Welcome to a new edition of the Ahrefs’ Digest.
Here's our meme of the week:
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Quick search marketing news
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Google announces the rollout of the March 2026 core update, the first major ranking update of the year.
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Google releases an early preview of WebMCP, a new protocol designed to standardize how AI agents interact with and navigate websites.
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Google expands Search Live to over 200 countries and 98 languages, powered by the new Gemini 3.1 Flash Live model.
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Google launches the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) in partnership with major retailers to enable AI agents to manage the end-to-end purchase journey.
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Google introduces Veo 3.1 Lite, a cost-effective video generation model now available for testing in Google AI Studio.
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Google tests a new Search feature that uses AI to rewrite and replace original website headlines and page titles in the SERPs.
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Google completes the rollout of the March 2026 spam update in less than 20 hours.
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Best of the week
What AI Writing Tools Get Wrong (And The Stack I Use Instead): AI tools fail because they prioritize fast writing over accurate research. Most platforms just recycle the same mediocre, outdated content already ranking on Google. To actually stand out, you must build your own verified data files before letting an LLM touch the draft.
Google Web Guide: What It Is, How It Works, and What It Means for SEO: Google's new Web Guide turns the traditional list of blue links into a dynamic, magazine-style layout. By using "query fan-out" to group results by sub-topic, it actually encourages more clicks than previous AI features. It’s a rare win for SEOs in the age of generative search.
Traffic Analysis of 7,500+ Websites: Ahrefs Vs Google Analytics Vs Google Search Console. Unexpected Results: Don't trust any single source of truth for traffic data. This study of 7,500 sites found that Google Analytics and Search Console have a surprisingly low correlation of 0.42. Ahrefs actually aligns more closely with Search Console, but you still need to compare multiple tools to avoid buying links on duds.
How Google Click Signals Drive SEO Rankings and AI Answers: Google treats your clicks as a giant "Mechanical Turk" to determine what’s actually useful. By tracking long clicks and final destinations, the algorithm identifies which pages truly satisfy a search. If you want to stay relevant in AI-generated answers, you have to win the click first.
Reddit Vs B2B SaaS: 8,566 Keywords Expose Who's Winning: Reddit is eating B2B SaaS for breakfast. A study of over 8,500 keywords shows the platform now outranks major brands for high-intent software queries. If you aren't optimizing for "Reddit SEO" or participating in these communities, you’re losing your best customers to a thread.
GEO Experiment: How AI Highlighted the 1 Bad Review We Got in 24 Years: AI doesn't care if a bad review is eight years old or a total outlier. It sees repetitive claims and treats them as fact. If you aren't proactively publishing your own data and buried success stories, you're letting a bot write your brand's reputation for you.
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Latest from our podcast
This week’s podcast guest is Luke Winter, founder and creative director of Deadpan Agency, specializing in B2B comedy video campaigns. Here’s what we covered:
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Why B2B brands need comedy videos — not just explainers
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The $50,000 investment for a full comedy campaign
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3-month timeline from concept to delivery
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Why humor beats celebrity endorsements for B2B
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How to create content that scrollers stop for emotionally
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Case study: ROI that paid for itself in weeks
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The StoryBrand principle: Your customer is Frodo, not you
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Creating distinct brand assets without celebrities
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Why "bad" comedy won't damage your brand (but bad audio will)
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AI video generation: The prompt problem nobody talks about
Listen to the full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
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Latest from our YouTube
How This Site Beat Amazon in Google Search (3 Step Strategy)
Chewy beat Amazon by turning customer service into an SEO growth loop. They own the long tail by acquiring topical authority, then use high-touch support moments to earn viral backlinks. Don't fight on price. Fight by scaling trust and human expertise across the SERPs.
Patrick Stox vs Ryan Law - Ahrefs Use Cases Showdown
Skip the basic tutorials and watch two veterans battle it out with high-leverage Ahrefs workflows. It is a rare chance to see how experienced operators actually think, rather than just which buttons they click. Steal their best use cases to move the needle in your own work.
See you next week,
Si Quan
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