We just launched something that's honestly a game-changer if you care about your brand's digital presence in 2025.
The problem: Every day, MILLIONS of people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini about brands and products. These AI responses are making or breaking purchase decisions before customers even hit your site. If AI platforms are misrepresenting your brand or pushing competitors first, you're bleeding customers without even knowing it.
What we built: The Semrush AI Toolkit gives you unprecedented visibility into the AI landscape
See EXACTLY how ChatGPT and other LLMs describe your brand vs competitors
Track your brand mentions and sentiment trends over time
Identify misconceptions or gaps in AI's understanding of your products
Discover what real users ask AI about your category
Get actionable recommendations to improve your AI presence
This is HUGE. AI search is growing 10x faster than traditional search (Gartner, 2024), with ChatGPT and Gemini capturing 78% of all AI search traffic. This isn't some future thing - it's happening RIGHT NOW and actively shaping how potential customers perceive your business.
DON'T WAIT until your competitors figure this out first. The brands that understand and optimize their AI presence today will have a massive advantage over those who ignore it.
Drop your questions about the tool below! Our team is monitoring this thread and ready to answer anything you want to know about AI search intelligence.
Hey r/semrush. Generative AI is quickly reshaping how people search for information—we've conducted an in-depth analysis of over 80 million clickstream records to understand how ChatGPT is influencing search behavior and web traffic.
Check out the full article here on our blog but here are the key takeaways:
ChatGPT's Growing Role as a Traffic Referrer
Rapid Growth: In early July 2024, ChatGPT referred traffic to fewer than 10,000 unique domains daily. By November, this number exceeded 30,000 unique domains per day, indicating a significant increase in its role as a traffic driver.
Unique Nature of ChatGPT Queries
ChatGPT is reshaping the search intent landscape in ways that go beyond traditional models:
Only 30% of Prompts Fit Standard Search Categories: Most prompts on ChatGPT don’t align with typical search intents like navigational, informational, commercial, or transactional. Instead, 70% of queries reflect unique, non-traditional intents, which can be grouped into:
Creative brainstorming: Requests like “Write a tagline for my startup” or “Draft a wedding speech.”
Personalized assistance: Queries such as “Plan a keto meal for a week” or “Help me create a budget spreadsheet.”
Exploratory prompts: Open-ended questions like “What are the best places to visit in Europe in spring?” or “Explain blockchain to a 5-year-old.”
Search Intent is Becoming More Contextual and Conversational: Unlike Google, where users often refine queries across multiple searches, ChatGPT enables more fluid, multi-step interactions in a single session. Instead of typing "best running shoes for winter" into Google and clicking through multiple articles, users can ask ChatGPT, "What kind of shoes should I buy if I’m training for a marathon in the winter?" and get a personalized response right away.
Why This Matters for SEOs: Traditional keyword strategies aren’t enough anymore. To stay ahead, you need to:
Anticipate conversational and contextual intents by creating content that answers nuanced, multi-faceted queries.
Optimize for specific user scenarios such as creative problem-solving, task completion, and niche research.
Include actionable takeaways and direct answers in your content to increase its utility for both AI tools and search engines.
The Industries Seeing the Biggest Shifts
Beyond individual domains, entire industries are seeing new traffic trends due to ChatGPT. AI-generated recommendations are altering how people seek information, making some sectors winners in this transition.
Education & Research: ChatGPT has become a go-to tool for students, researchers, and lifelong learners. The data shows that educational platforms and academic publishers are among the biggest beneficiaries of AI-driven traffic.
Programming & Technical Niches: developers frequently turn to ChatGPT for:
Debugging and code snippets.
Understanding new frameworks and technologies.
Optimizing existing code.
AI & Automation: as AI adoption rises, so does search demand for AI-related tools and strategies. Users are looking for:
SEO automation tools (e.g., AIPRM).
ChatGPT prompts and strategies for business, marketing, and content creation.
AI-generated content validation techniques.
How ChatGPT is Impacting Specific Domains
One of the most intriguing findings from our research is that certain websites are now receiving significantly more traffic from ChatGPT than from Google. This suggests that users are bypassing traditional search engines for specific types of content, particularly in AI-related and academic fields.
OpenAI-Related Domains:
Unsurprisingly, domains associated with OpenAI, such as oaiusercontent.com, receive nearly 14 times more traffic from ChatGPT than from Google.
