Ahrefs’ Digest #208: AI overviews, cold opens, and more

Welcome to a new edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.

Here’s our meme of the week:

—

Quick search marketing news

• OpenAI launches ChatGPT search.

• Google rolls out AI Overviews in more than 100 countries and territories around the world.

• Google adds Gemini to Google Maps.

• Google updates its Core Web Vitals documentation.

—

Best of the week

I Analyzed 300K Keywords. Here’s What I Learned About AI Overviews: Some top takeaways:

• Average AIO search volumes are 193x smaller than non-AIO volumes.

• AIO keyword Traffic Potential (TP) is 8x smaller than non-AIO SERPs.

• AIO keywords are long-tail, with a phrase length of 4 words vs. 2 words in non-AIO SERPs.

• Keyword Difficulty (KD) is lower in AIO SERPs, with a median score of 12 vs. 33 for non-AIO keywords.

• Content requires just 13 referring domains to rank in an AIO SERP on average.

• Informational intent keywords trigger an AI Overview 99.2% of the time.

• AIOs only have a 10% chance of showing for commercial and transactional keywords.

It is Time for SEO to Evolve: “Thanks to too many people to mention, the industry jas grown up. SEO is taken seriously at almost every fortune 500 company, commands high dollars, and makes an impact for large and small businesses alone. So why are we still talking about TF-IDF, Keyword Density, Domain Authority, Title tag length, and every other outdated SEO metric from the late 90s?”

Mastering the Art of the Cold Open in Storytelling: I love cold opens. Starting any article right in the middle of the action always feels more exciting. Definitely a technique I want to explore more in my blog posts.

[X] Secret Ingredient Behind Startup Pitch Decks: The most interesting thing is not how you’re better than your competition but how you’re going to acquire customers at scale.

—

Latest from our podcast

This week’s podcast guest is Fery Kaszoni, CEO of Search Intelligence, a digital PR agency.

• How he accidentally ended up in SEO after being a coder

• Why he made a bet on "digital PR"

• What helped him grow his agency to £10M/yr revenue

• How he measures the ROI of various sponsorships

• What's the value of those goofy viral videos he's known for

• Is it true that his team works just 4 days a week

• Are social media and brand building the future of SEO? 

Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

See you next week,
Si Quan

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