Growth Intelligence Brief #19
An updated version of the brief, the SaaS slide and Google's agentic SEO press release.
A note from Kevin:
Welcome to a polished version of the Intelligence Brief! This new version prioritizes the data from the SSI (SEO Site Index) higher. Free subscribers get the overview, premium subscribers get the data deep dive, bigger picture and related industry news.
As a reminder: the SSI tracks thousands of domains across organic ranks and AI Visibility in over 20 verticals, from e-commerce to SaaS.
Exec Summary
Three things moved this week. The SaaS slide we celebrated as “finally turning” in GIB 18 reversed inside 30 days. The Jobs vertical is having its strongest month since I started tracking. Local Search posted +44% on the back of a single domain. Each of these tells a different story about where Google is routing traffic right now.
SaaS visibility dropped -7.8% in 30 days, erasing last issue’s rebound. AWS (-22.7%), Oracle (-17.0%), Stripe (-16.8%), Atlassian (-15.6%), and GitHub (-14.2%) all fell in lockstep while their AI mentions grew 25 to 90%.
The Jobs vertical posted +21.2%, with Glassdoor (+64.2%) and ZipRecruiter (+53.5%) doing nearly all the work.
Local Search rose +44.0%, almost entirely on Yelp, which gained more raw visibility points (151) than any other site in the Index this month.
SaaS AI prompt counts grew +16.9% over the matching window. The divergence economy has resumed at a wider gap than any prior reading.
Trustpilot (+39.5%) and Glassdoor (+64.2%) extend the GIB 18 thesis: review aggregators continue to absorb traffic that used to go to original sources.
Movers & Shakers
Top 5 Movers (30-day SEO)
Glassdoor (Jobs) +64.2%. Vis 14.31 to 23.49. The single biggest 30-day gainer with a meaningful baseline. Full breakdown in the Winner callout below.
ZipRecruiter (Jobs) +53.5%. Vis 40.09 to 61.56. Running the same play as Glassdoor in parallel, which is what makes the Jobs story a routing story, not a single-domain win.
Nextdoor (Social Networks) +43.2%. Vis 20.14 to 28.83. Third consecutive month of double-digit gains. Local community signal keeps compounding while Threads and TikTok lose ground.
Yelp (Local Search) +42.7%. Vis 354.60 to 505.91. Single-handedly responsible for the entire vertical’s +44.0% lift. Yelp added 151 raw visibility points, more than any other site in the Index.
Trustpilot (Ecommerce) +39.5%. Vis 39.79 to 55.53. Third review aggregator in three issues to make the top risers, following G2 and Capterra in GIB 18.
Top 5 Shakers (30-day SEO)
Shutterfly (Images) -32.5%. Vis 5.98 to 4.04. The slide flagged in GIB 18 continues. AI mentions are up, but the SEO loss is steeper than the AI gain.
Costco (Ecommerce) -24.9%. Vis 57.32 to 43.05. Surprise loser this month. Worth watching whether this is a one-month dip or the start of something structural.
Airbnb (Travel) -24.9%. Vis 7.23 to 5.43. The Travel vertical itself is only -1.5%, so this is Airbnb-specific, not category-wide.
Substack (Content Platform) -22.0%. Vis 42.56 to 33.22. Notable one for the readers of this brief.
AWS (SaaS) -22.7%. Vis 10.40 to 8.04. Biggest SaaS faller of the month. Full breakdown in the Loser callout below.
Winner: Glassdoor (+64.2%)
The single biggest 30-day SEO gainer for any company with a meaningful baseline. Glassdoor went from 14.31 visibility to 23.49, with ZipRecruiter (+53.5%) running the same play in parallel. The Jobs vertical as a whole posted +21.2%, and those two aggregators account for most of the lift. Smaller job boards and individual employer pages barely moved.
The likely driver is Google routing more “[company] reviews” and “[role] salary” queries back to the big aggregators after a brief period of generating those answers directly inside AIO. This looks like the same pattern we tracked with G2 and Capterra absorbing SaaS comparison queries in GIB 18, only now applied to employer research.
Worth watching whether Indeed (+13.4% this month, much smaller move) catches up by next issue, or whether Glassdoor specifically is getting favored by the routing change.
Loser: AWS (-22.7%)
The biggest SaaS bellwether had its worst month in the Index history. AWS visibility dropped from 10.40 to 8.04 in 30 days, while its AI mentions for the same window grew only modestly. The product isn’t the story. The story is what AWS shares with Oracle (-17.0%), Stripe (-16.8%), Atlassian (-15.6%), Square (-17.9%), and GitHub (-14.2%): every major SaaS brand is bleeding visibility at similar rates this month.
What makes the pattern interesting is the diversity of products. Cloud infrastructure, payments, dev tools, project management, all moving in the same direction within the same window.
