Hey,

Welcome to another edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.

I just got back from two fantastic days in San Diego at Ahrefs Evolve. Lots of great talks, and I finally got to meet some of my “online” friends in person, including Harry Dry.

I’ve been learning from his work for years, so I had to join his copywriting mastermind. He put the nine of us through the ringer with exercise after exercise, and it was sooooo fun. My biggest takeaway: “Your writing can always benefit from more conflict and more stakes.”

I want to hear yours too. If you were at Evolve, or at any conference you’ve loved recently, hit ‘reply’ and tell me your biggest takeaways. I’d like to feature the best ones here in the Digest.

Speaking of meeting people: it was amazing to meet some of you IRL! One of you even told me you save and collect the memes I share here. So yes, I have good taste in memes *wink*

Without further ado, here’s our meme of the week:

—

Quick search marketing news

• Google's September 2026 Spam Update has finished rolling out.

• Google Search Console now lets you select multiple countries within its performance report filter to view their combined search performance.

• Google releases the "UGC Fresh Data Program", an initiative designed to help platforms display fresh, high quality, and authentic user-generated content (UGC) across various features on Search.

Best of the week

How ChatGPT Does Query Fan-Out (15 Million Queries Studied): Our study showed that 6.8% of fan-out queries used a site: operator to search a single website, and 75.9% of the most common site: searches pointed at a brand site, versus retailers, government sites, forums, or review sites. Together with studies by others, it seems this is the "future" ChatGPT is moving toward. (I put "future" in inverted commas because who knows? It may all change again.)

AI Overviews Currently Appear for 83% of Branded Searches: Google truly is shameless. Not even showing your website first for your own brand these days. Plus, it's a concern that competitors/external sources can now directly control your brand's narrative in search results.

SEO for Static Sites: 8 Problems to Watch For: Websites are easier to vibe-code for now, but it doesn't mean you can stop optimising! You still need to ensure your technical health is solid, so make sure you're building, configuring, and monitoring these eight issues.

AI Search ROI Is Messy. Here’s How to Measure It Anyway: It's impossible to prove AI search ROI to the cent, but hey, at least some number is better than none, right? Right? Anyway, this is Louise's process on measuring AI search ROI, and the good news is, it mostly uses data you already have!

Link Building & Outreach for AI Search: A lot of super cool ways to think about link building in this post, but my takeaway is this: If you try to game the system, you will create a pattern. And algorithms are great at detecting patterns. So hey, make good content and be human. Link normally. No weird SEO rules.

—

Latest from our podcast

This week’s podcast guest is Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable and a former lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

Nir is on the podcast to talk about his new book, Beyond Belief, written with Julie Li. He brings the research behind that idea: a wine that tasted better with a higher price tag, IBS patients who felt relief from pills they knew were placebos, and two identical cars rated at opposite ends of the chart.

When marketing makes people expect a better product, they don't just say it's better, they experience it, which is why Nir says marketing "is the product.”

Watch the full episode on YouTube.

—

Latest from our YouTube

He Built A $10M+ SEO Empire. It Nearly Broke Him.

If you are chasing rankings, scaling agencies, or stacking affiliate sites, this is the honest blueprint most entrepreneurs never share. Watch now to learn the engineering habits that beat Google, the traps that quietly burn you out, and the mindset shift that keeps you winning without losing yourself.

See you next week,
Si Quan

P.S. Liked this week’s Digest? Forward it to a friend or tell them to subscribe here.