Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 16/09/2026New: How do you “rank” in Google AI? What factors determine if Google’s AI answers recommend your brand or website? To find out, we asked 130+ search experts, many at the very top of their field, what moves the needle. signal.zyppy.com/p/google-ai-... Big thanks to all our contributors 🙏 061
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 13/08/2026New - Content Effort: The Google Ranking Signal Nobody Talks About Google has talked about, measured, and scored qualities like EFFORT for nearly 20 years, and we’ve barely noticed Effort isn’t what you think it is. Effort ≠ work. It's something way more important signal.zyppy.com/p/content-ef... 250
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 06/08/2026Haters will say it's fake, but here's how we started reporting rising Google traffic with this one simple trick 📈 2140
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 29/06/2026What happened to 100 "Content" blogs before Google's HCU and AI Overviews? 85% lost traffic, 11 collapsed, but a handful actually GREW (here's where the lesson is) Great analysis: "The Great Blogging Collapse" danielstanica.com/posts/Great-... 082
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 27/06/2026Wish you had screenshots like these with your winning Google traffic? Need to show the boss evidence of your SEO brilliance? Now you can! I built a Google Traffic Simulator that generates traffic charts for any value you choose. Now, anyone can be an SEO genius zyppy.com/traffic-simu... 3150
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 25/06/2026New: You already know about AI fan-out queries You ALSO likely know that ranking for fan-out queries can increase your chances of getting cited in AI answers But how do you optimize for this? I couldn't find a great guide, so I wrote one. signal.zyppy.com/p/fan-out-fr... Hope you find it useful 162
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 22/06/2026Sample Report: my-workspace-public.cyrus-s-agent.letaido.app/seo-pattern-... Landing page: my-workspace-public.cyrus-s-agent.letaido.app/seo-pattern-... 020
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 22/06/2026Got a site with a big shift in Google traffic? Give me a URL, and I'll run it through the SEO Competitive Analysis tool I built w/ Agent A (partnered with Ahrefs). I'll post the report here: • finds your organic competitors • tracks who gained/lost traffic • analyzes URL-level content-type shifts 110
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 16/06/2026Hope the damage wasn't too bad! We experienced something similar last week (fortunately, a small tree) 100
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 12/06/2026Funny enough, it seems to have fixed it almost immediately (first screenshot was immediately before I claimed my profile) 100
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 11/06/2026Traditional SEO rankings multiply AI citations Great conversation w/ @chrisraulf.bsky.social on earning AI Citations • Why Foundational SEO Still Wins • The Fan Out Multiplier • How AI Reads Your Page • How AI Reads Your Page www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KNH... 151
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 27/05/2026New: Ask Me Anything on r/SEO_for_AI — run by @seosmarty.bsky.social - AI Citation Ranking Factors" - Type of content Google rewards in the age of AI - Ranking signals rewarded by Google's Helpful Content systems - Click+engagement signals in ranking content www.reddit.com/r/SEO_for_AI... 001
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 24/05/2026Honored to be named Best Speaker of SEO Vibes Summit '26 (though several others were likely more deserving) So remember, the next time you read a post from me, you won't be reading a post from just anybody... You'll be reading a post from award-winning Best Speaker Cyrus Shepard 😏 Think on that 070
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 22/04/2026Very informative slide via Google's Danny Sullivan explaining the difference between "Commodity" vs "Non-Commodity" content Google prefers the later IMO, lots of evidence this is spot-on, not where Google is going in the future, but where it already is now 5192
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 21/04/2026New: 17 Content Types to Survive Google’s Zero-Click Future Google Zero is coming for many sites, but Google still sends billions of visits per day to the web What kind of content survives? Not generic blog posts. Companies need to shift their content strategy signal.zyppy.com/p/content-go... 052
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 14/04/2026After a long day of SEO marketing, I like to relax and catch up on the latest LLMs.txt files 270
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 08/04/2026Starting NOW over at Reddit: reddit.com/r/localsearch/ Ask me anything about your Marketing / SEO / AI / brand strategy in 2026 April 8, 2026 at 1PM ET 151
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 04/04/2026Nifty Tool: "Will it Crawl?" Helps you see if Googlebot can crawl your URL before reaching a 2MB limit willitcrawl.com FYI, it's really difficult to find pages that exceed the 2MB limit, but they exist. Via Rodrigo Stockebrand 252
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 01/04/2026So @dejanseo.bsky.social built an AI Brand Authority Index, and it’s super cool Search 122M brands/domains ranked by AI recall + web authority These are the brands that ALREADY live in Gemini's memory, “ranked by frequency and personalized pagerank” Check out your own brand: authority.dejan.ai 082
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 24/03/2026Easily one of the best posts on AI marketing this week "GEO Experiment: How AI highlighted the 1 bad review we got in 24 years" Tackling negative brand information in AI answers via @wilreynolds.bsky.social www.seerinteractive.com/insights/geo... 080
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 17/03/2026New study of 15K URLs shows articles receiving Major Rewrites (30-100% of content) vastly outperform minor/moderate updates Interestingly, even "minor" rewrites, defined as 0-30% of content, still saw decay Is this a cutoff for "lastSignificantUpdate" per Google? republishai.com/content-opti... 164
