🚀 Finchling's Trending PR Campaigns allow you to see them not only per industry, but also per campaign type and the emotion they spark... for free (!) 👇 We've just launched two new filtering options in Finchling's free Trending PR Campaigns to help you identify the most covered campaigns not only per industry, but also based on: * Campaign type: Is it a data story, stunt, product launch, collaboration, event, or something else? * Emotion: Does the campaign trigger joy, surprise, nostalgia, empathy, fear, or another emotional response? You can combine these new filters with the existing industry and time period options to identify patterns among the PR campaigns getting the most coverage, understand which approaches are working in your sector, and find inspiration for your own campaigns. Try it out for free: finchling(.)com/campaigns

📊 20% more searches, but fewer organic clicks… and paid clicks taking the lead? Welcome to this week's SERP Squeeze Monday - this week's query: "college backpacks" in the US 👇 @Similarweb's for September 2026 vs 2025 show: * Search volume: 6K to 7.2K (+20%) * Organic clicks: 1.6K to 1.5K (approximately −6%) * Paid clicks: 1.3K to 1.7K (approximately +31%) So, organic clicks share fell from 55.42% to 46.73% and paid now accounts for the majority! What changed in the SERP? @ahrefs snapshots for September 2026 vs 2025 show that: * An AI Overview is now shown at the top. * Shopping packs increased from one to two. * People Also Ask are now shown; and the Discussions and Forums feature disappeared. * Traditional organic results decreased from eight to six within the top 10 positions. Another example of how nowadays, growing search demand doesn’t automatically translate into growing organic traffic... it's not you, it's Google. Are you seeing similar shifts for your commercial queries? Share your examples with #SERPSqueezeMonday 👀 Until next week!

🚨 It's almost Masters of Search time! One thing I want everyone to take home from my keynote: a clear way to separate what earns citations in AI answers from what actually attracts clicks 👇 In "What Gets Cited and Clicked in AI Answers Today?" I'll go through the data by vertical and AI search platform, so you can: * Classify your priority pages by the role they play: cited, clicked... or both * Measure each group with its own KPIs, instead of one blended "AI visibility" number * Prioritize the content that still has a role after the AI answer * Report your AI search work without overclaiming It's step 10 of my AI Search Optimization Framework & Checklist... and in Berlin I'll show the data behind it 💪 Let's gooooo... See you on October 22 (Yes, this Thursday) in Berlin! Register here: masters-of-search(.)com/conference

⭐️ The Latest in SEO & AI Search [From #SEOFOMO - Oct 18, 2026] 👇 * ​Google announces updates to AI Mode and AI Overviews to explore the web... More prominent links in AI answers. Let's see how it impacts traffic. * Google launches Universal Cart in the U.S... Shopping carts now extend across Search and Gemini. * ​ChatGPT had stopped and then started again tagging its links with utm_source=chatgpt(.)com ... If you had noticed a decrease in ChatGPT traffic ... this is the reason. * ​Poisoned Google SERPs... Double-check unexpected ranking shifts before changing anything. * ​Microsoft introduces Topics Portfolio (Beta) in Bing Webmaster Tools... See the thematic shape of your AI Search footprint at a glance. * ​Build something so valuable that Google looks stupid for not ranking it... The Google dependent affiliate playbook is dead. * ​Why SEO Isn’t Enough Anymore - And Why That’s A Good Thing... Your SEO strategy needs audience loyalty and distribution too. * ​Finding High-Value Converting Queries That Mainstream Tools Miss... Zero reported search volume doesn’t mean zero search opportunity. * Much more! Including SEO & AI Search jobs, events, tools.... From specialists like @dejanseo @SequinsNsearch @guaca, @NickLeRoy, @jwbobbink, @RossHudgens, @thetafferboy, @iPullRank, @kmadhavan77, and more! Read it here: seofomo(.)co/posts/the-latest-in-seo-ai-search-seofomo-oct-18-2026

.@lufthansa You made us check our carry-ons as luggage for weighing +8kgs (while KLM and others allow 12kg) and this is the outcome !! This after a Europe - USA trip with delay, overbooking and being placed on waiting list just bc not being able to check in online initially … all stuff I hadn’t experienced in quite a while with other airlines … and I’m a very frequent traveler. I don’t think I want to fly with you ever again after this! Sad how the quality of your service has gone downhill.

