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?? March 2025 Weekly Insights -- AI OVERVIEWS GREW 18%+ THIS MONTH SO FAR: WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR TRAFFIC! ?? BrightEdge Generative Parser? reveals Google's AI Overviews are rapidly growing in size! Just since March 1, we’ve observed a significant 18.26% increase in AI Overview pixel height in just two weeks, with some dramatic jumps in specific industries: ??? Travel: Massive 39.49% increase in AI Overview size ?? B2B Tech: Sharp 37.13% increase ?? Education: Substantial 35.49% increase ?? Finance: Notable 32.89% expansion This isn't just about real estate on the SERP—it's about your traffic and visibility! As these take more real estate on the screen, you can expect impressions increase while clicks and CTRs decline as AI Overviews continue to expand. But here's the crucial part—this development requires a TWO-PRONGED approach: 1?. Track Impact on Traffic Performance: Track how AI Overviews affect click-through rates and clicks even as impressions increase. This crucial data helps you differentiate where your regular search results need to be focused for maximum ROI. 2?. Optimize Citation Presence: As AI Overviews increasingly guide customer decision-making, ensure your content is cited and influencing how AI helps your audience. This isn't about losing traffic—it's about expanding and enhancing how you measure SEO's power! The result? Complete visibility into both sides of the equation: ?? Which keywords have AI Overviews providing the most answers to customers ?? Where your best opportunities exist for citation within these influential AI Overviews ?? How to adjust strategy based on industry-specific growth patterns As Google continues expanding AI Overviews—particularly in travel and B2B tech—your ability to track both traffic impacts AND citation presence isn't just nice-to-have, it's business-critical. BrightEdge customers can accomplish both of these strategies in one unified platform with Data Cube X and Google Search Console Reporting. Ready to gain complete visibility into how expanding AI Overviews are affecting your business? Let's connect! #SEO #AISearch #GoogleUpdates #SearchAnalytics #BrightEdge

???? Anthropic Adds Another New Entrant to the AI Search Race With Claude's Real-Time Web Search. The Big Question: A Parity Move or Clever Strategy, Tech Stack and Partnership Move? It was just last week ago that I posted on Anthropic and its $61.5 Billion AI Powerhouse.?? One of the key things mentioned was how its approach to market differed from many as it focused on content, coding, and enterprise businesses and partnerships with key investors like Google and Amazon, keeping a close eye on the coding and enterprise market.???? I also mentioned that its uniqueness lay in its no follower strategy to the likes of #ChatGPT and other technologies that focus on building out web search features for consumers. ?? At the same time, I also mentioned that "despite not being classified as a search engine," BrightEdge Generative Parser? in February detected an 82% month-over-month increase in organic website referrals. We also know that competitive and consumer pressure was mounting for a search feature.?? Things move fast in this market! ??♂??? ?? Anthropic Adds Real-Time Web Search As the news broke on yesterday, I spoke with MediaPost and Laurie Sullivan and shared my thoughts below. 1. For now, internet search capabilities are exclusively available with Anthropic's most recent model that powers Claude, specifically Claude 3.7 Sonnet. 2. Its current unique point lies in searching and sharing what it finds in a natural conversation. Claude will naturally become smarter by adding current information to what it already knows via its own crawler. 3. Expect more USPs in coming months – voice? 4. It looks like a move to a whole AI solution, not just content and coding, enterprise plays – direct-to-consumer. However, at the moment, it also raises more questions than answers.? 1. Will it use its proprietary index and public data or #Bing or #Google as time progresses? Today, #TechCrunch reported that appears to be using #Brave as a source. 2. Will it do more media deals for citations? 3. Will it go multimodal to compete at the top level? 4. Is this a signal that Claude is going for a Google-like all-in-one approach to AI? 5. How will this new feature change how businesses use AI assistants and search? ?? As AI platforms and search align, it's another signal of the search and AI multiverse that requires different search approaches for specific engines/platforms. It emphasizes the shift for marketers in terms of how they manage their brand discoverability and understand AI opinions and conversations, as well as measuring outcomes. ?? ?? Final thought Given the Google investment, will Google give them access to its search index? It's unlikely, but perhaps another source or partnership piece will come into the news soon. After all, the AI and Search space is full of surprises! https://lnkd.in/gXHue-h5

