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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We’ve acquired Detailed.com and the Detailed SEO Extension, and SEO legend Glen Allsopp joins us!
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U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google won’t be broken up, but it’ll have to share search data with rivals.
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Google no longer supports the &num=100 parameter, which allows you to request the top 100 results.
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AI Mode is available in five new languages: Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese.
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Best of the week
SEO vs. GEO: 5 Key Differences Despite the Similarities: You still need both. Think of SEO as your foundation and GEO as future-proofing your online presence.
100 Most Cited Domains in ChatGPT: The top cited domains in ChatGPT are Reddit, Wikipedia, Amazon, Forbes, and Business Insider.
You Can’t Track AI Like Traditional Search. Here’s What to Do Instead: “AI rank tracking” is a misnomer—you can’t track AI like you do traditional search. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t track it at all. You just need to adjust the questions you’re asking, and the way you measure your brand’s visibility.
10 Ways to Use Ahrefs’ Brand Radar to Grow AI Visibility: Brand Radar is one of the fastest-growing tools in AI brand visibility, with 100M+ prompts, 6+ AI indexes, and requires zero setup. These are the best use cases and actionable workflows to turn Brand Radar’s insights into measurable growth for your brand.
The Complete AI Visibility Guide for SEOs, Marketers, and Site Owners:
AI visibility is just beginning—most brands aren’t tracking or optimizing for it yet. Learn how to build early momentum.
What AI Can’t Replace: Your SEO Talent Pipeline: Let AI handle the repetitive tasks it’s built for, freeing your team’s time and energy. But keep juniors in the mix, giving them projects that build judgment, context, and leadership skills.
How People Use ChatGPT: A new research paper sharing how people are using ChatGPT. Andrei, my colleague, shares how this ‘impacts’ SEO.
Inside Replit’s Breakout Growth: Lessons from $2.8M to $150M ARR: Two main lessons:
- Product-led growth is the unlock — if your product resonates, the right systems compound it.
- Speed without systems leaks value — launches and campaigns must be codified to sustain scale.
Personas are Critical for AI Search: In the AI-search era, prompts don’t just tell you what users want; they reveal who’s asking and under what constraints. If your pages don’t match the person behind the query and connect with them quickly - their role, risks and concerns they have, and the proof they require to resolve the intent - you’re likely not going to win the click or the conversion.
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Latest from our podcast
This week’s podcast guest is Melissa Laurie, founder and CEO of Oysterly Media. Through Oysterly Media, she’s helped brands like SEPHORA, Salesforce, and even the Singapore Police Force, turn their employees into a powerful marketing channel. Here’s what we covered:
- Why polished brand videos flop while scrappy iPhone clips go viral
- How EGC actually helps attract top talent and keep employees engaged
- The biggest misconceptions about EGC (spoiler: it’s not just “let Gen Z do it”)
- The “art & science” tips for making short videos people actually watch
- How to measure ROI on social video efforts
- And yes — whether a podcast can actually go viral on TikTok
Listen to the full episode on YouTube.
See you next week,
Si Quan
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