With Google’s ongoing AI upgrades, OpenAI’s browser launch, and Microsoft tightening control across Bing and Ads, October was a busy month in search. Below, we’ve rounded up the most significant developments and explain their implications for digital strategy.

Updates are colour-coded by importance:

🔴 Major developments likely to impact strategy

🟡 Worth watching or understanding

🟢 Informative - but lower impact for most

Google Search

🟡 Chrome to start warning users of HTTP-only sites 

Google has announced that Chrome will follow an “Always Use Secure Connections” plan by default come October 2026. Whenever a Chrome user clicks on a public site that uses HTTP rather than the more secure HTTPS encryption, the browser will issue a warning notice before loading the page.

Currently, between 95 and 99% of all Chrome navigation is to secure websites, but being that Chrome has such high use rates, that remaining 1 to 5% of insecure traffic comprises millions of navigations.

For site owners…

Users met with a warning message before your site loads are more than likely going to cancel the navigation and try one of your competitor sites instead. It’s therefore crucial to migrate your website to the HTTPS standard, ideally ASAP, but certainly before October 2026.

🟢 Google voice search gets an upgrade

Google recently rolled out a Speech-to-Retrieval (S2R) process for their voice search system, which completely replaces the previous parsing method.

Pre S2R, Google relied on automatic speech recognition (ASR) to process voice searches. ASR could convert the voice query into text for Google to handle like a standard search. With S2R, there is no text conversion. It allows Google to directly interpret, understand and retrieve accurate results for an audio query.

This reportedly solves a challenge faced with the previous technology. Google said, “slight errors in the speech recognition phase can significantly alter the meaning of the query, producing the wrong results.”

Simply put, S2R removes a step in the voice search pipeline, leaving less room for errors.

For marketers…

SR2 marks yet another step away from keywords as signifiers of intent. Instead of asking ‘What words were said?’, the new technology cuts directly to ‘What information is being sought?’

This means that marketers should deepen their focus on user intent and conversational queries, addressing the underlying need a user has, as opposed to letting keywords play too large a role in content strategy and creation.

🟢 AI Mode language and region expansion

The latest AI Mode expansion sees it available in “40 new countries and territories.” It also now support 35 additional languages, bringing the total number of languages supported to 43.

Bing Search

🟡 Microsoft gives site owners more control over how content is previewed

Microsoft now supports the data-nosnippet HTML attribute. This gives site owners more control over what can be included in Bing’s previews of their content.

Google has partially supported this attribute for a while, but Microsoft is pursuing its full potential for creators. For example, it can advise Bing on what’s fair game for use in the search engine's AI responses.

For site owners…

The data-nonsnippet attribute has a range of practical applications, the main ones being:

• Protecting paywalled content - you decide which content from a paywalled or subscriber-only page can be used in search results, protecting the value of withheld information.
• Better search previous - you can signal Bing to ignore outdated or irrelevant content, such as legal disclaimers, outdated promotional offers, nav or footer text, and off-topic reviews, so the preview is of the highest possible quality - encouraging clicks.
• A-B testing insights - you can test different content availability setups and see which leads to more clicks.

OpenAI

🔴 OpenAI launches a web browser

OpenAI has released a web browser called ChatGPT Atlas (or just Atlas). It arrives only weeks after Perplexity launched its own AI browser, adding to the growing “agentic web” trend.

Atlas offers a range of AI-powered features, including a sidebar for live conversations, summarising pages, and handling tasks like shopping or scheduling directly from the browser.

Some early testers and SEO observers have noticed something curious in server logs. Visits that seem to come from Atlas occasionally appear as Googlebot, the user-agent used by Google’s web crawler.

If accurate, this could mean that Atlas is:

• Fetching pages through Google’s search index or cached results, or
• Simply identifying itself in a way that resembles Googlebot for compatibility reasons.

To be clear, OpenAI hasn’t confirmed any such mechanism, and there’s no technical evidence yet that Atlas is “spoofing” Googlebot or routing traffic through Google’s servers. However, if these reports are correct, it could pose issues for website owners in the future since sites often treat Googlebot differently (for example, skipping analytics, bypassing paywalls, or allowing unrestricted access).

For site owners…

The most immediate concern is that Atlas is yet another search tool that aims to satisfy as many user queries directly within the platform as possible, reducing clicks.

Currently, the best solution is to make sure you’re the one being cited in AI-generated responses. Structure your content for AI visibility, utilise structured data, and focus on topical depth and conversational queries to get started.

SEO

🟡 Why Google Search Console might say your LCP is “Bad” (even when URLs look fine)

Barry Pollard from Google recently explained on Bluesky why Google Search Console (GSC) sometimes reports poor Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) performance — even when the individual URLs listed appear to have good LCP scores.

In short, popular pages that load quickly suggest high performance, but overall site LCP can be dragged down by many slower, lesser-visited, uncached pages.

For site owners…

If GSC flags poor LCP scores but your main pages test well, it’s likely those slower, low-traffic pages are to blame. To address this, you need to reduce the load time of your uncached pages; aim for page loads no longer than 2.5 seconds.

To test for uncached performance, try:

• Running a Lighthouse test on a URL with a random URL parameter.
• This parameter often forces a cache miss (an uncached page load).
• Compare this "uncached" test result to a normal, likely "cached" test result. If the uncached version is significantly slower, you've found the issue.

🟡 Googler explains key difference between SEO and optimising for AI search

Google’s Robby Stein noted that while traditional SEO and AI search optimisation share a lot of common ground, the key difference lies in how people use them — AI tools invite more complex, conversational questions and cover broader contexts. 

He advised marketers to “be a student of understanding the use cases of AI,” meaning the best starting point is to study how user behaviour shifts between classic search and AI-driven experiences. Get started with our guide on how people are using ChatGPT.

