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A Digital Growth Marketer & Consultant.
Signal through the Slop
Hear about what's happening in the industry of AI Search.
Signal Through the Slop — Week 20, May 2026
AI search is changing how brands get found, recommended, and trusted. Each week, we pull signal from Reddit, LinkedIn, and industry research to track what's actually moving in the space. Here's what caught our attention this week. What Reddit is saying this week The loudest signal on Reddit this week isn't about a new tactic — it's about a measurement dead end. Practitioners who bought into AI visibility tools are now staring at citation share dashboards and asking: "What am
Andrew Riker
1 hour ago5 min read
Signal Through the Slop — Week 19, May 2026
AI search is changing how brands get found, recommended, and trusted. Each week, we pull signal from Reddit, LinkedIn, and industry research to track what's actually moving in the space. Here's what caught our attention this week. What Reddit is saying this week Three storylines drove Reddit's AI search conversation this week: the ripple from SEO Week 2026, the 5WPR Citation Index drop, and the ongoing Google AI Mode behavioral questions. The community maturity read is nuance
Andrew Riker
5 days ago4 min read


Signal Through the Slop — Week 17, April 2026
AI search is changing how brands get found, recommended, and trusted. Each week, we pull signal from Reddit, LinkedIn, and industry research to track what's actually moving in the space. Here's what caught our attention this week. What Reddit is saying this week The loudest conversation on Reddit right now is a simple, frustrated question: how do you actually know if you're showing up in AI search? Across r/SEO, r/bigseo, and r/marketing, practitioners are running variations
Andrew Riker
Apr 235 min read
Surfaced AI Weekly Search News — April 23, 2026
Published April 23, 2026 — Weekly intelligence brief covering AI search developments, practitioner signals, and research findings relevant to marketing teams navigating AI-driven discovery. TL;DR — Week of April 23, 2026 Two things define this week. First, OpenAI launched CPC ads in ChatGPT at $3–$5/click, and the marketing community is still processing what it means for organic AI citation strategy. The dominant question across Reddit and LinkedIn: "if we can pay for ChatGPT
Andrew Riker
Apr 239 min read
Surfaced AI Weekly Search News — April 22, 2026
Your weekly briefing on what's happening in AI Search: what Reddit's saying, what LinkedIn's signaling, and what the data actually shows. Published every Monday by Surfaced. REDDIT AI SEARCH PULSE — April 22, 2026 Subreddits checked: r/SEO, r/bigseo, r/marketing, r/digmarketing, r/ChatGPT, r/AskMarketing, r/ecommerce, r/SaaS Date window: April 15–22, 2026 TL;DR Reddit is in full-blown GEO awareness mode this week, but the sophistication gap is real. The dominant tension is br
Andrew Riker
Apr 227 min read
Surfaced AI Weekly Search News — April 20, 2026
Your weekly briefing on what's happening in AI Search: what Reddit's saying, what LinkedIn's signaling, and what the data actually shows. Published every Monday by Surfaced.vReddit AI Search Pulse — April 20, 2026 Subreddits checked: r/SEO, r/bigseo, r/marketing, r/digmarketing, r/ChatGPT, r/AskMarketing, r/SaaS, r/ecommerce Date window: April 14–20, 2026 TL;DR Two things dominated Reddit this week: the Google AI Mode split-screen update and HubSpot's AEO tool launch. Both la
Andrew Riker
Apr 2112 min read
Surfaced AI Weekly Search News — March 30, 2026
Part 1: Reddit AI Search Pulse TL;DR The Reddit signal this week is loud on one thing: measurement confusion is still the dominant pain. Marketers who've spent years refining dashboards have no visibility into AI search performance, and the community is asking the same question in five different ways — "how do I know if any of this is working?" The emergence of platform-specific citation fragmentation (ChatGPT vs. Perplexity vs. Google AI Mode each pulling from different sour
Andrew Riker
Mar 307 min read
Surfaced AI Weekly Search News — March 24, 2026
Your weekly briefing on what's happening in AI Search: what Reddit's saying, what LinkedIn's signaling, and what the data actually shows. Published every Monday by Surfaced. THIS WEEK'S SIGNAL Zero-click is no longer a warning — it's the default. With 93% of AI search sessions now ending without a website click, and Google AI Overviews cutting CTR for top-ranked pages by 58%, the entire premise of search marketing is shifting underneath us. The brands winning in AI search are
Andrew Riker
Mar 247 min read


Answer Engine Optimization tldr
Based on insights from Profound's comprehensive AEO playbook I've been watching search behavior evolve for years, but nothing prepared me...
Andrew Riker
Aug 23, 20255 min read


Mastering Prompt Engineering with the DICE Framework: Your Guide to Effective AI Communication
Alrighty, let me share with you the framework on how I prompt. Here is something I learned from Hubspot, which they worked with Profound...
Andrew Riker
Jul 31, 20255 min read


Beyond the Buzzwords: Deciphering SEO's New Alphabet for 2025
It all started with SEO, now it's acronym soup. The world of online visibility is changing fast, especially with AI becoming a bigger...
Andrew Riker
Jul 2, 20255 min read


AI Search + LLM Optimization
AI and LLMs are reshaping our online experiences, influencing SEO, and why measurement and strategic optimization are essential for businesses today.
Andrew Riker
Jul 1, 20253 min read
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