https://surfil.com Reports, research write-ups and case studies, each built on a cited primary source. en https://surfil.com/blog/chatgpt-query-fan-out-ahrefs-15m-queries https://surfil.com/blog/chatgpt-query-fan-out-ahrefs-15m-queries Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs studied 66.6M ChatGPT responses and 15M fan-out queries: 14.4% searched the web, 6.8% of fan-outs used site:. Each figure with its base and limits. reports ai-search content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/google-crawling-indexing-serving-timelines-2026 https://surfil.com/blog/google-crawling-indexing-serving-timelines-2026 Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez All 23 typical and slowest times Gary Illyes showed at Search Central Live Barcelona, as recapped by ROAST, plus caveats and Google's own docs. reports indexing technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/ai-content-usage-survey-ahrefs-2026 https://surfil.com/blog/ai-content-usage-survey-ahrefs-2026 Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs' 2026 survey of 301 marketers: 93% use AI for content, 85% of them work faster, 66% trust it only after review. Each figure with its base. reports content-strategy ai-search https://surfil.com/blog/pdp-brand-link-plp-traffic-searchpilot https://surfil.com/blog/pdp-brand-link-plp-traffic-searchpilot Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SearchPilot split-tested turning unlinked brand text on product detail pages into links to brand category pages, finding an 18% uplift in organic traffic. studies technical-seo ecommerce-seo https://surfil.com/blog/what-to-do-after-google-core-update https://surfil.com/blog/what-to-do-after-google-core-update Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's own recovery steps after a core update: wait a week, compare the right dates, size the drop, self-assess and avoid quick fixes. reports core-updates content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/which-google-update-hit-my-site https://surfil.com/blog/which-google-update-hit-my-site Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Match a Search Console drop to confirmed Google update dates using 7-day windows, search types and a manual actions check, then rule out overlaps. reports core-updates search-console https://surfil.com/blog/google-structured-data-markup-helper https://surfil.com/blog/google-structured-data-markup-helper Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez What Google's Structured Data Markup Helper does, whether it still works, and what Google recommends for writing and testing structured data. research structured-data https://surfil.com/blog/the-best-title-tag-ab-test-searchpilot https://surfil.com/blog/the-best-title-tag-ab-test-searchpilot Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SearchPilot split-tested putting 'The Best' at the start of an editorial site's title tags. The variant pages gained 10% more organic traffic. studies serp-features https://surfil.com/blog/backlinkless-pages-search-traffic-ahrefs-14b https://surfil.com/blog/backlinkless-pages-search-traffic-ahrefs-14b Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs found ~20 million indexed pages with no referring domains, and only 2,997 of them earn over 1K monthly search visits. reports link-building https://surfil.com/blog/statcounter-search-engine-share-august-2026 https://surfil.com/blog/statcounter-search-engine-share-august-2026 Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Statcounter puts Google at 91.02% of worldwide search in August 2026, ahead of Bing at 4.55%, against 90.37% across the prior twelve months. reports technical-seo analytics https://surfil.com/blog/web-almanac-2025-median-home-page-weight-by-type https://surfil.com/blog/web-almanac-2025-median-home-page-weight-by-type Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez The 2025 Web Almanac puts the median home page at 2.86 MB on desktop and 2.56 MB on mobile, with images and JavaScript the two largest parts. reports page-speed technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/youtube-citation-share-across-ai-platforms-brightedge https://surfil.com/blog/youtube-citation-share-across-ai-platforms-brightedge Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez BrightEdge measured YouTube's citation share in Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, Perplexity and ChatGPT from May 2024 to September 2025. Here are its figures. reports ai-search content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/ahrefs-600k-pages-ai-content-ranking-correlation https://surfil.com/blog/ahrefs-600k-pages-ai-content-ranking-correlation Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs checked the top 20 Google results for 100,000 keywords with its AI detector and found almost no link between AI share and ranking position. research content-strategy core-updates https://surfil.com/blog/backlinko-title-h1-clearscope-ranking-correlation https://surfil.com/blog/backlinko-title-h1-clearscope-ranking-correlation Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Backlinko's 11.8M-result study found exact-match titles and H1s common on page one but unrelated to rank, while Clearscope content grade tracked position. research content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/google-analytics-bounce-rate-not-ranking-signal https://surfil.com/blog/google-analytics-bounce-rate-not-ranking-signal Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez John Mueller said on record that Google does not use Analytics bounce rate for ranking. What that statement covers, and what it leaves open. research search-console technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/mobile-desktop-parity-web-almanac-2024-seo https://surfil.com/blog/mobile-desktop-parity-web-almanac-2024-seo Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez HTTP Archive's 2024 Web Almanac SEO chapter compared mobile and desktop crawls. Titles, canonicals and word counts nearly match; a few gaps remain. research technical-seo indexing https://surfil.com/blog/subdomain-vs-subfolder-mention-com-ahrefs-case-study https://surfil.com/blog/subdomain-vs-subfolder-mention-com-ahrefs-case-study Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs