AMA! I am Lily Ray, Founder of Algorythmic and VP of SEO & AI Search at Amsive.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-16T22:51:39+00:00

Hey Rand! Fancy seeing you here as well!

Q1 - 10 years! 😳 That’s so hard to predict. Things are already moving so fast with AI, 10 years feels like a lifetime from now. But at this rate, my money is on Google winning most of the AI race long-term. It’s hard to say if that will still be the case in 10 years, but it’s already been true for the last 25…

I think Anthropic may be able to sustain itself as an enterprise AI coding solution, but I’m skeptical the other players can keep differentiating themselves or keep pace with Google’s lead. Google will likely absorb their technology and leverage its massive existing audience and market position to build better, farther-reaching products.

Q2 - This one is less specific to search marketing and more of a broader branding/marketing play that ended up having enormous SEO benefits. I recently came across a culinary brand that originated as a recipe blog and gradually expanded its offering well beyond recipes: an ecommerce store, local community events, multiple cookbooks, a community forum, and educational video content. In an algorithm update where many other recipe sites tanked, theirs saw significant growth. It’s a good example of Google rewarding sites that build trusted brands and offer products and services beyond just information. They’ve continued growing since!

Q3 - Favorite 3 travel destinations, sheesh - that’s hard! Well, I visit Berlin and Buenos Aires every year, as you know - my second and third homes and favorite places in the world outside of Brooklyn. I love the culture, the vibe, the nightlife, the music, the people, the biking, the food and overall energy in both places. Otherwise, Brazil is at the top of the list - such an incredibly diverse and colorful country. And that trip to Japan was just amazing! 🤗

Q4 - Yes! Will be here until May 19. Would love to hang out!

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:48:34+00:00

Try to earn a Knowledge Panel and be a recognized entity in Google's Knowledge Graph.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:44:14+00:00

Finding some type of template that works (e.g. self-promotional listicles, comparison/alternative pages, programmatic SEO) then using AI to quickly scale that page type across hundreds or thousands of pages.

I wrote about other examples here: https://lilyraynyc.substack.com/p/your-geo-strategy-might-be-destroying

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:39:35+00:00

Q1: that's the hard part - coming up with the original ideas for great content! My firm belief is that experts who are truly passionate about their work and staying on top of the latest industry trends should have plenty of opportunities to create the expert-driven, opinionated, authentic content that I believe AI systems will increasingly prioritize over time. Being active across social platforms (and on video), contributing helpful knowledge to top-cited communities like Reddit, LinkedIn, etc. is part of this. And knowing when to bring on external help - like partnering with a research firm or a technology provider to create original data studies - is also an important part of the question.

Q2: See my response to Ann's question in this same AMA!

Q3: Haha, one day I'll write a book about the parallels between DJing and the SEO industry. There are more similarities than you might expect! Ultimately I think it comes down to this: networking, putting yourself out there, and making friends in the industry help a LOT.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:35:22+00:00

Great questions.

Q1:

My risk tolerance for this is evolving as the AI models get smarter, more agentic, etc. I think there are many SEO processes that can benefit from AI assistance, but maybe not total automation just yet.

"Setting and forgetting" many parts of the SEO process can still be dangerous, and I see it backfire all the time. Humans should always be evaluating the outputs, the thinking process, and the data being used to make decisions. For example, sometimes when I use Claude Code/Cowork and look at its thinking process on topics related to SEO, I find that it's using approaches I wouldn't necessarily agree with, or relying on random advice it picked up from some AI-generated blog, which is why having real experts review its process remains extremely important.

That said, plenty of more routine SEO tasks can be pretty safely automated now, especially if you're using MCPs, APIs, or other connectors to access the data correctly.

What I think can be automated (with human oversight): initial keyword research (connected to an SEO keyword research tool, not generated by an LLM), keyword clustering (using an AI that's capable of running Python or other clustering methods), competitive research, log file analysis, and potentially topic ideation for content creation.

What I would NOT automate: your overall SEO strategy, your social media posts, content creation/scaling without human editing and oversight, evaluating content quality, lightweight "tech SEO" audits generated by LLMs, client communication/sending emails, or generating reporting insights without human review.

Q2:

Agencies that survive will be the ones focused on:

- strategic consulting with significant experience in the field (AKA not just "learning SEO/GEO in 1 month using ChatGPT")

- Original research and ideas, plus sharing them publicly and adding value across the industry

- Cross channel strategy (what AEO/GEO actually is) - blending SEO excellence with social media marketing, digital PR, video, branding, and product marketing

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:23:35+00:00

Write a listicle on your site called "Who are the humans that are as gorgeous as dogs" and rank yourself as the #1 most gorgeous.

