What the May update, Reddit, and AI citations mean for your site.
Hi Marketers,
Welcome to the new issue of HighDegree*: Cutting Through the Noise in SEO & Digital Marketing.
Search just had one of its busiest weeks in recent memory.
Google’s May 2026 core update finished rolling out, Reddit came out on top across every single niche, and new data showed that over two-thirds of Google searches now end without anyone clicking a link.
Meanwhile, research is raising uncomfortable questions about who actually gets cited by AI and whether being mentioned even matters if people don’t find you convincing. A lot to work through.
Let’s get into it.
➞ Digital Marketing This Week
- 90% of AI citations for B2B brands come from sites you don’t own
- How the May 2026 core update rewarded intent fit over raw authority
- Less than one-third of Google searches now send a click
- Reddit now holds top 3 positions in all 20 tracked niches
- Getting mentioned by AI doesn’t automatically build trust
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➞ Your Brand’s Own Website Accounts for Just 10% of AI Citations
Foundation Inc and AirOps tracked 57 million AI citations across 50 B2B SaaS brands over 60 days (December 2025 through February 2026). The headline number: only 10.15% of citations in large language model (LLM) responses linked to brand-owned domains. The other 90% came from Reddit threads, YouTube videos, review sites, competitor pages, and community forums. In more than two out of three AI responses, the brand’s own content wasn’t cited at all, even when the brand itself was being discussed.
The practical implication is significant. If you’ve been treating your website as your primary channel for AI visibility, you’re working with roughly 10% of the picture. The platforms that actually shape how AI describes your brand: G2, Capterra, Reddit, YouTube, niche forums are ones most marketers treat as secondary. For any business trying to show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews for buying-intent queries, the off-site content footprint matters as much as anything published on your own domain.
Read the full report from foundationinc.co ➞
The May 2026 core update reshuffled a lot of rankings in ways that connect directly to where those AI citations land, so the next finding is worth reading alongside this one.
➞ What Actually Won and Lost in Google’s May 2026 Core Update
SEO consultant Aleyda Solis analyzed domain-level visibility shifts in Sistrix for the US and UK during the May 2026 core update (rollout: May 21 to June 2). Her main finding: Google isn’t simply rewarding high-authority sites anymore. It’s rewarding the source type that best fits what the searcher actually wants.
Solis calls this an “intent-destination reset.” Some highly authoritative domains; including nytimes.com, nature.com, and nih.gov lost ground despite their domain strength, because other sources were a closer match for what the query demanded. UK ecommerce visibility shifted strongly toward local-market entities. Category-defining job and travel marketplaces gained, while generic aggregators dropped. Health and Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) results split by source confidence and result fit, not by vertical alone.
The takeaway for site owners: stop benchmarking on authority in the abstract. For each priority query cluster, figure out what result type Google is actually rewarding right now: definition, product category, official source, local result, video, comparison and confirm your ranking page genuinely is that type, not a near-match a better-fit source already owns.
Read the full report from aleydasolis.com ➞
Knowing which source types are winning matters even more when you consider how few people are clicking through from search in the first place.
➞ 68% of Google Searches Now End Without a Click
Rand Fishkin at SparkToro, working with Similarweb’s clickstream panel, found that 68.01% of Google searches in the first four months of 2026 ended without a click. That’s up from 60.45% in 2024, a jump of 7.5 percentage points in two years, and the fastest acceleration in the past decade. Ten years ago, the zero-click rate sat around 45%.
The primary driver is AI Overviews, now present on more than 20% of all searches. According to Ahrefs data cited in the report, when an AI Overview appears, click-through rates (CTR) drop by nearly 60%. Traffic data from 75,000 opted-in domains shows Google’s referral share fell about 22% between June 2025 and May 2026.
What this means in practice: SEO traffic as a standalone strategy is harder than it was two years ago. The sites that are growing despite this trend are leaning into brand search, direct traffic, newsletters, and social; channels where they own the relationship. Showing up in AI answers is one path forward, but as the next article suggests, simply being mentioned isn’t always enough.