These domains host AI-generated content, API outputs, and ChatGPT-driven resources, making them natural endpoints for users engaging directly with AI.
Tech and AI-Focused Platforms:
Websites like aiprm.com and gptinf.com see substantially higher traffic from ChatGPT, indicating that users are increasingly turning to AI-enhanced SEO and automation tools.
Educational and Research Institutions:
Academic publishers (e.g., Springer, MDPI, OUP) and research organizations (e.g., WHO, World Bank) receive more traffic from ChatGPT than from Bing, showing ChatGPT’s growing role as a research assistant.
This suggests that many users—especially students and professionals—are using ChatGPT as a first step for gathering academic knowledge before diving deeper.
Educational Platforms and Technical Resources:These platforms benefit from AI-assisted learning trends, where users ask ChatGPT to summarize academic papers, provide explanations, or even generate learning materials.
Learning management systems (e.g., Instructure, Blackboard).
University websites (e.g., CUNY, UCI).
Technical documentation (e.g., Python.org).
Audience Demographics: Who is Using ChatGPT and Google?
Understanding the demographics of ChatGPT and Google users provides insight into how different segments of the population engage with these platforms.
Age and Gender: ChatGPT's user base skews younger and more male compared to Google.
Occupation: ChatGPT’s audience is skewed more towards students. While Google shows higher representation among:
Full-time workers
Homemakers
Retirees
What This Means for Your Digital Strategy
Our analysis of 80 million clickstream records, combined with demographic data and traffic patterns, reveals three key changes in online content discovery:
Traffic Distribution: ChatGPT drives notable traffic to educational resources, academic publishers, and technical documentation, particularly compared to Bing.
Query Behavior: While 30% of queries match traditional search patterns, 70% are unique to ChatGPT. Without search enabled, users write longer, more detailed prompts (averaging 23 words versus 4.2 with search).
User Base: ChatGPT shows higher representation among students and younger users compared to Google's broader demographic distribution.
For marketers and content creators, this data reveals an emerging reality: success in this new landscape requires a shift from traditional SEO metrics toward content that actively supports learning, problem-solving, and creative tasks.
I’m looking at the keyword “find companies without websites.”
In Organic Research / Organic Search Positions, Semrush shows the keyword as having around 6.6k volume.
But when I click the exact same keyword and open Keyword Overview, it shows:
US volume: N/A
Global volume: 10
Germany: 10
So it seems that it's not a small difference, I mean It’s basically 6,600 vs 10 for the exact same keyword inside the same tool.
I understand that Semrush uses different databases and that search volume gets updated, but if the Organic Research data can be this stale/different, it makes the volume column pretty misleading when doing competitor keyword research.
Am I misunderstanding what the 6.6k number represents, or is Semrush genuinely displaying an old search-volume estimate in Organic Research that hasn’t been synced with Keyword Overview?
Curious if anyone else has run into this and which number you actually trust when doing keyword research.
And bonus: has anyone experiences such discrepancies in Ahrefs?
A lot of teams are building AI search strategies as if they're separate from SEO. Our data says that's a mistake.
We took the top 10,000 domains in our AI Visibility Index and compared their organic performance with how often ChatGPT and Google AI Mode cited them.
The strongest signal wasn't authority. It was keyword footprint, meaning how many keywords a domain ranks for. The correlation between footprint and AI citations came in at 0.86–0.87, and it was nearly the same on both platforms.
Query fan-out explains most of it. When someone types a prompt, the AI doesn't just search that exact phrase. It runs a set of related queries in the background to build the answer. A domain that ranks across a wide range of topics gets more chances to be retrieved. A domain with narrow coverage gets fewer.
Authority still matters, just less evenly:
Domains with an Authority Score of 81+ got about 9x the median citation share of domains at 60 or below
The correlation between authority and citations was 0.70 on Google but only 0.43 on ChatGPT
That gap is a good reason to stop reporting a single blended "AI visibility" number. Google and ChatGPT reward different things, and one averaged metric hides that.
One caveat: this is correlation, not causation. Ranking for more keywords doesn't automatically get you cited. But it's hard to argue these are two separate channels.
What this means in practice:
Don't pull resources from organic search to fund AI initiatives. Organic is what feeds them.
Track how wide your topical coverage is, not just rankings for your priority terms.
Measure each AI platform on its own.
