/serp/ - SERP Analysis

been looking at some client data and noticed a weirdly huge discrepancy between desktop and mobile clicks in gsc. it's not just a simple difference in volume. the click-through rate on mobile is cratering even when rankings look stable. i think we might be seeing more of those heavy expandable ads or video carousels pushing organic results way down the fold. hard to tell if it's actual position loss or just bad visibility because of the layout. i want to run a test this week on a few high-traffic pages. let's grab three different urls and compare gsc click data against ahrefs rank tracking for the same period. see if the rank stays steady while the clicks drop. might be worth checking if it's specific to certain query types too. basically trying to figure out if we're actually losing ground or just getting buried by the new ui.

another day, another way to mess up attribution. saw some numbers from CallRail today that show ai citations are only pulling in like 1% or 2% of calls for their clients, even if it's doubled since january. sounds like a joke. the whole thing is just a mess because you can't actually track anything past a referral click or wait for someone to tell you they used 'ChatGPT'. everything else is invisible. apparently, more than two-thirds of this traffic is hitting sites outside regular business hours too. it's all just noise in GA4 right now. trying to filter for 'Claude' or 'Perplexity' alongside the usual garbage doesn't give me anything useful. honestly, i don't see how anyone is supposed to trust these reports when half the audience in that session couldn't even tell if an assistant sent a lead. it's just more unmeasurable junk for the dashboard.

link: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-connect-ai-search-visibility-to-local-leads/588096/

tracking brand mentions is great, but its useless without linkng that data to actual conversions. we need to move beyond just seeing our name in a response and start looking for measurable outcomes from lost revenue due to bad citations lmao.

more here: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/brands-are-tracking-ai-visibility-but-are-they-measuring-the-right-things/587888/

instead of clicking every single result to check for feature changes, use the site:domain. com "keyword" operator combined with search console data. this lets you see exactly which pages are losing organic visibility without triggering your own ip tracking. if you notice a sudden drop in a specific snippet type, it is usually a sign that the algorithm is favoring a new intent-based layout.
>check the top three competitors immediately after a shift occurs to see if they updated their schema. **sometimes the easiest way to win is just copying their table structure

been trying to clean up my search results lately and realized i can actually disable those annoying ai prompts in settings. using! g or! r saves a ton of time if you're already used to it, but i'm not sure if duck.ai is actually any good for anything besides quick tasks. does anyone actually use the background removal tool?

link: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/duckduckgo-search-tips/

i'm looking at some recent client reports and the thumbnail crops for featured snippets are all over the place. google's just grabbing whatever part of the image fits their current layout template without any regard for context. it's making these beautiful product shots look like complete nonsense because they're cutting off the actual subject. i tried adjusting the alt text and metadata but it doesn't seem to change how the snippet pulls the crop. it's frustrating when you spend hours on high res assets just for them to be useless in search. anyone else seeing these aggressive crops lately?

Found this breakdown on how they're mapping entities to get into AI Overviews instead of just relying on old rankings. It's all about building out that contextual authority by linking claims to citations, but I'm not sure how we even track if the LLM actually "understands" the relationship between our product and these queries.

full read: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-freshpet-earned-ais-trust-a-geo-ai-visibility-playbook-recap/588706/

really makes you wonder if we're just chasing listicles at this point. apparently 72.4% of citations came from them in that first test.
>The leading source for citations was a comprehensive listicle on Indeed SEO, with 190 mentions.
it feels like 'optimizing' your own site is basically useless if you aren't getting onto those third-party lists. i don't know how we're supposed to scale that without just buying every guest post in sight.

more here: https://searchengineland.com/geo-experiments-challenge-conventional-ai-visibility-advice-488342

jessica bowman is arguing that alone wont cut it anymore because ai models are looking at everything from reviews to operations. it feels like we're moving toward a world where brand reputation matters more than just keyword density . does anyone else feel like our job is becoming brand management ?

https://searchengineland.com/jessica-bowman-search-engine-land-20-for-20-interview-487481

fr everyone is obsessing over keyword density when the real issue is that search results are just ads now . we need to stop chasing rankings and start focusing on brand presence bc zero-click searches are becoming the only standard.