The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

August 9, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +45.5K SEOs.
Today's sponsor are Profound and Ahrefs. Ask to advertise here.​

Microsoft has done it again... thank you!

​Microsoft added Branded and Non-Branded AI Queries in the Clarity Citations Dashboard​

Bahga El Sobky, Ihab Rizk / Microsoft

Microsoft Clarity has added branded and non-branded segmentation to its AI Citations dashboard. The update labels individual grounding queries, adds filters and breaks down "Share of Authority" by query type, helping users differentiate visibility driven by explicit brand demand from broader category discovery.

Another ChatGPT update is here!

​OpenAI is improving GPT‑5.6 Sol in ChatGPT—and expanding access to GPT‑5.6 Luna for free users​

OpenAI

OpenAI has updated GPT‑5.6 Sol in ChatGPT for Plus and Pro users to deliver more focused, factually reliable answers, with a slider to control reasoning effort. GPT‑5.6 Luna is also becoming the default for Free and Go users, with unlimited text chats and a Think button for harder questions; limits still apply to files, images and other tools.

Replaces general descriptions with more specific ones.

​Google’s Documentation Refresh Offers Ideas For SEO Content Updates​

Roger Montti / Search Engine Journal

Roger compares the previous and revised versions of Google’s crawl budget guide, highlighting how the update replaces general wording with specific terminology, removes unnecessary explanations and improves sentence construction. The result is clearer technical guidance and a practical content refresh lesson.

• Related: Google Recommends Using 304 Status Code To Conserve Crawl Budget by Roger Montti​

Is Running The Same AI prompt Once a Day Actually Enough?

Profound's research team analyzed 1 million AI responses and 6.6 million AI citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, DeepSeek, Google AI Mode, and Google AI Overviews to answer this question.
​
The results:

• Running a prompt ten times improves precision by only about 10%.
• Citation share is the one place extra runs help a little.

Patents show what Google could evaluate, not which signals are live today

​Does Google Use User Behavior, Website Design & Layouts in SEO Rank Assessments?​

Daniel Foley Carter / Assertive Media

Daniel reviews Google patents, leaked documentation and his own tests related to page segmentation, link placement, rendered layout and user behavior. The analysis makes a case that Google has long had the capability to interpret these elements, while correctly noting that a patent doesn't prove a system was deployed or remains part of current ranking.

Most AI visibility levers already sit inside modern SEO with a few adjustments

​These SEO Strategies Drive 90% of Your AI Visibility​

Cyrus Shepard

Cyrus argues that businesses can achieve most of their AI visibility goals by adapting established SEO practices rather than building a separate playbook. He organizes the work around three outcomes: making content eligible, winning citations and earning recommendations. Check the guide out.

A resilient SEO strategy is designed to survive change

​How to de-risk your SEO strategy when Google keeps changing the model behind your rankings​

Dan Taylor / Search Engine Land

Dan explains how to reduce the risk to ranking volatility by strengthening crawlability, technical health, editorial quality, intent coverage, user experience and earned authority.

Google’s review questions show the details it wants customers to supply

​Study: Whitespark Analyzed GBP Review Questions for 765 Businesses. Here’s What We Found.​

Miriam Ellis, Darren Shaw / Whitespark

Miriam and Darren analyzed 765 businesses across 180 keywords to identify which GBP categories feature the most review questions. They found that only 25% of primary categories have them, with restaurants topping the list at 14 questions (the most of any category), followed by other hospitality categories at 12.

Publishers need to win passive discovery before building an owned audience

​The Future of Discoverability​

Harry Clarkson-Bennett / Leadership in SEO

Harry argues that the next decade of publisher growth will be won by publishers who incentivize the right behaviors and understand how audiences really discover their brand.

A useful content graph needs controlled entities, not a loose set of tags

​How I Use Knowledge Graphs on Content Sites​

Olesia Korobka

Olesia shares a step-by-step guide to build a knowledge graph system for content sites, tested on her own projects.

Prioritize content by the value it creates beyond an AI answer

​Content Prioritization in an AI Search Era: A Framework + Worksheet​

Aleyda Solis

To establish what content is still worth creating when AI can satisfy many queries without a click, I've shared a framework based on six directional dimensions: click resilience, citation potential, brand mention potential, business value, proprietary advantage and expected effort. The guide includes recommended content types to prioritize or deprioritize and a downloadable worksheet to adapt to your audience, performance and business model.

Sell AI search through business outcomes and evidence

​How to Communicate and Sell AI Search Optimization (GEO, AEO, LLMO) to Decision Makers [Video]​

Aleyda Solis, Yagmur Simsek, Adelle Kehoe, Gus Pelogia / Crawling Mondays

In the fourth AI Search Roadmap episode, Aleyda, Gus, Adelle and Yagmur cover common mistakes when presenting AI search to decision makers, the steps and resources that make the case clearer, and how to connect the work with business goals.

Being crawled, indexed or repeated by an LLM doesn't prove a visibility benefit

​How cats.txt showed llms.txt evidence is GEO astrology​

Mark Williams-Cook

Mark released cats.txt and tested it against four arguments commonly used as evidence to make the case for llms.txt: bots fetched it, Google indexed it, an LLM repeated its unique information and ChatGPT endorsed it. It passed all four, demonstrating why none establishes that a tactic improves AI visibility. He isn't claiming llms.txt can never work, only that the current evidence bar is too low.

Agent readiness is a structured information and governance problem,

​Search Beyond the Blue Link: Agentic Commerce and LLM Readiness​

Gianluca Fiorelli, Alex Moss / Advanced Web Ranking

Gianluca and Alex discuss how discovery is fragmenting across Google, AI tools and social platforms, and why agentic commerce is developing through different ecosystems such as OpenAI’s ACP and Google’s UCP.

• Related: The SEO’s Guide to Agentic Commerce — Whiteboard Friday [Video] by Miracle Inameti-Archibong​

Brand mentions cluster in entity and comparison fan-outs

​What 50k Query Fan-Outs Reveal About Brands (+ Free Data!)​

Dr. Peter J. Meyers / Moz

Dr. Pete’s analysis of 50k query fan-outs provide insights into LLM bias, brand visibility, and search intent. He found that brands are powerful, but intent matters; fan-outs were topical but not too relevant, and fan-outs cluster in the medium-long tail.

The workflows can show where agents may struggle to read or operate a page

​10 SEO use cases for auditing your accessibility tree for AI search​

John McAlpin / Search Engine Land

John shares ten ways to audit what browsers show through the accessibility tree, from rendered versus response HTML differences and missing headings to fake links, unclear landmarks, dynamic states and non-semantic controls.

Your brand may rank #1 in search and still be invisible in AI-generated answers.

Ahrefs Brand Radar helps you measure and improve your visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, and more. See how often your brand is mentioned, compare your AI share of voice against competitors, and uncover the websites, YouTube videos, Reddit discussions, and other sources that shape AI recommendations.

Built on hundreds of millions of real prompts, Brand Radar gives you actionable insights into where your brand is winning, where it's missing, and what you can do to increase your presence in AI search. Start tracking your AI visibility with Ahrefs Brand Radar.

• ​SEO Lead at Brightwheel​
• ​SEO Manager at SharkNinja​
• ​Senior Growth Marketer at HubSpot​
• ​SEO Account Manager at Stryker Digital​
• ​Senior Manager, SEO / AEO at AssetWatch​
• ​Web Strategy, SEO & AEO Lead at Harness​
• ​Senior Marketing Manager, Growth at Webflow​
• ​Director of Organic Growth - SEO | AEO | CRO at Rula​