Blog
What we learn about search, AI assistants, and writing that gets found.
Every article here is made by the same process we offer our clients.
Top generative engine optimization companies in AI in 2026: where the lists come from, and what to ask before hiring one
On 12 October 2026, both lists of agencies we could open on the results page for this search, captured in the United States, were written by a firm that put itself in the lead: SeoProfy opens its 13 with SeoProfy, and 20North opens its 6 with 20North. If you…Read the article
How many sources does an AI Overview cite? A university audit's answer, and its limits
AI Overviews in the independent audit by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis cited a median of 8 sources each: 61,212 reference links across 7,583 overviews, with a mean of 8.1, a minimum of 1 and a maximum of 32. A Google AI Overview is the AI…
LLM seeding: what the practice is, and where Anthropic's and Google's rules draw the line
LLM seeding is a marketing term with no settled meaning; most of the guides we read use it for placing material about a brand on the sites AI assistants read, so that their answers name the brand. Anthropic published a new version of its Usage Policy on 8…
Does ChatGPT cite its licensing partners more? What the deals say, and what has been measured
Nothing published that we could find shows that a licensing deal causes ChatGPT to cite a publisher more often. The deal announcements we read promise attribution, summaries and links when a partner's journalism appears. One large study of June 2026 data…
Does ChatGPT have its own search index? What OpenAI documents, and what others have observed
Yes, by OpenAI's own account. Its head of product for ChatGPT told a US court in 2025 that the company was building its own search index, and one of its help pages describes an index ChatGPT can search in one workspace setting. Its page on everyday use says…
How do AI assistants recommend products? What their own shopping documentation says
By OpenAI's own account, ChatGPT shows a product when it judges it relevant to what you asked, weighing structured data from merchants and other providers, what the model would already say before it searches, and the company's own policies. Once a shopper…
The great decoupling in SEO: what Search Console's logging error changes, and what it doesn't
The great decoupling is the Search Console graph where impressions climb while clicks fall. It ran through the same months in which Search Console was not counting impressions accurately, from 13 May 2025 until 27 April 2026. Clicks were counted normally…
Does E-E-A-T matter for AI search? What Google's own documents say, and where they stop
For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google's own documents root the features in the same ranking and quality systems as ordinary search results. We read that to mean the qualities behind E-E-A-T matter there in the same way: as a description of what those…
Do AI Overviews show for brand searches? What changed in September 2026
Since late September 2026, yes, for most of the brand queries that three separate reports checked. An AI Overview is Google's own AI-written answer, shown among the ordinary results, and as late as July 2026 a bare company name rarely drew one in the samples…