Affiliate Marketing in the AI Era: New Tactics, Old Fundamentals | Gareth Hoyle & Rishi Lakhani
Welcome back to The Search Session! I’m Gianluca Fiorelli, chatting with Gareth Hoyle and Rishi Lakhani about the realities of affiliate marketing—how it works, how it’s changing, and what that means for marketers today.
Among the most important topics we cover are:
LLM SEO is still unclear, so don’t be fooled by LLM optimization services. There are no fixed rules yet, and visibility tricks fade fast as dilution sets in.
Affiliate marketing is big. Success requires strong brand signals, varied traffic sources, and constant adaptation.
Links still count. Even with AI citations, competitive rankings need solid internal and external links.
Beyond Google, affiliates grow through Discord, Telegram, and creator partnerships to own their audiences.
Both guests see visibility as key, but with different approaches: Gareth focuses on conversions while Rishi values impressions.
I invite you to watch the episode to discover practical insights, fresh strategies, and surprising truths about affiliate marketing today.
Video Chapters
Transcript
Gianluca Fiorelli: Hi, and welcome back to The Search Session. Today, we’re going to talk about affiliate marketing—but not just affiliate marketing, I’m sure. For this reason, I wanted to invite two people who are really experts in this field.
However, our first guest is the Managing Director of Marketing Signals, but he doesn’t work exclusively in affiliate marketing.
The second guest is a very seasoned SEO consultant. His company is called Pwani Consulting—if I’m pronouncing that correctly, but I’ll ask him in a moment. He describes himself as specializing in digital communication and content strategy. So, even though our second guest is deeply involved in affiliate marketing, he also offers consultancy for various types of brands, industries, and so on.
So, who are these mysterious guests? They are Gareth Hoyle and Rishi Lakhani. How are you both doing?
Rishi Lakhani: Great.
Gareth Hoyle: Brilliant! Great to see you, Gianluca. It’s been a long time between drinks, as we say.
Gianluca Fiorelli:Yeah, it has. Let’s see if we’ll manage to meet again somewhere around the world at a conference or event.
How SEO Has Been Lately
Gianluca Fiorelli: As I always like to ask my guests—how has SEO been treating you in the past month, with all the changes we’re seeing?
Gareth Hoyle: I’ll happily take the lead on this one. It’s been an interesting month, to say the least. Actually, it’s been an interesting few months since AI Overviews started taking over the world. SEO is always changing, and if there’s one set of people who will figure it out for brands, it’s SEOs—because we have to.
I’ve been on so many client calls this past month where I think I’m giving the right advice, but honestly, none of us fully understand what’s going on right now. Luckily, we work with some pretty large brands, so we get a lot of earned media. We are seeing our clients appear in AI Overviews, which helps me sleep a little better at night. But yeah, we’re definitely strapping in for the ride, as they say.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah, like Gareth said, it’s been interesting. But ever since I saw the initial announcement about AI Overviews, I kind of figured this was coming. I’m one of those guys who always says Google’s out to take everything it can, right?
Even if you look back at my posts from 15 or 20 years ago, you’ll see me predicting this kind of behavior from Google. So, I wasn’t surprised. I had already started prepping some of my clients—those who are willing to work with me on a longer-term strategy—to build their content in a way that makes it easier to be accepted by AI Overviews, and also featured better within LLMs. So, we’re talking more about gearing things up.
So, while a lot of people are seeing a significant drop off in their traffic, most of my clients are actually still seeing growth—which is a nice position to be in.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I’m sure! And, you know, it feels like a kind of Back to the Future situation for me. It reminds me of 20 years ago, when we were all trying to figure out how SEO really worked. Everything was so new, and while there was a lot of experimentation, no one was entirely sure about anything.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah, exactly. And you know, unlike today’s marketers, we didn’t have access to advanced analytics, tools, or whatever, right? We’re from that same era. I’ve probably known you just as long as I’ve been in SEO—maybe a little bit less—but we didn’t have access to all of the data, tools, and technology that’s available now, which actually makes it significantly easier to understand where you are. So yeah, it’s nothing new. We’re used to it.