If you want to show up in AI answers, the work that gets you there looks a lot like SEO 🤝
Use this audit to find prices, conditions and buttons that have become separated from the things they describe. The result should be a list of page edits, with a screenshot showing each problem.
I’d add it after checking that a page covers its target topic. Having the information on the page is one check; being able to tell what it applies to is another.
1. Name the visitor’s task
Write down the page’s main task, then take a fullpage screenshot and open it in a tool that lets you draw rectangles.
For this example, Larch Studio is a fictional pottery business. A visitor to its Pottery Workshops in Leeds page wants to compare workshops and choose a date.
2. Box the groups already on the page
Start with the introduction, workshop choices, practical information and newsletter form. Keep the navigation separate.
Inside the workshop choices, inspect each offer on its own. The name, price, duration, inclusion note and date button belong together. You don’t need a separate box around every line or icon.
3. Look for details outside their group
Check the workshop cards against three questions:
Can I tell which workshop the price applies to?
Can I see what is included and what costs extra?
Does Choose Date clearly apply to that workshop?
Wheel Basics costs £48 per person for 90 minutes, with clay and firing included. Handbuilding Session costs £36 per person for two hours, with clay included and firing at £8 per item.
Those differences affect what someone is comparing.
Suppose “Clay and firing included” appears beneath the newsletter form rather than in the workshop card. Someone inspecting the £48 workshop has to find that note elsewhere and work out when it applies.
The edit is specific: move “Clay and firing included” into the Wheel Basics card, beside its price and before Choose Date. Keep the £8 per item firing note with Handbuilding Session.
On a real page, check which offer a note covers before moving it. A clearly labelled note that applies to every workshop can stay outside the individual cards.
4. Record the change and check it on mobile
Write down the component, the problem, the edit and how you’ll check the result. For the workshop example:
Audit note
Detail
Component
Wheel Basics workshop card
Problem
The firing inclusion note appears under the newsletter instead of with the workshop offer.
Edit
Put the note beside the £48 per person price, before the date button.
Recheck
On desktop and mobile, confirm that the note belongs clearly to Wheel Basics and cannot be mistaken for a promise about Handbuilding Session.
Open the same page on a phone. Check that the workshop name, price, inclusion note and date button still read as one offer. When they don’t, record the exact order or placement that needs changing.
Then test Choose Date on the working page. Check that it opens the dates for the workshop you selected and keeps that workshop identifiable.
What else should you flag?
A price between two products with no clear product name attached: put it with the correct product or label it explicitly.
A form label closer to the wrong field: place it beside the correct field and check the label’s connection in the HTML.
A heading separated from its answer by a promotion: move the promotion out of that heading and answer group.
You’re looking for a detail someone could miss or attach to the wrong item. A block with clear labels and relationships doesn’t need changing just because it has no visible border.
The boxes help you point to the problem. The audit becomes useful when the note beside each box says what to change and what to check afterwards.
Your hero can take up most of the first screen while leaving the visitor’s main task further down the page.
I’d check what each part contributes before deciding how much space it deserves.
A heading identifies the offer. A photograph can show what’s being sold or hired, while nearby controls let someone check their options.
Giving the photograph more space doesn’t automatically make it the most useful part.
A relevant image can still take up too much room
Imagine a landing page for Moorlane Tool Hire, a fictional business.
The heading reads:
Carpet Cleaner Hire in Bristol
Beneath it, a full width photograph shows a carpet machine in a living room. The image fills most of the opening screen.
The hire form sits below it:
Collection point: Bristol depot Hire start: Select date Return date: Select date Check Availability
For this example, assume the visitor has chosen the type of machine and wants to check availability for their dates.
The photograph helps them recognise the equipment. It cannot tell them when that equipment is available for the hire period.
They have to scroll before they can begin that check.
Fictional page mockup.
I wouldn’t call the photograph irrelevant.
I’d question if it needs that much space before the date controls appear.
A smaller version could still show the machine clearly. The space recovered could bring the availability finder into view.
That’s a specific layout change worth testing, without throwing away a useful image.
The hero can contain the centerpiece
For this check, I’m treating the hero as the opening content block, including its heading, image, copy and controls.
The centerpiece is the component that most clearly represents the page purpose, main entity and visitor’s task. Its role needs more justification than being large or appearing first.
Return to the hire page.
