Affiliate marketing in the AI era, entity SEO basics, ChatGPT’s own search index, Google ranking recovery timelines, and how Ahrefs uses AI without making slop.
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Hi Marketers,
Welcome to the new issue of HighDegree*: Cutting Through the Noise in SEO & Digital Marketing
AI is reshaping every corner of digital marketing right now, from how you promote products as an affiliate to how search engines understand your brand, to how ChatGPT retrieves information in the first place. This week we dig into all of it. We have a practical guide on keeping affiliate revenue alive as zero-click search grows, a clear breakdown of entity SEO and why it matters for both Google and AI, new reporting on ChatGPT’s own search infrastructure, straight talk from Google on ranking recovery timelines, and Ahrefs’ honest account of using AI in content production without publishing garbage.
Let’s jump in.
➞ Digital Marketing This Week
- Affiliate marketing is not dead, but zero-click search is forcing a strategy shift
- Entities are the foundation modern SEO and GEO share
- ChatGPT built its own search index and it is called Labrador
- Google says ranking recovery after algorithm updates takes many months
- How Ahrefs uses AI for every article without turning out slop
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➞ Affiliate Marketing in the AI Era Requires a Strategy Shift
Zero-click searches hit 25.3% of US desktop searches in June 2026, up from 22.4% just three months before. Kinsta’s affiliate marketing guide lays out what this means for publishers: generic, keyword-stuffed affiliate content is increasingly answered directly in search, so you are competing with AI summaries, not other sites.
The practical response is to move down the funnel. Top-of-funnel content explaining basics is exactly what AI handles well. What AI cannot replicate is hands-on testing, real benchmarks, proprietary screenshots, and honest evaluations that include flaws. Sam Gooch, Head of Performance Marketing at Kinsta, puts it plainly: one comparison page that converts is worth more than dozens of informational articles that no longer draw meaningful traffic.
The guide also makes a strong case for channel diversification. Email lists, YouTube, and niche communities on Reddit or Discord let you reach audiences outside search algorithms entirely. Building those relationships now protects you against further search shifts later. And if you are chasing AI citation data, Bing Webmaster Tools has a free AI Performance report that shows which pages Copilot is citing and what queries triggered them.
Read the full report from kinsta.com ➞
Entity SEO connects directly to affiliate authority, and the next piece explains exactly how to build that foundation.
➞ Entities Are the Foundation Google and AI Systems Both Depend On
Google’s Knowledge Graph has existed for over 15 years: a database of entities, people, places, organisations, and topics, plus the relationships between them. Harry Clarkson-Bennett’s piece on Leadership in SEO argues that entity SEO is as close to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as you can get, because both Google and large language models (LLMs) need a clear, consistent picture of who you are before they surface you reliably.
The framework has four parts. Own your controlled properties first: website, social profiles, Google Business Profile, and Wikidata entries should all describe your brand consistently. Describe clearly, with internal links and schema markup connecting your key pages. Prove credibility through author pages and real publication history. Then earn mentions from relevant sources that reinforce your topical authority.
The piece also introduces entity drift: as mentions accumulate across the web, they can diverge from how you want your brand described. Monitoring how LLMs describe you over time is a quick check on whether your signals are staying coherent. Start with a simple entity map from Search Console data, listing your primary entity, connected people and topics, and the evidence behind each relationship.
Read the full report from leadershipinseo.com ➞
Knowing how information retrieval systems understand your brand matters even more when the system retrieving information is ChatGPT with its own index.
➞ ChatGPT Built Its Own Search Index Called Labrador
For two years, the working assumption was that ChatGPT pulled search results entirely through Bing and Google. Peec AI’s investigation proves otherwise. Between May and July 2026, a field called result_source appeared in ChatGPT’s live server-side data streams. It carried four values: Labrador (OpenAI’s own index), Bright, Oxylabs, and SERP. Labrador is not a single index but a family of them, covering web pages, PDFs, YouTube, news with separate recency tiers, Wikipedia, local, finance, legal, medical, shopping, and images.
