▶  Technical SEO · S6E141 · · October 19, 2026

Is Google Breaking SEO? Semrush’s Marcus Tober on AI Search & Rank Tracking

Guest: Marcus Tober, SVP Enterprise Solutions at Semrush & Founder of Searchmetrics
Hosts: Jon Clark & Joe DeVita

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About this episode

How do brands improve AI visibility when the data behind search is getting harder to trust? Marcus Tober, SVP of Enterprise Solutions at Semrush and founder of Searchmetrics, joins Jon Clark and Joe DeVita to unpack what’s breaking in search measurement and what still works.

Marcus’s short answer on AI visibility: describe your business clearly and neutrally on your own site, using well-structured headlines and paragraphs that AI can lift as passages. He shares how a ~30-year category leader with top SEO visibility lagged in AI search until it added plain homepage copy about what it does. Its visibility jumped almost immediately. He also explains why he believes Google’s num=100 removal and go-to redirects are really about AI agents. He estimates their request volume at 1,000x+ what SEO scrapers ever sent.

For Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) practitioners, the conversation also covers log files as a leading indicator for dark AI traffic, the impression inflation hitting Search Console, ChatGPT referral traffic doubling for many brands from August into October, and the first AI spam policy from Anthropic.

In This Episode

  • Why rank tracking got harder after num=100 and go-to redirects
  • Are AI agents inflating Search Console impressions?
  • Mirroring logged-out ChatGPT results, and why prompts aren’t keywords
  • Measuring AI search ROI as ChatGPT becomes a destination
  • Log file analysis for AI user bots and dark traffic
  • How should brands structure content for AI citations?
  • Neutral language vs. superlatives as an AI trust signal

A rare inside look at search data from someone who has spent two decades collecting it.

Connect with Marcus Tober

Marcus Website
Marcus on LinkedIn
Marcus on X

Chapters

  • 0:00

    SEO’s broken bargain

  • 1:49

    Meet Marcus Tober of Semrush

  • 4:03

    Semrush Enterprise vs. Semrush Core

  • 7:17

    Rank tracking’s cat-and-mouse game

  • 13:23

    Tracking ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini

  • 16:34

    Data poisoning and 29B keywords

  • 19:12

    SEO tools vs. AI optimization usage

  • 21:59

    A word from Moving Traffic Media

  • 22:40

    Measuring AI search ROI

  • 25:38

    Direct traffic and attribution

  • 30:52

    Log files as a leading indicator

  • 34:09

    Structuring content for AI

  • 38:07

    Is the homepage the most cited page?

  • 40:45

    Neutral language vs. superlatives

  • 42:39

    Anthropic’s first AI spam policy

  • 43:46

    Rapid fire

Resources mentioned