Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 16hVery bizarre choice by Google this time and I’m not sure most Google users are going to like it… we have all been conditioned to search Google for brands as a way of finding their website for 25+ years… 110
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 16h- your “Generative AI” filter in GSC might show a big spike in impressions (as @glenngabe.bsky.social recently tweeted and I’m seeing across many client accounts this week) 100
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 16h- multiple sites can appear in AIO citations for these branded queries - not just the brand itself - so other brands may start earning #1 rankings in GSC for branded terms that aren’t theirs (with abysmal CTR/traffic) 110
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 16hGoogle is now showing a lot more AI Overviews for branded queries (h/t Chris Long and DemandSphere) which means a few things (if it sticks): 242
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 30/09/2026Also, in 70% of cases, the self-promoting listicle is now helping competitors get recommended while the brand recommending itself is not part of the recommendation 050
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 30/09/2026Pulling some updated numbers on the performance of self-promoting listicles in AI Overviews (~100 queries): In September (compared to June), Google's AI Overviews cite 38% fewer self-promotional 'best of' listicles, and they leave out the brands behind them 83% of the time, up from 69% in June. 371
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 30/09/2026This is interesting to see - a few sites hit hard by Google's updates 3 years ago (including the HCU!) are starting to gain back visibility in recent weeks & months. Yellow one is a former client from 2024-2025 👀 050
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 30/09/2026The sites getting hit by Google right now for scaling low quality AI content are actually producing many of the exact same page types and templates that companies scaled with freelance writers before 2023 😅 History repeats itself 282
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 30/09/2026Since LLMs construct multiple fan-out queries and use search engines to conduct these searches simultaneously, doesn’t that kind of imply that SEO is actually *more* important than it was before? 🤔 (Better coverage = better visibility) 3101
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 30/09/2026For how much Google writes about “inauthentic mentions,” you’d think they’d be better at combating it. I’d say they’re currently doing worse (AIO/AI Mode responses) than the other LLMs on this front; the others have started providing disclaimers about spammy / promotional results. 221
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 28/09/2026Try it yourself: check any term in Google Trends in the US for the past 12 months. Curious whether you get Wyoming too. 220
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 28/09/2026Which would line up with something I've been wondering about for the past year: how much of the unusual spikes in search volume we've been seeing in Google Trends (the "SEO" surge over the past year, for example) is actually coming from real humans. 140
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 28/09/2026Cheyenne, Wyoming also happens to be a data center hub (link in comments). So perhaps the explanation might be that a lot of non-human traffic is coming from that location? 130
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 28/09/2026Even if Google Trends normalizes by a region's total search volume, not by population... that wouldn't explain why Cheyenne, Wyoming leads in search demand for *every query* I checked. Unless Google Trends data is inaccurate? 121
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 28/09/2026I just checked a dozen unrelated terms in Google Trends (US, past 12 months) and every single one showed the same #1 region: Wyoming (The least populated state in the U.S.) Drill down, and it's all coming from Cheyenne - a town of 67K. 270
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 22/09/2026Despite reading AI search and SEO content every day, I rarely read any new finding or discovery that results in actually doing something new or different, strategically. 8170
Reposted by Lily Ray 😏Owain Lloyd-Williams @owainlloydwilliams.com · 16/09/2026A couple of distance shots from Shenzhen SEO conference with fascinating talks from @methode.bsky.social and @lilyray.nyc 051
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 31/08/2026I just used this across a few sites and I'm seeing the same pattern of many impressions, 0 clicks, and a whole lot of queries that look exactly like ChatGPT fan-outs in GSC. 020
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 31/08/2026It checks for site: and "official" at the same time. It's not *all* ChatGPT queries, but it's the ones that contain both of those terms. 120
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 31/08/2026I'm pretty confident these are ChatGPT fan-out queries in Google Search Console. You can use this regex filter to check your own sites: (?i)(site:.*official|official.*site:) 2170
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 26/08/2026Especially given that Google shows social posts in the "What People Are Saying" carousel for many high-volume queries... you'd be surprised by the total impression count when you add up this data across platforms. 000
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 26/08/2026Since Google is now giving GSC data for various social properties, and external tools like Substack also provide GSC stats, you can combine all the data into a holistic organic report that shows how visible your brand is across the ecosystem. 100
