Will ChatGPT paid ads be a worthwhile investment for brands? Right now, it’s hard to see how we can prove it. Estimated average CPM at $60 (which is super high relative to other paid platforms), and yet there is no clear way to understand conversions generated from those placements. 🧵 1/7

What replaces clicks in a post-click world? If “SEO is dead” and “AEO/GEO is the new SEO”, it’s ironic that Google Impressions are one of the best indicators Don’t expect to hot-swap clicks for impressions without questions. Time to start educating on impressions and why they’re important.

So you’re happy your content works for users, but are you sure it works for AI systems too? Okay, so this is something that I wish we didn’t need to worry about - but we do. It comes worrying close to the “writing for SEO” activity that is responsible for at least some of my grey hairs. 🧵 1/9

AI Search has driven an evolution in your SEO function, not - I’ve argued many times - a replacement of it. But for those who were quicker at launching a new function (net new or an extension of existing SEO), here’s likely what you have seen in the first year: 🧵 1/7

If you want an example of why 2026 is the year of better bot management, this is it! In this specific example, Grok is asked to fetch a URL, and we see 16 requests across 5 different user-agents and 12 IPs. 🧵 1/6

I use AI but… I wouldn’t connect it to my Google Drive I wouldn’t use a browser powered by it I wouldn’t auto-allow Cursor to run any/all commands in terminal I wouldn’t take health advice without question I wouldn’t let my kids access unsupervised I wouldn’t trust references without review 🧵 1/4

Final shout for Issue 1 of This Station Is Non-Operational, a newsletter for human computer users forced to live under the yolk of big tech. buttondown.com/thisstationi...

Been a busy week, so busy I barely clocked this one go out - www.searchenginejournal.com/what-the-lat... Thanks @shelleywalsh.bsky.social for the interview and the cracking write up too!

This experiment from Dan is really interesting, and it's great that he's sharing it. I am worried it’ll be taken the wrong way though… What if this gets boiled down to “Google AI only uses ~500–800 words, so we should all write 500–800-word articles again”? That doesn’t seem right… 🧵 1/6

These questions from Despina stopped me in my tracks: - If your brand is cited in AI Overviews, will it also appear in AI Mode? - Do you need separate optimisation strategies for each? - What does it mean when two AI systems agree on what to say but not where they found it? 🧵 1/6

This experiment is as fun as it is scary. Can a fake brand, with “official facts”, be cited in AI answers? Can AI be made to cite fictitious counter-facts (“lies”) about the fake brand? Yes! It’s a little more complex than that, but it proves a few worrying things we ALL need to be aware of: 🧵 1/6

When machines can do almost everything, which parts of your SEO work are you deliberately choosing to keep human? For years, SEO has trended toward scale. AI and agents are assumed to be here to finish the job. By 2026, most “commodity SEO” will be easy to replace. 🧵 1/5

For most of the web’s history, humans browsed, and websites responded. That assumption is starting to break. Agents now compare options, check availability, monitor prices, and filter constraints for users. In many cases, they don’t need pages at all. They just need reliable information. 🧵 1/5

Gemini’s interactions API probably won’t be super interesting to you,, but I think this is likely a huge step in AI/Agent development. 🧵 1/5

Bot management (for SEOs at least) used to be simple; a few search engine crawlers, some bad actors, and simple controls. That world is gone. Today, visibility depends on a growing ecosystem of bots: crawlers, scrapers, training bots, AI search providers, and agents acting on behalf of users 🧵 1/5

Love this, great stuff from Dawn!

The 2025 Web Almanac was published this week and I've put together some insights from the chapters I contributed to. Huge thanks to the community who made it possible. It was a real pleasure working with you all. montserrat-cano.com/insights-fro...

Best excuse for missed assignment due date goes too…

🚨 This week's SEO & AI Search News of the Week with #SEOFOMO [Jan 18, 2026] 👇 * ​OpenAI will start to test ads in the US * ​Apple is finally upgrading Siri, and Google Gemini will power it * ​Microsoft releases a Guide to AEO and GEO for Retailers More: seofomo.co/posts/the-se...

Our first webinar of 2026 is a corker! Join us for a panel discussion with 2 SEO heavyweights: @dejanseo.bsky.social & Jes Scholz. sitebulb.com/resources/guid... Note the earlier time to accommodate our Australia-based panelists. If you cannot make this time, sign up anyway to get the recording.

The Almanac is out! If you work in digital, then you should read it to understand where the web is at. Thanks for the opportunity to work with so many brilliant people on the page weight again and SEO chapters, eg, @tamethebots.com @not-a-robot.com @chris-green.net

So glad I (finally) put myself forward for this. Such an epic project, I learned so much and got to work with some really great people. The rumour are true @tunetheweb.com is a legend

Eoghan’s back writing (or at least I have started seeing his work again), which is a good thing as far as I am concerned. In a starkly practical piece, “How Much Has SEO Really Changed?” Eoghan describes the following cases: - A lot of basic SEO work can now be automated 🧵 1/3

A lot of the work many of us do can now (or soon) be handled by AI agents What’s changed isn’t the notion of this; it’s the execution. The capability is finally catching up with the hype, and the promise of automation is too strong for organisations to ignore. Opting out isn’t neutral. 🧵 1/5

The line between SEO/GEO is a controversial topic. Some say the line is blurred; others are dancing on the line; others are running a mile. Some refuse even to accept the premise of the line 🤷 🧵 1/8

How will we handle attribution as clicks disappear? AI search will reduce clicks. That's not controversial. The uncomfortable consequence is: fewer clicks mean fewer people trigger web analytics, which is how most organisations measure performance and assign value. SEO will appear to be 🧵 1/11

X2 weeks into January and I’m still hanging on to this one 😅

Better late to this thread is better than never!

