Cyrus Shepard

Maybe a coincidence, but as soon as I claimed my Google Search Profile, searches for my name were suddenly correct

The State of SEO in 2026 Great conversation with the folks at @Adsy_Com - covered nearly every major SEO topic of the year: - Why Google doesn't know who should rank number one until you tell them - How AI overviews moved discovery + consideration away from your website - How optimizing for CTR can actually hurt you - A three-layer framework Google uses to evaluate every page - What Google's site quality patent reveals about branded search More: youtube.com/watch?v=YSvvHN…

Friends, it's time I told you about my secret identity

Google Trends is now completely bonkers, likely due to AI search For every AI search, Google performs multiple fan-out queries, and those fan-outs look to be getting lumped together Either that or protein powder, SEO, running shoes, and CBD all became *hugely* popular in 2026

Last week, Google launched "Search Profiles" • Gives creators a profile to highlight social posts/articles • Can increase visibility in Discover for followers • Claiming a profile may create a knowledge graph • Currently available in US to publishers with larger followings

Like it or not, your website almost certainly now has more bot visitors than humans. Latest Cloudflare data: - Bots: 57.4% - Humans: 42.6% Let's call it a tax. While Google/AI companies monetize all your website data, you still pay the hosting bill

This is a real screenshot from Google's new Search Generative AI performance report in Search Console Importantly, they didn't include "Clicks" because—presumably—they don't want you to see how little traffic they send

SEO Vibes Summit in Poland was an obscenely good time - The WhitePress team is amazingly professional and friendly - Incredible venue, location, and activities 🏔️ 🚴 - Made a ton of contacts/friends with fellow attendees Highly recommended if you can attend. Hoping to go back!

Google Algo trackers are great, but wildly inconsistent with one another So callout to @rustybrick for making a tool that aggregates Google Algorithm volatility trackers 1st image = all, 2nd = aggregate Makes more sense of the data while respecting the trackers

New: Hosting a Reddit AMA on r/SEO_for_AI Potential Topics: - AI Citation "Ranking Factors" - Type of content Google rewards in the age of AI Answers - Ranking signals rewarded by Google's Quality + Helpful Content systems - Click and engagement signals in ranking content 1/2

So let's talk Schema and AI visibility, since it's a hot topic these days A much-discussed Ahrefs study found no improvement in AI citations after Schema appeared in the HTML ⛔ It was a very solid study. But that's not the end of the story... I looked at 40+ AI studies + experiments to see what they had to say about Schema: 1)  A case study by OtterlyAI across 2000+ URLs showed Google AI Overviews citations increased 1500% after Schema was added. 📈 ChatGPT citations actually dropped. 📉 2) An AirOps / Kevin Indig study showed pages with JSON-LD had a 6.5% gain over non-JSON-LD pages 📈 3) A 2025 research paper from UC Berkeley showed a very strong correlation between structured data and AI citations, showing a +39% citation lift 📈 4) An analysis of 1000 Google AI Overviews by Digital Applied found "Schema-marked-up pages cited 2.3x more often than unstructured equivalents." 📈 Honestly, it's hard to understand why this is controversial. Structured data helps with Google

Google: Don't "chunk" your content - that's a myth! Also Google: Organize your content into chunk-like sections plz

Since everyone is talking Schema and AI citations, @tompeham, CEO of Otterly, shared data from adding markup on 2000+ URLs • Google AI Overviews citations increased 1500% 📈 • ChatGPT citations dropped 📉

You may have heard by now that Google is dropping support for all FAQ rich results So, should you remove all FAQs from your content? No. No. And probably not. Google previously stopped showing FAQs for the vast majority of publishers in August 2023, except for a handful of high-authority government and health sites. This means most of us weren't seeing the search results benefits from FAQs for ages now. That said, there's plenty of evidence that *answering relevant questions with helpful content* CAN help your SEO visibility: - A recent experiment by @SearchPilot showed a 9.7% increase in organic traffic after adding page-specific FAQs - A study last year via @AlsoAsked found a strong, positive correlation between Google ranking and pages that fully answer "People Also Ask" questions. Note: this isn't exactly the same thing as FAQ, but the concept is similar - Related but relevant: An earlier 2024 study from SearchPilot removed FAQ Schema—but kept the content—and found

New: AI Citation Ranking Factors Everyone talks about AI Citations as a way to boost visibility + traffic, but what works? To find out, I gathered every study/experiment from the past 2 years, and scored the biggest wins 22 Ranking Factors associated with earning AI citations

Very informative slide via Google's Danny Sullivan explaining the difference between "Commodity" vs "Non-Commodity" content Google prefers the later IMO, lots of evidence this is spot-on, not where Google is going in the future, but where it already is now via @ChouinardJC

New: 17 Content Types to Survive Google’s Zero-Click Future Google Zero is coming for many sites, but Google still sends billions of visits per day to the web What kind of content survives? Not generic blog posts. AI killed that strategy (1/2)

Do you ever notice your rankings go up after a surge of unrelated traffic? Many reasons why this could happen, but in the Google antitrust trial, they found Popularity is based on both links + "Chrome visit data" Importantly, this data is separate from Google search results 1/3