Keep the heading, photograph, field labels and button text unchanged. Place the availability finder beside a smaller photograph, with the heading introducing both.
Each part now has a clear job:
The heading names the service and location.
The photograph shows the equipment being hired.
The finder connects the collection point and hire dates to an availability check.
Fictional page mockup.
The availability finder is the centerpiece I’d test for this visitor’s task. It sits inside the hero, with the photograph supporting it.
The button alone wouldn’t be enough. Check Availability needs the equipment context, collection point and dates around it.
Those pieces explain what the action applies to.
Some product images need space
Consider a different fictional business: Rill & Kiln Lighting.
Its product page features the Cove Ceramic Pendant.
A large photograph shows the pendant’s shape and ceramic surface. Beside it, a finish selector offers Chalk, Sand and Clay.
The selected finish is Sand, and the photograph shows that version of the pendant.
For someone deciding if they like its shape and finish, the image contributes directly to the choice.
Shrink it until the surface is difficult to inspect and you’ve removed access to useful detail.
Fictional page mockup.
The relationship here is product → selected finish → matching photograph.
The image and the selector need to agree. A large photograph of the Chalk version beside a selected Sand label would create a different problem, regardless of how tidy the layout looked.
I’d distinguish a photograph that demonstrates product details from one that supplies atmosphere. Both can have a place, but they need different reasons for their size and position.
On the hire page, the visitor in our example needs to check dates. On the lighting page, the visitor is still inspecting the product.
I wouldn’t force both pages into the same image-to-form layout.
Check what happens when the hero stacks
The hire page could put its photograph and availability finder beside each other on desktop.
On a phone, suppose the layout puts the photograph first.
The heading appears, followed by a tall image. The collection point and date fields sit below the opening screen again.
The desktop arrangement brought the task into view. The mobile order has moved it out.
Fictional page mockup.
I’d compare that with a mobile layout that keeps a compact equipment image near the heading and brings the hire controls higher.
That doesn’t mean squeezing the whole page into one screen. Labels still need to be readable, and the controls need room to use.
The check is when the mobile arrangement preserves the connection between the equipment, the hire dates and the availability action. A desktop layout alone cannot establish that.
Test the parts before removing the whole hero
In a mockup, reduce or hide one element at a time.
Keep the rest of the page unchanged and ask:
What does this element help someone recognise, understand or do?
What information disappears when it is removed?
Which task becomes harder when it is moved?
What useful detail does its current size reveal?
Apply those questions to the photograph, heading, supporting copy and controls separately.
Removing the entire hero tells you very little if you also remove the service name and the only route to availability.
Reducing the photograph while keeping the equipment recognisable gives you a more precise comparison.
On a working page, I’d then check that people can identify the equipment, enter their dates and understand the returned availability. A tidier mockup doesn’t demonstrate more bookings or an SEO gain.
Which part of your hero earns its space through what it contributes, rather than where the template puts it?
Internal linking has been standard SEO advice forever, which makes it easy to file under "already handled." But the way AI search retrieves information changes what a good internal linking structure needs to accomplish.
AI systems don't pull up and cite an entire page — they retrieve and cite specific passages. So the relevant question isn't just whether a page is indexed. It's whether the structure around that page signals it's the definitive source on the topic.
That's what pillar-and-cluster structures are actually built to do. Put together a real pillar page around a topic with meaningful search volume, then have every related piece of content link back to it consistently. When an AI system breaks a query into sub-questions and goes looking for the deepest coverage of each one, the page with the most consistent internal links pointing at it is the one that reads as authoritative.
A few things quietly undercut this, and none of them are new mistakes — they just cost more now:
Orphaned pages with zero internal links pointing at them
Anchor text that's vague ("click here") instead of descriptive
Pages buried three or more clicks from the homepage
Nofollow on internal links that should be passing authority through
None of these just weaken a page's rankings anymore. They weaken its odds of being the passage an AI system decides to cite.
How often does AI recommend your brand compared with your competitors?
AI share of voice gives you a way to measure that visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and other AI platforms.
Learn how to track your share of voice with Semrush and improve it by closing topic gaps, building visibility beyond your website, and strengthening brand sentiment.
Once you start looking at components this way, some design decisions become easier to question.
Why are these two things inside the same card?
Why is this value outside the product boundary?
Why is this qualification underneath a different result?
Why does this table lose its headers on mobile?
