Friday, December 5

🌟 Today’s Highlights:

• Google’s 2025 Year in Search is here

• Threads is letting users tell its algorithm what they want in their feeds

• The first safe AI-native browser is here

• 📊 Stat of the Day: The latest flagship AI models (Claude Opus 4.5 & Gemini 3 Pro) have statistically regressed in performance for standard SEO tasks with a ~9% drop in accuracy compared to previous versions. (Source: Previsible)

• 💡 Today’s Insight: Social media beats SEO as SMBs’ top traffic source

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⚡️ Today’s Headlines ⚡️

🎊 Google’s 2025 Year in Search is here. This year’s recap isn’t a ranking of the “top searches” or “most searched” terms, but instead focused on trending queries – aka the topics that grew the fastest compared with 2024.

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🦾 Meta is launching AI-powered account support options. Instead of providing support from real humans (which Meta has struggled with for awhile), it’s now adding more robust AI-powered tools to its support hub to help users.

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❤️ Threads is testing a new way to help users tune their feed algorithm. By posting a message to “dear algo” then including a note on what they want to see more or less of in the app, Threads is trying to let users match their algorithm to their interests.

💡 Today’s Insight 💡

Social media beats SEO as SMBs’ top traffic source

🗞 TL;DR - A new survey from WordStream by LocaliQ analyzed how small businesses view social media, traditional SEO, and emerging AI summaries, as well as what’s driving traffic to their brands. The data showed that social now leads search, SMBs are frustrated by AI summaries, and most visibility still depends on the homepage.

💡 Insight - Since AI summaries shape buyers’ early decisions and can steer buyers toward competing products, small businesses now find them as an important channel – despite their frustrations. 40% of SMBs say they’ve lost traffic from Google updates and AI-driven search. Nearly half of larger companies reported declines.

At the same time, 50% of SMBs monitor AI referrals and mentions while 70% of larger SMBs do the same. The biggest complaint of SMBs is seeing competitors show up in AI summaries instead of them. But since the models often pull from sites beyond Google’s top 10, smaller brands have an opportunity to get visibility they might not find with traditional SEO.

Among SMBs tracking AI traffic, the most cited pages are homepages (57%), product or service pages (48%), and contact pages (34%). The top actions SMBs are taking to boost AI visibility are: using clear, descriptive headlines (35%), improving readability (26%), fixing technical features like site speed (24%), and building external brand mentions (33%).

64% of SMBs listed social as a main traffic driver, beating organic search at 52%. Solopreneurs and micro-businesses ranked social first as a traffic driver. Also impressive, 35% of businesses without a website said social and marketplaces give them enough leads that they don’t need one.

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