Research

What to do now that AIOs turned search into reading sessions

Intent compression breaks the segmentation SEO ran on for 20 years. Your content strategy map survives, and your per-page optimization might not.

Jun 1 • Kevin Indig

Users behave differently in AI Overviews vs. AI Mode

A new clickstream study of 846K sessions shows AI Overviews turn the SERP into a comparison environment, while AI Mode produces acceptance

May 25 • Kevin Indig

Reasoning lift: What happens to AI visibility when AI thinks harder

High reasoning fires 4.6x more searches cites a nearly different web.

May 18 • Kevin Indig

The Consensus Gap

91% of AI citations show up in only 1 engine

May 11 • Kevin Indig

The AI skills salary premium

The SEO job market quietly repriced around AI, but 4 out of 5 of the new higher-paying roles don't say AI in the title.

Apr 27 • Kevin Indig and Amanda Johnson

The ghost citation problem

New data from 3,981 domains across 115 prompts, 14 countries, and 4 AI search engines

Apr 20 • Kevin Indig

Shorter, Focused Content Wins in ChatGPT

We analyzed 815,000 query-page pairs. The "ultimate guide" strategy produces worse citation results than a focused shorter page.

Apr 13 • Kevin Indig

How consumers navigate high-stakes purchases in AI Mode

A new user behavior study showing how AI Mode users accept shortlists built by the LLM, while classic Google search users build them themselves.

Apr 7 • Kevin Indig

The science of what AI actually rewards

Most AI SEO writing advice doesn’t hold at scale. This memo breaks down what AI actually rewards inside the content it reads and across verticals.

Mar 30 • Kevin Indig and Amanda Johnson

The science of how AI picks its sources

I analyzed over 21K citations to understand the impact of content length, depth and focus.

Mar 23 • Kevin Indig

Organic rankings vs. product grids: The new e-commerce divide

I analyzed 4K+ keywords and 40K product grids: The gap between classic SEO winners and product grid winners is enormous.

Mar 9 • Kevin Indig

The science of how AI pays attention

I analyzed 1.2 million search results to find out exactly how AI reads. The verdict? It’s a busy editor, not a patient student.

Feb 16 • Kevin Indig

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