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Here's our meme of the week:
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Quick search marketing news
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Google rolls out Information agents in Search AI Mode for AI Ultra subscribers to help users track and manage complex data.
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Google announces the Agentic Resource Discovery specification, an open standard for finding and verifying AI tools and agents across the web.
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Microsoft begins rolling out Citation Share and AI performance metrics within Bing Webmaster Tools.
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Google updates its Ads platform with a new Promotion mode beta and expanded Smart Bidding Exploration features.
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The UK Competition and Markets Authority introduces requirements for Google to provide advance notice of significant ranking changes and use objective criteria for AI Overviews.
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Best of the week
We Analyzed 137K Sites: 97% of llms.txt Files Never Get Read: Despite the hype, 97% of llms.txt files receive zero traffic. No bots and no humans are fetching them. Our study of 137k sites suggests these files are currently a speculative bet with almost no impact on AI visibility. If you publish one, don't expect it to be read.
How I Use My AI Marketing Assistant After 200+ Hours: After 200 hours with an AI assistant, I’ve realized it isn't just a chatbot, it's a workshop. I use it to automate repetitive SEO tasks, build custom dashboards, and organize product knowledge. If you leverage AI to handle the busywork, you can finally focus on the high-level strategy that matters.
9 Marketing Trends I’m Seeing Firsthand in 2026 (With Data): The marketing landscape is shifting from keyword rankings to AI brand mentions and citations. Generative Engine Optimization is now a vital discipline, and agentic workflows are replacing manual content creation. Tracking your brand visibility across AI models is the new standard for digital growth.
11 Ways to Automate SEO with Agent A: SEO is less about strategy and more about the menial, repeatable upkeep that eats your afternoon. Agent A handles the "drudge work" by connecting Ahrefs data to your actual tech stack. It can autonomously turn site audits into GitHub PRs or condense an entire keyword research process into twenty minutes.
Why Calling Yourself the 'best' Could Be Helping Your Competitors Win in AI Search: Self-promotional listicles are backfiring in AI search. Google has decoupled citations from recommendations, often using your own "best of" list to cite your sources while recommending your competitors instead. For smaller brands, these biased lists are becoming a liability rather than an asset.
Information Gain in Google's Top-ranking Results: a Measurement of 150 Pages: A study of 150 top-3 pages found that the median result adds only 52% new information beyond its competitors. In one out of four cases, ranking pages were almost entirely redundant. If you want to stand out, unique data points—not word count—are the strongest driver of originality.
The Modern-day Michelin Guide: Anthropic's Massive Programmatic Seo Opportunity: Anthropic is sitting on a massive programmatic SEO goldmine. By building a massive library of AI-generated tools and making them freely embeddable, they create a viral acquisition loop. Every embedded calculator becomes a high-converting billboard that drives millions of users back to Claude.
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Latest from our YouTube
AI SEO Course for Beginners: Complete AEO Tutorial
AI search is scaling fast, and our data shows referral traffic from these engines converts 9x higher than traditional search. This AEO course gives you the exact workflows to get your brand cited across ChatGPT and Perplexity. Stop guessing and start building visibility that actually compounds.
See you next week,
Si Quan
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