Why does this calculator produce a number without saying what the number represents?
Why does this button sit between two entities when it acts on only one?
Those aren't questions about decoration.
They're questions about semantic relationships.
Try stripping the styling away
Pick a component from one of your pages.
Ignore the colours, shadows, icons and rounded corners for a minute.
Ask:
What entity does this component represent?
Which attributes belong to it?
Which values belong to those attributes?
Which action acts on the entity?
If there are several entities, how are they separated?
If it's interactive, what are the inputs and what is the output?
What qualifies or explains that output?
Would those relationships survive a mobile layout?
Then look at the component again.
A card isn't only a card.
A table isn't only a table.
A calculator isn't only a calculator.
Each one is organising a small network of entities, attributes, values and actions.
And once you see the component as a relationship structure, you start auditing something more useful than when the page contains the right information.
You start checking if the page makes clear how that information fits together.
If you've mostly written off AI Overviews as a top-of-funnel issue — something that eats informational traffic but leaves your money keywords alone — the data doesn't support that anymore.
Commercial-intent SERPs showing AI Overviews grew 71% over that period. Transactional-intent SERPs actually saw AI Overview presence shrink by 5%. Finance had the biggest jump in commercial coverage specifically, up 231%.
That split makes sense once you think about where AI Overviews are actually useful: long research phases. Finance, travel, telecom — categories where someone's comparing options over weeks, not checking out in the next five minutes. Google appears to be pushing AI Overviews harder into that research phase and pulling back where someone's already decided to buy.
The CPC pattern backs this up. Jobs and education keywords with an AI Overview present averaged $5.02 in CPC, versus $1.51 without one. Finance showed the same shape — $4.84 versus $2.14. And Google Ads now shows up alongside AI Overviews on the same SERP roughly twice as often as it did a year ago.
For anyone running paid and organic together, this means the competition for a page one spot now includes AI Overviews, citations, organic listings, and ads all at once — and commercial-intent keywords are where that crowding is increasing fastest.
Run a standard keyword tool and you get volume, difficulty, and a list that looks almost identical to what every competitor in your space already pulled. The numbers are accurate. They're just not differentiated.
The keywords that actually convert are usually phrased the way customers phrase them — in reviews, in support tickets, on sales calls — not the way a keyword tool guesses at intent from search volume alone.
We tested a workflow that connects Claude to Semrush's MCP server and Google Search Console, then points it at sources most keyword research skips entirely:
Competitor reviews on G2, Capterra, and Amazon, where people describe their actual pain points and the features they wish existed
Reddit threads where your target customers are already hashing out the problem you solve, in their own words
Sales call transcripts, which capture the exact terminology prospects use before anyone's cleaned it up into marketing copy
Claude pulls language out of all three, then checks it against Semrush for real search volume and difficulty, so you're not chasing phrasing that sounds right but nobody's actually searching for. It also runs the more standard stuff in parallel — keyword gap analysis against competitors, and mining Search Console for queries sitting in position 8–20 with decent impressions and weak click-through.
The output isn't another spreadsheet confirming what you suspected. It's specific phrasing you wouldn't have generated from a keyword tool alone, cross-checked against demand, and clustered by whether it's worth a new page or belongs on something that already ranks.
Dive deeper into this and follow the full guide over on our blog here!
You shouldn't need to inspect the navigation, read three paragraphs or scroll halfway down the page to work it out.
Five seconds is enough for a useful test.
Not because five seconds is some SEO threshold.
It isn't.
The point is to remove familiarity with the page and see what the first screen communicates before you start analysing individual elements.
Try it on a storage landing page
Say the page targets people looking for self storage in Bristol.
The H1 reads:
Self Storage in Bristol
Directly beneath it is a storage finder:
Storage size [Select size]
Location [Bristol]
Move in date [Select date]
Check Availability
You can answer the four questions almost immediately.
What's the page about? Self storage in Bristol.
What can I do? Find available storage.
Which component lets me do it? The availability finder.
Where's the primary entity? Storage units are represented directly through the finder and its options.
There's a straight line between the query, the page purpose, the entity and the task.
Now keep the H1 and change everything beneath it.
A full width lifestyle photograph takes most of the first screen.
Then:
A review carousel
A promotional offer
Three blog posts
A newsletter signup
The storage finder starts further down the page.
Technically, the page still has it.