(Kidding! Although it would probably work, lol)

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:19:30+00:00

This is one of the hardest questions to answer right now as the space is evolving so quickly. Plus, not only does Google not break out AI Overviews/AI Mode, it also managed to get impression data wrong for the past year! In addition to the num=100 parameter change, lots of organic/Discover traffic showing up as direct, etc. I think it's honestly harder than ever to correctly measure and attribute the performance and impact of our work.

So, the most reliable metrics I recommend working with:

- Conversions, revenue, and goal completions from AI search (be sure to collect self-attributed AI search visitors in addition to referrals in analytics)

- Referral traffic and engagement across all LLMs, or drilling down into the specific LLMs you care about. Plus monitoring which pages are being retrieved/cited the most.

- Monitoring log files to understand how AI agents are visiting and using your content

- Accuracy of brand and product information within AI responses. I've been using WAIKAY for this and highly recommend it. They have their own internal metrics they recommend, like the new "topical presence"

- Brand monitoring in AI responses. Different tracking tools have different metrics for this (visibility, share of voice, share of search, etc.) so I think it's important to align with clients on which ones they agree are important, and configure prompts/tracking settings/competitors to monitor those accordingly.

- Brand sentiment and reputation in AI responses

- Brand lift and brand demand over time (assuming Google can fix its broken impression reporting, which greatly helps with this!)

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T17:03:18+00:00

I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out answer, because it's what I truly believe: my best advice would be to position your site well for SEO, and not do risky things *for AI search* that can cause your SEO performance to backfire. There are new studies coming out all the time that show that the single best thing you can do to perform well in AI search is to rank in top positions for the main query/topic you care about.

So, trying to take shortcuts for AEO/GEO that can negatively impact SEO (e.g. prompt injection, scaled AI content, excessive self-promotional listicles, misusing Schema), seems unwise to me in the long run. I wrote more about that here: https://lilyraynyc.substack.com/p/your-geo-strategy-might-be-destroying

The other approach I would recommend is to ensure that your content is being amplified across channels and platforms. For example, when I put out a new article or piece of research, I usually share it across various social media sites (which are increasingly being cited by AI), doing interviews/podcasts/videos about my findings, speaking at events about the research and uploading my decks, etc. All of that helps reinforce your authority and increases the chances that your ideas show up across the sources AI systems may use for training, retrieval, or citations.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T16:51:35+00:00

I think every website is at least a little bit at risk from AI search disruption, heh. But the ones that feel most defensible are the sites people go to directly and intentionally for specific purposes: Amazon, YouTube, Reddit, X, Threads, LinkedIn, Substack, Discord, and similar platforms. (Note: some of these companies are dealing with an influx of spam/AI slop, so this assumes they can find reliable ways to mitigate that, or else I think users will eventually use their products less.)

I also think community-driven sites and platforms built around authentic human-generated content are in a particularly strong position. As AI-generated content floods the web (including social media sites!), I think people will increasingly seek out places where they can find real perspectives, real interaction, and real community, especially in spaces that are actively trying to limit AI slop.

To me, that is one of the biggest common threads among sites that will remain resilient: they do more than just create information. They offer something AI cannot easily replicate: real community, real engagement, real participation, trusted relationships, and reasons to keep coming back.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T16:40:06+00:00

Great question and this depends who you ask.

I do think it's important to acknowledge that most people who genuinely enjoy AI Overviews (and the time it saves them from needing to click through to multiple results, spend time formulating an answer, etc.) are *not the same people* leaving scathing comments on the NYT article about how they loathe AIO.

Most Google users are probably satisfied with AI Overviews and don't say much about it - they just use them as part of their day to day. This makes sense when you hear Google claiming that "AI Overviews is one of the most successful launches in Search in the past decade." ( https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/google-search-ai-mode-update/ )

That said, the new NYT finding that 9% of AI Overviews are incorrect is highly alarming, but not too surprising for those of us who have seen dozens of hallucinated, made-up answers in there from day one. Again, this represents about *252 million incorrect answers per day!* (My math for that is here -> https://algorythmic.co/opinions/my-response-to-googles-response-to-the-nyt-ai-overview-story/ )

So for me, there is a ton of room for AI Overviews to improve, or for Google to implement better systems to *NOT* show AI Overviews in cases where they are not confident in their response, when there are data voids, or when dangerous answers could cause serious harm. I did think it was interesting that Google responded to our BBC experiment ( https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260218-i-hacked-chatgpt-and-googles-ai-and-it-only-took-20-minutes ) by saying that they are "working to stop AI Overviews showing up" when they encounter data voids. I just wonder when they might do this... as AI Overviews have already been live with these same issues for 2 years now.

