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]

@djforge Love the color on that origami! Is that ceramic or plastic?

[Aleyda Solis 🕊️ @aleyda]

📊 Technical SEO in the AI Search Era in 2026 – Take the SEOFOMO Survey and Win an #SEOFOMO tumbler + Hoodie 👇

How are technical SEO priorities and workflows changing as AI search and AI tools evolve? If you’re a technical SEO or an SEO who does technical SEO activities as part of their tasks, then this survey is for you!

It will only take 5 minutes to answer the questions, it’s anonymous and it will allow us to better understand the challenges and trends when doing technical SEO.

The results will be shared for free in the SEOFOMO newsletter and Website (no need to be subscribed) on November 1st, 2026. You have until October 30, 2026 to fill it out.

Need more incentives? When answering the survey you can also opt-in to participate in the giveaway of an SEOFOMO tumbler and hoodie.

Take it here: https://t.co/0dW54CGpzu

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@RayMartinezSEO Maybe tobasco scorpion, but regular is too weak. 😂

[Ann Smarty @seosmarty]

Look who is hosting a Reddit AMA this week! @patrickstox 🔥

Seldom will you find that much SEO experience in one person. From SEO at IBM to years of looking at thousands of sites when working with @Ahrefs, Patrick has definitely seen it all!

Come over and ask your questions about SEO and GEO/AEO here: https://t.co/8H741pNUMP

(And make sure to subscribe to the subreddit too!) 🙏

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Hate it because it's not a good take.

Yes, they transfer a tiny amount of authority.

But they don't support hreflang, crawl priorty, last mod, or as many pages. Try this with a big site and have thousands of these html pages with all the links. Bunch of useless pages.

[David G Quaid (SEO) @DavidGQuaid]

For some reason, TechSEOs hate this

HTML Sitemaps actually transfer authority - why would this be a lie?

Odd how people's egos and dislike for a person turns into disliking an objective fact.....

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

The joys of running events and a conference. This morning was all Tech SEO Connect things with Matthew Kay in Durham, NC. Getting things locked and finalized. Back to work for a few hours, and then headed to Pendo tower in Raleigh to put on the Triangle SEO Meetup event tonight, also with Matthew and JR Oakes. Really appreciate Timothy Wilson and the Pendo folks hosting us in their amazing venue!

This kind of stuff can be exhausting, but the end result and community built is amazing. Rule 1, don't try to do everything yourself. Find people to help. 😂

[Triangle SEO Meetup @triseomeetup]

Join us Tuesday at Pendo for The End of Marketing as We Know It: Perspectives from the C-Suite, co-hosted with AMA Triangle.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

A lot of resources can be wasted trying to measure everything. Sometimes it's best to just do what you think is right, but be flexible enough to pivot on certain things if that is what the data shows. I gotta say, reading this reminded me of @timsoulo, who is great btw.

[Kevin_Indig @Kevin_Indig]

Love this post by @jonoalderson
because it's true.

For most CMOs, good marketing is an act of bravery.

Data is unreliable and incomplete. So you make decisions based on judgment anyway. Might as well lean into it.

https://t.co/cdCAFwFKmF

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Important topic and I'm curious the result. Also, I'm about to fill it out.

[Nick LeRoy @NickLeRoy]

Are SEOs actually scared AI will take their jobs?

Rather than guess, I want data.

I’m surveying SEO/search professionals about AI, job security, career anxiety, and how sentiment has changed over the past year.

6 questions. <5 minutes. Anonymous.

Take it + please RT with your network.
https://t.co/aImP65QAUx

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@bryanfcasey I mean I hate that we even called it AI for so many years when it was nlp / machine learning and we hadn't even reached ani... I feel like I've been fighting this forever.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

I don't like getting political, but come on. Call a thing what it is. I'm not "the enemy". 1st amendment, free speech. It's a thing, whether the president wants to believe it or not. Also, he's in the wrong for labeling it incorrectly...

