Search Engine Roundtable's 22nd Anniversary

Ser Robot 22 Birthday Cake

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of when I started this site, the Search Engine Roundtable. I was 23 years old when I started this site, compiling what the search community and search industry was talking about and for almost half of my life now, I've been still doing the same thing, day in and day out.

I've been writing about search, Google, Bing, SEO, PPC and now AI for over 22 years. More importantly, I've been doing it consistently every workday, several times per day, no matter how I feel, for 22 straight years. It still amazes me that I can find several new topics to cover every day on this site, no matter how niche and specialized our industry is. But search has always been a very fast-paced and now with the AI rush, it is even faster.

22 Years Of Passion:

22 years ago today, I started this site as a way to keep notes on what the search marketing community was talking about. A roundtable of discussions, if you will, between the smartest search marketing minds. Finding new tests and concepts that most have not yet seen. To bring those topics and findings to a larger number of search marketers. That passion and that mission have not changed.

I still continue to publish several stories here a day and on Search Engine Land. I still produce my weekly video recaps, please subscribe to the YouTube channel. While I paused the search vlog where I try to bring more attention to new and maybe old individuals in our community, I started an almost daily search news brief video named It's New with Anu Adegbola, Mordy Oberstein and Greg Finn. I also publish these videos on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast player. Don't forget about the fun daily photos and big monthly Google webmaster reports. These are all aimed at saving you time while bringing you up to date on new topics and making you smile.

If you want, you can read last year's recap - the 21st year anniversary of the Search Engine Roundtable as well.

Our Growth & Analytics:

Google Analytics is still super confusing but here is what it shows me. Active users are up about 11% but at the same time, pageviews are down about 11% - go figure. I guess this is similar to many of you?

Direct traffic is up a whopping 21% year-over-year, organic search is down 2.5%, social is down 40%, email is up 16%. Google specifically is down about 10% for pageviews, but only 2% for "sessions" - how that makes sense, I don't know. What is weird, Google traffic to the home page is up almost 99% - clicks to the site. AI Search is up about 1,000% but I am not sure if it was properly tracking it prior?

Desktop traffic was 69% (last year was 58%), mobile was 29% (last year was 40%) and tablet was under 2% - these numbers seem to stay around the same level each year but not this year and I don't know why. Traffic from the US is up 33%, then China (normally India is next) is at 16%, then Signapore at 11% and then India at 10%, following by Canada, Netherlands, Germany, Australia and Brazil. 35% of the readers are female and 65% are male, according to GA4.

There are now about 40,500 stories on this site; I wrote over 37,500, which is about 93% of them. I published about 2,000 stories this year alone. We also had about 21,000 comments posted this year on the published stories, so thank you for all who comment - I do read them all and do my best to deal with spam. If you count up all my stories, here, Search Engine Land and the old days at Search Engine Watch, I have now written over 48,180 articles on search.

With YouTube, my channel - please subscribe has over 300,000 subscribers, something I worked hard on this year. There are over 8.3 million views on those videos, with over 99,000 hours of watch time. Oh, and I made just over $3,600 in YouTube ad revenue in the past year, which is $2,300 more than last year's revenue. I am also lucky to have some awesome video sponsors.

Most Important Stories In Past 12 Months:

As always, this site is super focused on Google algorithm updates and search volatility changes. But this year, so far, we had fewer Google updates than most years. Since this post is in early December, I'll go back about 365 days.

We had the November 2024 core update that rolled through Thanksgiving and didn't finish until December 5, 2024. Then we had the December 2024 core update touch day about a week later on December 12, 2024. It also was a big core update and it finished on December 18, 2025. That was then followed by the December 2024 spam update that began on December 19, 2024, it hit spam hard and burned through Christmas completing on December 26, 2024. Then 2025 came and we had the March 2025 core update hit on March 13, 2025 and then finished on March 27, 2025, it was impactful. Then the June 2025 core update rolled out on June 30, 2025, it was big and it finished on July 17, 2025. That was followed by the August 2025 spam update that hit quickly and finished on September 22, 2025 - which is unusually long for a spam update. Overall, 2025 was not a big year for Google updates in terms of the frequency. Don't get me wrong, I covered over 40 unconfirmed updates in the past year but the more core updates, more often did not happen.

