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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 11h

Whoa

Mark Williams-Cook @markwilliamscook.com · 12h

After the very rancorous online debate, it looks like housefresh.com more than made their recovery post-HCU decimation.

I wonder how much is:

-> Algo updates
-> Manual intervention (it was very public)
-> Equity earned *because* of the loss (links/brand searches)
-> Things they changed

A line graph from Ahrefs shows the organic search performance of a website. The graph covers the period from February 2021 to October 2025. It plots two lines: one for referring domains (blue line) and one for average organic traffic (orange line).

The referring domains line shows a steady increase from around 0 to just over 6,000. The average organic traffic line remains relatively flat at a low level until late 2024, at which point it begins to climb dramatically, reaching over 240,000 by October 2025. The orange line's steep, upward trend indicates a significant and rapid growth in organic traffic.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 17h

Also why SEO professionals are raising flags about many of the new recommended GEO tactics - they’re literally dangerous for SEO.

People will have to learn the hard way, I guess.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 17h

Good luck getting any meaningful AI search visibility over time if what you’re doing tanks your site in organic search.

This is why I think it’s been so incredibly silly and short-sighted that all this new GEO marketing often frames SEO as somehow dead or less important.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 17h

One of the main questions any AEO/GEO strategist should be asking is “can this tactic risk hurting my organic search performance?”

AKA, having actual SEO experience and knowing Google/Bing’s content & quality guidelines inside and out.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 1d

lol yikes that is bad

I’ve had other people commenting about how these features don’t actually work in their ChatGPTs yet

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 2d

I felt crazy seeing people write about this because I was 100% sure they did before, and wouldn't you know it: back in March 2023 OpenAI launched "ChatGPT Plugins" that would " help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services."
openai.com/index/chatgp...

We’ve implemented initial support for plugins in ChatGPT. Plugins are tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services.

In line with our iterative deployment philosophy, we are gradually rolling out plugins in ChatGPT so we can study their real-world use, impact, and safety and alignment challenges—all of which we’ll have to get right in order to achieve our mission.

Users have been asking for plugins since we launched ChatGPT (and many developers are experimenting⁠(opens in a new window) with⁠(opens in a new window) similar⁠(opens in a new window) ideas⁠(opens in a new window)) because they unlock a vast range of possible use cases. We’re starting with a small set of users and are planning to gradually roll out larger-scale access as we learn more (for plugin developers, ChatGPT users, and after an alpha period, API users who would like to integrate plugins into their products). We’re excited to build a community shaping the future of the human–AI interaction paradigm.

Plugin developers who have been invited off our waitlist can use our documentation⁠(opens in a new window) to build a plugin for ChatGPT, which then lists the enabled plugins in the prompt shown to the language model as well as documentation to instruct the model how to use each. The first plugins have been created by Expedia⁠(opens in a new window), FiscalNote⁠(opens in a new window), Instacart⁠(opens in a new window), KAYAK⁠(opens in a new window), Klarna⁠(opens in a new window), Milo⁠(opens in a new window), OpenTable⁠(opens in a new window), Shopify⁠(opens in a new window), Slack⁠(opens in a new window), Speak⁠(opens in a new window), Wolfram⁠(opens in a new window), and Zapier⁠(opens in a new window).

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 1d

Interesting how much more valuable real comments from humans have become in light of the influx of AI-generated comments everywhere.

It’s like your brain starts to automatically gloss over everything to seek out only the real opinions and insights from real humans.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 2d

Ooo… chat with apps now available in ChatGPT (in English outside of the EU)

“Developers can start building them today with the new Apps SDK”

Looks like another actual example of an AEO tactic that’s not SEO.

openai.com/index/introd...

Introducing apps in ChatGPT and the new Apps SDK

A new generation of apps you can chat with and the tools for developers to build them.

openai.com

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 3d

If anyone here is a techno lover, I got the chance to play at a techno/psytech party last night - here’s my newest mix, inspired by many summers in Berlin 🖤

on.soundcloud.com/cmJwvZe2428x...

Arcana at The House in Brooklyn (Rare Techno/Psytechno Set)

It was fun to get a chance to play some techno and psytech at the Arcana party at The House - thank you Kyo and Aaron! It's been fun to play a lot of the music that's inspired me during my summers in

soundcloud.com

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 4d

Enjoying late summer vibes at home in NYC ❤️🐶

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 4d

This was from about 6ish months ago at the Awin conference in Portugal - check it out!

youtu.be/HS39ssAPhYE?...

Lily Ray talks SEO, affiliate and AI trends in digital marketing | Awin-Win Marketing Podcast | Awin

YouTube video by Awin

youtu.be

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 5d

Looks like they’re adding “Web Guide” to the Web tab tho which is a bit ironic given that the whole point was that this tab would be for the pure 10 blue links 🫠

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 5d

Interesting - not sure I’ve seen Google prioritize the “Web” tab this way at the top of search results before. I’m pretty sure it even glittered for a second? 🤔

(1/2)

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 6d

I used @tryprofound to check ChatGPT citations going to Reddit.com across various big brands - most of them show the same patterns shown by @promptwatchcom

Big drop-off on September 10/11 - about 1/3 of the number of citations from prior weeks.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 8d

This data is aggregated across 8 LLMs though - it will be interesting to filter this out for each LLM. My hunch is that Copilot, ChatGPT and Perplexity tend to cite the low-SEO-visibility URLs more frequently than Gemini, AI Mode and AI Overviews.

I'll dive deeper soon - stay tuned!

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 8d

I used the
@ahrefs.bsky.social MCP integration with Claude to look at SEO visibility metrics for the top-cited domains in the "pets" category this month (according to Profound)

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 8d

Indeed - lots of sites with little to no SEO visibility are still driving substantial citations in AI search (the red rows).

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 8d

I noticed a lot of top-cited URLs in AI search are pages that would otherwise drive little to no SEO visibility on Google (spammy/low quality/hit by algorithm updates)

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 9d

Big deal for e-commerce

www.cnbc.com/2025/09/29/c...

Etsy pops 13% as OpenAI announces ChatGPT Instant Checkout for the shopping site

U.S. ChatGPT Plus, Pro and Free users can now make purchases through the chatbot

www.cnbc.com

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 12d

Perplexity cited two AI-generated articles on digital marketing agency domains that made up information about an algorithm update that never happened, and used a fancy SEO terminology to make it sound official, or something.

The snake is eating its own tail.

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Lily Ray 😏 @lilyray.nyc · 12d

This is so bad - I asked @perplexityai.bsky.social about recent SEO/AI news and it responded with an information about a non-existent, made-up algorithm update. 🧵