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

The whole AI > SI thing reminds me of working in corporate. Everyone wanted to name things their own way so they have no competition when they measure against the wrong things and so that some exec can put their name on it and say they did something. It's absurdly incompetent.

Call a thing what it is! Right now we're confusing the entire vocabulary for years to come. What they call SI is actually already called ASI. These are defined and settled terms, or they were...

-ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) = we are here.
-AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) = human level
-ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) = what they just rebranded SI and this is supposed to be smarter than all of human intelligence combined. We're not even close.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@rustybrick Meta. Congratulations Barry, and thanks for all that you do!

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

The whole AI > SI thing reminds me of working in corporate. Everyone wanted to name things their own way so they have no competition when they measure against the wrong things and so that some exec can put their name on it and say they did something. It's absurdly incompetent.

Call a thing what it is! Right now we're confusing the entire vocabulary for years to come. What they call SI is actually already called ASI. These are defined and settled terms, or they were...

-ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) = we are here.
-AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) = human level
-ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) = what they just rebranded SI and this is supposed to be smarter than all of human intelligence combined. We're not even close.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

It's kind of crazy that Tech SEO Connect is one month away and we haven't even announced it. We'll be in Durham, NC on November 5th-6th.

Early ticket sales have never been this strong. People want to come back, which is awesome! I guess that's what happens in year 3 when you run an amazing and super fun conference.

We do want new people to come to the conference, so this is me saying get your tickets before they're gone. https://t.co/OM9Xg1yDbr

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Manually in 2026? Nah, my AI is scraping, documenting, citing it's source, and checking if the citation actually exists. If all that fails, we're all screwed anyway...

[Barry Schwartz @rustybrick]

Google updates the AI content guidelines to say you should "manually factcheck and review all AI-generated content for accuracy and trustworthiness before publishing"

https://t.co/F0KgV2XO31

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Watching OpenAI DevDay, I kept thinking about how early @letaidocom (Letaido) / Agent A from Ahrefs brought together many of the capabilities now getting the spotlight.

Here are five capabilities Letaido offered back in April:

1. Always-on infrastructure. A dedicated environment where work can just keep on going, even if your laptop isn't open.
2. Shared workspaces to build together as a team.
3. Persistent memory so you have more context.
4. Agents that plan and execute multi-step tasks. They break down tasks and just keep working until things get done.
5. Software, apps, and dashboards that you can publish live to the web or for internal use.

Letaido also offers native access to Ahrefs data through your connected account, plus a choice of AI models. Check it out at https://t.co/XLFWVPL8S4

#ahrefspartner

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Taking a break, but there are still a couple hours left to ask me things!

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

It has begun. For the next several hours you can ask me anything on this /r/seogaps AMA. https://t.co/NmXOpmBbNy

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

It has begun. For the next several hours you can ask me anything on this /r/seogaps AMA. https://t.co/NmXOpmBbNy

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

Watching OpenAI DevDay, I kept thinking about how early @letaidocom (Letaido) / Agent A from Ahrefs brought together many of the capabilities now getting the spotlight.

Here are five capabilities Letaido offered back in April:

1. Always-on infrastructure. A dedicated environment where work can just keep on going, even if your laptop isn't open.
2. Shared workspaces to build together as a team.
3. Persistent memory so you have more context.
4. Agents that plan and execute multi-step tasks. They break down tasks and just keep working until things get done.
5. Software, apps, and dashboards that you can publish live to the web or for internal use.

Letaido also offers native access to Ahrefs data through your connected account, plus a choice of AI models. Check it out at https://t.co/XLFWVPL8S4

#ahrefspartner

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

@ikennaene_ If the content is the same, it's not cloaking.

[Patrick Stox @patrickstox]

This isn't widely supported by crawlers yet, but it's much better than LLMs.txt and markdown as separate files... This is the more future proof way to do markdown.

[Chris Long @chris_nectiv]

SEOs, your competitors may be covertly switching their content from HTML to markdown for AI agents.

You can analyze by auditing their Accept Headers. Here's the process: