The third week of November brought a mix of platform updates, AI-driven improvements, and major industry shifts that will influence how SEOs analyse performance, interpret volatility, and plan for 2026. 

Google rolled out several enhancements across Search Console and AI Mode, while a widespread Cloudflare outage disrupted crawling behaviour across multiple search engines. And in one of the biggest industry moves of the year, Adobe acquired Semrush, signalling significant changes in the SEO tooling landscape.

Here are the key developments from the week and what they mean for SEO teams moving forward.

1. Semrush Acquired by Adobe

What happened:

Adobe announced its acquisition of Semrush, one of the industry’s most widely used SEO, keyword research, and competitive intelligence platforms. Semrush will reportedly be integrated into Adobe’s marketing and analytics ecosystem.

Adobe is excited to share that we’ve entered into an agreement to acquire Semrush, a leading brand visibility platform. Together, Adobe and Semrush will deliver a comprehensive solution that gives marketers a holistic understanding of how their brands appear across owned… pic.twitter.com/5K5ZyIJ9nU

— Adobe (@Adobe) November 19, 2025

Why it matters:

This marks a significant consolidation moment in the marketing technology world. Adobe’s involvement likely means deeper integration between SEO workflows, content creation tools, and enterprise analytics stacks. Pricing, access, and feature direction may shift in the coming months.

What to do:

• Monitor pricing and feature roadmap announcements from both companies.
  
• Expect closer ties between SEO research, content production, and Adobe tools.
  
• Prepare for workflow changes if your team heavily uses Semrush.
  

2. Cloudflare Outage Impacted Google, Bing & Other Search Bots

What happened:

A significant Cloudflare outage temporarily interfered with Google, Bing, and other search engine crawlers. Some sites experienced sudden indexing delays, ranking drops, or reduced crawling activity during the disruption.

Yeah. 5xx = Google crawling slows down, but it'll ramp back up.

— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) November 18, 2025 at 6:01 PM

Why it matters:

Not all ranking volatility or crawling issues are algorithm-related. Infrastructure outages like this can distort performance data and cause temporary misinterpretations of website health.

What to do:

• Annotate analytics for outage dates.
  
• Avoid making major SEO decisions based solely on fluctuations during the outage window.
  
• Re-crawl key pages manually once systems stabilize.

3. Google Search Console Performance Report Annotations Rolling Out

What happened:

Google has begun rolling out a new feature in Search Console: custom annotations within the Performance report. This allows users to add up to 200 annotations per property (which cannot be edited once created and will auto-delete after 500 days).

Why it matters:

This update improves the ability to correlate traffic or ranking shifts with internal or external events. For SEOs and analysts, it means better context when interpreting changes in impressions, clicks or average position, reducing uncertainty and improving explanation for stakeholders.

What to do:

• Use annotations to support reporting and stakeholder communication.
  
• Pair annotation dates with ranking and crawling trends for clearer analysis.
  
• Expect better visibility into Google-side issues going forward.
  

4. Google AI Mode Gets Gemini 3

What happened:

Google updated AI Mode with Gemini 3, improving answer quality, factual grounding, and reasoning capabilities. This affects how AI Mode responds to queries and how users interact with AI-generated search results.

Why it matters:

More capable AI responses mean more users may rely on AI Mode for direct answers, potentially reducing clicks to websites for informational queries. Placement inside AI Mode, not just traditional SERPs, becomes even more important.

What to do:

• Structure content with concise, factual answer blocks.
  
• Strengthen E-E-A-T signals to increase your chance of being cited.
  
• Monitor AI Mode visibility and CTR changes over time.
  

5. Google Search Console Will Add Brand vs Non-Brand Query Filters

What happened:

At the Google Search Central Live – Tel Aviv event, Google announced that Search Console will soon introduce a brand vs non-brand query filter in the Performance report. The feature is AI-assisted, meaning Google will automatically identify brand queries for you, and is expected to roll out in the coming weeks, with availability expanding gradually to all properties.

Live from Google Search Central Tel Aviv:

Coming soon in Search Console… AI-assisted brand query exclusion 💫 pic.twitter.com/c080oK2Xgk

— Daragh Nener-Lally (@nenerlally) November 20, 2025

Why it matters:

This is one of the most practical upgrades GSC has introduced in years. Clear brand vs non-brand segmentation helps SEOs report more accurately and understand true top-of-funnel performance. It also aligns GSC data more closely with PPC and attribution models.

What to do:

• Plan reporting updates to incorporate brand segmentation.
  
• Revisit KPIs tied to non-brand visibility.
  
• Expect cleaner, more actionable insights about organic acquisition.

Other Great Search Threads (3rd Week of November 2025)

• Ranking Volatility Spike Linked to Gemini 3 – SERP Alerts on X
  → SERP Alerts flagged heavy turbulence across trackers, suggesting Google is testing or refining Gemini 3 models behind the scenes. (Link)
• Post-Outage Crawl Rebalancing After Cloudflare Issues – SERP Alerts on X
  → Crawl behaviour spiked unusually as Googlebot revalidated content paths following the widespread Cloudflare outage. (Link)
• Google Business Profile Verification Failures – Local Search Forum
  → Businesses report “No more ways to verify this profile” errors, blocking legitimate listings from verification. (Link)
• Agentic AI Advancements Teased – Sam Altman & Oriol Vinyals on X
  → Leaders from OpenAI and Google hinted at new reasoning and planning capabilities coming to their agentic AI systems. (Link)
• Canonical Signals & AI Overview Behaviour – John Mueller on Bluesky
  → John clarified that canonicals don’t decide AI Overview citations directly — but consistency and clean structure still improve model confidence. (Link)