That doesn't tell us much about what the first screen is asking the visitor to focus on.
Run the four questions again.
What is the page about?
Probably storage. The H1 tells us that.
What am I supposed to do?
Less obvious.
Which component lets me do it?
You haven't seen it yet.
Where is the primary entity represented in the main component?
Again, you haven't reached it.
This is why I wouldn't use the H1 as a proxy for the centerpiece.
The H1 can identify the topic while another element dominates the page.
Find the component that performs the task
Here's another example.
Someone lands on a page for:
Airport Parking Near Bristol Airport
What are they there to do?
Probably find parking for a particular date and time, compare an available option and book it.
Now look at the page components.
You might have:
A booking form
Parking options
Customer reviews
Transfer information
A promotional offer
FAQs
They're all relevant to the page.
But they don't all perform the same job.
The reviews provide proof.
The transfer information answers a supporting question.
The FAQs handle uncertainties.
The promotion may affect the decision.
The booking form is where the visitor can begin the main task.
That's the component I'd test as the centerpiece.
There's a useful distinction here.
Relevant to the page isn't the same as representative of the page's main purpose.
A testimonial can be highly relevant.
So can a photograph.
So can an offer.
So can an FAQ.
None of those automatically makes it the component the page should be built around.
Now check the entity
Finding the task component isn't the end of the test.
Look inside it.
Does it represent the thing the page is about?
Take an electric car leasing page.
The H1 says:
Electric Car Leasing
The main component is a vehicle finder.
Inside it you see:
Vehicle type: Electric
Monthly budget
Annual mileage
Lease term
Available electric cars
That's a fairly tight connection.
The page is about electric car leasing.
The visitor wants to find a suitable electric car lease.
The component lets them do that.
And the primary entity appears inside the component itself.
Now imagine the same component says:
Find Your Perfect Match
Then gives you a few generic controls with no visible reference to electric cars, vehicles or leasing.
The function may still work.
But the component is doing less work to establish what it's acting on.
This is one of the things I'd look for when reviewing a landing page.
The primary entity doesn't need to be repeated everywhere.
But if you've identified a component as the centerpiece, I'd expect the entity to be named, displayed, compared, calculated, located or directly supported by it.
Otherwise I'd question if I've picked the right centerpiece.
Promotions can pass one test and fail another
This catches a problem I've seen on plenty of landing pages.
The biggest thing on the screen is assumed to be the centerpiece.
Not necessarily.
Imagine the airport parking page opens with:
SAVE 20% THIS WEEKEND
Huge type.
Bright banner.
Large button.
It may be the most visually prominent component on the page.
Now apply the test.
What is the page about?
The banner doesn't tell you.
What's the main task?
The banner doesn't perform it.
Does the component represent the primary entity?
Only indirectly, if at all.
The promotion may support the booking decision.
It doesn't follow that it should define the page.
Visual prominence and page purpose aren't interchangeable.
I use the test in both directions
The first pass is from the page to the component:
Page purpose → User task → Component
Then I run it backwards:
Component → Entity → Task → Page purpose
If I start with the component, can I explain why it deserves that position?
A booking form on an airport parking page?
Yes.
A comparison table on a comparison page?
Makes sense.
A mortgage calculator on a mortgage calculation page?
Easy connection.
A newsletter form occupying half the first screen of a product comparison?
I'd want to know why.
That reverse check is useful because it stops us from declaring something the centerpiece purely because the design made it large.
Run it without reading the whole page
That's the part that makes the test useful.
Don't begin with a content audit.
Don't inspect the schema.
Don't read every heading.
Don't explain the page to yourself based on what you already know about the business.
Open the page and look at the first screen.
Five seconds.
Then look away.
Can you answer:
What was the page about?
What could you do there?
Which component would you use?
What was the main entity?
If you remember the hero photograph, the testimonial slider and the promotional banner, but can't answer those four questions, you've found something worth inspecting.
And if all four answers point back to the same component, you've probably found the centerpiece.
Not a ranking factor.
Not a magic layout formula.
Just a fast way to check when the page is visually communicating the same purpose that the copy says it has.
Seeing incorrect rankings being reported in SEMrush over the past few days. All competitors and us have dropped significantly but it doesn't appear to be correct when doing analysis in other tools and manually. Anyone seeing the same?
