As the sun sets on 2025, the digital landscape looks vastly different than what it did just twelve months ago.
If 2024 was the year of AI panic, 2025 was the year of AI integration.
Furthermore, the past year has been nothing but a rollercoaster of algorithm updates, legal battles, and fundamental shifts in how the web is indexed, served, and monetized.
Below is a comprehensive recap of the year’s highlights, lowlights, and critical turning points for both SEO and WordPress.
The State of SEO in 2025
The SEO industry in 2025 was defined by one concept: Stabilization of the Artificial. The chaotic testing of 2024 paved the way to a “new normal” where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) became a standard line item in marketing budgets.
Unfortunately, it brought in another side of the coin in the conversation, and the “Zero-Click” reality became unavoidable.
The Maturity of Google AI Overviews (AIO)
The biggest story of the year was the evolution of Google’s AI Overviews (formerly SGE).
Reports from early 2025 showed a massive surge in AI Overview (AIO) prevalence.
In January, AIOs appeared for roughly 6.5% of queries. By July, that number peaked at nearly 25%, causing widespread panic among publishers. However, Google dialed this back in the latter half of the year, stabilizing around 16% by November. (Source: Semrush)
The Shift in Intent
The most crucial development for SEOs was where these overviews appeared.
In 2024, AIOs were primarily informational. But in 2025, Google aggressively expanded them into commercial and transactional queries.
Transactional AIOs rose from ~2% in early 2025 to nearly 14% by year-end.
In the meantime, navigational AIOs skyrocketed from under 1% to over 10%, meaning even branded searches were now often intercepted by AI summaries. (Source: Semrush)
The Rise of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
2025 was the year GEO went mainstream.
It is no longer enough to rank for keywords; brands now have to rank for concepts in the Large Language Models (LLMs) that power search.
A major highlight was the industry-wide adoption of llms.txt files (similar to robots.txt). This allowed site owners to explicitly guide how AI crawlers interpret their content.
Furthermore, Google’s algorithm update schedule was relentless but predictable in 2025.
- March 2025 Core Update (Mar 13 – Mar 27): Focused on reducing parasite SEO and further penalizing AI-generated spam.
- June 2025 Core Update (Jun 30 – Jul 17): A massive update that rewarded first-hand experience, heavily impacting affiliate sites that lacked original testing.
- August 2025 Spam Update (Aug 26 – Sep 21): Targeted deepfake content and site reputation abuse (SRA).
- December 2025 Core Update (Dec 11 – Dec 29): Just completed days ago, this update appears to be a correction update, restoring visibility to some legitimate publishers who were unfairly hit by the volatility in June.
Search Console Goes AI Too
In a delightful end-of-year surprise, Google rolled out an AI-powered configuration for Search Console in December.
Instead of manually filtering for “Queries containing ‘X’ in country ‘Y'”, users can now simply type natural-language prompts like “Show me how my blog pages performed on mobile in Spain last month compared to last year.”
And voila! The AI configures the report automatically.
Lowlights of 2025 Recap for SEO
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows for the general SEO landscape. Some noteworthy shifts in dynamics shook the whole industry and how SEO would look further down the line.
The Zero-Click Reality
The most painful statistic of the 2025 overview is the Zero-Click Rate, which reportedly surpassed 70% for the first time.
Publishers saw a continued decline in organic referrals, with some sectors (like News and Lyrics/Definitions) seeing drops of over 20% YoY.
Rank Tracker Blocking
In a controversial move, Google aggressively blocked third-party rank tracking bots in late 2025. This ultimately made it significantly harder for SEO tools to provide accurate SERP data.
The State of WordPress in 2025
If SEO were about adapting to AI, WordPress was about surviving a Civil War.
The ongoing legal and cultural battle between WP Engine and Automattic (Matt Mullenweg) cast a long shadow over the ecosystem.
Thankfully, the software itself saw brilliant technical innovations.
WordPress 6.8 and 6.9 “Gene”
Despite the drama, the Core team delivered two stellar releases.
WordPress 6.8 (April 2025) update released, focusing on the Data Liberation project.
This update made things easier than ever to migrate sites away from hosting silos, which was, to be honest, a direct technical response to the platform’s political tensions.
It also introduced improved grid layouts and font management.
WordPress 6.9 (December 2, 2025), AKA Gene Ammons, is being hailed as the AI Foundation update.
Its Abilities API allows developers to expose plugin functionality to AI agents in a standardized way.
For example, an AI agent can now understand how to check a WooCommerce order status without needing a custom integration.
But that’s not the only thing that came with this update!
A massive quality-of-life improvement for editorial teams lets users use Google Docs-style commenting directly on blocks in the WordPress editor.
Basically, AI was the common denominator in the 2025 year review for SEO and WordPress.
Global Growth and the Non-English Majority
2025 marked a historic tipping point for the first time. Over 56% of WordPress sites are in non-English languages. (Source: WordPress)
Japanese became the second-most used language, with WordPress holding a staggering 83% CMS market share in Japan.
Not to mention, 81 WordCamps were held in 39 countries, including a heartwarming Youth Day in Nicaragua, where teenagers taught younger children how to build sites.
Lowlights of 2025 Recap for WordPress
All the glee and glamour fade away when we look at how the legal side of WordPress went down in 2025.
And boy o boy! It went down indeed!
The WP Engine vs. Automattic/WPEngine
The defining narrative of the 2025 recap was the escalation of the conflict that began in late 2024.
The dispute between Automattic (the commercial arm behind WordPress.com and WooCommerce) and WP Engine (the hosting giant) dominated headlines. This WordPress vs. WP Engine drama continued throughout New Year’s Eve.
In December 2024/January 2025, a court issued a preliminary injunction against Automattic, ordering it to stop blocking WP Engine customers from accessing WordPress.org repositories.
The Secure Custom Fields Fiasco
The confusion surrounding Automattic’s Advanced Custom Fields (ACF)/Secure Custom Fields plugin continued to plague developers. Many sites broke as updates clashed between the original ACF (hosted by WP Engine) and the forked version on the repository.
The communal fallout of this issue was pretty high.
Slack Exodus
A symbolic low point occurred when Mullenweg requested the deletion of his account from the “Post Status” Slack community.
It signaled a deepening rift between the platform’s founder and its professional class.
Looking Ahead to 2026
The web didn’t die this year, but it certainly mutated. The question for next year is: Can we live with the mutation?
If we look at the 2025 year review for SEO and WordPress-
For SEOs: The job is no longer just ranking on SERP. It is about managing information visibility across AI agents, voice search, and traditional organic growth.
The winners of the 2025 recap were those who built brands strong enough to be cited by AI, not just indexed by it. And mark my words, the winners of 2026 will be the same.
For WordPress: The platform is stronger technically but weaker culturally. The resolution of the WP Engine lawsuit (likely coming in late 2026) will determine the future governance of the open web.