OpenAI’s own job postings confirm the scope. One role describes designing indexing systems at exabyte scale (that is 10^18 bytes), and another specifically names dense, sparse, and hybrid retrieval techniques. Nick Turley, head of ChatGPT, testified during Google’s antitrust trial that OpenAI began building Labrador in 2023, aiming to answer 80% of queries from it by year’s end, though full independence from outside providers may take five or more years.
The takeaway for marketers: Bing visibility is not a reliable proxy for ChatGPT visibility. In shopping especially, OpenAI is actively A/B testing Labrador against scraped search results, with five experiments running in early September. If your business has local listings, Yelp and TripAdvisor matter because ChatGPT treats them as licensed partners.
Read the full report from peec.ai ➞
And while understanding ChatGPT’s infrastructure helps with future visibility, fixing current Google ranking issues requires patience, not speed.
➞ Google Says Ranking Recovery After Algorithm Issues Takes Months
A Reddit thread from an SEO who accidentally disavowed valuable backlinks prompted Google’s John Mueller to lay out a point that many site owners find uncomfortable: fixing the problems that caused a ranking drop does not mean rankings return quickly. For issues tied to a broader algorithm update, Mueller’s direct words were that recovery can take “sometimes many months” before any effect is visible.
The post involved two overlapping problems. A suspended Google Business Profile and a link disavow gone wrong, where over 800 links were filed, including some that were likely contributing to rankings. Mueller clarified that link disavows take three to six months to process incrementally, so a ranking collapse happening within days of filing is almost certainly unrelated to the disavow.
His advice was practical: clean up the disavow file to reflect only links you actually control and know to be spammy, then look for other causes, particularly broad technical issues. The article also highlights that buying guest posts through services like Fiverr creates ongoing spam risk. If your site already carries that risk, a Google spam update may be the actual cause of a ranking drop, and the road back will be a long one.
Read the full report from searchenginejournal.com ➞
That patience principle applies to content quality too. The final article shows how Ahrefs builds a human layer into every AI-assisted piece they publish.
➞ How Ahrefs Uses AI for Every Article Without Producing Slop
Every article on the Ahrefs blog involves AI in some form. Their team built a pipeline that researches, outlines, drafts, and fact-checks a near-publish-ready article in six to twelve minutes. They are not using it to flood the web with content, and this article explains why.
Their definition of AI slop skips past stylistic signals like banned phrases or punctuation tics. Slop is content published without enough human understanding, judgment, evidence, or original contribution to justify the reader’s attention. The publisher skips the hard work; everyone else pays for it.
The workflow has four checkpoints. Before drafting, a human decides the angle and supplies raw material AI could not generate on its own: interview notes, proprietary data, failed experiments, internal knowledge. At each stage from outline to evidence to draft, a human passes explicit judgment before moving forward. Every article has both an owner who can defend its claims and an editor with the authority to say no. Their data also shows: AI-generated pages can rank in the top three, but as AI use has grown across the industry, search performance has tended to decline because teams use it to skip the difficult parts, not speed them up.
Read the full report from ahrefs.com ➞
➞ From Google
Everything from Google search this week —
→ Google Says DMA Changes in EU Resulted in Worst Search Quality Degradation Ever (searchengineland.com) – Google says complying with EU Digital Markets Act rules produced the largest reduction in search quality the company has ever seen.
→ Google Warns of Lower Quality as It Revamps Europe Search Results (reuters.com) – Google is overhauling search results across the European Economic Area to avoid DMA fines, and has publicly cautioned that quality will suffer.
→ Google Rolls Out Redesigned Search Results Across the EEA (searchenginejournal.com) – The new EEA search layout is now live, with structural changes to how results and features are displayed across the region.
→ Regional Differences in Google Search Experience Documentation (seroundtable.com) – Google has published documentation explaining how the search experience differs across regions due to regulatory requirements.
→ Google Says Old Low-Value Pages May Affect Site Recovery (searchenginejournal.com) – Even after quality improvements, old thin pages on a site can slow ranking recovery and should be addressed as part of any cleanup.
→ UK Site Loses 98% of News Search Visibility After .com Move (searchenginejournal.com) – A UK publisher migrating to a .com domain saw near-total collapse in Google News visibility, a cautionary example for publishers considering domain changes.