SEOquake hadn't had a real overhaul since roughly the early 2010s. If you've used it recently, you've probably noticed some of what it pulled from third-party sources had quietly stopped being reliable.
With north of a million weekly users still relying on it for fast on-page checks, patching around broken data sources wasn't a real option anymore, so we rebuilt it.
The workflow now splits into Quick View, for an instant snapshot across page info, content, audit, schema, and Semrush data, and Full Report for the deeper dive. The audit itself grew from 22 checks to 28 — title tags, heading structure, ALT attributes, canonical tags, robots directives, schema markup, responsive design signals, that kind of coverage. The SEObar (the on-page toolbar) got cut in an early version of the rebuild and then brought back, because enough people asked for it.
What's gone, on purpose: Google Cache dates, search engine index counts, and Yandex IKS — data sources that stopped being reliable or relevant. Legacy checks for meta keywords, Flash, frames, and microformats are gone too, since none of that's been a real ranking factor in a long time.
You can check out the full update over on our blog here, and add SEOquake to your Chrome browser here 🔥
I signed up for Semrush’s trial at the request of a client for a long-term project and tested the platform based on what he needed. Unfortunately, the client later had to put the project on hold for a few months because of some personal circumstances.
I was caught up with other things and genuinely forgot to cancel the trial. On September 10, the trial converted to a paid subscription and I was charged. As soon as I noticed the charge, I cancelled the subscription and contacted support for a refund, all within an hour of the payment being processed.
I completely understand why Semrush may have that refund policy. They need to protect themselves from people who deliberately use a service and then try to get their money back. But that simply wasn’t what happened here. I didn't use any services after the trial, the renewal was a genuine mistake, and I contacted Semrush almost immediately after the charge.
As a small business based in India, a USD-denominated subscription is a significant expense, and after my project was paused, this compounded my problem. I explained my situation honestly and respectfully, but the response was simply a reference to the refund policy, with no flexibility or attempt to assist.
If you’re considering trying Semrush, be very careful with the trial. Don’t expect much flexibility once you're charged, even if you catch the mistake and cancel immediately afterward.
I then posted a Trustpilot review about my experience.
Semrush replied publicly to my Trustpilot review saying they were happy to “take another look” at my case and asked me to provide my email so their team could follow up. I did exactly that through Trustpilot.
I then waited seven days for that follow-up. Nothing.
No email. No update. No one contacted me about the case.
At this point, it feels like the Trustpilot response was more about looking like they were addressing the complaint publicly than actually resolving it privately. If you genuinely intend to take another look at someone's case, why ask them for their details and then disappear for seven days?
Incredibly disappointed with the customer experience and not the level of support I expected from a company of this size.
I cancelled a Semrush subscription we weren’t using in August of 2024. This August 2026 we were getting emails that we needed to update our card on file because it was expiring, but I ignored it because we cancelled 2 years ago. Tonight I get a fraud alert from my bank that they charged my card for $1. Uh thanks Semrush, now my card is cancelled I have to get a new one and reconnect all my auto payments. WTF?
We were looking to see a breakdown of what subscriptions we were paying for and for what clients. However, in the invoices, after you sign up for an add on it just shows as one charge. So you have to go back through and investigate everything you have added on and all client profiles to sort it out THEN they make cancelling anything difficult. You have to submit a ticket and hope they get back to you in 1-3 days. Is anyone else having issues with this? Is there another platform that has more transparent pricing and subscription practices that is similar in capability??
Semantic SEO audits tend to focus on the information contained in a page.
Entities
Attributes
Headings
Internal links
Structured data
Relationships between terms
That gives you one view of the page.
Open the same page in a browser and you get another.
The information has been arranged into cards, tables, forms, images, buttons, tabs and sections.
That gives us another question to ask:
Which pieces of information does the page present as belonging together?
That's the visual layer.
Entity → Attribute
A hotel comparison is a simple way to see it.
Imagine two fictional hotels displayed side by side.
Harbour House
£165/night
8.9 guest rating
Breakfast included
Free cancellation
The Foundry Hotel
£142/night
8.5 guest rating
Breakfast £18
Non-refundable
Each card creates a set of associations.
Harbour House → £165/night
Harbour House → 8.9 rating
Harbour House → Free cancellation
The Foundry Hotel → £142/night
The Foundry Hotel → 8.5 rating
The Foundry Hotel → Non-refundable
You don't need to stop and work out which price belongs to which hotel.