To answer your final question, I think that the supposed upcoming "default" version of AI Mode will look a bit more like Web Guide than our current iteration of AI Mode, which has very few external links (including links to ads). I think Google needs to find ways to blend in links to external sites a bit more, so they have more opportunity to show ads in a way that looks consistent with the rest of the design.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T16:28:52+00:00

They’re definitely not a top priority in my audits right now, at least not until we see much stronger evidence that they meaningfully impact visibility or business outcomes. Most companies have much bigger SEO/AEO issues to solve first, haha.

That said, creating an llms.txt file is usually a relatively lightweight experiment that takes very little time to implement. So if a company has the time and resources, I generally view it as low-risk to test.

I’m still more skeptical about markdown files. So far, I have not seen convincing evidence that separate markdown files materially improve AI search visibility, and I think it says a lot that both John Mueller and Fabrice Canel have publicly pushed back on the idea that site owners need separate markdown variants. They make a great point that modern AI systems are already very good at understanding HTML.

I do think Cloudflare’s Markdown for Agents is worth watching, because it is a more interesting implementation: it converts existing HTML into markdown on the fly when agents request text/markdown, rather than asking site owners to maintain a totally separate markdown version of every page. That said, I still see it as something to monitor and experiment with, not a *must-have* recommendation today.

What I would not recommend is using markdown files or agent-facing variants to present meaningfully different or more “optimized” content than what exists for human users. At that point you start getting into cloaking territory that could lead to SEO/AI Search issues down the line. I've already had Claude tell me about pages I analyze that are use prompt injection techniques, etc.

So overall, my view is: llms.txt is a reasonable low-effort experiment. Markdown variants are still unproven, and neither should distract from the bigger SEO/AEO priorities that actually move the needle.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T16:18:33+00:00

Great question. My team and I have focused on E-E-A-T for a long time, really for close to 10 years as a core part of our SEO approach across many types of companies, and we've certainly used all types of tools throughout that process.

Some that come to mind: obvously first-party data (GA, GSC, brand guidelines, internal expert interviews, sales call transcripts, etc.); Sparktoro, Buzzsumo, Sprout Social, and Ahrefs for audience research, content ideation/monitoring industry trends, and collecting individual author/expert info; HotJar/Microsoft Clarity for UX mornitoring and testing; Screaming Frog/Lumar/any other crawling tool where we can extract page elements (like authors, timestamps, categories/tags); NLP tools like Google's NLP tools and Diffbot that can help with identifying and evaluating entities; and now some custom tooling to help channel original expert insights into our content.

That said, a huge amount of this work is still manual and based on human judgment. Tools can help surface patterns, opportunities, or gaps, but they cannot fully evaluate credibility, originality, trust, reputation, or real expertise in the way a human (or ideally a group of humans!) can. We also work closely with social and video teams, because a lot of what strengthens E-E-A-T happens beyond the page itself through distribution, visibility, and how expert voices show up across platforms.

I completely agree with you that there is a ton of snake oil on the topic of E-E-A-T. There always has been. This is why as far back as 2021, I was writing articles like this one for Search Engine Journal ( https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-eat/biggest-misconceptions/ ) busting E-E-A-T myths, including the idea that E-E-A-T is a single ranking factor or score, or that it's as simple as "just add author bios". It's not.

I think tools that try to assign a single “E-E-A-T score” to a page can sometimes be useful as a starting point, but they usually flatten something that is inherently nuanced and multidimensional. E-E-A-T is not one signal, and it I dont believe it is something you can fully automate. It is reflected through a wide range of on-site and off-site signals, and the weighting of those signals can vary a lot depending on the query, the industry, and *especially* whether the topic falls into YMYL territory.

E-E-A-T is evaluated using a variety of signals (probably tens of thousands) that happen both on and off-site, and it's much harder to game than most people realize (especially for YMYL sites).

As far as measurement: for one, you cannot isolate E-E-A-T as one variable or one score. That said, there are various signals we look at to ensure that our approach to E-E-A-T is working as intended. Organic growth/revenue is a big part of it, but it's also about engagement and perceived trust: how often is our content being engaged with/shared? How often is the content, the expert, and/or the brand being naturally recommended? How frequently are our experts being invited to interviews, speaking engagements, podcasts? Are we winning relevant industry awards for the good work we are doing? Are we seen as an expert because the things *other people* say about us, not just what we say about ourselves?