Gareth Hoyle: Yeah, I guess the exciting—and also worrying—thing is that a lot of the LLMs seem to be looking at volume of mentions. Now, we’ve all lived through the era where the volume of mentions equaled Google's success. Are we going back to the days of link spamming or citation spamming? I don't know. I’m fascinated.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah. I love this. A lot of the guys offering LLM optimization services right now are going down the route of putting you in a listicle and then charging you to get into that listicle. What they don’t understand is that when you pay for those listicles, you’re also paying for your competitors to be in that same list.
So, a lot of people are going to get preferential treatment because they’re not even paying to be in that list—a competitor is paying to be at the top of that list, right? But all the rest are still in there, so all the competitors are being included in that listicle as well. So, I find it quite hilarious, to be honest, that people are offering that service.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah.
Gareth Hoyle: Like, if you’re not willing to be constantly learning, reading, and trying to improve your knowledge while working in SEO, then maybe you should try PPC.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah, well, PPC is just as complicated now, to be honest.
Gareth Hoyle: Well, I’m still seeing four paid listings above most AI Overviews—let’s put it that way.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah.
Gareth Hoyle: They’ve not quite given up.
Rishi Lakhani: Sometimes I’m seeing paid listings right in the middle of the page, which is insane.
Gaming LLM Visibility: Experiments and Tactics
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes. And maybe, if we want to make some hypotheses, we’re surely going to see a reality where many new sites see in paid links an opportunity to have another income. So now, they don’t even need to be paid for links. They will be paid for mentions.
And anyway, if you remember, Rishi, we did an experiment back in the days—something that now many others are doing—where we created this kind of list in order to test the influence of LinkedIn for this. We did it, and we had success.
So, for a certain period, if we were asking ChatGPT who the top SEOs in the UK were, the list was substantially the same as the one we were pushing through LinkedIn and always creating the same list, mentioning it, and having people in our group share it.
But one thing that came out of this—but we didn’t fully clarify at the time—is that there’s a recency when it comes to pushing this kind of influence on LLMs. If you don’t continue the action consistently—by creating similar lists where you’re always present—the initial list will disappear over time. It’ll be replaced by a more traditional and, let’s say, authoritative list, rather than the experimental one we were pushing.
Rishi Lakhani: With that experiment, what actually happened is that when we started using LinkedIn as a source—especially me, Mark, and a couple of others—a large number of other people started pushing their own lists out. So, we caused a dilution effect by making the list public.
If we’d kept the experiment quite private, we probably would’ve had a much better result. I mean, even now, if you Google “top SEO experts,” our lists—me and Mark’s—are the top two featured in AI Overviews. But none of the people on our list are heavily shown. I mean, you are in the list, but they’ve mixed it up now.
There are people from other places—they’ve got you in there, Mark’s in there, Gerry’s in there as one of the targets that we used. But mine and Mark’s results still show right under AIO as the LinkedIn profile. The problem is, there was so much dilution. So, it’s about controlling that dilution. But it’s definitely gameable. And, you know, gaming SEO is what we do.
Affiliate Marketing: AI, Scale, Myths, and Realities
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, and I want to avoid making the mistake of associating, as so many people do, affiliate marketing with these kinds of tactics. Because I know of many—let’s call them what they are—brands that are fully built on affiliate marketing, and they are totally licit brands.
They’re not the classic image or stereotype of the “alligator” that became so popular just 18 months ago, when all the news sites, especially in the States, were shaming Google about the quality of its service.
But we know—and this is my impression—that affiliate marketing-based websites, along with classic publishers—maybe because they share a similar nature in how they present themselves and target their audiences—are possibly the ones most at risk from this expansion of AI in classic search. In this case, I’m talking specifically about AI Overviews. You’ve probably seen something similar in the States if you’re working with U.S. clients with AI-mode, but especially with AI Overviews.
And obviously, with LLMs too—because we know that LLMs, even more than Google, tend to keep users inside their own platforms. So, the traffic coming from LLMs is usually very small.
Have you seen something in this direction? Am I right in this consideration, or not?
Rishi Lakhani: The first thing to consider here is that, unfortunately, when people in our industry think about affiliate marketing, they often picture these niche micro-sites built for Amazon reviews and that sort of thing.
