Aren’t listicles dead? Brands have been writing self-serving listicles as a classic SEO play for years, and many have ramped up production at the start of AI Search due to their outsized influence on citations. But over the last 12 months, we’ve seen growing evidence that the tactic of editorial “best of” or roundup pages has run its course.
Lots of great research over the last 12 months from experts like Lily Ray, Nick Haigler, or Glen Allsopp has shown that:
Listicles are the most-cited page type in ChatGPT answers at 43.8% of 26,283 source URLs, including lists where brands rank themselves first
Google began demoting sites built on self-serving listicles in January 2026, with several SaaS brands losing 29 to 49% of organic visibility within weeks
ChatGPT cut listicle citations by 30% from December 2025 to January 2026, with Wikipedia and Reddit absorbing the lost share
And yet, whenever I still use Google (which is not that often anymore), I still encounter listicles all the time. So, what gives? A few questions came up for me:
How often are listicles still present?
Can we spot a demotion of self-serving listicles?
What are characteristics of a listicle that consistently performs well?
Should companies write listicles at all?
I set out to find the answers to those questions with a large data pull: I analyzed 60,000 US-English desktop Google queries across 15 verticals using SE Ranking. The dataset contains 5.32 million organic-result rows collected during a 47-hour window in August 2026.
I’ll split the findings into two Memos: Memo one (this one) answers questions 1 and 2. Memo two (next week) will answer 3 and 4, so stay tuned.
Definition of a listicle
A lot of confusion comes from not using the terminology correctly (tell me you’re a nerd without telling me you’re a nerd).
The word listicle is a combination of article and list. Or, in other words, a listicle is an article where the list is the content. The body consists of discrete, same-type items (tools, ideas, examples, options) that are comparable with each other. Each item gets a self-contained treatment (usually its own heading). And the title promises a bounded set, with or without a number in it.
A step-by-step tutorial (”How to set up Asana”) is sequential, not a listicle, because item 3 depends on item 2. Listicle items can be reordered without breaking the logic.
A few examples of listicles:
https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/five-investing-ideas
https://www.salesforce.com/small-business/types-of-businesses/
https://travel.usnews.com/hotels/best-all-inclusive-resorts-in-usa/
https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/at-home-workouts
Listicles can come from different types of companies with varying incentives: affiliates like NerdWallet, publishers like US News, or brands like Salesforce.
Website owner type: brand, publisher, retailer, platform, nonprofit, or community
Incentive: self-promotional, affiliate-supported, independent, or unclear
Methodology
60K US-English desktop Google queries were analyzed across 15 verticals using SE Ranking data.
This dataset contains 5.32M organic-result rows from a 47-hour window in August 2026.
Queries were stratified by vertical, query wording, and query length, then weighted to the intended sample mix.
Duplicate records and successful-but-empty SERPs were excluded.
A nested 20,000-query subset captured additional search-result features, including AI Overviews, video, images, People Also Ask, Reddit, and YouTube.
Each result was automatically classified as a listicle or not using its title, snippet, URL, and website type. The classification separated numbered list articles from unnumbered editorial roundups and excluded product grids, directories, forums, video pages, single-item reviews, and step-by-step guides.
The data pipeline was checked for completeness, duplicate queries, and rank integrity. I also manually reviewed website ownership and conducted a blind quality review of 30 pages. The initial classifier pilot achieved 100% precision and recall on 30 queries, but an untouched production holdout remains the final validation step.
The study is observational and reflects one crawl wave. It identifies associations between query wording, listicle presence, and ranking, not causal effects.
Has Google demoted listicles?
The results from this dataset do not show a universal penalty for listicles. At least one listicle appeared in the top 10 for 55.1% of queries and in the top three for 32.3%.
85.9% of search results pages contained at least one title with a broad list cue: a one-to-three-digit number or a word such as “best,” “top,” “ways,” “ideas,” “examples,” “alternatives,” “tips,” “tools,” “apps,” or “options.”
However, stronger classification shows a confirmed listicle on 55.1% of search results pages. In other words, half of search results contain true listicles.
The query itself is the biggest factor deciding whether Google shows a listicle or not. Google shows 4.5x more listicles when users ask for a set of options.
When a query explicitly asks for ideas, examples, options, or the best items, listicles dominate the top results.
