Category: SEO

Google provides a solid set of free SEO tools. From simple keyword research to performance tracking, you can stitch together a full workflow without spending a dime. Every SEO—whether beginner or expert—uses Google’s free tools in some capacity. They’re widely accessible, they offer a glimpse into how Google’s search and advertising systems work, and they’re often…

We analyzed 1,000,000 SERPs to see how the presence of different SERP features has changed since the start of the year. AI Overviews appeared from nowhere in August 2024, and now appear on over a quarter of the keywords in this sample (and they’re much more prevalent for informational keywords). Functionally, AI Overviews seem to overlap…

If you rank well in traditional search results, does that mean you’ll get cited in AI Overviews? We decided to find out. We pulled one million keywords that triggered AI Overviews and extracted the top three links cited within those AIOs: a total of 1.9 million citation links in our database. We then analyzed the relationship…

How much do traditional and AI search results overlap?  AI models draw on search engine indexes to enrich their static training data in a process known as retrieval augmented generation (RAG), so some crossover between AI and search results is to be expected. But how much does your visibility in search align with your presence…

Get the week’s best marketing content AI Overviews aren’t always in the first position in the SERPs. For example, here’s an AI Overview in the 2nd position. See where AI Overviews appear outside of position 1 You can use the SERP features filter along with the Position filter to find some of the AI Overviews outside…

I set up some tests over a month ago to see if Google would rank content generated by Google AI Mode in the organic search results. Spoiler: it did not rank. Google believes AI Mode content is good enough to show to users in what will likely be the default search mode in the future. But…

Conferences are a great excuse to meet other marketers, learn cutting-edge tactics, and just simply hang out and make friends! Even better if it’s on your company’s dime. Here are the marketing conferences we think are worth attending in 2025. Conference When Location Affiliate Summit East Aug. 4-5 New York, USA INBOUND Sep. 3-5 San Francisco, USA…

AI Overviews are AI-generated content, which means they can contain hallucinations. Google uses “grounding” to improve their accuracy, but according to our research, AI Overviews are more likely to cite AI-generated content than human-written content. Here’s what we found: We took one million SERPs showing AI Overviews from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and extracted the top three…

Get the week’s best marketing content Does being mentioned on highly cited web pages lead to more mentions in AI assistants? I’m defining highly cited web pages as those with more Referring Domains (RD). These are prominent pages on the web and those that other websites have deemed worthy of linking to. Having your brand…

In 2023, Google published a blog post stating that they’re not against AI content: If you think about it, there is no clearer signal than the fact that Google has rapidly rolled out AI Overviews (and now AI mode), both of which are basically AI-generated content. Yet there are still many SEOs and digital marketers…