But the fact is, the affiliate industry in the UK last year was worth £1.6—no, £1.7 billion in revenue in the UK alone. Right? So it’s a massive industry.
And a lot of the people you’d consider affiliates—most people aren’t even aware that these sites are affiliate sites. 90% of the revenue for these websites comes from affiliate revenue. In terms of sales, you’re looking at almost £2.2 million every hour generated through affiliate marketing.
So yes, these guys are going to put in every effort to manipulate Google as much as they can and stay ahead of the algorithm. It’s not a small industry. It’s not the niche guys you’re playing with. These are big players. Most affiliates that I consult with—on and off, because I have a large network—have an average revenue of about £1 million a month.
They have the budget, and they’re willing to throw everything at it because they’re building these platforms and sites specifically to dominate search. But that doesn’t mean they’re leaving themselves exposed to search either. It’s a big business.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And you, Gareth—what’s your take?
Gareth Hoyle: Yeah, we have a few affiliate clients. We tend to work with the larger affiliates. For example, we have a car insurance affiliate, and we also have a flight and hotel booking affiliate where we are actually being featured in the LLMs and AI Overviews.
So we know that if you can send the right brand signals—if you can do real business stuff—then affiliates can still thrive. I think the lazy affiliates, the ones that were still around after the Helpful Content Update… well, luckily, the Helpful Content Update in September 2023 cleaned a lot of that up. These types of affiliates were just copying and pasting AI content into WordPress and hoping to make money.
We’ve never worked at that level, so I can’t comment on how they’re doing now, but they can only be struggling. They’ve got no brand signals, no earned media publications. They’re not getting included in any listicles, which is what is powering a lot of the LLM visibility. Nobody’s talking about them on Reddit or Quora. So, I guess if an affiliate is treating their business like a real business rather than just trying to skim Google, there’s no reason why they can’t thrive.
I was at an event in London this week called the Elevate Summit, run by Affiverse, who do a lot of work in the affiliate space. There were people there who were investing in the future. And I think where we’re seeing affiliates really thrive is when they’re not just relying on a single source of traffic. These people are building their own Slack communities, their own Facebook communities, they’re running paid ads—they’re not just relying on free Google traffic.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah.
Omnichannel Strategies & Community Building for Affiliate Websites
Gianluca Fiorelli: I totally agree. I think, yes, this kind of strategy, which is obviously a valid strategy for any kind of business, not just affiliates, might actually be the key.
In a recent conversation I had with Mike King, he was calling this the “omni model.” We were talking specifically about AI, but you could also define it as “omnichannel.”
Ultimately, this is also where the classic E-E-A-T signals are leading us. You have to demonstrate that you’re not just a website doing dropshipping, for instance, but a website that actually cares.
Like—yes, I’m doing dropshipping, but I care about user experience. I care about who I am, and I care about the products I’m proposing to you. Even if I’m not the one producing or directly distributing them, I know that I want to recommend this product over that one. And I’m here to help you make a good decision—to guide you.
And this is where using other channels—TikTok, social media, but also, and I think this hasn’t been talked about enough—private messaging groups are really thriving. As you were saying, platforms like Discord communities are becoming very popular. I think that’s a place where, strictly speaking, it’s not really SEO—it’s hard to call it formal SEO—but as SEOs or strategists, we should always try to convince our clients to experiment with all these different sources of traffic and revenue. What were you going to say, Rishi?
Rishi Lakhani: I was just going to say—I write for the organization Affiverse, and I’ve actually put together two major guides. One’s on using Discord as an affiliate, and the other is about using Telegram as an affiliate. I’m also pulling together another big case study on one of my clients who does extremely well in search, but also generates about a million pounds through Facebook. And this is a small business—we’re talking very small. Their annual revenue is around £6 million, and about £1 million of that comes exclusively from Facebook groups, without any ad revenue.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Obviously, I’m not going to ask you to reveal all the details of this guide—also because we probably don’t have the time—but if you could distill, say, the key takeaways from the Discord guide, or maybe highlight what these platforms—Facebook, Discord, and Telegram—have in common. What are the three characteristics to focus on when trying to target these kinds of channels?