checked Mention.com's January 2016 move from subdomain to subfolder in Site Explorer. Traffic shifted, and only new content produced growth. research technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/backlinko-content-relaunch-white-hat-seo-case-study https://surfil.com/blog/backlinko-content-relaunch-white-hat-seo-case-study Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Brian Dean reports a 14-day content relaunch of Backlinko's White Hat SEO post: organic traffic up 260.7% and the target keyword from 7th to 4th. studies content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/multi-location-studio-pages-bodybar-oneupweb https://surfil.com/blog/multi-location-studio-pages-bodybar-oneupweb Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Oneupweb rewrote 17 duplicate franchise studio pages for BODYBAR Pilates. Organic sessions rose 115.9% and conversions 198.1% year over year. studies local-seo https://surfil.com/blog/nfon-cctld-consolidation-international-gtld-searchviu https://surfil.com/blog/nfon-cctld-consolidation-international-gtld-searchviu Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez searchviu's client case: NFON merged nfon.at into nfon.com/at/ and saw Austrian organic traffic up 90% in five months, with a Germany dip. studies technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/noindex-deploy-brafton-recovery-case-study https://surfil.com/blog/noindex-deploy-brafton-recovery-case-study Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A sprint pushed noindex onto every Brafton page in August 2019. Search traffic fell 33.2% at the peak and took six weeks to return to baseline. studies indexing https://surfil.com/blog/rootly-athenahq-ai-citation-rate-case-study https://surfil.com/blog/rootly-athenahq-ai-citation-rate-case-study Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez AthenaHQ says Rootly's citation rate across tracked AI prompts rose from 3% to 30%. Here is what it reports, and what a vendor case cannot prove. studies ai-search https://surfil.com/blog/ai-referral-conversion-vs-non-ai-retail-adobe-2026 https://surfil.com/blog/ai-referral-conversion-vs-non-ai-retail-adobe-2026 Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Adobe's May 2026 data shows AI-referred retail visits converting 54% better than non-AI traffic, a reversal from a year earlier. reports ai-search ecommerce-seo https://surfil.com/blog/cloudflare-radar-2025-mobile-desktop-request-share https://surfil.com/blog/cloudflare-radar-2025-mobile-desktop-request-share Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Cloudflare Radar's 2025 Year in Review puts mobile at 43% of global requests, up from 41%, with mobile ahead in 117 countries and regions. reports technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/hcu-recovery-amsive-400-site-sistrix-tracking https://surfil.com/blog/hcu-recovery-amsive-400-site-sistrix-tracking Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Amsive tracked about 400 sites hit by the September 2023 Helpful Content Update and found no known significant recoveries by late March 2024. research core-updates https://surfil.com/blog/json-ld-schema-ai-citations-ahrefs-1885-pages https://surfil.com/blog/json-ld-schema-ai-citations-ahrefs-1885-pages Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs tracked 1,885 pages that added JSON-LD against matched controls. Here is the method, the citation changes by platform and the limits. research structured-data ai-search https://surfil.com/blog/digital-pr-canada-affordability-study-onelittleweb https://surfil.com/blog/digital-pr-canada-affordability-study-onelittleweb Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez OneLittleWeb reports a six-week Canadian digital PR campaign earned a finance blog 12+ editorial links and 143k+ new organic visits. What the case shows. studies content-strategy link-building https://surfil.com/blog/product-schema-b2b-ecommerce-impressions-clicks-simplified-search https://surfil.com/blog/product-schema-b2b-ecommerce-impressions-clicks-simplified-search Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Simplified Search reports Product markup on one unnamed B2B ecommerce site lifted impressions 119% and clicks 111%, with no control group. studies structured-data ecommerce-seo https://surfil.com/blog/google-ai-mode-adoption-and-zero-click-semrush https://surfil.com/blog/google-ai-mode-adoption-and-zero-click-semrush Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Semrush clickstream data on Google AI Mode's first two months: usage grew about 4x to just over 1% of sessions, and 92-94% ended without an external click. reports ai-search analytics https://surfil.com/blog/google-discover-share-newzdash-publisher-traffic https://surfil.com/blog/google-discover-share-newzdash-publisher-traffic Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez NewzDash's analysis of 400+ news publishers shows Discover's share of Google traffic rising from 37.03% in 2023 to 67.51% in Q4 2025. reports technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/serp-features-alongside-ai-overviews-semrush https://surfil.com/blog/serp-features-alongside-ai-overviews-semrush Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Semrush's refreshed study: Related searches (95.32%) and People Also Ask (90.03%) almost always appear beside an AI Overview, and ads now reach 25%. reports ai-search serp-features https://surfil.com/blog/https-adoption-web-almanac-2025-httparchive https://surfil.com/blog/https-adoption-web-almanac-2025-httparchive Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez HTTP Archive's 2025 Web Almanac measured HTTPS on 97.3% of mobile homepages and 98.8% of requests. What the crawl method can and cannot show. research technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/page-age-top-ranking-pages-ahrefs-study https://surfil.com/blog/page-age-top-ranking-pages-ahrefs-study Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs checked the age of top 10 pages for 1.3 million US keywords: 72.9 percent are over three years old, and the average number one page is five. research technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/url-length-ranking-correlation-backlinko-11-8m https://surfil.com/blog/url-length-ranking-correlation-backlinko-11-8m Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Backlinko's 11.8M-result study found shorter URLs correlate with slightly better Google rankings. Here is the method, the numbers and the limits. research technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/discover-traffic-independent-publisher-adsterra-case https://surfil.com/blog/discover-traffic-independent-publisher-adsterra-case Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Adsterra's case study of an independent Indian publisher: 8.45 million impressions, 703,948 clicks and $6,976.06 in revenue, about 95% from Discover. studies content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/on-prerender-javascript-rendering-traffic-case-study https://surfil.com/blog/on-prerender-javascript-rendering-traffic-case-study Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez On's Prerender.io case study reports +67% Google traffic and +98% Bing traffic after prerendering a JavaScript front end instead of building SSR. studies technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/topic-cluster-pillar-pages-campaign-creators-case https://surfil.com/blog/topic-cluster-pillar-pages-campaign-creators-case Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Campaign Creators reorganized six years of blog posts into three pillar pages and reports organic visits rising from 1,091 to 9,214. studies content-strategy https://surfil.com/blog/google-shopping-graph-visual-search-scale https://surfil.com/blog/google-shopping-graph-visual-search-scale Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's own disclosures put the Shopping Graph at 45 billion listings in October 2024, 50 billion in January 2026, and past 60 billion by May 2026. reports structured-data ai-search ecommerce-seo https://surfil.com/blog/anchor-text-type-ranking-correlation-ahrefs-study https://surfil.com/blog/anchor-text-type-ranking-correlation-ahrefs-study Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs' 384,614-page study isolated exact, phrase, partial and random-match anchor text and found every correlation with rank was weak. research link-building https://surfil.com/blog/italiaonline-video-seo-schema-case-study https://surfil.com/blog/italiaonline-video-seo-schema-case-study Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's case study on Italiaonline reports an 841% rise in video clicks and 353% more impressions after fixing VideoObject structured data errors. studies technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/whitespark-local-ranking-factors-2026 https://surfil.com/blog/whitespark-local-ranking-factors-2026 Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Whitespark surveyed 47 local search experts on 187 ranking factors for 2026. Here is the verified top 10 for the local pack and what changed since 2023. reports local-seo https://surfil.com/blog/page-weight-byte-size-ranking-correlation-backlinko https://surfil.com/blog/page-weight-byte-size-ranking-correlation-backlinko Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Backlinko and Ahrefs analyzed 11.8 million search results and found no correlation between page HTML size and Google rankings. research technical-seo page-speed https://surfil.com/blog/sillysanta-hreflang-cctld-expansion https://surfil.com/blog/sillysanta-hreflang-cctld-expansion Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Skalum's case study on Shopify brand Silly Santa: hreflang across 7 ccTLDs, with UK organic users up 297.5% and Norway's local traffic share up to 93%. studies technical-seo ecommerce-seo analytics https://surfil.com/blog/news-site-ai-crawler-blocking-by-bot-2026 https://surfil.com/blog/news-site-ai-crawler-blocking-by-bot-2026 Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A robots.txt scan of 100 top UK and US news sites finds CCBot blocked by 75%, the most of any AI bot. Google-Extended is the least-blocked training bot. reports ai-search https://surfil.com/blog/faq-schema-uplift-searchpilot https://surfil.com/blog/faq-schema-uplift-searchpilot Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SearchPilot's aggregate split tests found FAQ schema was positive 67% of the time, with organic traffic uplifts of 4-15% while the rich result existed. research structured-data serp-features https://surfil.com/blog/valery-real-estate-404-redirect-recovery https://surfil.com/blog/valery-real-estate-404-redirect-recovery Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Croton Content's audit found 324,580 broken URLs after a rebrand with no redirects. Fixing them took weekly organic sessions from 974 to a 12,276 peak. studies technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/portent-page-speed-conversion-rate-2022 https://surfil.com/blog/portent-page-speed-conversion-rate-2022 Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Portent's aggregate analysis of 100 million page views across 20 sites found B2C conversion falls from 3.05% at 1 second to 0.67% at 4 seconds. reports technical-seo https://surfil.com/blog/backlink-velocity-ranking-movement-ahrefs-study https://surfil.com/blog/backlink-velocity-ranking-movement-ahrefs-study Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs tracked backlink growth for 200,000 pages across 10,000 keywords and found no observable link between acquisition pace and ranking movement. research link-building https://surfil.com/blog/rei-faceted-navigation-crawl-budget-botify https://surfil.com/blog/rei-faceted-navigation-crawl-budget-botify Sat, 19 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez REI's technical SEO team told Botify's Crawl2Convert summit how it cut its site from 34 million URLs to 300,000, including faceted navigation. studies technical-seo ecommerce-seo https://surfil.com/blog/ai-overview-trigger-rate-by-query-type https://surfil.com/blog/ai-overview-trigger-rate-by-query-type Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Seer Interactive tracked 49,358 queries and found comparison searches trigger an AI Overview 95.4% of the time, versus 27.3% for single words. reports ai-search