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 26/08/2026As search becomes increasingly cross-channel and multimodal, it's a good idea to consider updating your organic search reporting to include more data than just your own website's organic traffic. 130
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026My amazing @amsive.com teammate Savanna found several examples of PDFs losing clicks and dropping out of the index in GSC. Are others seeing the same? 330
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026Hey @johnmu.com I saw you recently say that there’s nothing special you need to do for AI search, but I have a feeling Zeeshan might disagree with you. Is Google actually planning to do anything about “inauthentic mentions”? I’ve seen some changes but this stuff can still work well. 380
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026Like… canonical URLs? Building a search engine? 😂 By the way, this is NOT a recommendation to go spamming things. (Who, me? Never!) But I do think some cool SEO experiments could come out of this. (Proceed at your own risk!) 040
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026Of course, this is one of those things that, if it works, will inevitably be spammed heavily. And then OpenAI will need to figure out a new solution besides running site: searches across the entire domain and all its subdomains. 110
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026Could both the root domain and subdomain(s) form part of the response? Will a brand get cited across multiple subdomains? 100
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026But there might be some unique SEO testing opportunities with this new change. For example, what happens if you create content you specifically want to appear in LLMs on a subdomain of the main site? 120
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026I’ve already worked on a client project where I found that ChatGPT was doing site: searches that pulled up a subdomain every time, instead of the brand’s root domain… until we discovered that the root domain was accidentally blocking OpenAI’s web search crawlers. 🫠 100
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 25/08/2026ChatGPT is doing fan-out searches using site: … but it doesn’t always get the domain right. And even when it does, a site: search for a brand doesn’t just pull up the root domain. It can pull up all the subdomains too. 😅 150
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 24/08/2026I really wish I knew the answers and who is teaching them this stuff, and why. Personally, I block most of them/report as AI slop, and would absolutely never hire, recommend or respond to any of them so IDK if this is helping them the way they think. 010
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 19/08/2026and now citing Reddit and YouTube less frequently and official brand sites more… this all sounds to me like OpenAI is trying to reduce spam making it into ChatGPT’s responses. 050
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 19/08/2026Between ChatGPT heavily using site: searches in fan out queries (which prevents lesser-known domains from being retrieved there), elevating .gov, .org and other “official” sites in fan-outs… (1/2) 241
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 17/08/2026New on my Substack: I spent the past few months watching how ChatGPT's fan-out queries have been evolving and paying close attention to the awesome research being done in our space on this topic. Check out my theories on why they’re changing: open.substack.com/pub/lilyrayn...lilyraynyc.substack.com 2112
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 13/08/2026Seeing dozens of posts stressing about Claude’s new watermarks and potential avenues for circumventing, using Chinese LLMs, etc. …but not a single post about maybe not having Claude do your writing for you 😂 1202
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11/08/2026Also worth noting that Malte from Peec AI found examples where ChatGPT constructed site: queries using *the wrong brand domain,* so this could potentially help reconcile that problem. 010
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11/08/2026Note that this was already a pretty standard SEO recommendation for a long time, but I think it's worth a second review given the way ChatGPT is specifically seeking out official information now. 110
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11/08/2026Or even other page <title> templates or meta descriptions, if there's room and it reads well for users. 110
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11/08/2026Pro-tip: with ChatGPT adding "official" to many more fan-out queries, it's a good time to consider whether adding "Official" makes sense to things like official brand homepage <title> tags (e.g. "Official Site"). 🧵 171
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11/08/2026What if I told you that - not only did this Jan 20 casualty not recover at all - but the AI company working with this site has since published a case study about the great success of this campaign 🤣 3110
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11/08/2026The power of LinkedIn likes / comments on high-engagement accounts is kinda wild. Glad it boosted your post Gastón! 180
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 07/08/2026I just had 4 people leave nearly identical comments on my LinkedIn post, all within a few minutes of one another So now the AI spam is all coming from the same source, or something?? 😩😩😩 070
Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 06/08/2026My favorite part of posting online is the AI-generated comments validating all of my opinions. 3111
