Let’s get ready to RUMBLLEE!

It’s the last Perceptive Marketer of the year, so you bet we stuffed this stocking with all the good stuff!

First off, a little quiz from our VP, Marc Engelsman!

It’s the end of year already? That’s how fast 2025 has flown by in the ever-changing world of SEO and SAIO. We put together this quiz to highlight some of the key developments we covered in Perceptive Marketer and our Perspectives Blog. Your job is to properly place them in chronological order by Quarter! 

1. Google says AI Overviews are generating more queries and higher quality clicks than search ever has. But it is difficult to verify via Google Search Console as AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Organic Search data are all mixed together and results like Click Through Rate (CTR) can be misleading given the “double whammy” effect.
2. Google soft launches AI Mode via Search Labs. Brands report people are clicking links in ChatGPT Search.
3. 34.8% of people surveyed answered “brand visibility had increased” as one of their most improved outcomes.
4. “Search is dead, long live search!” perspective on how SEO and GEO (what we call SAIO) are like cars and trucks – different in some ways but both get you where you want to go. So you need to evolve to include both in your search marketing strategy.

• Google Search Console Social Insights? It’s another Google experiment with limited roll out, but it would allow you to monitor search queries leading to your profiles, top social channel pages, and other social performance data. If released, it will be a great tool as long as data is not delayed.

• Long time SEOer Duane Forrester looks ahead with “14 Things Executives and SEOs Need To Focus On In 2026”. It includes AI-related developments that will impact the search discovery process and, potentially, conversions. The conversion angle centers on AI’s growing ability to assess “latent choice signals” that are triggered by user inaction and decision avoidance. AI systems will be able to reward websites with positive user experience and actions with citations above those that it detects create friction, hesitation, confusion, etc. Google has long promoted best practice SEO as providing helpful content that promotes positive user experience. Predictive AI is taking measurement of that to a new level.

• Google is rolling out its third core update of 2025 this month. “There’s nothing new or special creators need to do for this update as long as they’ve been making satisfying [i.e., helpful] content meant for people” is the advice Google has provided for previous updates, and it applies to this one as well.

• When attending a Marketing Profs webinar on AI in content creation, the presenter, A. Lee Judge, mentioned one thing every person using AI should have: a prompt library. Compile all the prompts you use/your team uses and put them in one place. As your processes evolve, this will help you keep track of the prompts that give you superb answers. Some tools like Claude have their own prompt libraries for you to use!

• Marketing has always been volatile — it’s a matter of knowing what parts of it can be more volatile than others. The top two according to Marketing Dive are:
  • Brand loyalty – Customer experience and convenience will be playing more of a role than ever before in loyalty. How can your team balance making your product the best and easiest to acquire?
  • AI-driven issues – How can marketing teams implement AI without looking lazy/uncreative/boring to consumers?

You may have seen their signs at the start of a trailhead or in a local park. Leave No Trace helps people enjoy the outdoors while minimizing their impact. This membership-based nonprofit provides hands-on training to make stewards of the environment and preserve highly-trafficked places in nature: Leave No Trace.

My intro was a reference to a scene from Daddy Day Care. 

I know it’s silly (how can a carrot fighting a broccoli not be?), but it’s got a great point in the context of the film.

Plot summary if you need: the main characters Charlie and Phil lose their corporate jobs at a cereal company (where the costumes are from) and create an affordable day care service for the community.

When you first see the costumes in the movie, they are used as a kid’s focus group for healthy cereal (which you can imagine does not go over well). Charlie and Phil are disconnected from their families and pitted against coworkers. When they open the day care, Phil and Charlie spend more time with kids to learn what they actually like. They listen to what they want and ultimately become more suited for their previous corporate jobs than ever before.

This is a glorious lesson in listening. At home. At work. Everywhere. Listening to others is how you can learn how to best help them (and yourself).

((Also, the movie soundtrack is *chef’s kiss*.)) 

(((Did I use enough parenthesis in this section?)))

Have a wonderful winter/holiday season! Stay awesome! ✌️

Natalie

1. 3rd Quarter. “Google says AI Overviews are generating more queries and higher quality clicks than search has ever before” and DBE’s Double Whammies blog post.
2. 1st Quarter. Soft Launch and ChatGPT Search.
3. 4th Quarter. “Moving Beyond E-E-A-T: Branding, Survival And The State Of SEO.” Read DBE’s blog post for more on “Measuring Search Marketing Success in the AI Age.”
4. 2nd Quarter. “How Generative Information Retrieval Is Reshaping Search” and DBE’s blog post “SEO & SAIO Should Come Together (Right Now).”