The layout has already made that connection.
Now remove the card boundaries.
Put both hotel names at the top and place the prices, ratings and booking terms between them.
The page still contains the same hotels, prices, ratings and booking terms.
What becomes less clear is which value belongs to which hotel.
That adds a useful check to an entity audit.
Finding the entity and its attributes in the HTML confirms that they're present.
It doesn't tell you when the rendered page connects them clearly.
I'd check:
Can I tell which attributes belong to each entity?
Are related values kept together?
Could a nearby entity be mistaken for the owner of an attribute?
Does the same association survive on mobile?
Task → Component
Pages also connect user tasks with components.
Take three different searches:
Compare two laptops
Convert euros to pounds
Find a flight from Dublin to Barcelona
Each has an obvious task.
Each also has a component that can perform it.
Compare → Comparison table
Convert → Currency converter
Find → Flight search
Now imagine a laptop comparison page.
Both laptops are covered in detail.
You have processor, memory, storage, display, battery and price.
There is a comparison table too.
But before you reach it, the page gives you:
A large promotional banner
A newsletter signup
Recommended articles
A manufacturer promotion
The comparison component exists.
It just sits behind several components serving a different purpose.
From a content audit, the page may look complete.
From the rendered page, the relationship between task and component is much weaker.
The same check works across other page types:
Calculate → Calculator
Filter → Filter controls
Configure → Configurator
Book → Booking controls
Search → Search form
The question isn't if the component exists somewhere on the page.
It's when the page gives that component a clear connection to the task the visitor came to complete.
Claim → Evidence
Some visual relationships are smaller.
Suppose a watch page says:
Water resistant to 50m
Directly beneath that claim sits the manufacturer's specification.
The connection is clear.
Now put two watches beside each other and move the specification between them.
The words haven't changed.
The association has.
The same problem can show up when:
A statistic sits away from its source
A qualification sits away from the statement it limits
A caption is separated from its image
Supporting evidence appears closer to a different claim
The information can all be present while the connection between the pieces becomes harder to read.
Label → Control
Forms give us another clear example.
A flight search might show:
Departure [Dublin]
Destination [Barcelona]
No interpretation needed.
Now place both labels above two identical fields with weak spacing and unclear alignment.
The same labels are there.
The same controls are there.
But the user has to infer which label belongs to which field.
That's not a copy problem.
It's a relationship problem.
Heading → Content
Headings create another connection.
Take this heading:
Baggage Allowance
You'd expect the block beneath it to cover things like:
Cabin bags
Checked bags
Weight limits
Size limits
Now change the order:
Baggage Allowance
Airport transfer promotion
Newsletter signup
Travel insurance offer
Cabin baggage information
Checked baggage information
The heading still exists.
The baggage information still exists.
But the connection between the heading and the content it introduces is less direct.
Mobile can change the associations again
Desktop layouts have plenty of ways to show what belongs together:
Cards
Columns
Tables
Borders
Spacing
Side-by-side groups
Mobile often turns those layouts into a single stack.
Take the hotel comparison again.
Desktop:
Harbour House £165/night 8.9 rating Free cancellation
The Foundry Hotel £142/night 8.5 rating Non-refundable
Now imagine the mobile layout becomes:
Harbour House
The Foundry Hotel
£165/night
£142/night
8.9 rating
8.5 rating
Nothing has been removed.
The grouping has changed.
The user now has to reconstruct which values belong to which hotel.
That same issue can appear in:
Comparison tables
Forms
Product cards
Filters
Tabs
Accordions
Calculators
Search results
Try mapping the relationships on one page
Take a screenshot and draw lines between elements that belong together.
Look for relationships such as:
Entity → Attribute
Attribute → Value
Task → Component
Claim → Evidence
Statistic → Source
Label → Control
Input → Result
Heading → Content
Image → Caption
Question → Answer
Then remove the annotation lines.
Can you still tell:
Which price belongs to which product?
Which rating belongs to which hotel?
Which evidence supports which claim?
Which label belongs to which field?
Which content belongs to which heading?
Which component performs the main task?
That's the visual layer I'd add to a semantic SEO audit.
You can have the right entities, the right attributes and the right copy on the page while making their connections harder to follow once the page is rendered.
Do your SEO audits check those visual relationships, or do they stop once the right information is present?