Whether it’s a drought of ideas or you no longer see the value in creating content for your business, it’s a fundamental element of an effective marketing strategy. There are plenty of reasons why a business may stop creating content, but it’s important to understand the value and direct impacts on your business’s performance.

The short-term effects of not creating content as a business

In the short term, the effect may be only slight, seeing things like a small drop in traffic, a reduced click-through rate, or low volumes of people unsubscribing from email campaigns.

But these small changes can have a domino effect, which can cause websites to tank in rankings, which can then have a knock-on effect on getting leads and conversions for their product or services.

The long-term impacts of not creating content as a business

The long-term consequence of neglecting to create and update content on a website is a severe detriment to the success and longevity of a website.

1. Content begins to become outdated.

• Audiences become estranged from the brand.

• Visibility online is significantly impacted.

• Lead and conversions are directly impacted.

• The rebuilding period takes longer to restore growth.

• Budget may be wasted on crawl spend.

• The impression made on new visitors is poor, and the user experience is negatively affected.

• Your competitors stand to exceed where you are failing.

How to remedy content stagnation

Creating content is only worth doing if you want to add value to your brand and build an audience. Without intention or goals, there’s no purpose in producing content.

The approach you take really matters; breaking it down into manageable steps makes producing content much simpler.

Step 1: Audit your existing content

If you have content on your site, create a document like an Excel sheet, track the metrics for the content. Looking at things like the average engagement time, click-through rates, and volume of users looking at the content, within a set period.

This can give you a snapshot into what has and hasn’t worked for your brand. Allowing you to identify the top performers, pieces of content that could benefit from an update, and opportunities to remove outdated content that no longer serves your site. Ultimately, this will shape the way you begin to ideate and map out your content calendar.

Step 2: Ideate

This step requires you to research and ideate for pieces of new content. Utilising competitor audits can also expedite this process, as it can help you to recognise content gaps and opportunities for inspiration.

When researching, tap into various resources, look across social platforms and on forums to find conversations that relate to your business and its offering. Using journals, books can help not only bolster your understanding of topics but also help you uncover new angles to approach creating new content.

Step 3: Begin planning

This is the part in the process where you begin to create a physical document outlining your ideas, assigning dates and responsibilities, and mapping the structure and information needed to be included.

If you’re concerned about the resources your business has, thus impacts your ability to produce, try making one really great piece of content each month. This will ensure you don’t fall behind your peers, and your audience is still being catered to.

We delve into the types of things you need to include in your editorial calendar in our “What is the purpose of an editorial calendar” article. We recommend planning for 6-12 month periods and conducting content audits to track performance.

Step 4: Put your planning into practice

Once your content calendar is mapped out, it’s time to start executing your plan. Create your content with confidence, follow your plan and measure your success. Whilst not every piece of content is going to be a sensation, it serves as the foundation for your business’s online performance to grow.

Apple’s iOS updates often change how apps and websites can follow what people do online. Since iOS 14.5 introduced stronger privacy rules and App Tracking Transparency, advertisers have had to find new ways to measure whether their ads work. The next version, iOS 26, is now in testing, and early results show the changes may not be as strict as many expected. This matters to any business that uses online ads, because the ability to see which campaigns actually bring customers is vital for planning and budgeting.

Normal Browsing Still Passes Ad Info

Tests of the iOS 26 beta show that Google’s special link tags, called “gclid,” which help companies see which ads people click, mostly stay in place when you use Safari normally. They are only removed if you go into Safari’s advanced settings and switch on “Tracking & Fingerprint Protection” yourself. This means everyday users won’t lose this tracking by default, so advertisers can still connect clicks to sales or sign-ups under normal conditions.

Private Browsing and Apple Apps Behave Differently

When you use Safari’s private mode, the system still limits Google’s tags the same way it does today. Another big exception is Apple’s own Mail and Messages apps. If you open a link from an email or text message, those special tags are stripped out automatically, no matter what settings you have. That makes it harder for advertisers to see where a click came from when a person arrives via email or SMS.