Need more information? Find out who is using ChatGPT in our demographic exploration.

Paid media

🔴 Microsoft to end Ads for Social Impact grant

Microsoft has announced it will discontinue its Ads for Social Impact ad grant programme in December 2025. The final grants will be issued on November 30, 2025, and nonprofits will have 45 days to spend their remaining funds.

According to Microsoft, once the grant period ends, nonprofits must pause campaigns if they don’t want to be charged. Any campaigns left active will draw funds from the payment method on file. 

Microsoft has assured nonprofits that support and guidance will continue during this transition, including access to its Tech for Social Impact solutions and broader nonprofit offerings such as free or discounted access to Azure, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft 365.

For charities and nonprofits…

If you manage nonprofit campaigns through Microsoft Ads, review your remaining grant balance and plan spend carefully before January 2026. Be sure to pause campaigns after grants are used to avoid unexpected charges.

This isn’t the best news for charities, but thankfully, Google’s ad grant programme is still live, and there are no signs it’ll end any time soon. If you need support making the most out of your Google ad grant, contact TDMP today.

We’re a Google Premier Partner agency specialising in paid media for charities, with a strong track record of maximising results from ad grants. Explore our paid media services - or check out our guide to getting more from your ad grant.

🟡 Google may delete Ads accounts with no campaigns after 6 months

Towards the end of October, Google announced via a new help document that it will start deleting Ads accounts with no active campaigns after 6 months of inactivity.

However, the help page in question has since been removed from Google’s support site, so we’re hesitant to confirm that this will be the case.

For advertisers…

For active advertisers, there’s nothing to worry about here, but if Google does start deleting accounts, it could be a problem for those who need their account but currently have no campaigns running.

Let’s say you’re planning on using your historical campaign data, or you need to preserve the account structure for when you’re ready to launch a new campaign. You’re still using the account, but it could be deleted.

Google’s since-deleted help document said that advertisers will get a 30-day warning email before they take action, so as long as you’re on top of your emails, you shouldn’t have your account deleted out of the blue.

The help note also stated that you can prevent account deletion by reactivating it.

🟡 Google Ads introduces new requirements for message assets

Google's policy changes for message assets took effect on October 30, 2025. 

Under the updated policy, message assets must be verified by Google and directly related to the advertised business. Assets with unverified message IDs, usernames, or phone numbers will no longer be eligible to serve. Google will begin enforcing the policy from launch, with full effect rolling out over a four-week period.

For advertisers…

If you’re using message assets in your Google Ads campaigns, now’s the time to review and verify them. Make sure your associated phone numbers or messaging accounts are approved and compliant with Google’s editorial and verification policies to avoid disruption.

🟡 New “Text guidelines” feature rolls out to Google Ads

Google has introduced a new Ads feature called “Text guidelines” that gives advertisers more control of Google’s AI-generated text creative. 

It allows you to guide Google’s AI towards more brand-safe copy. For instance, you can use it to make sure the generated copy aligns with your brand’s messaging and requirements. Think of it as guardrails to keep the copy as relevant as possible.

This is a campaign-level feature, meaning the text guidelines you set will apply to all ad groups and assets within that specific campaign, but will not affect any other campaigns in your Google Ads account.

🟢 Google Ads rolls out new reporting enhancements

Google Ads has introduced several reporting upgrades aimed at giving advertisers greater visibility into campaign performance. The updates include new segmentation options in asset reporting and enhanced channel performance reporting.

Advertisers can now break down asset performance by factors like device, time, conversions, and network, with additional metrics now available across formats such as Performance Max, Demand Gen, and responsive ads. 

On the channel side, Performance Max campaigns gain bulk reporting at the account level, added cost and ROI metrics, and new diagnostic insights to help identify performance issues more easily.

For advertisers…

These updates make it easier to understand where results are coming from and how different assets or channels contribute to performance. For marketers, that means clearer data, more informed optimisation decisions, and better accountability across Google’s automated campaign types.

UX

🔴 Study reveals mobile conversion gap

Unbounce’s Conversion Benchmark Report, has revealed that, despite most traffic coming from mobile, desktops convert at a higher rate. According to the analysis, desktop landing pages convert 8% more frequently than mobile pages on the whole.

Part of this may come down to the nature of web use on different devices. For instance, mobile browsing tends to be more explorative, while desktop browsing is typically more task-oriented, particularly in professional contexts. But this doesn’t account for the entire gap.

Unoptimised mobile pages are the main offender, letting roughly 1.3 million conversions slip through the cracks throughout the study's observation period.

For site owners…

This is a clear call to optimise your webpages for mobile users. Not only will this improve your conversion rate, as Google uses mobile-first indexing, it will likely also help to boost your rank on the SERPs.

To get started, consider the following:

• Page speed: Compress images, reduce scripts, and prioritise fast loading — slow mobile pages are conversion killers.
• Responsive design: Ensure layouts, buttons, and forms adapt seamlessly across screen sizes.
• Simplified UX: Minimise friction — shorter forms, clear CTAs, and easy navigation are key. Users should always know what to do next and how to do it.
• Readable content: Use concise copy, scannable headings, and mobile-friendly fonts. The Unbounce report suggests landing pages written to a 5th to 7th grade level (Year 6 to 8 in UK schooling) convert the most.
• Test and iterate: Use mobile analytics and A/B testing to identify pain points and optimise continuously.

Stay current with TDMP

That wraps up October’s key updates. Between AI-driven search shifts, evolving ad policies, and new UX insights, search is changing quickly. Stay tuned for continued coverage of the most important updates throughout November, or contact TDMP for digital marketing support.