Category: Trends & News
The latest SEO, GEO, and AI-search trends and news.
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We Asked 3 AI Engines the Same 12 Questions — They Cite Almost Nobody in Common
GEO Lab experiment: we asked Perplexity, Google, and ChatGPT the same 12 GEO questions. Of 231 cited domains, only 3% were cited by all three and 84% by just one. There is no single “AI SEO” — here’s the data.
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Is llms.txt Worth It? What 137,000 Websites Reveal (2026 Data)
The largest study yet (137,210 domains) shows 97% of llms.txt files get zero requests, and AI search bots account for just 1.1% of fetches. Here’s the honest verdict on whether llms.txt is worth it for GEO in 2026 — and what to do instead.
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Bing Webmaster Tools Now Shows Your AI Citation Share — A Hands-On First Look
Bing added Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare to its AI Performance report — the first free tool to show your share of AI citations. We opened our own account: here’s what it looks like, and why our baseline of zero is useful.
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Google Confirms It Doesn’t Use llms.txt — What That Means for GEO in 2026
Google says Google Search doesn’t use llms.txt and it won’t help ranking — confirmed by John Mueller. Here’s what that means for GEO, and the open question for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.
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AI Search Trust Is Cooling: Usefulness Sentiment Fell From 82% to 54% in a Year
The share of people who find AI search more useful than traditional search fell from ~82% to ~54% in a year, and Google still wins trust 3:1. Here’s the data and what it means for GEO.
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ChatGPT Now Links Brand Homepages in Its Answers: Inside the 2026 ‘Branded Link Update’
Around May 7, 2026, ChatGPT began linking brand homepages inside its answers — and referral traffic jumped ~60-65%. Here’s the data, by the numbers, and what it means for GEO.
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Claude Picks Its Sources From Brave Search: What It Means for AI Visibility in 2026
A reported analysis suggests Anthropic’s Claude leans on Brave Search to choose the pages it cites — using top results without re-ranking. Here’s what that means for getting cited by Claude in 2026.