How common are self-promotional listicles in software questions, and what do they do? @minuttiax analyzed of 18,084 questions across Google Search, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to identify the answers of these and other self-promotional content performance in AI search for software related topics. A few findings: * 34% to 47% of cited listicles are self-promotional. 93% highlight the vendor’s product, 87% rank it first, and only 16% clearly disclose the vendor. * Where do vendors’ own lists dominate, and whose lists get cited most? Their share ranges from 12% to 76% by software category. The market remains fragmented, with the top 20 vendors receiving only 6% of citations. * How many pages does each answer cite, and how often are they repeated? Answers cite an average of 2.9 to 10.4 pages. The same page is usually referenced one to three times. Learn more here: self-promotional-content-dat…

Many don't realize the amount of work/effort that goes into preparing a deck for a conference (besides the speaking part itself)! That's why I truly appreciate when someone takes the time to share positive feedback like this. I don't usually share this type of feedback that I'm lucky to receive, but thought it would be actually useful to incentivize others to also give positive feedback to any of the speakers and anybody who shares anything useful in any format, whether a guide or a tool or resource that makes your day to day easier... this is what makes the effort worthy, and your little comment can make someone's day 😉💪 A little challenge to finish the week: Go and give a positive feedback to that search / digital practitioner who has helped you lately with what they've published/shared/spoken.

Google doesn’t label AI Mode queries in Search Console, but they leave a trace: people reply to an AI, and the reply gets logged as a search: @jwbobbink classified every query of 155 sites over 16 months to see how often that happens, and how fast it’s growing 👇 Here are key insights: * Replies typed at an AI are now normal. Bare replies such as “yes”, “ja” or “yes please” showed up as searches on 94 of the 155 sites. Per million impressions they grew from 5.6 to 116: 21 times as many in 16 months. * German speakers say please to an AI, Indonesian speakers don’t. Three in four German yes-replies come with “bitte” or “gerne” (“ja bitte” on 52 sites). Dutch speakers add “graag” two times in three, English speakers say “yes please” 40% of the time, and Indonesian speakers never do. * Follow-up questions are rising from a small base. Queries like “what about salary” are still rare, but they grew 39x over the window, most of it after May 2026. * The typical site sees seven times more AI-shaped queries. The median site’s AI-shaped share of impressions went from 0.032% to 0.22%. Across all impressions pooled the share fell, because a few very large sites carry most of the volume. * AI-shaped queries rarely get clicked. Their click-through rate was 2.9%, against 35.6% for all queries pooled. * It’s still small. AI-shaped queries were 0.13% of all impressions. The growth is the story, not the size. More: gscwizard.com/learn/research…

Excellent coverage by @nozzleio sharing how Google is poisoning the SERPs that it serves to rank trackers since last month ... so if you have seen rankings "off" in the latest weeks: this is your confirmation: Google has been poisoning the SERPs it serves rank trackers: complete, normal looking pages whose results have been swapped out. Nothing on the page gives it away. Each keyword’s own history does. From 27.5M analyzed SERPs: 8.0% of SERPs came back poisoned, the page looks normal. The results don’t, No error, no captcha, the same template, but most of the keyword’s usual sites are gone, the organic results keep 20.7% of the previous SERP’s sites, against 88.5% before. * Social sites and forums fill the gap: Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Quora show up more often; YouTube, Yelp and MapQuest less. * Tracked sites fall out of the top 10: A project’s own site misses the top 10 on 58.6% of poisoned SERPs, against 2.7% before. * It passes within days: 77.9% of poisoned SERPs have their usual sites back within three days. A one-day drop in late September is more likely this than a ranking change. Read more here: nozzle.io/research/poisoned-… PS: Thank you so very much to the Nozzle team to let us know 🙏

One of the highlights of my trip to San Diego at #AhrefsEvolve: Hanging out with the awesome @randfish and the wonderful @everywhereist (thanks for the delicious dinner, can’t wait to see you again soon), seeing Rand speak about Zero click marketing going through so many insights and actionable advice to navigate marketing in a zero click era and … getting his and the amazing @amandanat new Zero Click marketing book as a gift at the event (no need to wait for longer to read it anymore!)… I have now an excellent read for my flight to LA and then back home! If you haven’t ordered it yet, check it out : zeroclickmarketing.co/book

The new Generative Engine Optimization book by @RossHudgens is out and it’s a comprehensive, actionable, no-fluff resource you need to read asap! Go get it now 🫡👌⭐️

.@randfish on 🔥 going through zero click data at #ahrefsevolve @ahrefs

💸 Ecommerce In the Age of AI Search: Shifts, Risks and Strategic Moves - my presentation at #ahrefsevolve today 👇 Thanks for having me Ahrefs Evolve 🎉 speakerdeck.com/aleyda/what-…