→ Google AI Overviews Get a Character Counter Tool (seroundtable.com) – Google has added a character counter inside the AI Overviews interface, giving editors a quick way to gauge response length.
→ Google Can Lose Faith in Sites Based on Low-Value Programmatic SEO (seroundtable.com) – Google’s systems can lose trust in a site as a whole when it detects patterns of mass-produced, low-quality programmatic content.
→ Google Disavow Tool Does Have Effects, Confirms John Mueller (seroundtable.com) – Mueller confirmed the disavow tool works as intended, but clarified that effects take months to appear and are often misread as short-term causes of ranking drops.
→ Google Search Using Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode (seroundtable.com) – Google has upgraded its AI Mode to run on Gemini 3.8 Flash, its latest and faster reasoning model.
→ Google AI Mode Gemini 3.8 Flash Not Link-Friendly? (seroundtable.com) – Early observations suggest Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode is surfacing fewer clickable citations than previous versions.
→ Google to Fix Citation Bug with Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode (searchengineland.com) – Google has acknowledged a citation display issue with the Gemini 3.8 Flash rollout and says a fix is on the way.
→ Google DeepMind Says Gemini Is Evolving From Chatbot to AI Agent (searchenginejournal.com) – Google DeepMind’s latest framing positions Gemini as an autonomous agent capable of multi-step reasoning, not just conversation.
→ Google AI Mode Prices Differ From Product Carousel for Same Items (searchenginejournal.com) – Users are noticing price discrepancies between AI Mode responses and standard product carousel results for identical products.
→ Publishers Noticing Google News Tab Content Disappearing (seroundtable.com) – Multiple publishers have reported content dropping out of the Google News tab without clear explanation.
→ Google Responds to Sitemap Technique That Forces Daily Crawling (searchenginejournal.com) – Google addressed a circulating tactic that uses sitemap manipulation to trigger more frequent crawling, clarifying it does not guarantee ranking benefits.
→ Google Ads Collapsing Sitelinks That You Can Expand (seroundtable.com) – Google Ads is testing a collapsed sitelink format in which users can expand additional links with a click, changing how ad real estate is managed.
➞ AI + Social
Find out what’s happening in the social media and artificial intelligence world —
→ OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra Now Available in Microsoft Applications (sdtimes.com) – GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s latest model generation, has begun rolling out inside Microsoft’s application suite.
→ OpenAI Releases ChatGPT Images 2.5 with Sharper Details and More Precise Editing (9to5mac.com) – The updated image generation model brings improved detail fidelity and more accurate inpainting for targeted edits.
→ Hackers Are Stealing Claude Tokens From Subscribers (techcrunch.com) – TechCrunch reports an active theft campaign targeting Claude API tokens, with attackers monetizing stolen access.
→ Some Sites Use llms.txt Like robots.txt, Common Crawl Finds (searchenginejournal.com) – Common Crawl data shows a growing number of sites adopting llms.txt as a signal file for AI crawler preferences.
→ Meta Debuts Its Muse AI Agent (techcrunch.com) – Meta has launched Muse, a personal AI agent aimed at consumers, raising open questions about trust and data use.
→ Australia Moves to Enable Algorithm Opt-Outs (socialmediatoday.com) – Australia is advancing legislation that would let users opt out of algorithmic content curation on major platforms.
→ Pinterest Renames Campaign Objectives to Simplify Ad Focus (socialmediatoday.com) – Pinterest has updated its campaign objective labels to align more clearly with advertiser outcomes.
→ YouTube Expands Watch With to More Creators (socialmediatoday.com) – YouTube’s co-watching feature is opening up to a broader pool of creators following its initial pilot.
→ Threads Updates Profile Analytics Display (socialmediatoday.com) – Threads has refreshed its analytics view to give creators more readable at-a-glance metrics on their profiles.
→ LinkedIn Shares Insights Into Younger Professionals (socialmediatoday.com) – LinkedIn’s latest data report covers how Gen Z and younger millennial professionals are using the platform.
