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.
finally started working on a new version of the GTM Copy/Paste extension. Using Cursor and Claude Sonnet 3.7... Given it took me 2 months to create the V1 back in 2018, using AI feels like cheating.
🎥 We are developing an app that interviews you—helping you produce short-form video content for your social media just by answering questions.
And now we are looking for beta testers. Interested? DM me
(5/5)
I then repurpose that into short clips for YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more.
All from just one interview.
But what if you’re not getting invited to podcasts? That’s what inspired a project I’m excited to share.
(4/5)
You might be thinking, “But isn’t that still a ton of work to produce?”Not exactly…
The trick is to make it effortless. One way that works great for me is when I go on podcasts as a guest, I ask the host for the footage.
(3/5)
I loved it—but it was brutal.
Creating long-form content demands dedication and consistency.
And honestly, it’s only sustainable if you can make it feel effortless.
Today, I believe there are smarter, faster ways to build credibility. One of them? Short-form video.
(2/5)
What if I told you… I wouldn’t do it again?
YouTube has been incredible for building my authority in digital analytics—175k subscribers and countless opportunities to help people solve their analytics challenges.
But would I do it all over again?
No.
(1/5)
The MeasureSchool Team is hiring once again: This time we are looking for a talented marketer to help promote our products and events.
Apply here: https://t.co/GTkMbUXGjn
Happy to report the GTM Copy Paste extension is working again. The annoying change of links in the triggers caused it to break and I've now added a fix that will allow to copy triggers again https://t.co/UgZfNdxDuP
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