SE Ranking

In May, ChatGPT referral share hit monthly highs across the US, UK, and EU. EU: +42.7% MoM UK: +38.7% MoM US: +23.2% MoM Context that matters: Jan–April 2026, ChatGPT's referral share grew ~1.5% total. Then May alone beat the entire first four months combined. seranking.com/blog/chatgpt-r…

Newsflash: an agentic audit is not a strategy! Are SEO, GEO, and/or AEO Gurus and/or Ninjas messing everything up for the rest of us? (When have they not been? Just see what The Verge tends to think of SEO) Irina Maltseva 🇺🇦 chunks with me about how the nonsense about LLM optimization is trickling down to clients (and stakeholders) and what you can do to push back in the right direction. Strategy is not dead in the agentic era! Rise up ye' search marketing strategists and let us chunk for it Tuesday and on Tuesdays... we chunk! Look for episodes of Let's Chunk each week (guess which day of the week) here and on the @SERanking channels!

Looking for an SEO event worth adding to your September calendar? Belgrade SEO Conference returns on September 18, with sessions on: → ecommerce in the age of AI search → getting your website cited in ChatGPT and other LLMs → building SEO strategies that hold up in the real world → winning visibility in Google Discover → measuring SEO impact in business terms → the sustainability costs of generative AI → earning links through Digital PR The lineup includes Aleyda Solis, Mark Williams-Cook, Judith Lewis, Barry Adams, Marco Giordano, Lazarina Stoy, and Jo O’Reilly. One day, seven practical sessions, and a chance to connect with the SEO community in Serbia and across the Balkans. 📍 Belgrade 📅 September 18, 2026 🎟️ Tickets: belgradeseoconference.com

Did you notice any big changes after the June Spam Update? Here’s what we saw (and yes, Reddit showed up in the data again.)

Google's June 2026 Spam Update was the calmest update we’ve seen this year. Only 11.48% of URLs now ranking in the top 3 were outside the top 20 before the update. And while around 20% of domains dropped out of the top 3, most of them are still visible in search: → 77.2% are still in the top 10 → 92.3% are still somewhere in the top 100 The one constant, as usual: Reddit. Its top 3 share barely changed compared to the May Core Update: 10.24% vs. 10.28%. But Reddit keeps getting stronger at #1. After this update, the number of keywords where Reddit holds the top spot grew by another 4%, continuing the trend we saw after May — from 8,993 to 13,872 keywords, a 54% jump from March to May alone. Let us know if you’d like us to dive deeper into the SERPs.

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We built 24 Claude Skills for some of the SEO tasks that usually take way too much time. Drop a comment and we’ll share the link 😉

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@freddysxg In your inbox 🤝

@SERanking I’d love to take a peek.

Here are our Head of SEO’s most-used connectors in Claude: Core SEO tools: ✅ GSC (the one she uses most) ✅ GA4 ✅ SE Ranking (for rankings, keyword and domain data, AI visibility, and more) Scraping tools: ✅ Firecrawl (for scraping website content) ✅ Apify (for LinkedIn scraping and competitor monitoring, plus other scraping tasks) Day-to-day management: ✅ Gmail, Google Calendar & Drive ✅ Slack (for daily and weekly recaps, action items, creating Linear tasks from messages, automated reports, etc.) ✅ Notion as a knowledge base & database ✅ Linear as a task manager Other: ✅ Claude in Chrome (for small tasks, like pulling data from an open tab) What are your most-used connectors?

@gaetano_nyc And on llms.txt: we tested that assumption directly and found no measurable lift in AI visibility after adding it. Our test: seranking.com/blog/llms-txt/…

