The Consensus Gap
A brand can look dominant in an aggregate AI dashboard and be invisible in two of three engines. Here’s the data that proves it.
Kevin Indig
Growth Advisor
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Kevin Indig is a Growth advisor who helps the world’s market leaders define and evolve their Organic Growth strategy.
Once a week, he sends an email with Organic Growth strategies and case studies to over 9,000 subscribers called The Growth Memo.
He co-hosts the Contrarian Marketing podcast with Eli Schwartz, which gives you ideas you might not be thinking about.
In the past, he led SEO and Growth at Shopify, G2 and Atlassian and is an angel investor.
Articles
AI Changed My Work. And Yours, Too
Advisor or builder? How agentic vibe coding is redefining what marketing and product work actually means.
The AI Skills Salary Premium
AI skills are now embedded in most SEO roles. Learn how they influence salary and hiring expectations.
The Ghost Citation Problem
Analysis across four LLMs reveals how citation and mention behavior differs, and why it matters.
Shorter, Focused Content Wins In ChatGPT
Learn why covering fewer subtopics can outperform exhaustive guides in ChatGPT citations, backed by large-scale data.
How Consumers Navigate High-Stakes Purchases In AI Mode
New research shows AI Mode is reshaping buying decisions. Learn how to secure visibility, trust, and top placement.
The Science Of What AI Actually Rewards
Part 3 of this analysis reveals what AI actually rewards in content, from entity types to structure, across seven verticals.
The Science Of How AI Picks Its Sources
New ChatGPT citation data shows a small group of domains owns most visibility, while broad, cluster-based pages outperform single-intent content.
The Brand Tax: How Google Profits From Demand You Already Own
If your paid search looks efficient, branded keywords may be hiding the truth. Learn how to measure real performance.
Organic Rankings Vs. Product Grids: The New Ecommerce Divide
Ranking No. 1 in Google means less when product grids dominate the SERP. Here’s how ecommerce visibility actually works now.
How To Build An AI SEO Strategy That Outlasts Tactics
If your AEO plan is just a tactic list, it won’t survive scrutiny. Here’s how to build a durable AI SEO strategy.
AI-SEO Is A Change Management Problem
Don’t let AI SEO fail in the boardroom. Align leadership, metrics, and ownership before scaling tactics.
The Science Of How AI Pays Attention
An analysis of 1.2 million ChatGPT citations reveals why AI favors front-loaded, entity-rich, definitive writing over traditional “ultimate guide” formats.
Synthetic Personas For Better Prompt Tracking
New research shows synthetic personas can improve AI prompt tracking accuracy while cutting cost and research time dramatically.
GSC Data Is 75% Incomplete
New analysis shows Google Search Console hides roughly 75% of impressions, forcing SEO teams to rethink how they measure performance.
How Do You Compete In Agentic Commerce?
The rise of agentic commerce ends marketing-first SEO and forces brands to compete on data integrity and product truth.
The Great Decoupling
AI search broke the link between traffic and revenue. This piece explains how SEO creates demand without page views.
How Much Can We Influence AI Responses?
LLM visibility is less about control and more about volatility, as studies reveal how easily AI answers can be influenced at scale.
State Of AI Search Optimization 2026
AI search is replacing ranked results with single answers. This guide explains how brands earn retrieval, citations, and user trust.
Scoring My 2025 Predictions
Kevin Indig reflects on his 2025 predictions, scoring the wins, misses, and lessons from AI’s first year of true deployment.
7 SEO, Marketing, And Tech Predictions For 2026
Kevin Indig’s 2026 predictions reveal the end of AI dashboards, the rise of agentic SEO, and a web divided between bots and verified humans.
The Alpha Is Not LLM Monitoring
Fresh data reveals where AI search value is actually accumulating, and which companies may face painful down rounds.
Selling AI Search Strategies To Leadership Is About Risk
AI search buy-in comes when it’s framed as a cost-effective way to prevent losing ground in the next discovery shift.
Budget SEO For Capacity, Not Output
Marketing leaders need to stop funding SEO for clicks and start designing budgets around brand authority in AI-first search.
LLM Traffic Is Shrinking
Despite strong early growth, LLM referral traffic is fading fast as model changes and AI Overviews make clicks obsolete.
AI Is Breaking The Economics Of Content
The decline of Wikipedia’s search visibility highlights a fundamental shift in content value driven by AI and changing user behavior.
The Impact Of AI Mode On SEO – Analysis Of 10 Studies
What do AI Mode studies really say about search behavior, visibility, and brand trust? Kevin Indig separates fact from hype in this research-driven breakdown.
Google’s AI Mode SEO Impact | AI Mode User Behavior Study [Part 2]
The second part of Kevin Indig’s AI Mode study breaks down what’s measurable, what’s myth, and where visibility is really earned.
What Our AI Mode User Behavior Study Reveals About The Future Of Search
Here’s what 250 AI Mode sessions reveal about search: Users stay inside, clicks vanish, and visibility replaces traffic as the real currency.
How AI Really Weighs Your Links (Analysis Of 35,000 Datapoints)
Backlinks still matter in AI search, but quality, diversity, and even nofollow links now shift visibility more than raw volume.