The 2025 Google Core Updates: What They Mean For Your SEO/AEO Strategy

Google’s 2025 core updates have not just shuffled rankings. They have changed how search engines understand, evaluate, and surface content across the web.

Whether you work with an seo agency in Dubai, run an in-house marketing team, or manage your own site, these changes affect how your pages are discovered, how AI Overviews summarise your content, and how users find you across sectors from hospitality to digital marketing for real estate.

Below is a practical breakdown of what happened, what changed, and what you should be doing about it now.

A Quick Recap: What Actually Changed in 2025

Google rolled out multiple core updates in 2025, building on the quality and “helpful content” changes we have seen in recent years. A major core update began in March and lasted for several weeks, followed by another starting on June 30, 2025, both of which were described by Google as broad changes to their ranking systems rather than narrow tweaks.

At the same time, AI Overviews (AI-generated summaries in search) continued to expand internationally after their initial launch in the US in 2024, reshaping how people interact with search results and the amount of organic traffic individual sites receive. 

Taken together, these updates push search in a clear direction:

• Quality and usefulness over volume
• Intent and clarity over keyword density
• Authority, experience and trust over generic, AI-generated content
• Structured, easy-to-parse content that both humans and AI systems can understand

In other words, Google is moving from “ranking pages” to “ranking answers”. Your site is still a key source, but it is now one of many signals that feed search, AI Overviews, and other AI-powered experiences.

How Ranking Signals Have Shifted

Several trends have become clearer after the 2025 core updates:

1. Intent first, keywords second
Google’s systems are better at understanding the reason behind a query. Pages that match that intent with clear structures, strong headings, and meaningful depth are outperforming thin or purely keyword-led content, even if that content used to rank well.

2. AI Overviews influence visibility
For more queries, users see an AI-generated summary at the top of the page. If your content is not easily accessible to systems like AI Overviews for quotation or summarisation, you may still be indexed but not surfaced. That means format and clarity matter as much as the message. 

3. Topical depth beats superficial breadth
Sites that build strong topic clusters around key themes (for example, a set of articles focused on restaurant marketing strategies or a hub for digital marketing in real estate) are performing better than sites that publish disconnected articles across many unrelated topics.

4. Trust and experience are non-negotiable
The EEAT framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) is no longer just a guideline. For sensitive topics like finance, health, and AI, signals of real expertise and accountability are increasingly critical for sustained visibility.

5. Community and real-world voices are rising
Discussion forums and Q&A platforms are appearing more frequently in search results, especially where lived experience and practical details are relevant. That does not mean brands should abandon owned content, but it does suggest that robotic, over-sanitised copy will struggle against real conversation.

Global Changes With Local Implications

Although these updates are global, the impact is very real for businesses in the GCC and beyond. In markets like the UAE, where mobile usage is dominant, and competition is intense, slow pages, vague content, and generic positioning are punished twice: first by users, then by search.

For an seo agency in Dubai working with clients in hospitality, education, or professional services, this means:

• You can no longer rely on historic rankings and “safe” content that has not been touched in years
• You need tighter alignment between brand positioning, content strategy, and technical SEO
• You must assume your content will be read by both humans and large language models, and plan structure and clarity accordingly

What This Means For Sector-Specific Strategies

The updates may be algorithmic, but the effect is very tangible at the industry level. A few examples:

For real estate and property marketing
If you rely on digital marketing for real estate, generic listing-style articles will not be enough. Google is rewarding pages that help users with real decisions:

• How to compare communities, financing options, or off-plan versus ready properties
• What it is like to live in a specific area, with real examples, costs, and trade-offs
• Guidance that reflects current regulation, visa rules, and market conditions
  
  

A single “ultimate guide” that has not been updated since 2022 will not compete with fresher, more focused content clusters built around a clear real estate marketing strategy.

For hospitality, F&B and leisure
Brands investing in restaurant marketing strategies should think beyond listicles and occasion-based posts. Pages that clearly answer real questions (menus, pricing expectations, experience, dietary options, location details, booking flows) are more likely to appear in both search results and AI summaries.

Here, first-hand photos, reviews, and practical tips carry more weight than over-polished copy written purely for SEO.

How AI And LLMs Change The SEO Conversation

The 2025 core updates sit alongside a growing reality: search is increasingly powered by large language models and AI ranking systems behind the scenes. That does not mean classic SEO is obsolete. It means your content now plays two roles at once:

1. It needs to serve human visitors clearly and convincingly
2. It needs to be structured in a way that AI systems can interpret, summarise, and trust
   
   

That has a few practical implications:

• Use clear headings, short sections, and descriptive subheadings so your pages can be easily broken into answer-sized chunks
• Make entities unambiguous: name people, brands, locations, and products in a consistent way
• Use schema markup (FAQ, Article, Product, HowTo) where relevant to give search additional context
  
  

When AI models generate answers, they draw from patterns in high-quality content. The clearer and more consistent your content is, the more likely it is to be useful to those systems and, by extension, to users.

Practical Actions To Take Now

You do not need to rebuild everything overnight, but you do need a structured response. Here is a practical approach to get started.

1. Audit your existing content against intent
Pick your top traffic pages and your most important topics. For each one, ask:

• Does this page still match what users expect when they search for this topic today
• Is it up to date, or still referencing products, prices or policies from years ago
• Does it give a clear, opinionated answer, or does it circle around the topic?

Pages that feel vague, thin, or outdated should be updated, consolidated, or retired.

2. Build or strengthen topic clusters
Group related content into hubs around the problems your users care about:

• A cluster on digital marketing for real estate with guides, case studies, FAQs and checklists
• A series on restaurant marketing strategies covering local SEO, review management, menu design, and paid media

Interlink these pages with clear, contextual links so that search engines can understand the topical depth.

3. Improve structure, schema and page experience
Work with your development team or agency to:

• Improve mobile load speeds, especially for content-heavy pages
• Add appropriate schema markup to key templates
• Clean up intrusive pop-ups, cluttered layouts, or confusing navigation that may hurt engagement

4. Update authorship and credibility signals
Make it clear who is behind your content and why they should be trusted. That includes:

• Real author bios with relevant expertise
• Dates of original publication and last update
• References to credible sources where you rely on data or research

If you position yourself as an seo expert in Dubai, your site should reflect that expertise in both messaging and detail.

5. Align your SEO and content teams around one plan
The days of “SEO content” and “brand content” living separately are over. Your editorial calendar, technical roadmap, and analytics strategy should all support the same goal: useful, focused, trustworthy content that earns both clicks and summaries.

Turning The Update Into An Advantage

Core updates are disruptive by design. They expose weak spots, reward stronger strategies, and create openings for teams who are ready to adapt faster than their competitors.

If you treat the 2025 updates as a one-off event, you will constantly feel on the back foot. If you treat them as a clear signal of how search is evolving, they become a useful guide for the kind of content and websites you should be building anyway.

Blue Beetle collaborates with brands across various sectors to align technical SEO, content strategy, and design, ensuring that sites are not only compliant with the latest updates but also genuinely useful to the people they are intended to serve. If you are reassessing your organic strategy following the recent changes, this is the moment to solidify your foundations rather than pursue quick fixes.