Over the last few months, our "evergreen" guides that used to rank #1 have started slipping to the second page. We haven't changed the content, and it’s still highly relevant. Could this be due to the "Zero-Click" trend, or is Google now favoring "Freshness" over historical authority in 2025?
3 answers
In 2025, "Evergreen" does not mean "Set it and forget it." Google's current algorithm places a huge emphasis on "Freshness," especially for topics that involve technology or marketing trends. If your post hasn't been updated in over 6 months, competitors with "newer" publication dates will likely leapfrog you. Additionally, the rise of AI Overviews means that if your content doesn't answer the search intent in a way that can be easily summarized in a snippet, users won't even click through to your site. Try updating your statistics, adding a 2025 perspective, and refreshing the "Last Updated" metadata.
Are you tracking your "Click-Through Rate" (CTR) in Search Console? If your rankings are the same but traffic is down, it’s likely a Zero-Click issue.
Check your technical SEO. Sometimes a drop in rankings is actually related to Core Web Vitals or mobile usability rather than the content itself.
True, Barbara! Especially with the mobile-first indexing, if your long evergreen posts take too long to load on a 5G connection, Google will definitely start pushing you down.
George is right on the money. If you see your impressions staying steady but clicks dropping, Google is probably answering the user's question directly on the SERP. To fight this, you need to give them a reason to click. This could be a downloadable template, a calculator, or a deep-dive case study that an AI summary simply can't replace. I’ve started adding "Click to see the full data set" buttons to my summaries, which has helped recover about 15% of the lost traffic.