Boyd Lake SEO

Husband, Father, SEO Manager, and Recovering Video Game Artist. I love SEO, 3d characters, and Guitar. I'm a Teacher and a Student.

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

From this weekend, if you are using the AIOSEO plugin (like 3M+ sites are), be aware that they pushed an update that's ON by default. They are publishing an llms.txt file for your site and markdown files for every post. If you want an llms.txt file (not for SEO but for agents), then just be aware it's there. And if you don't want to publish many markdown files, then make sure you are aware of that too. It's easy to disable but my guess is most site owners have no idea.

And... no plugin should be publishing files to your site without explicit approval from the site owner. If you had 10K posts, you now have 10K markdown files published too. Again, if you want that, fine, but the plugin should not have done that without your approval.

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

"Ranking #1 in Google is not enough for AI search"

...6 months later..

"The most strongly correlated factor with appearing in AI answers is ranking #1 on Google" lol

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

I felt a disturbance in the SEO force this morning. It shook me a bit... I immediately knew that millions of sites started publishing llms.txt files and markdown files. And that happened recently. I knew I must reach out to Yoda... ;)

OK, it wasn't the force... it's that I realized the AIOSEO plugin used by 3M+ site owners now *automatically* creates llms.txt files and then markdown files for each post. Yes, that means tons of sites are publishing those files now and I would bet most don't even know it. The feature is ON by default. It's easy to disable, but again, most don't even know that's happening. Oof.
https://t.co/pT2Qo1w9JF

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

Yep, once again, the Jan 2026 unconfirmed update was very powerful for the sites it impacted. I think it's just the beginning as Google cracks down on "commodity content", self-serving listicles, and more. And like I've documented before, drop in Google and you can drop in ChatGPT. See below.

[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🙏

[Boyd Lake SEO @boydlake]

Ouch!

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

It's not often you get to see a Google site migration. Google moved the Nest community to its own support system. How? Every page now uses a meta refresh redirect to the homepage of the new support area. Oof. 313K urls indexed. 🤦‍♂️

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

Can scaling AI content be risky for SEO?

I've been monitoring the impact across hundreds of sites for the past few months.

Check out my recent research and findings in my latest Substack:

https://t.co/nY4XO08uBG

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

From an Anthropic engineer. HTML beats Markdown -> An Anthropic engineer argues HTML is a better output format for AI agents than Markdown, citing information density, ease of sharing, and two-way interaction

"I’ve started preferring HTML as an output format instead of Markdown and increasingly see this being used by others on the Claude Code team, this is why."

"But as agents have become more and more powerful, I have felt that markdown has become a restricting format." https://t.co/MAMLGXflvF

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

Remember, Google rolled out passage-based ranking in 2020. Maybe Bing is just catching up now. :)

"Passage ranking is an AI system we use to identify individual sections or "passages" of a web page to better understand how relevant a page is to a search."

"With new passage understanding capabilities, Google can understand that the result on the right is a lot more relevant to a specific query than a broader page on that topic (L). In this case, our systems were able to highlight a featured snippet, but this improvement applies to how we rank web pages overall."
https://t.co/m7iISsxVaF

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

YouTube citations in AI Mode 🚀🤯

via @ahrefs

[Andréa Bensaid @AndreaBensaid]

AI bros: "I got Claude to replace an entire SEO team"

Yes...we can see that.

[Boyd Lake SEO @boydlake]

Always something interesting in these Lily Ray Update articles.

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

Better late than never - I was finally able to publish the “winners and losers” list for the March 2026 Google Core Update, plus some analysis about what changed.

In some cases, reversals happened after the update, so I made a note of those too:

https://t.co/5ksX6xXqmP

[Fabrice Canel @facan]

Bing hitting 1 billion monthly active users is HUGE. More growth in 5 years than the prior 10. #SEOs pay close attention. The search landscape is shifting fast. Time to optimize for Bing Search and Bing Grounding API alongside Google. Congrats to the entire Bing team and partners driving this momentum! Excited for what’s next for our customers. 🚀

[Boyd Lake SEO @boydlake]

@defense_of_fam @conservmillen

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

I think they are smoking something over at SEL 🤣 -> March 2026 Google core update more volatile than December — here’s what changed

The March 2026 core update wasn't even close to the power of the December 2025 core update. Not even remotely close. @lilyraynyc want to chime in here? https://t.co/ZfulktFX3L

[Glenn Gabe @glenngabe]

Important change from Google for how spam reports are handled AND for people filing the spam reports. 1) Google can now use those reports to issue a manual action on a site. They said that wasn't the case before. And 2) If they do issue a manual action based on your spam report, Google will send the entire spam report to the site owner verbatim. If you don't identify yourself in the form, your info will not be sent through. i.e. Google isn't identifying you, but you can identify yourself in the submission (if you want). So if you report spam, be aware your report will be sent to the site owner verbatim *if* a manual action is applied.

As Google explains: "If we issue a manual action, we send whatever you write in the submission report verbatim to the site owner to help them understand the context of the manual action. We don't include any other identifying information when we notify the site owner; as long as you avoid including personal information in the open text field, the report remains anonymous."

[Boyd Lake SEO @boydlake]

Great article.

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

In this week’s NYT piece, Google’s said that the BBC article about self-promoting listicles used “unrealistic searches people wouldn’t actually do.”

I have some thoughts about that, and about AIO accuracy overall.

Check it out:

https://t.co/F19vPuNkXO

[Bill Hartzer @bhartzer]

Google in the NY Post:

Google’s AI Overviews spew millions of false answers per hour, bombshell study reveals

https://t.co/H1nQeUq7Yx

[NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman @NASAAdmin]

And splashdown!

America is back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon and bringing them home safely.
Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy did an outstanding job. These talented astronauts inspired the world and represented their space agencies and nations as humanity’s ambassadors to the stars.

This was a test mission, the first crewed flight of SLS and Orion, pushing farther into the unforgiving environment of space than ever before, and it carried real risk. They accepted that risk for all we stood to learn and for the exciting missions that follow, as we return to the lunar surface, build a Moon base, and prepare for what comes next.

And they were not alone. The entire NASA workforce, our commercial and international partners, and the hopes and dreams of people all over the world were with them. The astronauts know it, and you should too. This mission would not have been possible without you.

Congratulations. Artemis II, mission accomplished.

[Lily Ray 😏 @lilyraynyc]

The irony is that this stuff only makes real SEOs more employable.

As I often say, “call me in 6 months.”