Aleyda Solis covers Google's ccTLD redirect plan, AI-generated search overviews cutting clicks by 30.5%, and how to transfer a Google Business Profile after acquisition. Roger Monte explains why llms.txt files don't need your attention, and Ahrefs research shows what's actually moving the needle in SEO right now.
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Let's go through the hottest, most popular SEO news of this week with today's SEO FOMO to Learn, Do, and Read. Today's edition is brought to you by the sponsorship of Ahrefs. Let's go through them. The most popular story this week in SEO FOMO has been the announcement that Google Search will redirect all of their country-level ccTLDs to their .com gTLD. This is a change that they will be doing gradually in the upcoming months, and they have confirmed it will change nothing. In terms of any sort of implications with the usage of hreflang and ccTLDs of websites. And they have clarified that they began providing the same experience with local results for everyone using search independently, whether they were using google.com or their country's ccTLDs. And because of this improvement, country-level domains for them are no longer necessary. So this is something that shouldn't change anything in the way that you do international SEO, but potentially how you track the rankings of your projects. Very likely rank trackers will need to update the way they do it. The next most popular news is the coverage from Roger Monte about Google saying that llms.txt are comparable to keywords meta tag. This is something that John Mueller had already addressed a few weeks ago in the Google Search Central event in Madrid. Mentioning how he was not aware of any major AI system using it, which is something that he again confirmed here, how for him this is something comparable to the keywords meta tag. So again, it's something that you should be aware of in case you're investing any time to creating one. The other top story of the week was an insightful research by Ahrefs, Ryan Law and Shibuya One analyzed 300K keywords. To assess the impact of AI overviews in click-through rate, and they identify the results correlated with a 30.5% lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page compared to similar informational keywords without an AI overview. They explain the methodology here, the type of keywords that they took into account, and the findings. I highly recommend you to take a look at this, but also I highly, highly recommend you to start assessing this yourself for your own targeted queries, the different type of them. This can widely change, not only depending on the intent and type of query, but also if you're included in the AI overview or not. For this, I recorded this short and actionable video that you can watch where I go through how do I do this with my own data, actually using also Ahrefs in order to identify those queries that are impacted, and compare the traffic before and after using Google Search Console data. In any case, I have to say that the results that I have seen myself with my own data and websites that I have access to are very similar to this, especially when they are not included in the AI overview, which is something to take into account. The other most clicked resource of the week was the SEO FOMO Ecommerce SEO in 2025. Survey results where I shared the outcome of the survey that was taken by more than 200 ecommerce SEOs from around the world. As you can see here, sharing their challenges when doing ecommerce SEO nowadays, the reason why results are not achieved, how they are integrating AI, how Google search features have impacted the organic search traffic. and much more. If you work in ecommerce SEO and look not only for trends and insights but actionable advice, go and take a look. The last question is pretty much what's your top ecommerce SEO activity priority to achieve goals this year. So don't miss out. Last but not least is this very useful tip from Darren Shaw of what to do when you have acquired a business and need to rebrand it. How do you transition the Google Business Profile without getting it suspended? Going through a step-by-step while clarifying that you shouldn't create a new Google Business Profile and mark the other one closed, which is what Google actually suggests you to do. But it will mean that you will lose all of your previous reviews and you will need to start from scratch. So if you're in local SEO and going through something like this, this is a must-read. I want to thank our today's sponsor, Ahrefs, highlighting their AI Content Helper, which is an AI content optimization tool that, unlike others, supports you to create high-quality content without turning off your own brand voice, suggesting topics and enabling features to help you to create the most comprehensive piece versus your competitors. If you haven't taken a look at it, go and check it out. Thanks for watching today's edition. If you want to keep up with the latest in SEO news without having to wait for the next SEO FOMO newsletter or the next edition of the SEO FOMO to London Read, go and take a look at the SEO FOMO News where you can monitor and submit year news and resources in real time. Remember to like the video and subscribe to the channel in case you haven't. Until the next edition, bye-bye.