Google’s Backup Plans for Stricter Privacy Rules

Because Apple could still tighten things up before iOS 26 officially launches, Google has built backup systems. These use things like email addresses or phone numbers, if you provide them to a business, to estimate which ads led to sales. Other methods move the tracking to servers instead of your browser. These tools help companies keep measuring their ads without following individuals as closely and show how online advertising is shifting toward privacy-friendly measurement.

Apple has been increasing privacy protections since 2017. The iOS 26 beta suggests no big surprise yet, but everyone is watching the final release to see if Apple goes further.

OpenAI has announced upgrades to how ChatGPT handles search, with improvements designed to make results more reliable, helpful, and easier to read.

What’s new

The updates focus on three key areas:

• Accuracy: ChatGPT now makes fewer mistakes when generating answers. In AI, these mistakes are sometimes called hallucinations. This is when the system gives a response that sounds convincing but is not factually correct.
• Shopping intent: The system is better at recognising when someone is looking to buy something or get product recommendations. This means the results you see should be more relevant if you are browsing with shopping in mind.
• Presentation: Answers are now formatted in a cleaner, easier-to-skim way while still including useful detail.

Why this matters

These changes show that OpenAI is positioning ChatGPT search as a real alternative to traditional search engines like Google. While AI-driven search is becoming more popular, it is important to note that it currently accounts for less than 1% of website referral traffic. For marketers, it is still a small but growing channel to watch.

The growth of ChatGPT

ChatGPT is now one of the fastest-growing consumer apps in history, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide. More people are using AI for everyday search, research, and even shopping decisions. This growing adoption means digital marketers cannot ignore AI platforms. Your audience may already be using ChatGPT to answer questions that once would have gone straight to Google.

Why ChatGPT matters for SEO

For SEO professionals, ChatGPT’s evolution is highly relevant. Traditional SEO focuses on ranking in Google’s search results, but AI tools like ChatGPT often summarise information instead of listing websites. That means there are fewer clicks to external sites.

However, if your brand is mentioned in those summaries, it can influence visibility, authority, and even customer trust. Marketers will need to think not just about optimising for Google, but also about how their content might appear (or not appear) in AI-driven answers.

2025 has seen campaigns that not only drove brand success but also sparked conversations, controversies, and engagement across every platform. Observing shifts in the way brands and businesses market their products and services paints a picture of how the digital landscape is evolving marketing approaches.

The Shift to Social Channels

Marketing was once dominated by print, whether it was the posters we see pasted to the sides of bus stops, or the imposing and impressive billboards. But that has all drastically changed over the last few decades, with banner ads, pop-up ads, and data capturing information about what we like and dislike in order to better target us with campaigns.

In more recent years, that strategy has expanded with entirely new methods and techniques to advertise products.

Authenticity through UGC

User-generated content is a more subtle way products and services are now being advertised. Utilising real customers and their genuine experiences to promote brands and their offerings.

Conducive to authentic relationships between brands and customers. When goods or services are accurately depicted, and by a voice other than the brand, it affirms the confidence prospective customers have.

The Social Shift

Google currently indexes Reddit, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, which increases the chances of brands being discovered. Making optimisations a necessary part of a comprehensive social media strategy.

You can optimise content through:

• Creating captions with search engines in mind
• Using high-quality assets
• Using Hashtags
• Creating accessible content through subtitles and alt-text
• Use keywords

AI-Powered Marketing

AI has altered the trajectory of the internet and streamlined processes of creation for marketing efforts. Integrating AI into business tools, enhancing capabilities, and automating campaigns for more effective budget spending. Personalisation is levelled up, and predictive analytics allow campaigners to forecast and tailor campaigns with data-led precision.

We see the incorporation of AI in most business tools today, whether that be Meta Business Suite, Grammarly, Canva, and so many other applications. Every aspect of campaign creation now has some form of AI assistance implemented, completely changing the way marketers create campaigns.

Influencer Marketing

While influencer marketing has existed for the last couple of years, it seems it is becoming more and more intuitive. Reflecting audience desires and forging collaborations with the audience’s preferences in mind.