Rishi Lakhani: The primary thing I tell—or the stuff I work on with my clients, especially with Discord and Telegram—is that there are so many really good AI tools specifically built to manage those communities. Because it can be chaos, right? So the first thing I tell them is: plan and build a set of tools before you even start building your strategy.
After that, it’s literally just getting discovered and making sure you're in the right places to get your channels discovered. It’s the same as how we used to use Facebook marketing or groups before—just get your presence in the right places.
Also, run ads in plenty of other places. People don’t realize this, but you can actually run tons of ads on Reddit about your Discord group, in the right subreddit, and you’re going to get an influx of members.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, indeed. And I’ve said this in a previous episode too—I really think brands should start learning from creators. The creator economy has been leading the way in how to use all these different channels. Another one is Patreon, for building a community.
At the core of all of this is community-building. If you build a strong community, you’re creating a loyal audience—people who trust you, come back to your site, and eventually choose to buy from you rather than going to another place, maybe going directly to you.
Rishi Lakhani: In traditional marketing, we call it captive audiences. I’ve been telling my clients for the last three years: keep building your email list, keep building your social media groups.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah. You, Gareth, I’m sure you also explore these ways of expanding the flows of traffic and revenue for your clients.
Gareth Hoyle: Yeah, similar to what Rishi just said—like, the only medium that you truly own is email. So I’ve always—whether it’s an e-commerce or an affiliate client—we kind of just view search as an acquisition channel. So if I can break even on getting sale number one, then brilliant. But sales number two and three? That’s gonna come from email or from the community.
We have a client that does affiliate in the flight space, and they run private Telegram communities where you're paying $19 a month to get in. But they’re publishing cheap flights and cheaper hotels than what you’re seeing on their website. So that way, they’re 100% controlling the message. Their conversion rates are frighteningly high because they own that message—and it’s on your phone.
If you're willing to pay to be part of their community, then 100% you're going to be getting multiple sales from those users. But you still need to acquire that new user in the first place, to tell them about your community.
You probably need to provide them with one or two sales in mainstream before you can build up trust. And honestly, we haven’t moved that far away from E-A-T signals at the moment. Everything that Google taught us with the E-A-T framework is still valid across most digital marketing channels, to be honest.
Link Building vs. Brand Mentions in the LLM Age
Gianluca Fiorelli: So, let’s talk about something we almost touched on jokingly at the beginning: what about link building?
We know that link building has always been viewed with a certain level of suspicion by part of the SEO community. But we also know it’s important. I mean, we were just talking about E-A-T—well, the "A" for Authority is largely based on links. So creating a natural linking profile is still a key part of any solid SEO strategy.
But now that mentions, maybe, are becoming more important—because of LLMs—what do you think, out of all the many tactics related to link building and brand amplification (let’s call them that), are still the most effective?
Gareth Hoyle: Well, to start with—I struggle a little bit with the fact that people are focusing on mentions. For the last 17 years, I’ve always considered an unlinked mention as a failed link. So you’re going to do well to convince me that...
Rishi Lakhani: It works either way.
Gareth Hoyle: …unlinked mentions is a successful digital PR campaign, if I’m honest.
The reality is that the LLMs haven’t taken over Google yet. They haven’t taken over everything. I’m not saying they won’t—and I can see the trend. Every graph I look at tells me that it’s going to overtake at some point. But right now, if I want to rank for “blue jeans,” or I want to rank for “car insurance for over-80-year-olds,” I’m probably going to need some internal links and a fair few external links pointing to that page to get it ranking.
The journalists, the PR, and the listicle types of activity we do for many of the brands we represent—aren’t going to get you links to those commercial pages. So as it stands today—Friday, the 18th of July, 2025—we still have to use link-building tactics to get do-follow links. I know there's no such thing as “do-follow”—it’s either no-follow or just normal. But for argument's sake, we’re talking about do-follow links to those commercial pages to help them rank. And I’m sure there are many people in the community—and I know you walk a very clean path, Gianluca…
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes.
Gareth Hoyle: …but the reality is, if you want to rank the majority of websites for high-intent commercial terms, you still need links to the page.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Totally.