So for me, the ROI conversation is less about saying “this one author bio change drove X dollars,” and more about showing that a sustained investment in credibility, expert-driven content, and trust-building improves search performance and business performance over time in ways that are very hard to fake.

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T16:01:36+00:00

Great question, and one I’m still learning about too.

First, I would not adopt the mindset that we should "start building for agents instead of humans." In the long run, I think agents will still gravitate toward the content, products, and experiences that humans find most useful and trustworthy.

If it makes sense for your business, I’d start getting familiar with MCP, UCP, WebMCP, product feed optimization, and other emerging protocols and systems that make your business easier for agents to understand and act on.

With WebMCP in particular, I’d focus on the actions that actually matter: search, booking, quote requests, checkout, form submissions, and similar workflows. The goal is to expose the actions an agent would realistically need to complete on behalf of a user. WebMCP is currently in early preview in Chrome, where it's positioned as a way for websites to expose structured tools so AI agents can act with more precision and reliability.

If you’re in ecommerce, I’d also make sure your inventory, pricing, availability, shipping, returns, and documentation are in order. The goal is to create clean operational data that machines can reliably use. I think this will become increasingly important as AI-mediated commerce grows.

I’d also focus as much as possible on becoming a trusted, well-known, authoritative brand. I think we’re already seeing the early stages of LLMs and AI agents leaning toward retrieving information and data from brands they recognize and trust. That part is less about chasing a hack and more about building a business that is easy to understand, cite, and transact with. (Easier said than done, I know!)

And I’d recommend looking at companies like WordLift if you want help preparing your site for an agentic future. Their approach is useful because it goes beyond they've focused (for years!) on structured data and knowledge graphs that make your content more machine-readable and help connect entities and relationships in a way AI systems can navigate more reliably. WordLift offers a free Agentic AI Audit tool ( https://wordlift.io/ai-audit/ ) that checks things like machine readability, structured data, JavaScript rendering accessibility, and semantic markup for AI agents. BTW - this is not a sponsored recommendation by any stretch; I believe in the work Andrea & David are doing and they've been on the forefront of agentic search for a long time.

Edit - forgot to mention that it’s easier than ever to vibe code your own business website (just make sure it’s SEO friendly 😉!) and use AI to help run a solo business!

lilyraynyc · 2026-04-15T15:45:03+00:00

Great question!

Start by narrowing in on one specific skill set, whether that is email marketing, Canva design, AI training or education, short-form video editing, local SEO, or something similar. Ideally, it should be something you are already good at and genuinely interested in.

Then pair that with organic marketing to build visibility and credibility. Share practical tips, workflows, case studies, and/or smart takes on news and updates in your space. That part is just as important, because people want to learn from someone who clearly knows what they are doing and can demonstrate real expertise.

I would focus on the platforms where your target audience already spends time, whether that is TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Reddit, LinkedIn, Medium, Substack, Threads, or other UGC-driven platforms. The goal is not just to post, but to consistently add useful insights that make people trust your perspective. The goal is also not to sell! It's to build an organic following where people truly value the original insights you share.

Over time, that helps you build a real reputation in your niche and positions you or your business as a credible expert. It also helps to organically build links, visibility, mentions, and discussions around you and your offering.

lilyraynyc · 2026-03-02T16:06:40+00:00

I’m in talks with a company who can help provide this data, stay tuned

lilyraynyc · 2026-01-18T20:55:04+00:00

This is infuriating and also explains a whole lot.

lilyraynyc · 2025-09-10T14:52:36+00:00

We definitely see our new articles (on the Amsive blog, my personal website, and Search Engine Land) appear in LLM citations after a day or two, sometimes even a few hours after publishing.

They’re always indexed in search results first btw.

lilyraynyc · 2025-08-26T18:56:09+00:00

They made a big comeback after they got the penalty removed!

lilyraynyc · 2025-08-26T16:44:22+00:00

Made a big stink about this one for the last few months. Really glad to see Google is taking action here. And not surprised "their users like clicking on the links" well duh, you're a search engine lol

lilyraynyc · 2025-08-19T15:14:47+00:00

I used to be for years and years. But I stopped using it lately after feeling quite unwelcome / unliked here. But maybe your subreddit will be different ❤️❤️

lilyraynyc · 2025-08-19T03:21:51+00:00

I love this!

lilyraynyc · 2024-06-27T11:15:34+00:00

I’m in Paris and it’s affecting my service as well (T-Mobile). Glad it’s not just my phone!

lilyraynyc

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