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 introduces hover-over pop-up link cards and more prominent source icons within AI Overviews on desktop and mobile.
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Perplexity removes sponsored answers from its platform to maintain user trust and avoid bias in AI responses.
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Google releases a preview of WebMCP, a new protocol that allows websites to expose structured tools and actions directly to AI agents.
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Google launches an AI-powered configuration tool in Search Console to help users set up and optimize their accounts.
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Google expands its Universal Commerce Protocol, enabling instant checkout from retailers like Walmart and Shopify directly within Gemini and AI Mode
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Google updates its "Results about you" tool to help users remove search results containing sensitive personal identifiers like Social Security numbers.
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Best of the week
7 Steps for Tracking Your ChatGPT Visibility With Ahrefs: Brands are showing up in thousands of ChatGPT responses without ever knowing it. If you aren't tracking your "AI Share of Voice," you're missing the data points that actually drive visibility in LLMs. Brand Radar bridges that gap, moving beyond "vibe-coded" monitoring to hard competitive benchmarking.
25 SEO Conferences to Attend in 2026: In-person events are still the best way to trade war stories and learn what’s actually working in the age of AI. From Brighton to Chiang Mai (and of course, Ahrefs Evolve!), this lineup of 25 conferences is your roadmap for 2026. Pick a destination, leave the "What is SEO?" H2s behind, and go talk shop.
12 Content Marketing Conferences to Attend in 2026: We spend too much time staring at Google Docs and not enough time talking to humans. Leaving the desk to "talk shop" at a conference is how you stay relevant in an industry currently obsessed with AI. Whether you're after tactical SEO deep-dives or a "pitch-free" masterclass, getting out there is the only way to sharpen your thinking on your employer's dime.
Why Your SEO KPIs Are Failing Your Business (And How To Fix Them): We’ve spent years drowning in "metric debt" by chasing rankings and clicks that no longer move the needle. Good SEO teams need to stop reporting more data and start explaining better value. Shift your focus from visibility trackers to business outcomes like pipeline influence and customer acquisition cost.
Are Citations in AI Search Affected by Google Organic Visibility Changes?: When Google’s algorithm update hits your organic traffic, the damage doesn't stop at the SERPs. Recent data shows a direct link between losing search visibility and losing citations in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you aren't ranking on page one, you basically don't exist to the LLMs either.
The Anthropic Hive Mind: Anthropic is currently a "hive mind" of elite talent operating purely on vibes and veteran intuition. They’ve managed to maintain a high-velocity Golden Age by avoiding the typical corporate bloat that kills innovation. If your company isn't feeling that same crackle of electricity, you’re likely already falling behind.
Outcome Orientation as a Cure for Information Overload: Information diets fail because they’re too rigid for the real world. Instead of building filters, adopt "Outcome Orientation": constantly ask what specific result you want from the content you’re consuming. When you’re honest about the "why," you’ll stop doomscrolling and start using the internet like a tool again.
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Latest from our podcast
This week’s podcast guest is Kieran Flanagan, SVP of Marketing at HubSpot. Here’s what we covered:
- Managing a 350-person team at HubSpot
- How AI drove a 30% increase in sales meetings
- Building custom data sets for personalized outreach
- Demo: Kieran’s custom "Viral Talking Points" tool
- Why "Vibe Coding" is the future of marketing workflows
- Turning video transcripts into high-performing LinkedIn posts
- The evolution of prompt engineering (and why it’s dying)
- The "Shakespeare Trap" of using AI for feedback
- Using AI agents for deep research and storytelling
- Automating management: Summarizing Slack and identifying blockers
- Why AI makes creativity more valuable, not less
- The #1 trait Kieran looks for when hiring
- Sneak peek: AI agents inside Google Sheets
Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
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Latest from our YouTube
Keyword Research Tutorial for Google and AI SEO
Keyword research isn’t dead, it just evolved. In this video, you’ll get a 5-part strategy built for today’s landscape where AI Overviews siphon clicks and generic “how to” and “what is” queries underperform.
How to Rank in AI Search in 2026 (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and more)
In this video, you’ll learn how AI search actually works, steps to get cited in AI answers, how to measure your AI visibility, and why AEO/GEO/LLMO is still just SEO (done right).
See you next week,
Si Quan
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