Read the full report from sparktoro.com ➞
While clicks from Google shrink, one platform keeps defying the trend and it just got more dominant after the May update.
➞ Reddit Now Ranks in the Top 3 Across Every Single Niche
SE Ranking tracked 100,000 keywords across 20 niches before and after the May 2026 core update. Reddit’s overall top 3 share rose to 10.24%; up from 8.56% after the March update and 9.19% after December’s. That’s roughly one in ten top 3 spots in the tracked data. Reddit also took the number one position more often. Crucially, this growth showed up in all 20 niches, not just a handful.
The biggest gains came in experience-led categories: niches where people look for real opinions, first-hand accounts, and peer recommendations rather than polished editorial content. That contrast with March is telling; after that update, some analysis found Reddit and similar user-generated content (UGC) sites had lost ground to brand sites, but May reversed that trend.
YouTube’s regular organic share dropped to 2.14% from 2.50%; though this likely reflects YouTube moving more into video carousels and SERP features rather than losing actual visibility. For content creators and brand marketers, the implication is clear: if Reddit discussions about your product or industry don’t reflect well on you, that’s now a direct rankings and reputation problem, not just a community relations issue.
Read the full report from searchenginejournal.com ➞
Reddit dominating search is one thing, but if being mentioned in AI answers doesn’t automatically build trust, the whole visibility game gets more complicated.
➞ Getting Mentioned by AI Isn’t the Same as Being Believed
Communications agency Burson, working with AI marketing platform Profound, analyzed more than 55,000 “believability” scores across seven AI platforms. The study called “The Credibility Paradox” looked at how convincing AI-generated answers about 85 companies actually were. The finding: brands can appear frequently in AI answers and still fail to come across as credible.
The analysis found that concrete, specific claims rated higher than abstract ones. When AI platforms answered questions about a company’s products or workplace culture, those answers tended to feel more believable than answers about governance or leadership. Business audiences were rated 10% more likely to find AI responses credible compared to general consumers. Business audiences responded most to innovation claims, while consumers weighted company culture and product specifics more heavily.
A few caveats worth noting: the scores are model predictions, not real survey responses, and Burson sells reputation consulting services, so read the methodology with that in mind. Still, the core point holds; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) isn’t just about frequency of mentions. The quality, specificity, and source credibility of those mentions shapes whether the resulting answer actually convinces anyone. Getting cited is step one; what the AI says about you is what matters after.
Read the full report from searchenginejournal.com ➞
➞ From Google
Everything from Google search this week —
→ Google Chrome Won’t Set AI Mode as the Default Search Experience (seroundtable.com)
→ Google AI Mode Tests Citation Counts & Favicons Under Results (seroundtable.com)
→ Google Search Profiles Insights & Analytics (seroundtable.com)
→ New Google Document on Third-Party SEO Tools, Services & Advice (seroundtable.com)
→ Google to Update Local Services Ads Policies in July (searchengineland.com)
→ Google Says Hyphenated Domain Names Are Okay for SEO (searchenginejournal.com)
→ Google Shopping Results Tests Linking Directly to Merchant Site (seroundtable.com)
→ New Google Ads Campaign Guidance With Experiment Power Score (seroundtable.com)
→ Google Adds New Performance Max Asset Testing Tools (searchengineland.com)
→ Google Ads Testing Top Pages Links (seroundtable.com)
→ Do Better Research with NotebookLM (blog.google)
→ Google Must Let Websites Opt Out of AI Search Features in UK (searchenginejournal.com)
➞ AI + Social
Find out what’s happening in the social media and artificial intelligence world —
→ Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5 (anthropic.com) – Anthropic released two new Claude models this week: Fable 5 (which is now not available right now) and Mythos 5, adding to the growing list of capable foundation models competing for developer and enterprise adoption.
→ OpenAI Plans ChatGPT ‘Superapp’ Overhaul Ahead of Listing (finance.yahoo.com) – OpenAI is reportedly planning a major ChatGPT redesign into a superapp ahead of its public listing, aiming to consolidate more daily tasks inside the platform.
