Welcome to a new edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.
Here's our meme of the week:
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Quick search marketing news
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Google fixes the attribution bug for AI mode.
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Google re-confirms that pages need to be indexed to be shown in AI mode.
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You can now use Google Lens for YouTube Shorts.
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Perplexity releases Perplexity Labs, a tool that can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more.
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Meta aims to fully automate ad creation using AI.
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Reddit sues Anthropic for unlawfully using its data and platform.
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Best of the week
Almost Half of Google Searches Are Branded. Here’s Why That Matters: Brand strength shapes how people search on Google—more than most marketers realize.
Google Is Stealing Your International Search Traffic With Automated Translations: Google auto-translates your pages on translate.google.com, ranks them in AI Overviews, and siphons global traffic.
Good SEO Plus Lazy Marketing Won’t Cut It Anymore: That used to work. But with AI-powered search on the rise, the era of SEOs as technicians is fading, and the era of SEOs as real marketers is here.
Google is Using AI to Censor Independent Websites: Nathan Hake submitted a letter to the FTC explaining how Google is using AI to censor thousands of independent websites and control the flow of information online. This is the blog post-formatted version.
Claude Leak: How LLMs Search – What SEOs Need to Know: This reveals for the first time how an LLM like Claude 4 decides whether to search, link to content, or answer from internal knowledge – with major implications for SEO.
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Latest from our podcast
This week’s podcast guest is Nathan Barry, founder of Kit. Here’s what we covered:
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How to turn a rebrand into a marketing flywheel
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How to fuel word of mouth for your brand
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Using AI to keep your brand voice consistent as your team grows
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Why flywheels > funnels (and how Kit builds theirs)
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Long-term thinking vs chasing short-term metrics
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How a rebrand can affect your team morale
Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
See you next week,
Si Quan
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