TheSEOTalkers, founded in 2013, is one of the oldest digital marketing community based in India. It was founded by Malhar Barai, Jaydip Parikh & Parth Suba, the platform fosters engagement through Twitter Chats, Spaces, Podcast and webinars.
Google said AEO is dead. Our community disagrees.
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๐ Top 4 This Fortnight
01
Google I/O
Google calls it the biggest Search upgrade in 25 years โ AI Mode hits 1 billion users At I/O 2026 on May 19, Google VP of Search Liz Reid described a fully redesigned search box as "the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago." AI Mode, one year after launch, has crossed 1 billion monthly users with queries more than doubling every quarter. New "Information Agents" โ always-on crawlers that monitor the web 24/7 on behalf of users โ are coming this summer. Google's own announcement confirmed: last quarter, Search queries hit an all-time high, framing AI Mode as driving more searching, not less. Read Google's official I/O announcement โ02
Core Update
May 2026 core update completes โ SISTRIX data shows informational content hit hardest The May 2026 core update ran from May 21 to June 2 โ the second core update of the year, landing just days after Google I/O. SISTRIX's live visibility analysis found notable movement across large, highly visible domains from May 23 onwards, with dictionary and informational content showing the sharpest shifts โ consistent with what they documented in the March update. Google also warned this fortnight about manipulating or buying citations for AI search responses, a new spam category. Don't make bulk content changes until volatility settles. Read SISTRIX's visibility analysis โ03
Search Console
New GSC AI performance report is live โ impressions only, no clicks, UK-first rollout On June 3, Google began rolling out dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, alongside a new opt-out toggle letting site owners block content from AI Overviews and AI Mode without affecting organic rankings. The report shows impressions, pages, countries, and devices โ but no click data yet. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable noted the data only goes back to May 18, 2026, and the rollout is currently limited to a subset of UK site owners before wider release. Google confirmed: opting out carries no organic ranking penalty. Read Barry Schwartz's breakdown โ04
Research
Seer Interactive: brands cited in AI Overviews earn 91% more paid clicks than uncited brands Seer Interactive's study of 25.1 million organic impressions across 42 organisations found that brands cited inside AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than brands appearing only in traditional results on the same SERP. The flip side: organic CTR dropped 61% on queries where AI Overviews appear. The practical read for SEOs: being absent hurts you across both organic and paid; being cited amplifies you across both. This changes how you frame an AI visibility strategy to any stakeholder who only cares about ROAS. Read the Westwood One research summary โ
โ๏ธ From the SEOTalk Blog
Beyond Rankings Series
How Shweta Gupta is building SEO for the age of AI In our Beyond Rankings series, we talk to SEOTalkers who are doing the actual work โ not publishing takes, but testing things and building real systems. This month's conversation with Shweta Gupta, SEO and content strategist focused on AI-assisted workflows and LLM visibility, is one of the most practical interviews we've published. A few things that stood out. On AI and jobs: "AI will not replace SEO professionals. But SEO professionals who are not willing to learn and adapt may struggle." On what actually changed in her workflow: tasks that used to take 15โ20 days โ deep research, competitor analysis, content planning โ can now be structured into a workflow and completed in 10โ15 minutes. That's not a small shift. Her biggest insight on LLM visibility: content written around a full problem space โ benefits, trade-offs, use cases, context โ surfaces in AI results far better than content written around a single keyword. And consistent messaging across YouTube, Instagram, and web properties performs better in LLM results than fragmented, platform-siloed content. She tested this. It holds. "AI makes execution easier. But the real value still comes from strategy, context, and human judgement. That is the part I am most excited to keep building on." โ Shweta Gupta
SEOTalk Spaces Recap
Is AEO/GEO real? Google says it's just SEO. Our community says: it's complicated. After Google's AI playbook landed and declared AEO and GEO "just SEO," we brought together practitioners Krinal and Shweta on our latest SEOTalk Spaces โ with Malhar and Parth hosting โ to dig into what Google actually said, what it conspicuously left out, and whether the SEO industry overcomplicated AI search or rationally responded to a very real shift. The honest answer from the panel: a bit of both. Malhar's read: "They are not ready with their building blocks, and hence they still don't want to come out and say here are some new principles you need to play by." The diplomatic framing may be strategic rather than fully informational. What has actually changed, per the panel: brand and topical authority matter more than domain authority in LLM citations; measurement has shifted from Analytics and GSC toward LLM share-of-voice platforms; and query fan-out means content needs to be written around full problem spaces, not individual keywords. Krinal's sharper take: "AEO is this window of opportunity for us as SEOs to get into that seat. Whether we take it or not is up to us." Read the full recap โ
๐ฌ Conversations Worth Reading
Verified posts and published pieces the SEO community is talking about right now.