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 15/03/2026Launching a newsletter about marketing your brand through search and AI: Zyppy Signal We have *23* subscribers (despite not publishing yet) If you'd like to be #24 and receive the first free issue this week, sign up here: signal.zyppy.com 043
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 04/03/2026Does Google still matter? Damn straight it does Research from @sparktoro.bsky.social shows Google is responsible for ~74% of all desktop searches ... and ChatGPT is smaller than expected sparktoro.com/blog/new-res... 1111
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 03/03/2026Take note: AI bots aren't checking if you have an LLMs.txt file Nice experiment via Reboot www.rebootonline.com/geo/llms-txt... 7143
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 02/03/2026If history repeats, very good chance we'll see a Google Core Update this month 070
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 24/02/2026Tool of the Day: "Discover pCTR Predictor" "Predicts Google Discover click-through rates using a model calibrated against actual SDK telemetry" Nicely done @metehan777.bsky.social 💪 pctr-discover.pages.dev 052
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 20/02/2026Hey peeps, I came up with a BRILLIANT new SEO strategy. 100% new, completely bulletproof. Pretty sure this is going to work forever 😎 2163
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 09/02/2026Research shows up to 75% overlap between ChatGPT/Google Shopping Why? ChatGPT runs specific fanout queries for products—essentially scraping Google Shopping URLs So if you want to rank in ChatGPT, you should probably optimize for Google Shopping www.semrush.com/blog/chatgpt... 042
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 05/02/2026Nice catch via @not-a-robot.com on Google's reducing its crawl limit to 2MB per file type 🤖 The old limit was 15MB per file (HTML, CSS, etc) If your webpages are > 2MB, Google may crawl it all. If you render URLs in SC and see missing content, check file sizes mailchi.mp/00ef7ce18980... 184
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 05/02/2026Nice case study of where users click when AI overviews are present: • Traditional: 51% • AI Citation: 15% • AI Overview: 11% • Other: 23% Honestly surprised so many users gravitate to the first AI citation 😯 (legal query, desktop) jurisdigital.com/research/cli... via @mchuckgreen.bsky.social 053
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 02/02/2026You can only pick one. Which do you choose? 1) Ranking #1 in traditional results 2) First citation in AI Overview 3) Brand/website included in AI answer 672
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 28/01/2026A chart of major Google Updates, 2021-2025 • Core Updates average ~17 days to roll out • 2025 saw the fewest new updates (4) • Typically 2 spam updates/year Steal this image 0101
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 23/01/2026We all know "negative" AI SEO/GEO is possible, but the folks at Reboot actually tested it: • Created a fake person • Published negative info • Tracked and measured AI outputs While they achieved success, it was tougher than expected. AI models are seemingly getting better at "authority" 🧵 340
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 30/12/2025Experimenting with removing color from my phone to reduce screen addiction, and it's kinda working?! What do you think? 360
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 25/12/2025Every Christmas we trek up to the Astoria Column to see the lights and look over the city. This year we went inside and sang carols in the base, voices echoing 120 feet up. Happy holidays, ya lovable animals! 160
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 22/12/20252 million views on Reddit earned me $0.15 Only 66 million more until the $10 payment threshold! 🕺 380
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 17/12/2025Sites that rank for multiple fan-out queries are far more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews Nice research via the @surferseo.bsky.social team "Ranking for Multiple Fan-Out Queries Dramatically Increases Your Chances of Getting Cited in AIOs" surferseo.com/blog/query-f... 285
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 15/12/2025Technical SEO tidbit spotted by @rustybrick.com If you change a robots "noindex" directive to "index" via JavaScript, good chance Google won't ever render the JavaScript after they see the "noindex" in your HTML 🚫 "noindex" in HTML remains noindex searchengineland.com/google-says-... 182
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 11/12/2025Me watching the traffic roll in from Google's December Core Update 140
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 02/12/2025A great SEO convo with one of our favorite peeps, @gfiorelli1.bsky.social where we talk about • What hurts/helps rankings most • Patterns uncovered by testing • The truth about AI visibility tools • How to shape brand signals for SEO • Backward books www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/what-dr... 2101
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 21/11/2025My results were more mixed, but Google rightly decided to rank you #1 in traditional results :) 020
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 21/11/2025Tool of the day: Alertmouse For finding new brand/keyword mentions on the web, this is the best tool, hands down, for tracking + daily alerts If you haven't already, try it out. Every day, I've received comprehensive email reports I never would have known about otherwise alertmouse.com 291
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 21/11/2025Actually useful > Gave Gemini our company's (human-designed) color palette, and it generated a fully interactive Design System, complete with multiple shades You can see it in action: zyppy.com/colors.html 161
Cyrus Maxx @zyppy.com · 04/11/2025Google's new deceptive ad layout not only tricks people into clicking more ads It's costing businesses real money 💸 4185