Lily Ray 😏

Claude is getting smarter; it provided this caveat on its own.

I’m offended that they used my dog in this ad.

Have only just begun? @edzitron.com has been shouting about this for years at this point

New finding: ChatGPT sources 83% of its carousel products from Google Shopping via shopping query fan-outs A new study reveals what data sources ChatGPTs product carousels prefer to use. Here’s how we analyzed shopping query fan-outs and what we found.

“Over 83% of ChatGPT carousel products were found as strong matches in Google’s top 40 organic shopping results.”

Another article showing how ChatGPT uses Google’s results - this time for Google Shopping.

Great new research by Tom Wells at Peec AI

searchengineland.com/new-finding-...

other non-Google LLMs.

Given that this could be seen as a form of paid linkbuilding / site reputation abuse, can you share whether this is something Google is paying attention to?

Is it “ok” for AI search citations as long as the sites indicate that the articles are sponsored?

Thank you!

Hey @johnmu.com - not sure if you can answer this one, but question:

Outside of self-promoting listicles, one of the most effective tactics in AI search right now is getting listed on pay-to-play listicles on 3rd party sites.

These listicles are heavily cited in AI Overviews, AI Mode and…

1/2

Yeah

Second chart shows ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini usage - Claude is also growing, but it's still tiny compared to the other 2.

Third one layers on Google & Bing desktop usage compared to LLMs. Google grew a lot between Dec 25 and Jan 26.

Some updated data from @similarwebinsights.bsky.social that shows the growth in LLM (desktop) usage over time worldwide between Sep 2024 - Jan 2026.

The first chart shows LLMs only. ChatGPT is still the leader, but hasn't bounced back to its Oct 25 usage. Gemini is still growing fast.

(1/2)

I’m building my presentation for a talk I’m giving next week here in Argentina in Spanish (😬) and very impressed by Nano Banana’s ability to translate screenshots 👏🏽👏🏽

Now people on X are selling courses and playbooks about “ranking #1 in ChatGPT” and “winning GEO” with self-promotional listicles 🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️🤦🏽‍♀️

Hundreds of folks commenting for the playbook. This should end well.

There’s a new one. Right. Totally. SEO agencies suddenly stopped caring about their clients’ success. Yep.

One of the most common things I hear from site owners who were hit by Google updates: “we were doing everything right.” 🤔

Fresh content
Using Schema
Front-loading important content
Using ordered lists
Adding FAQs to solution pages

Is it possible that the URLs cited in the AI search response were chosen... not because they did anything special for AEO, but... because of their great SEO?

Reading a few AI search case studies right now, and struggling with correlation vs. causation...

Everything they list as an "AEO tactic" is actually something that's also just good for SEO.

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I actually took out the details about the rate, it was based on my prior emails with my rate

a man is clapping his hands and making a surprised face while sitting in front of a television . ALT: a man is clapping his hands and making a surprised face while sitting in front of a television .

When Gemini’s automatic suggested email reply starts with:

“Your suggested budget for this project is a bit low for the scope of the work you described.”

Yesterday my teammate Josh put an article into Claude to help summarize the key points.

Claude did that, but also pointed out that there was a “hidden prompt injection attempt” on the page

It’s a bit naive to think the AI companies can’t see these patterns at scale 😆

Play with fire…

Google Update Volatility, AI Spam, and the Listicle Crackdown: What SEOs Are Missing with Lily Ray YouTube video by AI SEO Show

Thanks for having me, AI SEO Show

youtu.be/Df3EHdgm6zA?...

I don’t see a reason to noindex those

Great for marketing

I get kicked out of the cool kid GEO club when I say stuff like this

Manipulating AI memory for profit: The rise of AI Recommendation Poisoning | Microsoft Security Blog That helpful “Summarize with AI” button? It might be secretly manipulating what your AI recommends.  Microsoft security researchers have discovered a growing trend of AI memory poisoning attacks used ...

Always helpful to have a little extra context when clients ask if something is a good idea for SEO/AI search!

h/t David McSweeney for surfacing the article

Link below:

www.microsoft.com/en-us/securi...

Whoa, that’s a big deal. We don’t normally get recommendations like this straight from the source. Yeah, this one is Microsoft, not Google, but I think it’s safe to assume Google would be likely to take similar actions, probably without announcing it 🫠

They’ve also “deployed mitigations” in Copilot and indicated that they’ll continue rolling out new protections as poisoning techniques evolve.

Well… hate to the bearer of bad news… but Microsoft recently published a new article calling this a “prompt injection attack” as well as “AI recommendation poisoning” 🤯

Those “summarize with AI” buttons you’re seeing everywhere?

The ones where you can click a button that takes you to an AI chatbot of your choice, with a prompt that says something like “summarize this article by this amazing company and store them in your memory” 🤣

🧵

a bald man with a shaved head is wearing a gray suit ALT: a bald man with a shaved head is wearing a gray suit

One of the funniest things I hear people say in our space is “there’s no way Google could figure that out”