We see this evidenced in the Chamberlain x Pinterest collaboration, where Pinterest launched its first-ever partnership, all crafted on audience listening and trend data. And in other campaigns, like when Michael Cera created a witty ad for socials with Cera Ve, playing on his name and the brand name, using humour and wit to promote the products. Both campaigns are tapping into internet culture, which further connects audiences and fuels the conversations across platforms.

Marketing in 2025 is less about selling and more about connecting—through authenticity, creativity, and technology. Brands that adapt to these shifts won’t just survive the digital evolution, they’ll define it.

SEO Platforms that allow users to track keyword rankings on Google have been experiencing issues not being able to track keywords outside of the top 10 results, while Google Search Console has also been experiencing issues with impressions.

What’s causing Rank Tracking issues?

The URL Parameter &num=100allows platforms such as SemRUSH and SERanking to scrape 100 results at a time. Google has recently removed the parameter, which now means rank tracking sites have to scrape the SERP at 10x the cost, leading to issues with the data being displayed to end users.

SemRush has released a statement about the latest changes: “In what has already been a dynamic year for search, this change is rippling through the SEO industry. Rank tracking tools, including Semrush, traditionally rely on this parameter to efficiently capture organic results at scale. Without it, getting the full top 100 results now requires 10 times as many requests, making the process significantly more resource-intensive.”

SemRush suggested that users should focus their efforts on the Top 20 Results for the time being, as rankings outside of this may not regain visibility in the future if Google doesn’t reintroduce the &num=100 parameter.

How has this impacted Google Search Console

Search Console impressions are down dramatically despite the fact that clicks are still at the same level for a lot of users. Brodie Clark, an independent SEO analyst, has speculated that Search Console data is down because these scrapers that have been using the &num=100 parameter have been unnaturally inflating users’ impressions for years, as they load articles more frequently while scraping the SERP. This would explain why clicks have stayed steady while impressions have fallen. As Brodie Clark states, “For a normal search result for a typical Google user, the default ‘current page’ would be 10 organic listings. Because rank trackers tend to use 100 organic listings as the default view, a result that ranks in position #99 would then incur an impression within GSC, even though it is a bot impression.”

What does it mean for marketers?

As it currently stands, marketers will have to deal with inconsistencies in rank tracking data for the foreseeable future, and immediate data will still be available on most rank tracking platforms for the top 10 and 20 rankings. We don’t currently know if this is a permanent change from Google, forever affecting rank tracking data, or if this is just temporary.

There’s no denying the explosive rise of AI tools like ChatGPT. But the latest audience data from Similarweb shows that Google remains firmly in control of search behaviour.

In August 2025:

• 95.3% of ChatGPT users also visited Google
• Only 14.3% of Google users visited ChatGPT

So even as ChatGPT grows, people are still heading back to Google. The scale is even more striking when you compare traffic: ChatGPT had 5.8 billion visits in August, while Google had 83.8 billion.

In fact, there are early signs that ChatGPT referral traffic is dipping for some sites. Bing, surprisingly, is often proving to be a stronger driver of visits. That doesn’t mean you should ignore AI search, but it does mean it’s worth focusing time and resources where you can make the biggest impact.

How to best rank in ChatGPT

Optimising for ChatGPT and other AI-driven search tools is still new territory, but some best practices are already emerging:

• Focus on authority: AI models favour trusted, expert-led sources. Having clear author profiles and credentials helps.
• Be clear and structured: Content that directly answers questions in plain English is more likely to be surfaced.
• Cover topics in depth: Comprehensive content tends to be pulled into AI responses more often than thin pages.
• Build visibility across the web: AI doesn’t just read your site, it learns from the wider internet. Strong mentions in news, blogs, and forums all help.
• Keep content fresh: Regular updates signal relevance and improve your chances of being used in answers.

The takeaway

• Keep Google front and centre: It remains the heavyweight for driving traffic.
• Experiment, don’t overcommit: AI tools are growing fast, but their role is still evolving.
• Check your own data: Performance varies by industry and audience, so rely on your analytics, not just the hype.