?? The Hidden Power of Deep Content in Google's AI Overviews. Are You Optimizing?The Right Content On the Right Pages?? ? ?? While we've long considered homepages the crown jewels of our websites, they account for just 0.5% of citations in AI Overviews! ? Our latest BrightEdge research has uncovered something fascinating about Google's AI Overviews that challenges some conventional SEO wisdom. ? The real winners? ?? Those *detailed, specialized pages* buried deeper in your site structure – accounting for a massive 82.5% of all AI Overview citations! ? It was great to catch up with Danny Goodwin on #SearchEngineLand to share insights and discuss what this means for marketers. ? Below is what our analysis revealed, with some key extracts on what this means for brands and website owners: ?? ? ·??????Deep content pages (two or more clicks from homepage) dominate AI Overview citations at 82.5% ·??????Primary category/product pages account for 17% of citations ·??????Homepages represent only 0.5% of citations ·??????86% of citations appeared for just one keyword ? Even more interesting is the scale of opportunity: ?? the median search volume for keywords triggering these citations exceeds 15,000 monthly searches, with 19% exceeding 100,000 volume! ? What this mean: ? 1. Your deeper content pages now have the potential to drive significantly more visibility than the long-tail keywords they typically rank for in traditional organic results. ? 2. In this new AI-driven search landscape, success isn't about chasing the latest development—it's about fortifying your entire site and content foundation. ? ??? When algorithms and AI scan for truth, they don't just peek through your front door—they explore every room in your digital home, seeking the hidden gems of expertise that make your content worthy of citation. ?? ? Every page now has the potential to be someone's first brand interaction. ? ? https://lnkd.in/gPYRxKgB ? ? Is your entire site ready for its moment in the spotlight? ?? ? #AISearch #SEO #DigitalMarketing #ContentStrategy #GoogleAI #DataDriven #SearchInsights #BrightEdgeGenerativeParser ?

?? ?? It's the 2nd most visited website globally AND is one of the top traffic referrers to other sites, BUT are you paying attention to the most critical YouTube trends? As #YouTube approaches its 20th Anniversary, today it celebrated being named #11 on Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies list for 2025. ?? Its evolution in this new era of AI has been quite remarkable! It was great to have my thoughts featured in Greg Jarboe's latest piece on #SEJ and three critical YouTube trends below. ?? 1. AI + Personalization = The Ultimate Power Move?? YouTube's AI-driven recommendations are more powerful than ever. Creators and brands that master hyper-personalization, A/B testing, and data-driven storytelling will dominate in 2025. 2. SEO, AI + Video: A Winning Combination ?? Data from BrightEdge Generative Parser? has found that video content now appears in 31% of Google searches, proving that YouTube isn't just a social platform—it's a search engine powerhouse. Marketers who optimize video titles, descriptions, and transcripts for SEO will have a greater chance of appearing in Google search results. 3. Cross-Platform Success is the Future ?????? The days of treating YouTube as just a desktop or mobile platform are gone. With the rise of smart TVs, YouTube Shorts, and AI-driven recommendations, brands need to focus on cross-platform analytics to understand audience behavior across devices. Look out for more YouTube Innovations Coming Soon?? YouTube updates 1/3 of its major features each year, and with its 20th Anniversary in sight, we can expect big announcements around April–May at events like IAB NewFronts (May 5-8) and YouTube Brandcast (May 12-14). Marketers who stay ahead of these shifts will have a competitive advantage. ?? Final Takeaway >> YouTube is no longer just a video platform—it's an ecosystem where brands, creators, and advertisers compete + its content will *influence* and *feed* into GenAI engines. The brands and creators that succeed on YouTube in 2025 will be those who embrace change, invest in innovation, and prioritize cross-platform engagement. Whether you're an advertiser, a content creator, or a digital strategist—the time to act is NOW. https://lnkd.in/ge-piDPV https://lnkd.in/gMCxpwMj #YouTubeMarketing #SEOAI #BrightEdgeResearch #ContentStrategy #SocialMediaGrowth