When the request for multiple options is only implied in a query, the listicle advantage largely disappears.
The top-three rate rose to 54.5% for explicit-list queries compared with 10.2% for implicit category or comparison queries.
The rate of listicle appearance was 12.1% for the comparison group of informational queries that did not ask for a list.
However, one suggestive hint that Google is demoting (self-serving) listicles is that almost half of them come from publishers instead of known brands/vendors.
Publishers also won 54.0% of 4,026 direct matchups against a brand or vendor listicle on the same search results page. When examining the top 5 results in the SERP, the publisher averaged position 4.24 in those matchups, compared with 4.71 for the brand or vendor.
Publishing and content platforms had the strongest conditional rank at 3.76 when one of their listicles appeared in the top 10.
Publishers averaged 3.99, government, academic, and nonprofit sites averaged 4.48, and brands or vendors averaged 4.65.
The 5,765 domains that supplied top-10 listicle leaders point to a broad market with a long tail:
The top 10 domains accounted for 18.3%, and the top 50 accounted for 36.5%.
The remaining 5,715 domains accounted for 63.5%.
If a finding from this week changes a decision for your brand, the Growth Memo Premium Resource Library has 45+ (and growing) checklists, light tools, AI workflows, and stakeholder slide decks to put it to work. Switch to Growth Premium.
What about self-promoting listicles?
Self-promoting listicles come from brands (software companies, banks, service providers, etc.) that put themselves first in their lists to influence AI answers. A classic example is to write about the “x best [insert category]” and list yourself at the top. By the way, sometimes you can influence “objective” listicles (from affiliates or publishers) by paying for it, but Google cannot detect that since those transactions happen behind closed doors.
So now that we know that there is a difference between publishers who create listicles for products vs. self-serving listicles that come from brands, the question is whether the latter has seen a demotion since brands go bonkers with it?
We know from Lily Ray’s analyses that the unannounced mid-January Google update impacts listicles. I’ve observed the same, anecdotally. We also know from Peec that there doesn’t seem to be a demotion for self-promoting listicles in citations across ChatGPT, Google AI, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and AI Overviews.
In this study, I compared a fixed subset of 2,400 queries and 24,000 search results between January and August. The results: The search results changed substantially. Only 52.5% of queries had the same exact URL at position one in both periods, and only 58.3% had the same domain. At position one, the conservative listicle range fell from 18.9% to 20.2% in January to 15.1% to 15.6% in August. Across the top three, the January range was 35.9% to 39.0%, compared with 32.0% to 33.0% in August.
That is the listicle penalty we’ve seen anecdotally. But I cannot trace it back to self-promoting listicles specifically. As a matter of fact, 62% of vendor-authored listicles gained estimated organic traffic since January, and the median page gained 38%.
Results differ by vertical
Listicle occurrence in the organic top 10 ranged from 42.0% in entertainment and gaming to 67.2% in beauty and fashion. B2B software reached 62.5%, while travel reached 49.3%.
Brand or vendor listicles varied even more. They appeared in the top 10 on 46.2% of B2B software search results pages, compared with 3.3% in food and 6.2% in travel.
That, to me, is symptomatic of how B2B companies use listicles to “optimize” for AI Search, which is a much smaller lever for consumer-oriented verticals. After all, I’d argue it’s mostly B2B brands using listicles for AI Search optimization. However, it also shows that listicles are by no means dead.
Why do B2B teams pile into this tactic at all? Today’s sponsor has the demand-side data. For the 2026 Marketing Leaders Reality Index, AirOps asked 300+ marketing execs what is actually happening inside their teams right now, not the polished version that shows up on LinkedIn:
86.6% are prioritizing AI search
75.4% got higher pipeline or revenue targets, but only 43.0% saw any budget increase
Only 23% feel confident measuring it
Read that against the numbers above: Everyone is told to win AI search, few get more resources, and almost nobody can prove impact. That’s the environment where cheap, scalable tactics like self-serving listicles thrive.
Listicles solve for intent but face tough competition
Demotion or not, the reality is that listicles face heavy competition for attention. 92% of SERPs with a top-10 listicle also contained Reddit or YouTube somewhere on the page. Both platforms appeared together on 53% of those SERPs.