Gareth Hoyle: That’s—that’s just how it is at the moment. What we don’t know—and I love this—is how, three weeks after something new comes out, our industry suddenly has experts who supposedly know everything there is to know about LLM search.
But nobody’s actually figured out what trust and authority metrics these LLMs are really using. Now, we can look at the frequency of cited domains in AI Overviews. We know that Reddit shows up a lot. We know that Quora and Medium are also appearing quite frequently. We can look at SEMrush’s studies, or even the CIPR—that’s the UK’s PR governing body. They’ve produced reports—one I’m thinking of was done by PR Agency One—that show the majority of sites getting cited are either user-generated trusted forums, or they’re earned media.
So, where we've been doing a lot of digital PR—or, as we prefer to call it, PR—for some of our super affiliates, we’re actually seeing them get cited in these results. From a link-building perspective, it’s business as usual at Marketing Signals. Because what we’ve been doing in the past—we're not totally dirty, but we’re not 100% clean either. Let’s say we’re 80%. But it’s working.
And at the moment—and this was one of the things I was trying to get across in the talk I gave earlier this week—all I can really tell you is what’s working today.
There’s always going to be a new GPT version, or Gemini 5-point-something, or whatever the next iteration ends up being—and it could totally change everything. But we don’t know that. Your clients don’t know that. Your competitor agencies don’t know that.
All we can really do is focus on what we can see in the headlines. And right now, links, PR, and being cited in trusted publications—those that we know are trusted from a Google link-building perspective—are still having an impact with LLMs. Which, as far as I’m concerned—as a man with 20 years left on his mortgage—is good news. So, yeah.
Gianluca Fiorelli: If I may—it’s funny, because you are much more expert in this field than I could ever be. But if I recommend or suggest a strategy/tactics—which I sometimes use or suggest to some of our clients—I often say: okay, let’s look at the SERPs, for instance, in order individuate, you know, and then we can also talk about the zero-click search phenomenon and how that’s affecting your clients. But, for example, we know that because of this behavior from Google—and eventually also from LLMs—people are being gated inside the search. Inside Google.com, Bing.com, ChatGPT.com, et cetera.
So, I always try to see: who are my non-competitors that are being presented by Google? Especially when it comes to products—when Google starts showing videos, for instance, or Shorts from creators talking about a product. Maybe it’s a product of a competitor and not ours. Or, when we’re investigating during competitive analysis, and we look at the Product Knowledge Graph—we see those fields about reviews, and so on—then we ask: who is reviewing the competitor’s site or product?
What I do is basically collect all that information—YouTube channels, Reddit threads, specific websites doing reviews, and so on. Then, from there, I go deeper and try to see which ones Google is consistently showing. Not all creators, or threads by just any user, and not all review websites—but the ones that are always present.
Like, for instance, in ChatGPT—we know that ChatGPT takes a lot of brand mentions from G2. So, where should we be present to be mentioned in ChatGPT? In G2. I essentially apply the same logic to Google.
So I collect all this information and then ask: what can we do for these kinds of people? So they can start reviewing our product in videos and articles. Now, many times—it’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, let’s just send them the product and ask nicely, would you like to review it?” There’s usually a transactional moment involved, even if we want to frame it as a kind of co-marketing action.
One thing we can do—especially with creators—is to bring them onto our site. Have their face associated with our brand, at least for a certain period. That’s not necessarily a link-building tactic, but it’s something I tend to recommend when the case is right.
Gareth Hoyle: Yeah, and if they’ve got a decent product or service, then creators will be happy to work with you. I’m not saying we’re perfect or that we know everything we should be doing. But a lot of the time now, when we’re producing content, we’re thinking about how to slice it into Shorts and Reels. We’re thinking about how to get third-party validation alongside first-party content production. And we’re looking at how we can use that content across all channels.
And I think the speed that we used to associate with Google indexing and warehousing data, my lord, I can only imagine how much warehousing ChatGPT has compared to Google. And you think they’ve built all of that from the ground up on amazing 2021, 2022 NVIDIA GPUs that they’re constantly swapping out—the way they’re going to be able to connect the dots?
