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 rolls out the March 2026 spam update to all languages globally.
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Google expands the Universal Commerce Protocol with new cart, catalog, and identity linking features for AI agents.
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Google updates Discussion Forum and Q&A structured data with new properties to label machine-generated content.
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Google tests replacing standard news headlines and website titles with AI-generated summaries in search results.
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Microsoft updates the Bing AI Performance dashboard to map grounding queries directly to cited website pages.
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Google develops a new opt-out mechanism for generative AI features in search following discussions with UK regulators.
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Google Merchant Center mandates that buy buttons for out-of-stock items must be visually greyed out rather than hidden.
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Microsoft launches MAI-Image-2, a second-generation AI image model featuring improved photorealism and text rendering.
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Apple prepares to introduce sponsored search results within the Apple Maps interface.
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OpenAI discontinues its Sora video generation project and ends its high-profile partnership with Disney.
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Best of the week
Is AI Content Bad for SEO? No, and It Never Will Be (7 Reasons): Google doesn't hate AI; it hates spam. Our study found that over 80% of top-ranking pages use AI assistance, proving that quality matters more than the tools you use. If the content is helpful, Google will rank it regardless of who or what wrote it.
Your Geo Strategy Might Be Destroying Your SEO: Chasing AI search visibility with "GEO" tactics often backfires. Many shortcuts designed to win over LLMs actually undermine your baseline SEO, which is still the primary engine for AI discovery. Don't sacrifice your long-term organic authority for short-term AI hype.
First, Dark Social. Now, Dark SEO.: SEO is shifting from "click and convert" to "be mentioned and recommended." As AI takes over top-of-funnel discovery, traditional traffic KPIs are becoming obsolete. To win in the Dark SEO era, focus on building entity strength through unique data and industry mentions that influence LLM citations.
"Dark AI" and What Actually Drives AEO Influence: SEO experts are obsessing over citations, but they’re missing the "Dark AI" conversations where decisions are actually made. By the time a brand is mentioned in a conversion prompt, the model has already framed the requirements. Real influence happens earlier, in the messy middle where problems are defined.
See you next week,
Si Quan
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