Search Console, AI, and HTTPs updates Search Console (Q4 ‘25)

Hello everyone and welcome to today's
Google search news. I hope life is
treating you reasonably well wherever
you are. My name is John Mueller. I'm
your host today here from Google
Switzerland. Today we have news from
search console AI and search discover
shopping and more. Sounds interesting,
right? Let's get started. First up,
search console has a nice new logo. I
know, I know you don't get number one
ranking with just a logo, but it's still
nice. Within Search Console Insights, we
added achievements for your site. I love
seeing the progress when a site starts
getting clicks from search. I trust
you've collected a few of these awards
in the meantime, and I hope you get many
more. By the way, links to everything
are in the description below. Also,
there we added query groups. Users
search in many ways for your website,
and query groups combine similar
searches, making it easier for you to
focus on bigger themes.
And that's not all. Custom annotations
in the performance report are now
available for everyone. [snorts] They're
great to label events affecting your
site and are shared with your site's
Search Console users. We hope these
features make it easier to use Search
Console, helping you to be more
productive while getting the most out of
Google Search.
Next up, some Google search changes.
First, to get it out of the way, there
was the August spam update. We update
our automated spam detection systems
from time to time to improve the quality
of content shown in the search results.
Hopefully, not a problem for your site.
Next, AI mode became available to more
languages and locations. With AI mode,
we're seeing people diving deeper into
complex topics and asking questions
nearly three times longer than
traditional searches. This data is
included in your search console
performance reports already. Also in AI
mode, we're experimenting with agentic
features. These enable users to get
things done directly in search. For
example, users might be able to reserve
a table through your restaurant website
automatically. It's currently in search
labs for some countries. Can the AI
agent navigate your website and help
users with tasks there? Try it out. I
expect to report more about agentic
systems over time. It's a fascinating
new way of interacting with websites.
Finally, also experimental in search
labs, there's web guide. It uses AI to
group and organize search results,
making it easier to find information and
web pages. With it, you'll find a
familiar collection of links, making it
easy to dive into web pages. Try it out
if you have a chance. Next in line is
Discover, our interest based automated
feed. Creators can now be more visible
in Discover. So, if you're creating
timely and highquality content on
various social platforms, that content
could now be shown in addition to your
website's articles. We've also added a
profile for publications and creators
together with a follow button, helping
users to keep up with what you create
online. Now, let's move over to
shopping.
For e-commerce sites, we added support
for organizationwide
shipping and return policies, both in
structured data and in search console.
This makes it a bit easier for sites to
specify these policies, helping to build
trust with potential customers. This is
in addition to existing product level
settings.
In search, we dropped a few visual
elements that use structured data. We
evaluate the usefulness of features for
both site owners and users regularly and
cleanup were reasonable. You can
continue to use these structured data
types on your website, but they don't
have a visual effect in search anymore.
Having a flexible hosting configuration
that makes it easy for you to add and
update structured data helps you to be
on top of structured data changes.
And now over to some external posts. The
SEO community is never quiet and I
wanted to share a few things which I
found particularly insightful. Links are
in the description as always. First, we
have Hannah Masters on maximizing the
click with things that a site can do to
make the most out of every user's visit.
Then, there's a set of slides from
Charles Meen with lessons learned from
crawling a lot of sites. If you want
your content represented in any online
system, then crawling is the first step.
Finally, there's Barry Adams with AI
survival strategies for publishers. A
nice compilation of tips and good
practices for publishers in the modern
era of search and AI. But wait, I have a
few more things for you.
The Google security team just announced
that Chrome will make HTTPS the default
by October 2026, meaning users will have
to give permission before any non-secure
site can load. I hope you're all using
HTTPS.
ZKit, Google's WordPress plug-in, now
supports reader revenue manager, helping
you to grow, retain, and engage people
by adding newsletter signups, surveys,
contributions, and subscriptions. If you
use WordPress, check out Sidekit.
We added some additional information on
how to configure JavaScript-based payw
walls to our documentation so that they
work well for search and beyond. And
since we frequently get asked questions
about it, no, Google doesn't support the
LLM's text file. As we've mentioned
before, you don't need to do anything
special to be displayed in Google's AI
powered search features.
August through September are often
filled with events here. It's
inspirational for us to meet folks like
you working on websites worldwide. This
time we met you in Thailand, Mexico,
Hungary, Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong,
Serbia, Dubai, Japan, Israel, the UK,
Turkey, and even Switzerland. We'd love
to meet more of you. So, watch out for
future events on our blog. And with
that, this episode of Google Search News
is now complete. Thank you for tuning
in. I hope this video was useful, and
please add feedback and comments. We
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another episode is ready. Bye.