December 2025 Edition

Pat's December 30|30 webinar reviewed industry activity, noting a prevailing "chill trend" and "all time low" for Google volatility. This was quickly countered by the live revelation of a core algorithm update rolling out on December 11th. The December industry update showed mixed results: HubSpot was down 59% in page 1 visibility YoY in B2B SaaS, while CommonSpirit saw a massive 94% increase in page 1 visibility YoY in Health Systems. Dollar General was up 37% YoY in Retail. Pat noted AI Overviews (AIOs) continue to be stagnant, appearing for ~25% of all searches.

Pat affirmed ads are inevitably coming to LLMs and AIOs. He cited leaked code from the ChatGPT Android app referencing ads and OpenAI's financial losses of "billions of dollars a year". He scored his 2025 predictions a 3.5 out of 4 , confirming that LLMs "will dominate talk, but not traffic" and that consolidation continued with acquisitions like Adobe purchasing SEMrush.

For 2026, Pat predicted ads "Will Be Introduced Into LLms + Al Overviews"; "MCP Servers Will Become More Prevalent" , calling it a universal adapter for agents to interact with data ; and LLM referral traffic "Will Not Exceed 20%". He also predicted "LLMS.txt Will Become An Adopted Web Standard". Pat concluded the "only algorithm that matters is the heart, mind and soul of your customer".

This month, Pat covers:

• December Industry Review - What I’m Seeing & Hearing
• Santa Claus Is Comi....No Wait, It's Ads, Ads Are Coming To ChatGPT
• 2025 Recap & Prediction Review - How Did I Do?
• Predictions For 2026!