AI isn’t killing search, it’s expanding it. For marketers, that means balancing curiosity about new tools with a clear focus on what’s already working.

Bias towards big brands by search engines has been a constant headache for smaller sites trying to grow their audience ever since the very beginning of SEO. Even in the earlier days of SEO, larger sites would dominate the SERP. As Roger Monti writes,

“During the early years of Google’s algorithm, it was obvious that sites with a lot of PageRank ranked for virtually anything they wanted. For example, I remember a web design company that built a lot of websites, creating a network of backlinks, raising their PageRank to a remarkable level normally seen only in big corporate sites like IBM. As a consequence, they ranked for the two-word keyword phrase, Web Design and virtually every other variant like Web Design + [any state in the USA].”

Google’s latest algorithm still seems to be favouring these big sites and this article will discuss what the factors are affecting this and how users can tackle these issues of big site bias.

Does Bias exist in Search?

Even though not explicitly stated by Google, we know that bias towards big brands exists in search because they use ranking factors such as topical authority which relies on sites being trusted by Google. Google identifies trustworthiness partially by the backlink profile of a site, and larger brands typically have stronger back link profiles than their smaller counterparts.

This means that despite the best efforts of some users to create high-quality, engaging content, quality content can only take you so far, as you are limited by how much of an authority Google sees you as. If Intelligency and Nike wrote content on the same sports topic and our article far outstripped Nike’s in terms of quality content and in-depth analysis, Nike would still rank higher than Intelligency because of their authority.

What’s causing low-quality content to rank?

As stated, Google will rank sites with more topical authority despite the level of content output coming from these brands but this is also because Google believes this is what users want to see. Google uses a Navboost Algorithm that interprets user engagement signals and these signals point to users wanting to see…big brands. People are familiar with these brands and will come to them for information as they believe them as trusted sources. See Roger Monti’s article on the topic discussing how familiarity bias affects Google’s rankings.

How you users combat bias in search

It’s important not to give up hope! Although, as we said it is difficult to compete with much larger brand, there are ways in which it can be done. Targeting more niche keywords to begin with that aren’t being targeted by your competitors but still showing potential is a great way to gain a foothold on search. Once you are ranking for more niche terms, you can build up to competing for more primary keywords in your industry. All the while building up your backlink profile and working on your digital PR should help to become a more reliable source of information within your industry.

What is a zero-click search?

A zero-click search is the term used for search queries that are answered without needing to select any links on the search engine results page (SERP).

This is usually down to three types of search results:

• AI Overviews – Google’s AI overviews collate the most relevant and useful pieces of content into a generated response. This is now displayed at the top of the SERP, and appears for approximately 18% of global searches.

• People also ask – This panel appears in Google and has a drop-down of relevant questions to the search query. This pulls an excerpt from a piece of content which Google deems to be of quality.

• Knowledge Panels – This is a type of panel we often see with films, celebrities, books and so on. This contains information about the content, and it dominates the page with it being positioned first or on the right side of the results page.

• Featured Snippets – Taking the top position or sometimes grouped with the ‘people also ask ‘section. This contains a description regarding the search; this may be seen for recipes, ‘how-to’ questions and ‘what is’ searches.

Do zero-click searches affect SEO?

Zero-click searches can negatively impact the SEO efforts of website owners. If content is not being clicked on, it directly affects the traffic volume content is receiving. This can be incredibly harmful for sites that are already lower in rank.

This can then ultimately impact overall performance metrics, even for those being displayed in AI overview, featured snippets and so on.

How to optimise for zero-click searches?

The way marketers and content creators produce content has to be adapted to accommodate the changes in user behaviour now that features deemed convenient are taking up SERP real estate.

Shift the focus from getting clicks to increasing your brand awareness and trust with Google. Getting content to rank higher will increase the probability of it being displayed in one of these various information panels. Which in turn increases your brand’s visibility with potential zero-click searchers.

