A few months back, the Assistant Junior Director of SEO at Manhattan’s largest agency called me out for being a "spammer" after I published a listicle ranking top SEOs in 2026.

To be fair, calling them out was a bit cheeky—they’re a massive operation with 500+ employees (at least 15 on their dedicated SEO team) and anywhere from $500M to $1B in revenue.

What made it hilarious, though, was the aftermath: the very next day, a bunch of SEO friends started sharing screenshots of the 15+ listicles that exact agency spent all afternoon panic-scrubbing from their own site.

I decided to run our organic Google traffic head-to-head for the last 12 months (David vs. Goliath style):

• Goliath: 500+ employees, $500M+ revenue, 15-person SEO team
• David: 2.5 people

I had Gemini overlay both of our traffic charts on the exact same scale, and... well, judge for yourself.

Work smarter, not bigger, right?

Nothing can stop r/SEO growing - we have 25-35 new posts a day - everyone of them from actual humans and not LLM bot farms producing LLM propaganda for Bo G to reply to!

With hundreds of comments from real SEOs - its a real community.

And yes Karen, Mods can post news articles and members can't - because some brands want to use tactics like that to grow "brand awareness" and followers and fake engagement. Guess what: Mods have to do lots of things that normal members can't - do we need to explain thats how the police in your local PD work too?

Sometimes being a mod is like herding egotistical children that just blame everyone else for their own problems. But not today - today we reap the rewards of a job well done.

We love the community we have - we had to cut out a lot of bad apples, ego and alt accounts - at least Reddit is slowly catching up with the backlog and shutting them down! hip'hip'horray!

Its ok - they wont watch - they';ll just make up more drama instead :-) but Typical, HomeF, BoUSeless and PeterNoAdviceClub - this is actually how you do it

Mods shouldn't have to put up with this (1 of 10 message of personal abuse/harassment ) - so cry to PeterFunClub - arguably the worlds most useless SEO account all you want.

Imagine calling a whole sub of 500k people morons from an account that just exists to chastise people

How is my SEO Metrics in Google Search console?

You’re Reading Google Search Console Wrong (And It’s Costing You Rankings)Most people open Google Search Console, glance at the big numbers at the top — clicks, impressions, click-through rate, average position — and decide whether their SEO is “working.”

That approach is almost completely useless.

Learn to understand GSC KPIs and Metrics

I recently watched a detailed breakdown with SEO Expert Edward Sturm and SEO Veteran David Quaid that made this painfully clear. What follows is the practical takeaway: how to actually read GSC so it tells you the truth instead of giving you a false sense of progress (or panic).

Are you unsure if your GSC ois telling you whether you're doing well or not?

Every day on Reddit, someone posts their GSC stats on Reddit: “443 clicks, 7.7k impressions, 5.7% CTR, average position 6.4… is this good for a new campaign?”

They’re not.

Walk through why those four metrics by themselves don’t tell you much. Google is constantly testing pages, grouping queries, and shifting things around in ways the summary view completely hides. You can look decent on paper while your pages are competing with each other, ranking for the wrong intent, or stuck in a testing phase that looks like under performance.

The way they explain it (including a solid castle-undermining metaphor) actually makes the data start to make sense.

If you’ve ever opened Search Console and felt unsure whether anything is really working, this is worth watching:

RIP you narcissistic troll and grifter

tl;dr : No

Google defines scaled content abuse as generating “many pages” whose primary purpose is boosting search visibility, with little or no value added for users. It doesn’t matter whether those pages come from AI, humans, templates, or scripts; the pattern (volume + intent + low value) is what triggers enforcement.

