Patrick Stox

SEO Consultant, Product Advisor, Speaker, Author, Community Builder | Ex Ahrefs & IBM. “The Technical SEO’s technical SEO” Tech SEO Connect, Triangle SEO Meetup

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Today is my last day at Ahrefs after 6.5+ years. Incredibly proud to have helped shape such an amazing product.

I plan to do some consulting and build some things. Let me know if you need help. Potentially open to the right in-house opportunity.

Likes / shares appreciated🙏

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@connections8 @jabezreuben Big fan of Diggy Doo's especially. Great for pourover.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@gaganghotra_ @harpreetchatha_ @Hobo_Web Just sounds like a well structured site. Parent and child pages link together, related topics, etc.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@anubhavn22 The tabs are all rendered in the HTML in this case. I think it's good for users is why it exists, but for LLMs it might help or do nothing.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

This is spot on. Anything you plan to scale that is easy, just stop unless you can truly add value. For competitor pages pick 3-5 and put time and work into them...

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

I think the next frontier of spam fighting from the search/AI companies is going to hit one of the most popular page types in SEO/GEO right now: comparison and alternative pages.

These are pages on your own site that pit your brand against competitors, across the whole brand or a specific product or service (Brand X vs. Y, Product X vs. Y, [Competitor] Alternatives).

They've been making the rounds as an SEO/GEO goldmine lately, and "build a lot of these" is advice I keep hearing at conferences and reading in industry blogs and social posts.

This is similar to what I've been sharing all year with "listicles" - and I've got a new Substack piece coming out (ASAP!) on how Google and OpenAI are tuning their AI answers to lean less on brands promoting themselves. Stay tuned for that.

Comparison pages are trickier and more nuanced. There are genuine use cases for doing them well, especially at a small scale, and I've occasionally recommended them to clients in certain situations.

But like everything in SEO: once a tactic works, it becomes popular and people scale it. (File under: "this is why we can't have nice things" 🫠)

The "build these pages" advice inevitably leads folks to use AI to spin up as many as possible. I've already advised several companies that launched dozens, even hundreds of comparison/alternative pages (AKA an "SEO pattern") and ran into trouble. For example, A couple sites got hit by Google's late January update this year.

The fundamental problem: like any other "review" page, Google already has strict criteria for product reviews. The core requirement is that you prove you actually tried and tested the product, with evidence.

For a brand comparing itself to competitors, meeting that bar would mean you've hired your competitor(s) and your own company, and are authentically reviewing your honest experience using their services. How many brands can say they've actually done that? My guess is probably close to 0.

What usually ends up happening instead is brands do "research" about their competition, leaning on negative reviews of their competitors or worse - making up incorrect or untrue information to make your own offering look better than theirs.

I believe we're already seeing - and will keep seeing - Google, OpenAI and other AI companies look for "objective" 3rd party reviews* instead of leaning on biased brand content when they generate answers. This is ultimately why I think search/AI companies lean so heavily into Reddit discussions, YouTube reviews, Trustpilot, G2, and other major review sites.

(*Yes, I know these 3rd party sites are often influenced / manipulated / pay-to-play as well... so that's a big challenge for them too.)

So, as always: test, experiment, learn. But my spidey senses say that building these pages at scale - and doing it inauthentically - like trashing your competitor while calling yourself the best - is risky. When too many sites adopt these approaches, they become a liability long-term.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@MichaelH_rley @ahrefs @screamingfrog @sitebulb Everything

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Finally got business stuff set up and now I can get tools again.

First stop was @ahrefs and I already swapped a GKP screenshot in a recent article for an Ahrefs one.

What are people using for quick crawls these days? @screamingfrog @sitebulb?

[Triangle SEO Meetup @triseomeetup]

Our next meetup is later this month, and it's a big one!

@noahlearner is flying in from Denver, Colorado to present "Solving Business Problems with SEO Knowledge."

[Tim Soulo 🇺🇦 @timsoulo]

Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) API endpoint is now 100% FREE. 🔥

Now that AI lets anyone spin up their own tools and automations, the bottleneck isn't coding anymore — it's access to quality data.

And DR is one of the best shortcuts out there for sizing up how authoritative a website really is.

So we're just giving it away!

Grab it here:
https://t.co/stR5n5KF3c

New to DR?
It rates the strength of any site's backlink profile on a 0–100 scale.
More here: https://t.co/YdV3oI98Ny

Now go build something cool. 😉

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@ericosiu I'm a consultant now. Happy to have a chat.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

I'm in my next chapter, and with AI, the constraints are gone. I'm being bolder and dreaming bigger than ever.

Here's the latest, plus a sneak peek at the new site I'm building. Even there, I'm reimagining how websites could work and what is useful.

https://t.co/xJk3X8let0

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@MichaelH_rley Wow, there's a blast from the past! It's been a while and I'd definitely love to catch up. Shoot me a DM.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@SeoRobertson @lilyraynyc There are lots of queries with full sentences. Many look like test questions. 🫣

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Wow! Congrats to the folks at Scrunch!

[Gagan Ghotra @gaganghotra_]

🆕 AI visibility tracking space - Scrunch for $225 Million has been acquired by Sitecore!

They raised $4M seed round in March 2025 and later $15M Series A in July.

$19M total raised
against a $225M acquisition price
roughly an 11.8x return on invested capital - big exit for all the investors!

And now it's going to be a Sitecore property!

https://t.co/mgP5XedtXJ

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@IvanPalii Cool, so maybe 5.2%? 😂

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

No clicks? But that's kind of accurate in AI search tbh. Last time I looked at this, if AI search was 100% of search traffic, websites would have 5% of current traffic levels. People aren't clicking there.

[Barry Schwartz @rustybrick]

Google Search Console AI performance reports and controls to block your content in AI responses https://t.co/lsIeEvBUgY

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@inspiredtaste Insane.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@WilliamGendron Consulting is fun. Not sure I would go in-house again. It would take the right offer. And I do have some of my own things + will have more now that I have some time to work on them again.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Today is my last day at Ahrefs after 6.5+ years. Incredibly proud to have helped shape such an amazing product.

I plan to do some consulting and build some things. Let me know if you need help. Potentially open to the right in-house opportunity.

Likes / shares appreciated🙏

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@siddhesh_asawa Probably more than ever. 😂

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@brucebiz2 Nice! See you tonight!

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@NickLeRoy Ha! Yeah, Ahrefs is a great company full of great people.

I appreciate the offer. Looks like I'll be swamped with work for a while at least from the insane number of people reaching out already.