I’ve spent the last 18 months doing AI SEO / GEO / AEO for B2B SaaS companies... and here's the 10 biggest things I've learned: 1. Most companies do not have an "AEO problem." Most do not have an unfixable technical SEO problem either. They have a positioning, category alignment, and market validation problem. 2. I've spent too many hours in meetings explaining how the old-world SEO model is dying (clicks and rankings) and the new model is about being selected for AI-powered answer recommendations. 3. Brand selection depends on whether the market, your website, your customers, and third-party sources all tell the same story about why your brand belongs in the answer. This is not about llms.txt or paragraph chunking. 4. Bulldozing your way to the top with listicles and backlinks may help you rank, but not get recommended. Especially if your brand doesn't belong in that category. 5. The best AEO strategy starts with positioning and category alignment. Here is the proper diagnostic framework for: “What's our AEO strategy?” Do we have clear product positioning? Do we have messaging that's aligned to the category? Does the website make our category alignment obvious? Do we have a BOFU content strategy aligned with the desired category? Do we have an external authority gap? 6. AI referral traffic is negligible for most B2B SaaS companies. For most of the companies I work with: ChatGPT / Perplexity / Gemini / Claude, etc. is a tiny fraction compared to Google. It's common to see a range of 5% (AI) vs 95% (Google). Why? Because AI SEO eliminates top of funnel, whereas traditional SEO sends mostly informational traffic. 7. Visitor to page conversion rates from AI referral traffic tend to be higher than traditional Google traffic. This is because of personalization, long-tail BOFU intent, and the elimination of TOFU intent. 8. There's a "Dark SEO" funnel emerging where buyers are shortlisting vendor options with AI search, verifying the brands they want to evaluate with Google search, and then converting directly on the website from branded search much later in the buying process. 9. Off-site authority matters, but the GEO vendor claims are getting out of control. I'm skeptical on things like: “90% of AI visibility comes from third-party sources.” etc. Claims like these are confusing and pulled out of context. This causes marketers to have the wrong reactions and think irrationally. 10. Buying AEO tools is not a strategy. I have personally worked with companies that purchased AEO tools with no strategy in-place. The mere fact that a tool was purchased only buys them time with the board... "we're working on it" ... but it's not a real strategy. Bonus: There's a "research" study out there which fits any narrative you want to push. Be wary. And be skeptical.

Point 3 especially 🤝 It’s really about building a consistent narrative. LLMs won’t treat your website as more trustworthy just because it’s the main source of information about your product. They also look at what people are saying across social platforms, especially Reddit and Quora, as well as review sites. We published a study on the latter: seranking.com/blog/review-pl…

@shushant_l Good to see LLMs.txt in the myths column. We put it to the test and found no measurable lift in AI visibility from adding the file. Our experiment: seranking.com/blog/llms-txt/…

