How to Win in AI Search (Real Data, No Hype) | Ryan Law (Ahrefs)

AI search is exploding, and everyone wants to teach you how to show up in ChatGPT. But in this new "Wild West," who can you actually trust? Meet Ryan Law, Ahrefs' Director of Content Marketing. Ryan and his team have carried out some of the largest studies on AI search, backed by millions of data points, to understand what actually works when it comes to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). In other words, if you've been waiting for a credible, data-backed guide to getting your brand and content visible in AI search, this is it. Here's what you'll learn in this episode: (00:00) Intro (01:06) The Current State of AI Search (03:46) 3 Ways to Influence Your AI Visibility (07:55) The "Era of Off-Page SEO": Why Mentions are the New Backlinks (14:48) Optimizing the Content Types AI Prefers to Cite (18:33) How to Write for AI (and Humans) (25:51) Finding and Fixing "Hallucinated URLs" from AI (27:18) The Untapped Training Data Sources LLMs Love (28:37) How to Perform a Content Gap Analysis for the AI Era (32:56) The #1 Technical Mistake in Answer Engine Optimization (34:40) Fan-Out Queries: How AI Actually Searches Google (39:50) The Spam Strategy You Must Avoid (41:00) A Simple 2-Category Framework for AEO (42:32) AI Search vs. Google's AI Overviews (44:50) Outro We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like and subscribe (and tell a friend). Where to find Ryan: LinkedIn: (  / thinkingslow  ) X: @thinking_slow Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: (  / timsoulo  ) X: @timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/ Referenced: • Ahrefs Brand Radar: https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar • Ahrefs Site Explorer: https://ahrefs.com/site-explorer • Ahrefs Web Analytics: https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools • Clearscope: https://www.clearscope.io • G2: https://www.g2.com • Reddit: https://www.reddit.com • Quora: https://www.quora.com