Question 1

Can AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot execute JavaScript?

Accepted Answer

No. AI crawlers including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot do not run a headless browser or execute JavaScript. They fetch the initial HTML response and process only what's in that raw HTML. Any content, navigation, or structured data that depends on JavaScript execution is completely invisible to these crawlers. This is a permanent capability gap, not a queue delay—they will never render your client-side content.

Question 2

Can BigQuery show anonymized Search Console queries?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery exports show anonymized queries as NULL values in the query field, but their click and impression metrics are preserved. You still cannot see the actual search terms, but you can quantify how much traffic comes from hidden queries, break it down by page, and track trends over time.

Question 3

Do AI Overviews and Google AI Mode cite the same sources?

Accepted Answer

No. Despite reaching 86% semantic similarity in their answers, AI Overviews and Google AI Mode cite the same URLs only 13.7% of the time. This indicates each system runs a distinct source selection process even within the same company.

Question 4

Do author bios and bylines improve Google rankings?

Accepted Answer

Google has confirmed that author bylines are not a ranking factor. The search engine does not parse author bios, verify listed credentials, or boost pages based on displayed expertise. The correlation between bylines and higher rankings exists because publications that use them tend to have other quality characteristics like editorial oversight and consistent topical coverage. Bylines are required for Google News eligibility but do not function as a ranking lever.

Question 5

Do backlinks help content get cited by LLMs like ChatGPT?

Accepted Answer

Research suggests backlinks have a weak or even negative correlation with LLM citation likelihood. Brand search volume (correlation of 0.334) is a far stronger predictor. This represents a fundamental shift from traditional SEO, where backlinks have been the primary authority signal for two decades.

Question 6

Do branded searches still get clicks from Google?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Branded searches are largely protected from zero-click erosion and actually show an 18% CTR increase according to Search Engine Journal's analysis. When someone searches for a brand by name, Google still sends them to that brand's website, making brand recognition an increasingly important SEO investment.

Question 7

Do ChatGPT and Perplexity cite the same sources?

Accepted Answer

No. Only 11% of domains appear in both ChatGPT and Perplexity citation results. ChatGPT correlates 87% with Bing results and favors Wikipedia and Reddit, while Perplexity cites Reddit 46.7% of the time. Google's AI Overviews maintain a 93.67% correlation with traditional organic rankings. Each platform has distinct citation behavior.

Question 8

Do small sites lose more query data in Search Console than large sites?

Accepted Answer

Yes, dramatically. The Ahrefs study found small sites could see just 18.3% of their query data on average (some saw 0%), medium sites averaged 39.7%, and large sites retained 76.3% visibility. Small sites attract proportionally more long-tail searches that fall below Google's privacy threshold.

Question 9

Does adding noindex tags save crawl budget?

Accepted Answer

No. Google still has to crawl the page to discover the noindex directive, so you save indexing resources but not crawl resources. To prevent Googlebot from crawling junk URLs entirely, use robots.txt Disallow rules to block the URL patterns at the door.

Question 10

Does publishing more content always improve topical authority?

Accepted Answer

No. Google's Content Warehouse API data shows that pages deviating from your core theme increase your siteRadius, which hurts your siteFocusScore. Publishing off-topic or tangentially related content actually weakens topical authority rather than strengthening it. The most common failure modes are keyword cannibalization, topic drift, neglecting internal links between related content, and confusing volume with depth.

Question 11

How did Google's February 2026 core update affect topical authority?

Accepted Answer

Google's February 2026 core update strengthened topical authority as a ranking signal. Early analysis suggests it penalizes thin AI-generated content and rewards sites demonstrating genuine topical depth. The update evaluates expertise on a topic-by-topic basis rather than as a blanket domain-level signal, meaning a site with deep coverage in one area doesn't automatically receive credit for content in unrelated areas.

Question 12

How do AI Overviews affect Google Search Console impression and CTR data?

Accepted Answer

AI Overviews generate their own impression events in GSC, inflating impression counts by 27–49% without corresponding clicks. This creates an 'impressions up, clicks down' pattern that looks like declining performance but actually reflects AIO expansion. GSC currently provides no filter to separate AI Overview impressions from traditional organic impressions, making it impossible to isolate the effect from actual ranking changes.

