Review Of 2025: Highlights & Lowlights For SEO (& WordPress) By Roger Montti

Roger Montti’s 2025 review captures a transitional year defined by AI uncertainty, conceptual confusion around GEO, and a re-centering of fundamentals, particularly brand, user behavior, and content quality. While AI Search disrupted assumptions and traffic models, SEO itself did not collapse; instead, it reasserted its relevance under new constraints. WordPress followed a similar arc, starting the year uncertain and ending it structurally prepared for AI-native publishing.

SEO In 2025: Disruption Without Displacement

AI Search Forced an Identity Crisis, But SEO Survived

Early 2025 anxiety about SEO’s relevance proved premature. As AI Overviews and AI Mode expanded, SEO didn’t disappear; it shifted from keyword mechanics toward visibility, brand recognition, and contextual relevance.

Montti’s framing is important:

• AI Search still depends on classic search infrastructure
• What changes is what gets ranked (themes, sub-themes, passages), not the existence of ranking itself

This distinction explains why SEO best practices remained valid even as outputs changed.

GEO: Mainstream, Misunderstood, Still Immature

GEO Went “Mainstream” Before It Was Fully Defined

2025 marked the year GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) entered client conversations, but without a coherent, distinct methodology.

Key insight:

• Most GEO offerings were SEO repackaged for AI Search
• Attempts to define GEO as fundamentally separate from SEO largely failed

Montti correctly labels GEO as inchoate: real, but not yet structurally independent.

LLMs.txt: Demand-Driven, Not Evidence-Based

The rise of LLMs.txt in WordPress SEO plugins illustrates client pressure overriding technical reality.

Important takeaways:

• No major AI company uses or plans to use LLMs.txt
• Google explicitly rejected its viability
• Google’s brief internal use was accidental and quickly reversed

Squirrly SEO’s honesty stands out as a rare moment of transparency in a year dominated by speculative tooling.

Google’s Quiet Message: Branding > Tricks

Danny Sullivan’s comments at Search Central Live reinforced one of 2025’s most consequential themes:

Brand recognition is a proxy for trust, relevance, and authority.

Key clarification Montti makes:

• “Brand” ≠ big company
• Brand = being remembered, searched for by name, referenced, and recommended

This reframes E-E-A-T as an outcome of user behavior, not an on-page checklist. The implication is profound:

• You don’t add E-E-A-T
• You earn it through real-world signals

AI, Patents & Research: What Actually Mattered

Montti’s patent analysis is one of the article’s strongest sections.

Thematic Search: The Real GEO Distinction

Google’s thematic search patent reveals how AI Search:

• Expands queries into sub-themes
• Ranks documents across multiple conceptual layers
• Generates summaries from passages, metadata, and context

This is the clearest technical justification for GEO as a distinct challenge, even if it still rests on classic retrieval systems.

Contextual & Personalized AI Answers

Google’s patents on:

• Context-aware responses
• Related intents
• Personal history-based search

…show a future where:

• Rankings are less universal
• Visibility depends on who is searching, where, and why

“Sufficient Context” Research: A Wake-Up Call

Google’s research on hallucinations reinforces a core SEO truth:

• Thin, incomplete content is a liability in AI Search

SEO takeaway:

Content must fully support its claims and topics—not just match intent.

MUVERA: Infrastructure Matters Again

MUVERA’s ability to preserve token-level matching at scale suggests that precision retrieval is not being sacrificed for speed. These benefits:

• Deep, well-structured content
• Pages that answer specific sub-questions clearly

WordPress In 2025: From Uncertainty To AI-Ready

Abilities API: Quietly Transformational

The WordPress Abilities API may be one of the year’s most underappreciated developments:

• Standardized capability discovery
• AI-readable schemas
• Reduced plugin fragmentation

This positions WordPress as an AI orchestration platform, not just a CMS.

Mullenweg’s Vision: Many Small Models, Not One Big One

The future WordPress AI vision emphasizes:

• Task-specific models
• Cheaper, faster, more specialized AI
• Automation of routine creative work

This aligns WordPress with practical AI, not hype-driven AI.

2025 Lowlights: Where Things Went Wrong

Rank Tracker Blocking Changed the Data Narrative

Google’s blocking of rank trackers:

• Exposed inflated Search Console impressions
• Forced a re-evaluation of “zero-click” assumptions

This was painful but necessary for data integrity.

Click Decline Is Real (Despite Google’s Claims)

Despite Google’s assurances:

• Many sites experienced real traffic loss
• AI Overviews altered click distribution, not just presentation

This remains the most economically significant SEO issue of 2025.

WordPress vs WP Engine: A Self-Inflicted Wound

Montti’s assessment is balanced and clear:

• The principle (support open source) had merit
• The execution was destructive

Consequences:

• Legal escalation
• Community backlash
• Long-lasting reputational damage to Mullenweg

The sustained negative sentiment highlights a core lesson of 2025:

Governance and trust matter as much as technology.

Final Verdict: 2025 As A Gateway Year

Roger Montti’s article succeeds because it avoids panic and hype. Instead, it frames 2025 as:

• A recalibration year, not a collapse
• A shift from tactics to signals
• A transition from keyword optimization to contextual relevance, branding, and trust

The Big Picture

• SEO is not dead; it’s more demanding
• GEO is real but not yet mature
• WordPress is positioned, but leadership matters
• 2026 will reward clarity, substance, and credibility

2025 didn’t end the rules, it rewrote why they work.

Source: Search Engine Journal
By Roger Montti
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/year-review-highlights-and-lowlights-for-seo/562698/