The practical consequence is that a page can lose attention (think: clicks) without losing its position among standard unpaid results. Listicle-related keywords seem like they carry high buyer intent, but don’t expect a flood of conversions amidst AI Overviews, Reddit, and Youtube. The average share of AI Overviews across all verticals was 83.7% to 93.4% in B2B, where listicles appear most!
Reddit and YouTube occupy different positions in the organic results.
Reddit placed in the top 3 on 70.7% of the search results pages where it appeared in the top 10. YouTube did so on 11.1%.
When Reddit appeared in the top 10, its best result averaged position 3.31 and had a median position of 2. YouTube averaged position 6.62 and had a median position of 7.
Reddit and YouTube can appear as ordinary links, embedded result boxes, and sources in Google’s AI-generated answer for the same query.
Reddit ranked above YouTube on 84.5% of the 19,729 search results pages where both appeared in the top 10. The Reddit advantage reached 90.4% on explicit list queries and fell to 69.9% on implicit category or comparison queries.
YouTube gains more reach outside ordinary organic results. In the 20K-query advanced panel, video boxes and AI Overview citations added 20.7 percentage points of YouTube reach beyond search results pages where YouTube already ranked in the organic top 10. The same increase for Reddit was 2.1 percentage points.
The next budget review will ask why organic search optimization spend matters when Reddit, YouTube, and AI Overviews take the click. Premium subscribers can walk in with the AI SEO Budget Reallocation Planner: 5 growth-priority scenarios and a screenshot-ready visual in under 7 minutes… plus 45+ more tools, skills, and decks. Get Growth Premium.
The platform pattern also changes by vertical.
Reddit had greater organic top-10 presence than YouTube in 11 of 15 verticals. Its largest advantages appeared in travel (+40.6 percentage points), education and careers (+22.8), finance (+21.9), family and pets (+21.1), and automotive (+19.6).
YouTube led in 4 verticals: food (+40.8 percentage points), health (+19.1), home and DIY (+15.1), and beauty and fashion (+6.1).
Reddit’s organic top-10 presence peaked at 77.1% in automotive and fell to 25.7% in health.
YouTube peaked at 78.1% in food and fell to 29.7% in travel.
The pattern suggests different platform roles. Reddit is stronger in research and comparison-oriented categories, while YouTube is stronger where visual demonstration, inspiration, or instruction matters.
So, are listicles dead?
Has Google demoted listicles? Yes, In a very targeted way. We see almost 4% fewer listicles in position 1 and the top 3. And yet, they remain very present in Google’s search results. Listicles that are performing well in August have even gained traffic since January. So, Google has systematically and carefully weeded out certain listicles.
My take is that the aggressive use of AI to create (poor) listicles has led to a flood that Google targeted with the secret mid-January update. Quality and velocity seem to be markers in Google’s latest spam algorithm updates.
That said, and this is the bigger issue here: Even where listicles perform well, the click opportunity shrinks. 92% of listicle SERPs carry Reddit or YouTube results; 93.4% of listicle-related B2B query results have AI Overviews.
Look, I have my own moral judgments about self-promoting listicles. There’s a degree of cringe to it. There is also a degree of business impact to it, though we don’t know how much. So, the way I reconcile the two is by seeking evidence for putting yourself first. For example, can your G2 grid position or reviews support that “you’re the best”?
Next week, we’ll dive deep into my observations on what well-performing listicles do better than others, and whether it’s still worth creating listicles.
Humbly,
Kevin
PS: Last year, I spoke at SEO IRL in Toronto and had a great time. This year, Canada’s largest SEO conference returns October 6-7 in Toronto with speakers like Lily Ray, Joy Hawkins, Nathan Gotch, Lidia Infante, and more.
Listicles if done right can be useful. But so often it's just slop.
The finding that reconciles the two halves of this is that ranking and citation have already come apart. Ahrefs looked at 863,000 keywords and 4 million AI Overview citations in March: only 38% of cited pages rank in Google's top 10, down from 76% last July. So a demotion in classic rankings and a 43.8% citation share can coexist without contradiction, because the two systems now select on different things. Rankings reward the page. Citations reward whichever passage is easiest to lift whole and attribute. That is why self-serving listicles keep getting cited while losing rank: the format hands a model a clean, attributable line even when nothing independent sits behind it. The durable version is the same format built on a claim a reader can check, which is also the only version that survives models getting better at spotting the self-ranking pattern.