To sum up Google Search this year, I'd just say AI Mode. AI Mode was announced in March, rolled out in the US not too long later and then quickly continued to expand to hundreds of countries and regions. AI Mode got tons of agentic experiences, Gemini went from 2.0 to 3.0, all powering AI Mode and other parts of search.

But that also got the attention of the publishing world, SEOs, creators and site owners. Clicks dwindled, we had the great decoupling and then Google killed the 100 num paramter, which not only killed third party tools but messed up Search Console reporting and tracking. It was a mess and still is and publishers are afraid, despite what Sundar Pichai says. I will say that Google's web guide seems more promising.

Google Ads also went all in with AI and incorporated tons of AI features. From PMax, to AI Max and even Nano Banana - Google Ads got it all. First, happy 25th birthday Google Ads - you are older than this site. But it was the new ad grouping label that drives accidental clicks that is really bothering me. Google Ads now allows for double serving ads, although Google puts a different spin on it. Google continues to mix ads with organic results, it calls it dynamic ad placement but don't worry, Microsoft Advertising is doing it too. At least Google's ad labels aren't almost invisible, like the ads on Bing. But don't you worry, Google is stepping up using AI to answer your support questions.

It's all good, because despite Google being ruled a monopoly and having an illegal ad tech platform, the judge did not break up Google.

Oh, and Danny Sullivan stepped down as the Search Liaison with no one taking his place. On the ad side, Jerry Dischler also stepped down as the ad boss - I guess too much was found under the cushions...

There is a lot, so I tried to trim down the top stories and sort them by category. I do this by hand, so I hope I didn't miss any.

Here is how Gemini 3 summed it up (not perfect, I had to ask for changes but this is pretty good):

Here is the full list of stories I pulled out and categorized by hand:

Google Confirmed Core Update:

Google Confirmed Spam Update:

Other Confirmed Google Updates:

Unconfirmed Google Algorithm Updates & Volatility:

Google AI Overviews, AI Mode & More AI:

Google Ads:

Google Ads API & Editor:

Google Bugs:

Bing & Copilot:

Other AI Search:

Google Search Console:

Google Merchant Center:

Bing Webmaster Tools:

SEO:

Structured Data & Schema:

Search Features & Interface Changes:

Microsoft Advertising:

Local Search & Google Business Profiles:

Google Discover:

Industry & Business:

Earnings Reports:

RIP:

Most Viewed Stories In Past 12 Months:

Here are the most viewed stories in the past 12 months that were published in 2025 based on Google Analytics (GA4):

Honestly, some of these surprised me...

Timeline of Search Engine Roundtable:

I asked Gemini 3 with Nano Banana to make a timeline of this site, this is what it came up with (I did not ask for edits here):

Looking Forward To 2026:

I really was expecting a lot more confirmed Google updates, especially core updates. I was wrong, but you can't blame me, Google told us that. I guess I expect the trend to continue and Google will confirm fewer and fewer search algorithm updates going forward. Maybe AI is powering it all - well, not yet.

AI has been big last year, the year before that and will continue to be a big deal as I said last year and say again today. Google Gemini really did step up and as I thought, caught up big time to OpenAI. I do expect to see some massive updates in AI Search, from Google and others but I do think 2026 we will start to see consolidation in the AI Search space. The big players will be Google by a long shot, then OpenAI and Microsoft Bing with less share. Perplexity might hang on in 2026, we will see. I do expect a few new AI search engines to step up but eventually evaporate. And then there is Apple Intelligence - I assume they will just pay for Gemini in 2026 and leave it at that.

Sadly, I don't think things will get better for creators, bloggers, publishers and content producers in 2026. And as much as the platforms and big companies say they value us and the ecosytem, ultimately they will continue on the same path we've seen over the past few years.

It will continue to be a wild, ever-changing, and exciting year in Search, SEO, Ads, and, of course, AI.

Thank You:

As I said last year, I deeply appreciate and thank you all so much for reading every day, commenting (or ignoring the comments) and for sharing the stories here. Keep up the chatter, and let's build an even better search community this coming year. Everyone, stay safe and healthy! Thank you,

Barry Schwartz

22 Years Covering The Search Industry

Barry Schwartz / Executive Editor

22 Years Of Passion:

Our Growth & Analytics:

Most Important Stories In Past 12 Months:

Most Viewed Stories In Past 12 Months:

Timeline of Search Engine Roundtable:

Looking Forward To 2026:

Thank You:

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