Question 13

How do AI Overviews affect website click-through rates?

Accepted Answer

AI Overviews significantly reduce click-through rates. Pew Research Center found a 46.7% CTR reduction when AI Overviews appear (8% CTR with them versus 15% without). Queries that trigger AI Overviews hit 80-83% zero-click rates according to Similarweb data.

Question 14

How do Google quality raters influence search rankings?

Accepted Answer

Google's quality raters evaluate search results using E-E-A-T criteria, but their ratings do not directly adjust rankings. Instead, rater feedback helps Google's engineers understand whether algorithm changes are moving results in the right direction. As Google's John Mueller has explained, the quality rater guidelines are not turned one-to-one into ranking code. The relationship is a calibration loop: raters assess quality, and engineers use that assessment to refine algorithms over time.

Question 15

How do I find what is causing poor INP on my site?

Accepted Answer

Use Chrome's Long Animation Frames API (LoAF), available since Chrome 123, which provides script-level attribution for slow interactions. Unlike the older Long Tasks API, LoAF identifies the specific script — including third-party analytics, consent managers, and ad scripts — responsible for blocking the main thread during an interaction.

Question 16

How do I know if my site has a crawl budget problem?

Accepted Answer

Check two things: whether your pages get indexed within a day of publishing, and whether your Search Console coverage report shows a growing 'Discovered, currently not indexed' count. Google's thresholds are sites with 1M+ pages updating weekly or 10K+ pages updating daily. If your content indexes promptly and coverage looks clean, crawl budget isn't your issue.

Question 17

How do I measure AI search traffic and citation performance?

Accepted Answer

Set up a custom AI/LLM Traffic channel in GA4 using a regex pattern matching chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai as session sources, tracked on rolling 28-day windows. Beyond traffic, run weekly scripted citation audits: query each AI platform with your target terms, log whether you're cited, and track changes over time. AI-referred visitors convert at 4.4x the rate of traditional organic visitors, so measure conversion rates alongside volume.

Question 18

How do I structure content so AI systems cite it?

Accepted Answer

Place your core answer in the first 30-60 words of each section, then expand with evidence. Write in extractable 40-60 word blocks that make sense in isolation. Use question-based headings that mirror how people actually ask questions. Implement FAQPage schema (which increases citation likelihood by 3.2x). Update content quarterly with fresh statistics and update the dateModified timestamp — content older than three months sees sharp citation drops.

Question 19

How do you audit your brand's visibility in AI search platforms?

Accepted Answer

Run 20–30 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini covering five categories: identity, pricing, comparison, category, and reputation queries. Check whether your brand appears, whether the information is accurate, and whether you receive citations (linked sources) or just mentions (unlinked references). This manual process takes 6–8 hours and provides a baseline before investing in monitoring tools.

Question 20

How do you calculate ROI for schema markup?

Accepted Answer

Establish CTR baselines before deployment, annotate deployment dates in GA4, wait 2-4 weeks for Google to re-crawl, then calculate: incremental clicks from rich results multiplied by average CPC for those keywords. A page earning 500 extra clicks per month on $3 CPC keywords represents $1,500 in equivalent paid search value.

Question 21

How does AI crawler traffic affect crawl budget in 2025?

Accepted Answer

AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) have surged 15x according to Cloudflare's 2025 data, competing with Googlebot for the same server resources. Since Google throttles its crawl rate based on server responsiveness, increased AI crawler load can indirectly reduce your crawl budget by slowing down server response times. Managing AI crawler access via robots.txt has become a factor in maintaining healthy Googlebot crawl rates.

Question 22

How does AI referral traffic convert compared to organic search?

Accepted Answer

AI-referred visitors convert to sign-ups at 1.66% versus 0.15% from organic search — an 11x difference. They also spend 67.7% more time on pages (9 min 19 sec vs. 5 min 33 sec). This higher engagement likely reflects pre-qualification: visitors arriving via AI citations have already had their query matched to your content by the model.

Question 23

How does FAQPage schema affect AI citations?