X / Twitter ยท Verified source
Aleyda Solis ยท @aleyda
"Google is finally releasing a Search Generative AI performance report in Search Console! It doesn't seem to include prompts/topics information or clicks data butโฆ it's a start!"
Posted June 3, 2026 โ on the GSC AI performance report launch
View tweet โ
Search Engine Land ยท Verified source
Michael King ยท @ipullrank ยท Search Engine Land
"'It's just SEO' is naive, and it's naive for the same reason it has been naive every previous time someone trotted it out. SEO as a discipline is not a list of tactics. It's a mindset, a set of organizational expectations, a budget line, and a reporting structure."
Published May 22, 2026 โ "Google's AI search guidance is naive and self-serving"
Read the piece โ
All quotes are pulled verbatim from the linked sources above.
๐ฅ Hot Take of the Fortnight
From the SEOTalk community
"The SEO industry has a communication problem. We're bad at explaining value in business terms. AEO and GEO exist partly because someone finally gave our work a name that makes CMOs pay attention. That's not a bad thing โ it's a lesson." Agree or disagree? Reply to this email or join the debate on X with #SEOTalk
โญ Community Spotlight
Want to be featured? Reply to this email and tell us one thing you're working on. We feature one member every two weeks.
๐งฉ Fortnight Challenge
This fortnight: The query fan-out test
Pick one important page on your site. Now think about it the way an LLM would: what are the 5โ7 related sub-questions a user might have around your target topic? Does your page actually answer them โ or does it only address the primary keyword? Write down the gaps. Then pick one to fix this week. Share what you found โ either the gap or how you fixed it. Share your result with #SEOTalk โ
๐ One Resource Worth Your Time
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TheSEOTalkers
TheSEOTalkers, founded in 2013, is one of the oldest digital marketing community based in India. It was founded by Malhar Barai, Jaydip Parikh & Parth Suba, the platform fosters engagement through Twitter Chats, Spaces, Podcast and webinars.
Check out the latest happenings in the world of SEO Marketing and recap of conversation from SEOTalk Community Coming Up On SEOTalk Monthly Webinar First, we had SEO. Then came AEO, promising visibility in answer engines. Now GEO is the latest conversation, with everyone chasing AI citations and mentions. And suddenly, marketers are being told they need three different strategies, three sets of tools, and perhaps even three different budgets. But here's the question: Has search fundamentally...
๐ Top 4 This Fortnight 01 AI Search Google starts paying publishers whose content feeds AI answers Google's AI Contribution Pilot is now live with around 100 publishers. When a publisher's content "contributes significantly" to an AI-generated response in AI Overviews, AI Mode, or Gemini, they earn a payment visible in a new Search Console earnings widget. The key word is "significantly." Simply being linked or confirming a fact after generation does not qualify. Early participants report...
๐ Top 4 This Fortnight 01 AI Search Reddit's ChatGPT citation share collapsed 86% in a single week Reddit held a steady 3.8% share of ChatGPT Search citations from July 18 through August 7. On August 14, it dropped below 1% and stayed there. Promptwatch tracked the collapse to a change in ChatGPT's query fan-out behaviour: the use of site: operators jumped from 0.4% to nearly 17% of all fan-out queries on August 8, directing ChatGPT toward official sources instead of UGC platforms. YouTube...