Blog · Page 2 of 6
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.
Does Google Preferred Sources affect AI Mode: Google documents a badge, and its click figure is older than the feature there
In AI Mode and AI Overviews, a website that someone has picked "can be highlighted with a 'preferred' badge" for that person, according to Google's documentation for site owners. For Top Stories, the same documentation promises something different: there, the…
Does content syndication help AI citations: the same word names three different practices
"Content syndication" is sold under one name for three different things. In lead generation, it means placing a gated asset on other companies' networks: LeadSpot, which sells this service, defines it as "the distribution of gated content such as whitepapers…
Does a Wikipedia page help AI visibility: training data and live search treat an article differently
A Wikipedia page can get into an AI answer by two routes. The first is training: its text is collected into the data a model learns from, and anything the model later says because of it arrives with no source attached and only as of the date that text was…
How many B2B buyers use AI to research vendors: the answer depends on the question buyers were asked
The answer you will meet most often is Forrester's: "Nearly all business buyers (94%) report using AI during their buying process," from a survey of nearly 18,000 global business buyers that the firm ran in 2025 and published in January 2026. That counts…
Does earned media drive AI citations: press coverage is one part of what the study calls earned
Muck Rack's May 2026 edition of What Is AI Reading? puts earned media at 84% of the AI citations in an analysis of more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini across 17 industries. Its full report counts journalism, academic research…
Bing Webmaster Tools AI performance report: the citations Microsoft can see, not every assistant's
The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts citations. Microsoft's launch post of 10 February 2026 describes the tab as "a new set of insights that shows how publisher content appears across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and…
Do AI assistants cite paywalled content: what the paywall-penalty test measured, and what it left out
The figure you are most likely to meet, paywalled content drawing no AI citations at all, comes from a study the PR firm 5W released on 20 July 2026 with Everything-PR, a site under the same ownership. That study rests on a single test: 40 queries put to one…
Do listicles get cited more by AI: a share of citations is not the chance of being picked
Listicles, the "best X" and "top 10" articles that publishers, agencies and brands put out on the open web, take a large share of what AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode cite in the studies we read. Whether any single one is likelier…