adding the options to share on Reddit and Facebook.

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Google News AI-Powered Article Overviews Go Live For Some Publishers

On Wednesday, Google announced a number of new AI features, which we covered (links below) but one other feature Google spoke about was "AI-powered article overviews." This is an experiment Google News is trying with a handful of publishers.

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