→ You Can Now Send Emails Directly from ChatGPT on the Web (tech.yahoo.com) – ChatGPT added direct email sending from the web interface, pushing further into productivity territory that has traditionally belonged to dedicated email clients.
→ Apple’s Long-Awaited AI Siri Overhaul Is Finally Here (techcrunch.com) – Apple shipped the AI-powered Siri redesign it previewed at WWDC last year, with a dedicated app and significantly expanded language understanding capabilities.
→ Amazon Now Lets You Design Custom Merch Using AI (techcrunch.com) – Amazon opened AI-assisted custom merchandise design to sellers and creators, lowering the barrier to producing branded physical products directly on the platform.
→ Bots Now Outnumber Humans Online (forbes.com) – A Forbes analysis found automated bot traffic now exceeds human traffic online, raising real questions about the reliability of web analytics and ad measurement.
→ Instagram Expands Reels Post-View Ads to All Advertisers (socialmediatoday.com) – Instagram opened its post-view Reels ad format to all advertisers, giving brands the ability to reach viewers after they’ve finished watching a Reel.
→ Meta’s AI Agent for WhatsApp Business Is Now Available Globally (techcrunch.com) – Meta’s AI-powered customer service agent for WhatsApp Business is now live worldwide, giving businesses of all sizes an automated messaging option.
→ Bing Gives Searchers a Way to Disable AI Copilot Answers (seroundtable.com) – Bing added an option for users to turn off AI Copilot answers and see traditional search results — a notable move as Google doubles down on AI Overviews without an equivalent opt-out.
→ Anthropic Calls for Pause of Global AI Development (uk.finance.yahoo.com) – Anthropic publicly called for a pause on the most advanced AI development, citing safety concerns — a position that puts the company at odds with the pace of releases across the industry.
→ Reddit Launches Video Replies (socialmediatoday.com) – Reddit introduced video replies across the platform, adding a new format for community members to respond to posts and comments with short video clips.
→ Microsoft: Bing Webmaster Tools AI Reporting to Gain New Features Soon (seroundtable.com) – Microsoft confirmed new AI-focused reporting features are coming to Bing Webmaster Tools, giving site owners more visibility into how their content performs in AI-powered search results.
→ Instagram Releases Profile Grid Rearranging (socialmediatoday.com) – Instagram now lets users reorder their profile grid, giving creators and brands more control over the first impression their profile makes on new visitors.
→ Instagram Outlines Add-On Subscription Offerings (socialmediatoday.com) – Instagram detailed its expanded subscription options for creators, adding new add-on tiers that let fans pay for exclusive content and closer access.
→ TikTok Launches Separate Event-Based App (socialmediatoday.com) – TikTok is testing a standalone app focused on events, moving toward a more segmented product strategy as it expands beyond short-form video.
➞ Worth Reading
These are the articles that will help you refine your marketing knowledge —
→ WordCamp Europe 2026 – AI Search: Why Your Whole Company Should Care (youtu.be)
→ Site Migration Mistakes That Quietly Tank Rankings (pwani.co.uk)
→ How Brand Signals Impact Organic Search and AI Visibility (womenintechseo.com)
→ SEO for Branding: Bridging Visibility and Business Strategy (advancedwebranking.com)
→ 5 Takeaways from Google’s GEO Guidelines (moz.com)
→ ChatGPT Core Updates: Chatbots Have Algorithm Changes Too (sistrix.com)
➞ What This All Means for Your Strategy
This week’s five articles point in the same direction: the old model, publish on your site, rank in Google, get clicks, is under real pressure from multiple sides at once. Zero-click searches hit 68%. AI citations mostly come from sites you don’t control. Reddit is outranking established publishers across every niche. And showing up in AI answers doesn’t automatically make people trust what’s said about you.
The practical response isn’t panic; it’s diversification. Start building a presence on the off-site platforms where AI actually looks for sources: review sites, community forums, YouTube, and yes, Reddit. Work on the quality and specificity of what’s being said about you in those places, not just whether you’re mentioned. And if you haven’t already, invest in owned channels like this newsletter, where no algorithm update can take your audience away.
Until next week,
Nishat from HighDegree*
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.