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 launches "Ask Maps," a Gemini-powered conversational search feature for local discovery and trip planning in the U.S. and India.
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Google removes the "What People Suggest" AI feature from health-related search results following concerns over summarized advice from social media.
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Google expands Personal Intelligence features to free Gemini users, allowing the AI to access data from Gmail, Photos, and Drive for personalized answers.
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Google releases Gemini Embedding 2, a multimodal embedding model that can process multiple inputs at once in a single request
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Best of the week
How to Rank on ChatGPT: What Actually Works (Based on Data): ChatGPT visibility isn't about traditional ranking; it’s about probability. Our data shows that YouTube presence is the biggest needle-mover for AI mentions. If you want to show up in chat responses, focus on getting your brand into video transcripts and descriptions.
What Is Content Decay? (And How to Fix It Before It Tanks Your Traffic): Every piece of content you’ve ever published is slowly dying. Whether it's shifting search intent or fresher competition, "content decay" is the invisible tax on your organic traffic. If you aren't actively updating old posts, you're effectively leaking visitors every single day.
Keyword Intent: What It Is and How to Use It in Your SEO Strategy: Stop chasing high search volume if the intent doesn't match your product. Use keyword intent as a strategic filter to cut out queries that won't actually convert. If you can't naturally weave your solution into the content, the keyword doesn't belong in your plan.
AI Content Wasn’t Good Enough. Now It Is.: We’ve reached the point where AI content is indistinguishable from high-quality human writing. By codifying editorial principles into agentic workflows, LLMs now follow brand guidelines more consistently than tired humans. The trade-off between speed and quality has finally disappeared.
14 Digital Marketing Conferences to Attend in 2026: Forget the generic "what is SEO" slide decks. These 14 conferences actually deliver exclusive insights from industry heavyweights. Whether you want a 67,000-person festival in Hamburg or an intimate strategy session at Ahrefs Evolve, these are the stages worth your travel budget in 2026.
The Death of Internal Authority: We are outsourcing our intuition to algorithms and AI, replacing genuine taste with safe, validated consensus. This "death of internal authority" is why every brand and website looks identical. To stand out, you must trust your own judgment and embrace your own messy contradictions.
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Latest from our podcast
This week’s podcast guest is Tal Raz, Chief Marketing Officer at ZoomInfo. Here’s what we covered:
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Why ZoomInfo — master of outbound — relies on inbound for most new revenue
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Why AI search (ChatGPT, Gemini) is dismantling traditional SEO-driven inbound
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The execution gap: why AI-powered outreach so often gets it wrong
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GTM Studio: how to compress weeks of campaign prep into hours
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AI SDRs — real replacement for human sales reps, or just hype?
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Managing a 100-person global marketing team from Israel
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How to measure marketing by working backwards from ACV, not MQLs
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What Henry Schuck really thinks about brand marketing
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The apology billboard: turning a product failure into a campaign
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Labubu at Dreamforce: making the case for playful B2B marketing
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"No leaders leaders": why ZoomInfo's C-suite stays in the weeds
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From marketing analyst to CMO: Tal's 9-year journey at one company
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How AI is changing what it means to be a marketer
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Rapid fire: favorite book, admired company, and thought leader
Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
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Latest from our YouTube
SEO in 2026: How I'd Rank in Google in the AI Era
AI summaries now siphon nearly 60% of clicks from the top results. To survive in 2026, you must stop obsessing over page rankings and start optimizing for brand mentions. Be everywhere searchers and AI bots go, then focus your traditional SEO on high-intent, action-driven keywords AI cannot replace.
See you next week,
Si Quan
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