Charles Travers

Entrepreneur, Ecommerce SEO Consultant, Investor, The Charles Travers Show

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

In the last 6 months at @Ahrefs, we analyzed over 1 billion data points across 14 studies. Here's what we learned about AI search optimization:

1) "Best X" blog listicles are the single most prominent content format cited by AI chatbots. They make up 43.8% of all page types cited by ChatGPT specifically.

2) 67% of ChatGPT's top 1,000 citations come from sources marketers can't influence: Wikipedia (29.7%), homepages (23.8%), app stores (6.6%). Only 32.3% are influenceable content like educational pages, reviews, news, and blog posts.

3) 28.3% of ChatGPT's most-cited pages have zero Google organic visibility. These pages get cited repeatedly by ChatGPT despite not ranking in Google at all. A completely separate discovery layer.

4) ChatGPT only cites about 50% of the URLs it retrieves. It fetches dozens of pages per query but uses half as background context without attribution. This means that being retrieved and being cited are very different things.

5) Adding schema markup had zero meaningful impact on AI citations. AI Overviews actually dipped −4.6%, while AI Mode (+2.4%) and ChatGPT (+2.2%) showed changes indistinguishable from zero.

6) YouTube mentions have the highest correlation (0.737) with AI brand visibility out of all the factors we studied (including all the conventional SEO metrics like backlinks, page count, DR, etc). This held true for both Google-owned and OpenAI products.

7) AI Overviews reduce clicks to the #1 result by 58%. That’s up from 34.5% just 10 months earlier. The trend is accelerating.

8) 99.9% of AI Overviews appear on informational intent queries. Transactional, navigational, and local searches are almost entirely AIO-free. Shopping triggers AIOs just 3.2% of the time.

9) For a given search query, Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews reach the same conclusions 86% of the time — but cite almost entirely different sources (only 13.7% citation overlap).

10) AI Overviews change every 2.15 days on average, with 70% of content differing between consecutive observations. But semantic similarity stays at 0.95. The words, sources, and entities constantly shuffle, but the actual meaning barely moves.

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

@mattdiggityseo YES 🙌

[Matt Diggity @mattdiggityseo]

I used Reddit to grow a client's AI traffic by 2,814%...

And their referral traffic by 642%.

Here's the thing: Reddit is now the top source Google and ChatGPT pull from when
answering questions.

If you're not in those threads, you're invisible.

My new case study shows you:

✅ How to engage on Reddit without getting banned
✅ Which subreddits your audience trusts for buying decisions
✅ How to get AI models to cite YOUR expertise (136 AI overview rankings)

Retweet this, drop a "YES" and I'll send you the link. (must be following) 👇

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

@bloggersarvesh That’s epic man! Are you using a separate laptop or device to give Claude access? I want to start testing these AI assistants out but I’m wary of giving it remote access to my main laptop

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

SEO KPIs are evolving.

Ranking #1 on Google isn't enough anymore.

You want your brand featured on AI Overviews, product carousels, ChatGPT mentions and “share of voice” across platforms.

You're not just competing for 10 blue links,

it's everywhere your customers search 🔎

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

Most 7-8 figure Shopify brands don’t struggle with SEO effort.

They struggle with misaligned priorities.

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

My Core Ecom SEO Tech Stack 👇

FREE:
Google Search Console
Google Analytics
Google Merchant Centre

PAID:
Mangools (KW Finder, SERP Watcher)
LLMrefs (LLM visibility tracker)

Paying doesn’t guarantee better results.

Some of the best tools are still free!

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

Some say AI Search is a whole different beast to SEO.

Truth is…

It’s just SEO best practices + strong brand building.

GEO, AEO, AIO….

call it what you want.

The fundamentals haven’t changed that much,

Just where we search is evolving.

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

@iPullRank That would be amazing, I for sure would be watching! That was how many of us learnt about SEO with the OG Rand 💯

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

I’m currently reaching out to the top SEOs in the game to get their thoughts on how to prepare for AI Search.

Who wants the article when it drops?!

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

If you’re not structuring your site content for Google AI Overviews and LLMs then you’re missing out on a lot of search visibility!

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

AI SEO. GEO. AEO. SGE.

You’ll hear these a lot over the next year.

Yes, SEO is evolving. But don’t be fooled by clever branding.

All these strategies fall under the same umbrella:

“AI Search”

with some nuances between platforms.

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

You don’t need Netflix in your life,

when you’ve got Trump as US President.

And Elon running X.

Looks like that bromance didn't last long.

Popcorn, anyone? 🍿

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

SEO is certainly changing…

with the emergence of AI.

But trust me,

It’s far from dead!

If anything, it’s just evolving…

[Jake Ward @jakezward]

Every type of SEO that's not dead:

On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
Local SEO
International SEO
Multilingual SEO
Enterprise SEO
Ecommerce SEO
Affiliate SEO
Mobile SEO
Voice SEO
Video SEO
Image SEO
Content SEO
News SEO
AI Chatbot SEO
White Hat SEO
Gray Hat SEO
Parasite SEO
Brand SEO
Accessibility SEO
Programmatic SEO
AI SEO
Google Discover SEO
Google SGE SEO
Amazon SEO
Etsy SEO
eBay SEO
Shopify SEO
App Store SEO
Podcast SEO
Reddit SEO
Quora SEO
YouTube SEO
TikTok SEO
LinkedIn SEO
Pinterest SEO
Google Maps SEO
TripAdvisor SEO

[Jake Ward @jakezward]

Every type of SEO that's not dead:

On-Page SEO
Off-Page SEO
Technical SEO
Local SEO
International SEO
Multilingual SEO
Enterprise SEO
Ecommerce SEO
Affiliate SEO
Mobile SEO
Voice SEO
Video SEO
Image SEO
Content SEO
News SEO
AI Chatbot SEO
White Hat SEO
Gray Hat SEO
Parasite SEO
Brand SEO
Accessibility SEO
Programmatic SEO
AI SEO
Google Discover SEO
Google SGE SEO
Amazon SEO
Etsy SEO
eBay SEO
Shopify SEO
App Store SEO
Podcast SEO
Reddit SEO
Quora SEO
YouTube SEO
TikTok SEO
LinkedIn SEO
Pinterest SEO
Google Maps SEO
TripAdvisor SEO

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

Well worth a read for anyone in the SEO space!

[Glen Allsopp 👾 @ViperChill]

I genuinely have no idea what the reaction to this will be (or if anyone will care at all), but if for nobody but myself I felt like I had to put it together.

I hope you find something inside that's valuable 🙏🏻

https://t.co/rGnASOKr51

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

@CharlieeSimpson @krakenfx @CharlieeSimpson did you have any luck getting this resolved with @krakenfx?

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

@krakensupport @krakensupport Thanks, I just sent you a DM 📲

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

@CharlieeSimpson @CharlieeSimpson I'm dealing with exactly the same issue right now with Kraken and my UK Corporate account with them.

Beyond frustrating!

[Charles Travers @CharlesLTravers]

Just remember:

Putting SEO off for yet another year

means you not only miss out on your own organic traffic and sales growth,

but your key competitors get a 12, 24, 36 month head start on you.

Opportunity cost is a real thing!