Kevin Indig
Marketer
16
MENTIONS
12
EPISODES
9
PODCASTS
Search complete. 16 mentions across 12 episodes found for "Kevin Indig".
Oct 30, 2026
Alex KantrowitzHOST
Google is seeing an increase in searches, all-time increases in queries, right? Is it possible that these AI overviews make up most of those or even responses back and forth? Because I imagine every time you ping like AI mode, you get a response.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
So is it possible that we're just seeing, instead of like Google not being able to monetize AI mode, and this is an interesting point that Kevin Indig made on X, what if people are just searching less, right? So all the growth comes from AI mode potentially.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
And you end up seeing far fewer searches because people are starting to search within ChatGPT, maybe Claude, maybe Grok.
Alex KantrowitzHOST
I mean, ChatGPT has 1.2 billion users.
Scot WingoHOST
But it also covers e-commerce.
Scot WingoHOST
My guest today is Kevin Indig.
Scot WingoHOST
He is the author of Growth Memo.
Scot WingoHOST
I'm a huge fanboy, so that's a life bucket list item checked off.
Scot WingoHOST
So this is a long-ranging discussion with Kevin.
Scot WingoHOST
We kind of learn about his background, how he thinks about things, and he's really good at reading tea leaves and really good conversation about where he sees things going.
Scot WingoHOST
Hope you enjoy this conversation with Kevin Indig, author of The Growth Memo.
Scot WingoHOST
Subscribe today after you subscribe to Retail Gentic and enjoy the conversation.
Darren ShawHOST
So Marie Haynes published one called Geo is a Distraction.
Darren ShawHOST
SEOWorks UK published one, How Much Traffic Do AI Assistants Send? And then Kevin Indig was trying to look at direct traffic.
Darren ShawHOST
So the idea would be like, okay, we're not seeing a lot of referral traffic because one would think that...
Darren ShawHOST
When you go to ChatGPT, it doesn't give you a link, but then you then go and go direct to the website, right? And so, okay.
Edward SturmHOST
He's another SEO OG.
Edward SturmHOST
He wrote on X, my esteemed industry colleagues, Kevin Indig, Marie Haynes, and Ben Foster all published studies this week and Rand Fishkin amplified them.
Edward SturmHOST
The four parties landed on the same conclusion.
Edward SturmHOST
AI search doesn't send traffic, so stop worrying about it.
Paris ChildressHOST
So just a slightly higher, but it converted worse than organic on about a third of those sites, about 23 of the 63 sites, conversion rates were actually worse from AI referred traffic.
Paris ChildressHOST
And the last study came from Kevin Indig, who puts out the fabulous growth memo newsletter.
Paris ChildressHOST
And it was reported in Search Engine Roundtable He looked at four different sites, and he found no reliable link between AI visibility and branded or direct traffic.
Paris ChildressHOST
And so he looked deeper at the theory that AI-referred traffic is only a fraction of AI's influence, but you really need to look at the branded traffic and the direct traffic because a lot of people who are not clicking or rather going and searching for the brand on Google and also they may be just copying the links from AI Answers and then dropping those into their browser, which shows up as direct traffic.
Barry SchwartzHOST
So Marie Haynes has a great one called Geo Is a Distraction.
Barry SchwartzHOST
Um, there's also one from SEO Works UK about how much traffic does AI assistants actually send and does it convert better? And, and then one from Kevin Indig, uh, does AI traffic-- does AI drive more se- dr- uh, direct traffic? Um, interesting.
Barry SchwartzHOST
You go through the studies themselves.
Barry SchwartzHOST
Basically, it show-- most of them all show that it's sending a tiny fraction, like ChatGPT, they send a tiny, tiny fraction of what you would get from Google Search.
Paris ChildressHOST
Now on that note, that leads us directly into our next story.
Paris ChildressHOST
New research from Kevin Indig challenges the theory that AI traffic is hiding indirect.
Paris ChildressHOST
Kevin Indig examined Google Analytics data from 12 websites.
Paris ChildressHOST
Across the studied period, total direct sessions increased approximately 141%, while engaged direct sessions changed by approximately minus 1%.
Paris ChildressHOST
Further inspection suggested substantial bot activity behind the apparent traffic growth.
Edward SturmHOST
because they literally mentioned seeing this mention on gov.uk. Do nofollow backlinks make a difference for AI? This is a SEMrush study in 2025.
Edward SturmHOST
SEMrush and Kevin Indig studied 1,000 domains across five AI platforms.
Edward SturmHOST
They found that backlinks strongly correlated with AI visibility.
Edward SturmHOST
And this is crazy.
Barb DavidsHOST
[screen whooshes] And number four, put the most important information at the top.
Barb DavidsHOST
Kevin Indig of Growth Memo, one of my top resources, says, "Put it in the first twenty percent of the page content." It used to be that you'd make the page lengthy, not only for depth of knowledge, but it also helped signal to Google that the longer someone was on a page or the more engaged they were with it, it was a worthy page.
Barb DavidsHOST
AI is looking for more direct information, so putting things near the top and immediately following headings is more beneficial.
Barb DavidsHOST
Back in episode one seventeen, titled You're Optimizing Your Website for Three Searchers, I made the point about having to optimize for, one, Google traditional SEO.
Ross DunnHOST
Um, and, and you know, I read about this recently.
Ross DunnHOST
Uh, who was it? It might've been Kevin Indig was saying something about Reddit, uh, somewhat in that echelon of our peers.
Ross DunnHOST
And they were essentially saying what really should be obvious.
Ross DunnHOST
don't put so much weight and energy into getting a profile on these places.
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