I'm shocked most websites still rely on outdated SEO strategies. Here's the complete AI SEO framework to rank in search, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and more. --- 📂 AI SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 Foundation ┃ ┣ 📂 What AI SEO Is ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Search Platforms ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Citations ┃ ┣ 📂 Brand Visibility ┃ ┗ 📂 Ranking Goals ┃ ┣ 📂 Technical SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 HTTPS ┃ ┣ 📂 Mobile Friendly ┃ ┣ 📂 Fast Website ┃ ┣ 📂 XML Sitemap ┃ ┣ 📂 robots.txt ┃ ┣ 📂 Clean URLs ┃ ┣ 📂 Canonical URLs ┃ ┣ 📂 Crawlable Pages ┃ ┗ 📂 Indexable Pages ┃ ┣ 📂 Keyword Research ┃ ┣ 📂 Informational ┃ ┣ 📂 Commercial ┃ ┣ 📂 Transactional ┃ ┣ 📂 Navigational ┃ ┣ 📂 Long Tail ┃ ┗ 📂 Question Keywords ┃ ┣ 📂 Search Intent ┃ ┣ 📂 Learn ┃ ┣ 📂 Compare ┃ ┣ 📂 Buy ┃ ┗ 📂 Navigate ┃ ┣ 📂 Topical Authority ┃ ┣ 📂 Topic Clusters ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Tools ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Agents ┃ ┣ 📂 AI SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Automation ┃ ┗ 📂 AI Business ┃ ┣ 📂 Content Creation ┃ ┣ 📂 Helpful Content ┃ ┣ 📂 Original Research ┃ ┣ 📂 Experience Based ┃ ┣ 📂 Actionable Advice ┃ ┣ 📂 Real Examples ┃ ┗ 📂 Avoid AI Spam ┃ ┣ 📂 E-E-A-T ┃ ┣ 📂 Experience ┃ ┣ 📂 Expertise ┃ ┣ 📂 Authoritativeness ┃ ┗ 📂 Trustworthiness ┃ ┣ 📂 Content Structure ┃ ┣ 📂 Question First ┃ ┣ 📂 Short Answers ┃ ┣ 📂 Detailed Explanations ┃ ┣ 📂 Examples ┃ ┗ 📂 FAQs ┃ ┣ 📂 Formatting ┃ ┣ 📂 H1-H3 Headings ┃ ┣ 📂 Bullet Lists ┃ ┣ 📂 Numbered Steps ┃ ┣ 📂 Checklists ┃ ┗ 📂 Comparisons ┃ ┣ 📂 Original Value ┃ ┣ 📂 Case Studies ┃ ┣ 📂 Research ┃ ┣ 📂 Templates ┃ ┣ 📂 Frameworks ┃ ┣ 📂 Benchmarks ┃ ┗ 📂 Real Examples ┃ ┣ 📂 On Page SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 Optimized Title ┃ ┣ 📂 Meta Description ┃ ┣ 📂 Internal Links ┃ ┣ 📂 Image Alt Text ┃ ┗ 📂 Descriptive URLs ┃ ┣ 📂 Structured Data ┃ ┣ 📂 Article ┃ ┣ 📂 FAQ ┃ ┣ 📂 HowTo ┃ ┣ 📂 Product ┃ ┣ 📂 Review ┃ ┣ 📂 Organization ┃ ┣ 📂 Person ┃ ┣ 📂 Video ┃ ┗ 📂 Local Business ┃ ┣ 📂 Entity SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 Brand Authority ┃ ┣ 📂 Founder Profile ┃ ┣ 📂 Products ┃ ┣ 📂 Expertise ┃ ┗ 📂 Niche Signals ┃ ┣ 📂 Local SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 Google Business Profile ┃ ┣ 📂 Reviews ┃ ┣ 📂 NAP Consistency ┃ ┣ 📂 Local Landing Pages ┃ ┗ 📂 Local Schema ┃ ┣ 📂 Ecommerce SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 Product Titles ┃ ┣ 📂 Descriptions ┃ ┣ 📂 Images ┃ ┣ 📂 Reviews ┃ ┣ 📂 FAQs ┃ ┣ 📂 Specifications ┃ ┗ 📂 Merchant Feeds ┃ ┣ 📂 Content Updates ┃ ┣ 📂 Refresh Every 3 to 12 Months ┃ ┣ 📂 Update Statistics ┃ ┣ 📂 Add Examples ┃ ┣ 📂 Update Screenshots ┃ ┗ 📂 Fix Links ┃ ┣ 📂 Link Building ┃ ┣ 📂 Research ┃ ┣ 📂 Guest Posts ┃ ┣ 📂 Digital PR ┃ ┣ 📂 Partnerships ┃ ┗ 📂 Original Data ┃ ┣ 📂 User Experience ┃ ┣ 📂 Fast Website ┃ ┣ 📂 Simple Navigation ┃ ┣ 📂 Mobile Friendly ┃ ┣ 📂 Readable Design ┃ ┗ 📂 Accessibility ┃ ┣ 📂 Performance Tracking ┃ ┣ 📂 Organic Traffic ┃ ┣ 📂 Keyword Rankings ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Citations ┃ ┣ 📂 CTR ┃ ┣ 📂 Conversions ┃ ┣ 📂 Indexed Pages ┃ ┗ 📂 Core Web Vitals ┃ ┣ 📂 Common Mistakes ┃ ┣ 📂 Ignoring Search Intent ┃ ┣ 📂 Weak Technical SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 Thin Content ┃ ┣ 📂 Outdated Pages ┃ ┣ 📂 No Internal Links ┃ ┣ 📂 Missing Schema ┃ ┣ 📂 No Original Insights ┃ ┗ 📂 Slow Website ┃ ┣ 📂 AI SEO Myths ┃ ┣ 📂 SEO Is Dead ┃ ┣ 📂 AI Markup Required ┃ ┣ 📂 LLMs.txt Improves Rankings ┃ ┗ 📂 AI SEO Starts With Great SEO ┃ ┣ 📂 AI SEO Checklist ┃ ┣ 📂 Fast Website ┃ ┣ 📂 Mobile Friendly ┃ ┣ 📂 HTTPS ┃ ┣ 📂 XML Sitemap ┃ ┣ 📂 Helpful Content ┃ ┣ 📂 Topic Clusters ┃ ┣ 📂 Internal Links ┃ ┣ 📂 Schema Markup ┃ ┣ 📂 Fresh Content ┃ ┣ 📂 Original Research ┃ ┣ 📂 Optimized Images ┃ ┣ 📂 FAQs ┃ ┣ 📂 Brand Authority ┃ ┗ 📂 Performance Tracking ┃ ┗ 📂 Golden Rules ┣ 📂 Write for People First ┣ 📂 Solve Complete Problems ┣ 📂 Build Topical Authority ┣ 📂 Publish Original Insights ┣ 📂 Keep Content Updated ┣ 📂 Use Structured Data ┣ 📂 Strengthen Your Brand ┣ 📂 Focus on User Experience ┣ 📂 Maintain Strong Technical SEO ┗ 📂 Great AI SEO Begins With Great SEO

@harpreetchatha_ Worth underlining #14: don't trade Google rankings for AI visibility — they're not opposites. Good SEO is your AI strategy.

