How to plan 2027 when traffic is down and AI won’t attribute
Traffic is down, attribution is broken, and the final budget meeting is in three weeks. Here's what to bring.
VIP Contributor
Kevin Indig's latest articles
The collapse of attribution
AI search is breaking click-based attribution. Here’s how to measure visibility, demand and business impact.
Managing the AI mandate upward
AI automation costs more than tokens. Learn how to track team hours, cap experiments, and make the tradeoffs visible.
Are you building software instead of doing marketing?
Your team doesn't need to build every AI workflow. Decide what to automate in-house, buy from a vendor, or outsource.
The AI hours nobody on your marketing team is counting
AI adoption can turn marketers into unpaid (ineffective) software teams, while the real work absorbs the opportunity cost.
What makes a good listicle?
New research into 3,000 listicles reveals the signals associated with higher rankings — from freshness to explicit item counts.
Has Google demoted listicles?
A 60,000-query analysis reveals where listicles still rank, where they’ve declined, and why ranking well doesn’t guarantee clicks.
Slop antibodies: The link between AI slop, watermarking, and commodity content
From LinkedIn’s anti-slop systems to AI watermarking, platforms are building new ways to identify low-value content. Here’s what survives.
Community signals are AI’s largest third-party source
UGC platforms out-cite review sites at every stage of the buyer journey. Here’s what you need to know about organic authority multiplication.
Does topical focus make your brand more visible?
New research reveals why AI cites brands across many topics but recommends them only where they've built repeat topical authority.
AI halftime report: H1 2026
AI search grew, token spending surged, software stocks fell, and publishers lost traffic. Here’s what H1 2026 revealed about AI’s impact.
Does topical authority matter in AI search?
New Semrush data shows topical authority still matters in AI search, helping brands earn and defend category ownership over time.
Where AI agents get stuck on your site
AI agents retrieve most B2B website content, but pricing often sends them to third-party sources. Learn why and how to fix it.
Why most original data never gets cited
Primary research is rare, but it earns 3.3x more AI citations per page. Learn why benchmark studies outperform other original data.
Why proprietary data is your most defensible AI citation asset
Original data helps pages stand out in search, but structure determines whether AI cites it. Learn how to optimize for extraction.
Stop trying to replace people with AI
Fear-based AI positioning grabs attention, but it can undermine trust. Here's why augmentation is a stronger long-term marketing strategy.
Topics matter for third-party authority signals
AI doesn't rely on the same publishers for every query. Here's how to find the voices shaping answers in your space and earn your place.
How to make prompt tracking much more accurate
AI answers are variable, but measurable. Use repeated runs, confidence intervals, and journey tracking to separate signal from noise.
What to do now that AI Overviews turned search into reading sessions
Search intent still shapes content strategy, but AI Overviews now shape how users behave on the SERP itself.
Users behave differently in AI Overviews vs. AI Mode
New clickstream data shows AI Overviews reshape user behavior, from reverse scrolling to longer SERP evaluation across search intents.
Reasoning lift: What happens to brand visibility when AI thinks harder
An analysis of 200 GPT-5.2 responses found high reasoning cites more sources, runs deeper research, and rewards early-funnel visibility.