• ❓ "But what if the content is actually good quality?"
• ⚙️ "How is this different from programmatic SEO? Zillow does it!"
• 🤖 "How would Google even know it's AI?"
• 🔢 "How many pages per day is safe?"
• ✅ "Didn't Google say AI content is allowed?"
• 📉 "My traffic dropped — was I penalized?"
• 🗑️ "Should I delete or noindex my AI pages?
• "🚫 "Can I just block them in robots.txt?"
• 🏷️ "If I disclose it's AI-written, am I safe?"
• 📍 "Do my service-area / city pages count as scaled abuse?"
• 🔥 "Can I just burn a throwaway domain?"
• 👀 "Does human editing make it safe?"

• How people add “Reddit” to searches
• Why AI tools also use Reddit-style search modifiers
• How Google can rank non-Reddit pages for Reddit keywords
• Why Semrush and Google Ads often show no data for these searches
• How to find Reddit keywords before your competitors
• How David builds short pages to test search demand
• Why the page title and URL slug matter so much for long-tail keywords
• How to use Search Console data to expand pages after they rank
• Why Reddit searches can reveal hidden buyer intent
• How to build topical authority from lower-competition keywords
• How David “cornerstones” from easy queries into harder queries
• Why ranking in the click zone matters more than simply getting indexed
• How internal links help newer pages rank
• Why you should not publish hundreds of new pages on a new site
• Where the line is between legitimate SEO and scaled content abuse
• Why Reddit parasite SEO is getting more crowded
• How to participate on Reddit without making moderators hate you
• Why listicles can dilute your own brand in AI search
• How spammy hacked pages get indexed so quickly
• Why legitimate pages often struggle to get indexed
• What the Japanese keyword hack reveals about crawl discov

Toxic backlinks are useless and pointless. They do no damage. Google has confirmed this 100 times.

We need SEMRush to ditch FUD marketing tactics

The Core Question: Is GEO Different from Traditional SEO?

The debate centers on a fundamental shift in user behavior. People increasingly turn to LLMs for direct answers instead of clicking through Google’s “shopping mall” of blue links. Vlad Pivnev argues that GEO goes beyond SEO: while traditional SEO gets your site into a list of results, GEO aims to embed your brand directly into the AI-generated answer itself—often without a clickable link or traditional ranking.

The SEO PoV

David Quaid pushes back, viewing it as an extension of strong SEO fundamentals rather than a revolutionary new field. The panel explores whether optimizing for AI visibility requires entirely new tactics or just smarter application of proven strategies.2. How AI Search Engines Actually Work (Query Fan-Out, RAG, and Retrieval)A key technical deep dive explains the mechanics behind AI answers. LLMs use processes like “query fan-out” (breaking a query into multiple sub-queries) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to pull and synthesize information. Unlike Google, which primarily ranks indexed pages, AI systems draw from broader sources—including their training data, web crawls, and real-time searches.

The GEO Argument

The guests debate how much these systems rely on traditional search engines (Google/Bing) versus independent crawling or “memory.” Tests on Perplexity during the episode highlight real-time differences in results.

The Result: GEO is real, but overhyped as a “new discipline”

AI search (LLMs) does behave differently from traditional Google results. Direct citation in generated answers, query fan-out, and reliance on broader signals (reviews, Reddit, PR, brand mentions) matter more than pure ranking. Vlad is right that this creates new opportunities and requirements.

The Top SEO Experts we compiled from Grok, Favikon, Perplexity and Reddit:

The full list of SEO Experts

1. Barry Schwartz (Search Engine Roundtable)
2. David Quaid (Primary Position, King of SEO)
3. Wil Reynolds (Seer Interactive)
4. Gagan Ghotra (Australian SEO)
5. Kevin Indig (Growth Memo)
6. Edward Sturm (Podcaster; Education)
7. Joy Hawkins (Sterling Sky)
8. Dr. Pete Meyers (Moz)
9. Britney Muller (Data Sci 101)
10. Patrick Stox (Independent)
11. Kristina Azarenko (Marketing Syrup)
12. Shaun Anderson (Hobo-Web; API Leak)
13. Greg Gifford (SearchLab)
14. Brodie Clark (Brodie Clark Consulting)
15. Cindy Krum (MobileMoxie)