25 AEO, GEO, LLM SEO facts 📠 (to stop you from wasting money on something that doesn’t work) 1. AI visibility can refer to mentions or citations. (Mentions = being named by AI in the answer, citations = being linked). 2. SEO directly influences AI citations. Want to show up for “explain x”. Well you need content that explains x so your website can be cited. Good luck being cited for anything competitive without implementing SEO basics 3. SEO, marketing, your reputation & just doing business can ALL influence AI mentions. Want to be known for something? Well you need to say it on your owned assets and then other sites need to say it too. think of AI as a parrot 🦜 4. the latter 3 can also influence SEO, but that’s for another day. 5. Being mentioned does not = automatic success. The clickable links within AI may lead websites that don’t link to you. This increases friction for customers to visit your website. (Also, if websites don’t link to you and just mention you, how will you be found) [✨links are still important ✨] 6. Being cited does not = automatic ai success. You could be the 17th citation (that’s like being on page 6 of Google). Doesn’t mean anything. 7. AI mentions and citations are infinite. You can be mentioned and cited for an infinite number of queries. Likewise, you can track an infinite number of prompts 🌌 (track your main keyword within a prompt, you’ll be fine) 8. One highly successful TOFU webpage could have 100s of citations in an AEO tool (what is y, why explained, explain y so a 5 year old can understand). 9. One highly successful BOFU page may only have a few citations (y software, what’s the best y, what’s the best y product that solves for z) 10. No one on this earth has proven ROI after implementing an llms.txt file 11. No one on this earth has proven ROI after implementing schema for LLMs 12. Being on Reddit does not guarantee AI visibility. Being mentioned on Reddit in a positive or negative way can influence sentiment of your brand in AI answers 13. Different AI systems behave differently. Showing up in Google AI Overviews does not automatically mean visibility in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Gemini 14. Don’t sacrifice your Google rankings just to chase AI visibility. It could take 2, 3 years to recover 15. AI search with web search enabled uses data from search engines to form an answer 16. It can take years to influence true LLM training data 17. A strong brand can outperform a technically “better optimized” website in AI answers because LLMs take into account the stuff mentioned in point 3 18. You cannot optimize for every prompt variation individually. Focus on topical depth and building out the stuff in point 3 19. Remember AI being a parrot? 🦜 AI systems can confidently repeat incorrect or outdated information if enough sources on the web repeat it, so control the narrative 20. You don’t need to chunk your content. Just make your content readable 21. Every heading does not need to be a question 22. there is no universally accepted attribution model for AI search. A user may discover a brand in AI, then convert weeks later through branded search, direct traffic or another channel. 23. That said, AI Search is both a brand and performance marketing channel 24. You don’t need a prompt tracking solution if you’re just getting started. Ask AI questions about your brand - now you have something to work with. 25. Mass publishing content is not the answer to winning in ai search What did I miss?

Claude is driving 386% more traffic to websites. But website traffic isn’t the main thing to watch — and this isn’t only about AI visibility either. Two data points: 👉 Claude ranks fifth among AI traffic sources, accounting for 1.40% of AI-referred traffic (after ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Copilot). 👉 March 2026 was the largest single-month jump in traffic in Claude's history. So yes, the traffic share is still small. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important. 1. Even if clicks are limited, Claude is already influencing how people discover and evaluate brands. 2. Claude’s marketplace of connectors and plugins creates a new way for users to find, use, and interact with products directly inside the AI interface. Booking and TaskRabbit are already in Claude’s marketplace. So are many marketing, productivity, and other tools. That makes Claude more than another AI referral source. 📌 Check the full research on Claude: seranking.com/blog/claude-im…

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We created 24 Claude Skills for SEO teams. They help with content briefs, competitor analysis, backlink gap searches, local search visibility, and more. Comment for access 👇

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