→ Introducing Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber (blog.google) – Google announces two new Gemini variants, with Flash Cyber carrying additional safety layers for security-sensitive applications.
→ GPT-6 Astra: A New Generation of Intelligence (openai.com) – OpenAI’s official overview of GPT-6 Astra, detailing capability improvements over the previous model generation.
→ Meta Debuts Muse Spark 1.3 as Personal Agent Work Continues (axios.com) – An earlier iteration of Meta’s Muse agent framework, Muse Spark 1.3, reveals the product’s development roadmap.
→ Meta Is Switching to Slack Because It Says It’s Better for AI Agents (businessinsider.com) – Meta is migrating internal communications to Slack, citing the platform’s architecture as better suited to AI agent workflows.
→ X Money Will Be the Only Payout Option for US Creators (socialmediatoday.com) – X is requiring US-based creators to receive payments exclusively through X Money, removing third-party payout alternatives.
→ YouTube Updates Branded Content Sourcing and Disclosures (socialmediatoday.com) – YouTube has revised how branded partnerships are tagged and disclosed in videos and Shorts.
→ YouTube Says Bigger Thumbnails Drove More Long-Form Views (searchenginejournal.com) – YouTube’s own data shows that testing larger thumbnail sizes correlated with measurable increases in long-form video engagement.
→ A Guide to the Anatomy of Effective Commerce Agents (claude.com) – Anthropic outlines the components that make AI commerce agents reliable, covering decision-making, trust signals, and task scope.
→ Turn Google Docs, PDFs, and Word Files Into Video Summaries in Google Vids (googleblog.com) – Google Workspace is rolling out a feature that converts documents directly into narrated video summaries inside Google Vids.
➞ Worth Reading
These are the articles that will help you refine your marketing knowledge —
→ How I Built an MCP Server for Agents to Use My Algo Update List (mariehaynes.com) – Marie Haynes walks through building an MCP server that lets AI agents query her algorithm update history directly, a practical example of making your own data machine-readable.
→ Google’s August 2026 Spam Update: Case Studies (gsqi.com) – Real case studies covering how the August 2026 spam update hit scaled content abuse, AI content, programmatic pages, and thin affiliate sites.
→ Study: How Keywords in Business Names Impact Google Local Pack Rank and AI Search (whitespark.ca) – Whitespark’s research on whether having a target keyword in your business name still moves the needle in local packs and AI-generated answers.
→ Attention, Crawl, Render: The 3 Budgets Shaping Every Architecture Decision (sitebulb.com) – A sharp framework for thinking about how search engines allocate attention, crawl capacity, and rendering resources across your site architecture.
→ Can AI Agents Complete Tasks on Your Site? My Agentic Search Readiness Audit Framework (oritmutznik.com) – Orit Mutznik’s audit framework for checking whether your site is structured for agentic search, with a free skill included.
→ The Semantic Data Layer: Building a Brand AI Can Understand (advancedwebranking.com) – Martha and Mark van Berkel on building a semantic data layer that gives AI systems a structured, unambiguous view of your brand.
➞ What This All Means for Your Strategy
Are you building something AI can replicate, or something it cannot? That is the question each of these five pieces is answering from a different angle.
Pick one and act on it this week. Audit your entity consistency across owned properties. Check how ChatGPT describes your brand in lockdown mode. Shift content toward the middle and bottom of the funnel. Reset your timeline if you are in ranking recovery. Or put a real human editorial gate on your next AI-assisted article before it goes live.
Until next week,
— Nishat from HighDegree* Marketing
P.S. Have a question about implementing these strategies? Hit reply – we read every email and often feature reader questions in future issues.
➞ Who is Nishat Shahriyar?
I’ve been a Digital Marketing Strategist since 2007. Today I’m the Product Marketing Lead at Fluent Forms (a WordPress form and lead-generation plugin used by 700K people), FluentPlayer (a WordPress Video Player Plugin) and Ninja Tables (a WordPress table builder plugin used by 80K people). Before that, I led marketing at Fluent Support (a WordPress helpdesk plugin used by 10K people).
Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on X/Twitter at @rednishat for SEO & Marketing updates.