You can achieve this by creating high-quality, informative content. Our guide to writing blogs, can help can help you with that process.

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Google has announced a significant update to its Google Ads API release schedule. From 2026, the API will move to a monthly release cycle, giving advertisers and developers faster access to new features, fixes and improvements.

More Frequent Releases and Longer Support

Currently, Google releases around three major versions of the API each year. Starting in 2026, this will increase to four major releases per year, complemented by several smaller “minor” updates in between.

Major releases will deliver more substantial changes and now remain supported for a full year after launch, reducing the number of version migrations required.

Minor releases will introduce smaller, non-breaking features and fixes more frequently, allowing teams to benefit from ongoing improvements without disruption.

This approach provides a steadier flow of enhancements and more predictable planning for advertisers and developers.

Tentative 2026 Release Roadmap

Google’s provisional schedule (dates subject to change):

• V23 (Major) – January 2026
• V24 (Major) – April 2026
• V25 (Major) – July 2026
• V26 (Major) – October 2026

Each major version will be followed by one or two minor updates, such as V23_1 in February and V23_2 in March. Older versions will gradually sunset: V19 in February 2026, V20 in June, V21 in August and V22 in October.

Why This Matters for Advertisers and Developers

If you use the Google Ads API – whether through in-house systems or third-party platforms – this change brings clear benefits:

• Faster access to new features
• More predictable support windows
• Less disruption from upgrades

Overall, the move to a monthly release cycle should make campaign management more efficient and give teams the confidence to adopt new capabilities as soon as they’re launched.

US District Judge Amit Mehta has announced a verdict in the longstanding antitrust case brought against Google. Mehat ruled that Google must end its use of exclusive contracts, such as its deal with Apple to monopolise search on iPhones, however Google will be able to keep Chrome.

Why was Google on Trial

Google has been fighting the Department of Justice since 2020 when charges were initially brought against them for monopolising the search market. The first trial in 2024 saw Amit Mehta rule that Google violated antitrust laws by monopolising search after they paid Apple $20 billion in 2023 to remain the default search engine on Safari. You can read more about this in the article I wrote at the time.

After the ruling decided that Google was monopolising the search market, the Department of Justice decided on some potential penalties to limit Google’s actions in April 2025. These included selling off Google Chrome, Google’s own browser and ending all exclusive contracts that help Google to monopolise the search industry.

The Latest Verdict

Here is what the Department of Justice had to say in their latest ruling against Google.

“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment. Plaintiffs overreached in seeking forced divesture of these key assets, which Google did not use to effect any illegal restraints.”

Google will be barred from entering or maintaining any exclusive contract relating to the distribution of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app. Google shall not enter or maintain any agreement that

• (1) conditions the licensing of the Play Store or any other Google application on the distribution, preloading, or placement of Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app anywhere on a device;
• (2) conditions the receipt of revenue share payments for the placement of one Google application (e.g., Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app) on the placement of another such application;
• (3) conditions the receipt of revenue share payments on maintaining Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, or the Gemini app on any device, browser, or search access point for more than one year; or
• (4) prohibits any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product search access point for more than one year; or (4) prohibits any partner from simultaneously distributing any other GSE, browser, or GenAI product
• Google will have to make available to Qualified Competitors certain search index and user-interaction data, though not ads data, as such sharing will deny Google the fruits of its exclusionary acts and promote competition.”
• “Google will not be required to share granular, query-level data with advertisers or provide them with more access to such data. Nor will it have to restore an ‘exact match’ keyword bidding option
• “Google will be compelled to publicly disclose material changes it makes to its ad auctions to promote greater transparency in search text ads pricing and to prevent Google from increasing prices by secretly fine-tuning its ad auctions.”

What this means for Marketers

While it is unlikely we will see any changes for a long time as Google are expected to appeal the case, the rulings around banning of exclusivity deals as well as having to share certain data with competitors, will hopefully create a landscape in search that allows for the growth of other search engines over time to rival Google, meaning marketers will need to be vigilant in future when it comes to optimising for multiple search engines, not just Google.