Accepted Answer

FAQPage schema significantly increases the likelihood of being cited in AI Overviews and LLM responses because it provides pre-formatted question-answer pairs that AI systems can extract and attribute cleanly. Structured data reduces the parsing burden on AI systems and signals that content is authoritative and well-organized. Pages with FAQPage markup see 2-3x higher citation rates in AI Overviews compared to equivalent unstructured content, particularly for how-to and definitional queries.

Question 24

How does Google detect programmatic spam pages?

Accepted Answer

Google uses both automated spam detection systems and manual review (issuing roughly 750K manual penalties monthly). Detection signals include near-identical page templates with only variable substitution, thin content under 300 words, orphaned pages with no internal links, keyword cannibalization between similar pages, and low engagement metrics like high bounce rates and poor conversion.

Question 25

How does INP affect Google rankings?

Accepted Answer

INP affects rankings as part of Core Web Vitals, which function as a tie-breaker signal rather than a dominant ranking factor. DebugBear's analysis found only about a 10% difference in pass rates between position 1 and position 9 results. There are gradual benefits from improvement, but no additional ranking boost for scoring beyond the 'good' threshold.

Frequently Asked Questions

AI Search

Industry

Infrastructure

SEO

Technical SEO

Frequently Asked Questions

AI Search

Do AI Overviews and Google AI Mode cite the same sources?

Do backlinks help content get cited by LLMs like ChatGPT?

Do ChatGPT and Perplexity cite the same sources?

How do you audit your brand's visibility in AI search platforms?

How does AI referral traffic convert compared to organic search?

How much do AI visibility tracking tools cost?

How often do LLM citation sources change?

What content format gets cited most by AI Overviews?

What content formats get cited most by AI search platforms?

What is brand visibility percentage in AI search?

What is position bias in LLM citations?

What percentage of AI Overview citations come from top-10 organic results?

What percentage of AI referral traffic comes from ChatGPT?

Which AI platforms should I track my brand's visibility on?

Why can't I track AI search visibility the same way I track Google rankings?

Why do different AI platforms show different brands for the same query?

Why does my GA4 undercount AI traffic?

Why does YouTube get cited so often in AI Overviews?

Why is Gemini growing faster than ChatGPT in referral traffic?

Industry

How does FAQPage schema affect AI citations?

Infrastructure

What do AI crawlers actually see when they visit JavaScript-heavy sites?

SEO

Can AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot execute JavaScript?

Can BigQuery show anonymized Search Console queries?

Do author bios and bylines improve Google rankings?

Do branded searches still get clicks from Google?

Do small sites lose more query data in Search Console than large sites?

Does adding noindex tags save crawl budget?

Does publishing more content always improve topical authority?

How did Google's February 2026 core update affect topical authority?

How do AI Overviews affect Google Search Console impression and CTR data?

How do AI Overviews affect website click-through rates?

How do Google quality raters influence search rankings?

How do I know if my site has a crawl budget problem?

How do I measure AI search traffic and citation performance?

How do I structure content so AI systems cite it?

How do you calculate ROI for schema markup?

How does AI crawler traffic affect crawl budget in 2025?

How does Google detect programmatic spam pages?

How many articles do you need to build topical authority?

Is E-E-A-T a Google ranking factor?

Is programmatic SEO still viable in 2026?

Should I use server-side rendering or static site generation for SEO?

What foundational schema types should every website implement?

What happens to deprecated schema markup on my site?

What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and how does it differ from traditional SEO?

What is Navboost and how does it affect SEO?

What is siteFocusScore in Google's ranking system?

What is the difference between programmatic SEO and scaled content abuse?

What is the single highest-leverage fix for AI search visibility on JavaScript sites?

What makes Zapier's programmatic SEO successful?

What percentage of Google Search Console clicks come from anonymized queries?

What percentage of Google searches are zero-click?

What should publishers do about declining organic search traffic?

Which AI search platforms should I prioritize for AEO?

Which schema markup types actually produce rich results in 2026?

Why do impressions and CTR numbers differ between the Performance tab and Pages tab in Google Search Console?

Why do pages show 'Discovered, currently not indexed' in Google Search Console?

Why does average position get worse when my page is performing better?

Why does Google hide queries in Search Console?

Why is faceted navigation the biggest crawl budget problem?

Technical SEO

How do I find what is causing poor INP on my site?

How does INP affect Google rankings?

What is a good INP score?

What is the difference between INP and FID?