Ever been frustrated by a feature in Google Search Console? You’re not alone. But here’s a new way of looking at the GSC team and how they shape their roadmap. People are great at reporting when something is wrong, but not when something works well. 🧵 1/4

The num=100 change Google made recently was pretty disruptive It was also annoying, quite complicated to communicate if you weren’t already that “in to” the complexities of rank tracking. This change impacted: - Accuracy of data - Costs of rank tracking - Top line reporting metrics 🧵 1/2

There’s a huge spam war going on⛔️ It’s far larger than it ever has been. If you think you’re worried about AI slop in your social feeds, Google’s Discover team has seen it far worse. Besides the spam-fighting they're doing, they also illustrated a critical point at Search Central Live 2025 🧵 1/3

This AI Search thing is exhausting, right? Yes, but if you’re fortunate to find this stuff interesting too, maybe that’s some pay-off. One of the people whose output has been among the most useful is Josh Blyskal. 🧵 1/4

Work in E-commerce SEO? I can guarantee there’s data you’re missing from Google Merchant Centre, OR there is data you could be making more of. The New Merchant API is easier to work with, more modular, and offers new and enhanced features. Of particular interest: 🧵 1/2

Still on the lookout for KPIs for an Age of AI Search? I am! “AI tracking is a waste of time” or “Tool providers are doing a bad job” are really easy positions to take, but are you investing time/energy to find a better way? John Lovett from Seer has added more thoughts to this process. 🧵 1/4

Thrilled to receive my copy of this one, it’s been a few years since I last contributed to SEO in __ from David/Majestic - and what a whopper this is! I think this year’s is probably the most important. Why? Well, 2025 has been full of surprises, hype, excitement, mystery and worry for many 🧵 1/2

We’ve all seen it. Google’s AI Overviews not knowing the days of the week or ChatGPT failing to count the number of letters in a word… or counting letters at all! Does this mean LLMs are dumb, though? 🧵 1/7

SEOs have been mildly obsessed with knowledge graphs for a while, but mostly because we want to ensure that our websites/brands/clients are well represented in Google’s Knowledge Graph, which makes sense. 🧵 1/11

Agents (or agentic workflows) have potential to change a lot I'd argue that building “agentic” workflows will be a significant part of our jobs soon. In a world where it is relatively easy to build a workflow, those people who can do it effectively and efficiently ARE going to have the edge. 🧵 1/3

Attention workflow builders, and why not EVERY part of your new workflow needs to be using an LLM. Having tried several approaches with some “interesting” constraints and really tough success criteria, it’s really clear that A LOT of workflows out there really aren’t worth their time. 🧵 1/8

Morning after Search Central Live 2025. I have a head full of ideas for the new shopping API, a crap-load of questions and met a load of (new and old) people who make me glad to be in this weird, dysfunctional, fascinating industry. Thanks to Martin, John and the team for putting this on!

This is something I can’t wait to dig into further. It feels like Nick's been rummaging around in my head to find a topic that frequently causes me stress 🤯 “Brand” value can be quantified in “SEO data”, but it’s not always a clear or obvious picture as to the impact of SEO/Search Teams. 🧵 1/4

So, where is your Bing Strategy? Bing still drives significantly more traffic to websites than AI chat experiences today. This is almost a meme response to AI/LLM hype. 🧵 1/5

This is neat, smart and well-timed 👏 I’ve been doing a lot of hand-waving around feed optimisation recently, and this tool from Martin Aberastegue makes this much easier. If you wondered whether your existing merchant feeds are “ready” for OpenAI, this will help you understand that 🧵 1/2

Is ChatGPT-5 sending fewer visitors because it’s better than the previous version? Potentially. Interesting thought. “GPT-4.5… sometimes created URLs or citations that looked real but were not always accurate… GPT-5 stopped doing this. 🧵 1/4

SEOs could be testing more, with very few exceptions. There are sometimes good reasons not to test, but knowing when, where & how is really important. If I were learning SEO testing from anyone in the biz, SearchPilot is my pick - and there's a free course -

A post-click world is a scary place 😱 It’s also a dystopian future that it’s easy to get excited about, but probably won’t be what we think it will be…or will it? A sub 1% CTR from ChatGPT results is pretty sobering. Even as a thought exercise, but what if that’s as good as it gets? 🧵 1/3

Here’s a very common - yet important - mistake people make We talk about LLMs (Large Language Models) a lot - they are becoming the centre of “AI Search” - but if we REALLY want to understand how results are generated and how to optimise for them. We have to get a bit more precise than that 🧵 1/7

ChatGPT Web search evocation update I’ve been adding to buff.ly/j3N1nD4 as data comes out, and spoken to SE Ranking, who've been good enough to share their data Out of 100k keywords, they returned citation sources 15.77% of the time (from web search), but that number risks losing nuance 🧵 1/3

Here’s a data source to bookmark and watch closely 👀 Aleyda’s findings here aren’t super-surprising, but they are still interesting. AI traffic is low, relative to Organic, and it impacts certain sites/industries more than others. But this is my favourite: 🧵 1/3

Wonder how algorithm updates would play out in AI Search? Less of a worry for newer members of the SEO community, as algorithm updates are less well telegraphed and understood. If you’ve been in the industry a while, they’ll be formative experiences and a “boogie man” you warn kids about. 🧵 1/8