?? As Anthropic raises ?$3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion post-money valuation, what does Google's 14% stake mean for the AI Enterprise Ecosystem? Here are some observations I find pretty fascinating. ?? Last week, Anthropic announced it had raised $3.5 billion more in funding at a $61.5 billion valuation. Anthropic has quietly executed a disciplined enterprise strategy centred on coding capabilities - potentially one of the most valuable enterprise AI use cases. ?? Here is what I find super fascinating. 1. Google's Strategic AI Investments: TAM (Total Addressable Market) Footprint Google currently holds a 14% stake in Anthropic, having invested more than $3 billion across multiple rounds, with plans to add another $750 million in September. Despite having no voting rights or board seats, reports from the New York Times indicate that U.S. regulators have softened their stance, permitting Google to keep its investment in Anthropic.??? 2. Google and Anthropic: Competitive Players or Frenemy-like Partners ?? Google likely sees value in Claude's superior programming capabilities, with Claude's 3.7 Sonnet recently scoring 70.3% on benchmarks testing real-world software engineering abilities ?? Claude 3.7 Sonnet recently set new benchmark records for coding performance ?? Their new command-line AI agent "Claude Code" helps developers build applications faster ?? Cursor (AI-powered code editor defaulting to Claude) has reportedly reached $100M ARR in just 12 months ?? Enterprise coding revenue surged 1000% in the last quarter of 2024 3. Anthropic's Unique No Follow Strategy: An LLM for Enterprise Ecosystems: Unlike competitors rushing to match features, they haven't integrated web search into their app. This calculated omission signals their laser-focus on enterprise markets where coding capabilities deliver significantly higher ROI. ?? Claude is positioning itself as the LLM that matters most for businesses. It reportedly aims for $34.5B in revenue by 2027 - mainly driven by API business for enterprise coding applications.??? 4. Super Interesting Search Tandem: While its position may not suggest it is not a search engine, Anthropic's Claude has seen a significant uptick in organic search referrals to websites over the last few months. In February, BrightEdge Generative Parser ? found an 82% month-over-month increase in organic website referrals.?? #ChatGPT 29% #Perplexity 20% #DeepSeek 108% #Claude 82% 5. What it Means for The Market and the Competition ?? While most competitors are trying to serve enterprise and consumer markets with feature parity, #Google and #Amazon - and its $8 billion investment - have an extra pair of eyes on the coding and enterprise market. The New York Times https://lnkd.in/gjMY9tzU #ArtificialIntelligence #EnterpriseAI #SoftwareDevelopment #TechTrends #Innovation #LLMS #EnterpriseSEO?

OpenAI's ChatGPT may pose an existential threat to Google's business, though new numbers suggest it isn't making a dent in Google's search growth just yet. Google said Monday that it now sees more than 5 trillion searches a year. Barclays analysts took that figure — along with previous company disclosures — and did some back-of-the-napkin math to conclude Google queries may have grown over 20% over the two years since ChatGPT's launch in late 2022. "While this could still play out in the future, the opposite appears to be true over the past two years," the Barclays analysts wrote, referring to ChatGPT's perceived threat to Google's business. Read more on how ChatGPT isn't slowing down Google just yet on Business Insider:?https://lnkd.in/ddudq7ST (Credit: Getty Images) #ai?#chatgpt #google

?? ?? The Future of Marketing in an AI Agent World. A Discussion on What It Means For Consumers and Marketers. ? I recently had the opportunity to chat with Data & Programmatic Insider about a topic that's reshaping our industry: the rise of AI agents and their impact on consumer relationships, marketing, and brand visibility. ? Here's a glimpse into my conversation with Laurie Sullivan. ? On AI agents serving consumers: ??? ?? As AI agents become more advanced and adoption grows, especially in the consumer landscape, there will be a big shift in how AI agents interact and transact on consumers' behalf. ? ??As they evolve to take on roles such as comparing options and finalizing transactions, we will see more streamlined transactions in terms of efficiency and speed of purchase. ??This will also help consumers get more precise answers and product matches based on specific intent-based interactions, especially as AI agents improve exponentially over time. ? On the emerging AI marketplace ecosystem: ?? ?? One of the most significant developments to watch is the emergence of new AI marketplaces where businesses could hire out their agents for consumers. This could be a whole new ecosystem that builds out over the next few years, with multiple competing marketplaces offering specialized AI agents. The race to build these AI agent exchanges is already beginning, and this will fundamentally reshape how brands connect with consumers. ? On potential business impacts: ?? ?? Brands could worry that they will become increasingly disconnected from direct consumer interactions and customer relationship models. ? On the other hand, some may offset that with the fact that AI agents significantly reduce costs. Balancing that with human touch and interaction is a conundrum that many must solve. ? On the future of marketing and advertising: ?? ?? In terms of the overall impact on advertising and marketing, I think it will be pretty profound. ? Personalization is a big part of that. An agent will only be as good as the data that feeds it, so the ones who win must first have that. ? We will also see smaller players able to compete with the large powerhouse brands, creating a fascinating and new competitive dynamic. ?? ? One thing is clear: the curve ball here lies in privacy and data transparency. Like any technology — success lies with the consumer and their trust and confidence (i.e., accuracy), and human oversight must be part of that equation. ?? ? Read the full interview to learn more below ?? https://lnkd.in/gnpXZhdQ ? I'd love to hear your perspectives in the comments below. ?? ? #AIinMarketing #DigitalTransformation #FutureofSEO #BrightEdge #AIAgents #RetailMedia #MarketingEvolution #DataPrivacy?