I think you have to be across everything: looking at what your competitors are doing, looking at what Google is ranking, and looking at the intent behind the content that ChatGPT is spitting out. That’s what you should have already been doing for—well, forever.
I can’t imagine us fundamentally changing what we do for our clients. Because what we do is market their goods and services on the internet. And the benefit of doing that across multiple channels is that the collectors of information—whether it's Google, ChatGPT, or anything else—are picking up everything we’re putting out: podcasts, videos, images, blog posts. And it's rewarding us for being omnipresent. So I can’t imagine we’re going to change much what we do at Marketing Signals.
Rishi Lakhani: One of the things you mentioned—about looking at what the AI Overview is linking to and stuff. I had a specific issue. A client of mine wanted to be in this top list in the industry, and the three sites that were showing up in AI Overviews just didn’t have them listed. And when we reached out to them, saying, “Look, can we get our client listed?” they wanted to charge about $3,000 each, which we thought was just completely ridiculous.
So what I did instead—I reached out to two or three authority sites that we’ve had historical relationships with. We created and curated our own lists on those sites. And then, on the basis that we would drive traffic to those pages on their sites, they gave us the page free of charge and allowed us to put our content on there.
But in return, we had to build links. And we did—we built links to those three sites. And as a result, for the same amount of money it would’ve cost me to get my client listed for one year on those sites, I now have three websites ranking—two of which are showing up in the AI Overviews for the keyword that was important to us. And we got the others pushed out. So sometimes, you just have to use traditional marketing strategies. Don’t just start shelling out money the minute someone asks for it. Think about how you can use it better.
Gareth Hoyle: It does seem slightly simplistic, some of the tactics you’re suggesting—which is getting you featured in the LLMs and AI Overviews. And I think that’s because we’re still right at the start of the journey. We’re 20-odd years into SEO for Google. We’ve learned, we’ve gotten it right, and we’ve definitely gotten it wrong over the years—I’m sure all three of us would admit that.
But when it comes to AI optimization, we are literally just at the beginning of the curve. And, you know, it seems crazy that we’d even be thinking this way—but I’m sure AI is going to start indexing podcasts. And I could just start saying that Marketing Signals is the number one agency for LLM optimization in the UK and the US for big brands. And maybe this is the snippet that gets me featured in an AI Overview. It’s almost like we’re shifting from optimizing a page to literally optimizing a passage of text within that page. I’m enjoying it anyway.
Rishi Lakhani: I call it micro-optimization. And yes, this is absolutely what we’ve been doing over the last year. It is literally about finding those little nuggets—knowing where you need to be and just honing in on them hard and just getting them done.
Translating the Shift from Clicks to Visibility Metrics to Clients
Gianluca Fiorelli: And now, another question—one of the common topics right now is that we’re moving from click-centric to visibility-centric SEO. I mean, it’s not exactly news—zero-click SERPs have been around since even before the pandemic. But it has been clearly signaled, for instance, by AI Overviews—the classic example being “the big decoupling,” the alligator graphics in Search Console, and so on.
So how are you explaining this sort of conceptual change in terms of the most important metric? For instance, with impressions becoming more important than clicks—how do you communicate that to your clients?
Gareth Hoyle: We're trying to explain it. We still have clients who are obsessed with year-on-year traffic growth. And for some of our clients, the year-on-year traffic growth over the next 12 months is going to suck—because a year ago, we spent three years writing content for featured snippets and position zero.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes.
Gareth Hoyle: Now it's gone. You know? And it’s not coming back either, by the way. I don’t think Google is going to give up on AI Overviews and go back to featured snippets. But for a lot of brands out there—and I’ll be honest with you—if you’re just measuring raw traffic, you’re probably measuring it wrong.
We actually prefer to be measured on conversion. Whether that’s getting a quote, getting a flight price, or making a sale—that’s fundamentally what we’re being measured on.
We’re also producing reports for our clients using a tool by a good friend of all three of us, Dixon Jones, What AI Knows About You—Waikay. We’re running a lot of reports for our clients, and maybe five to ten of their competitors too, just to let the clients know that this isn’t a local issue for their domain. This is across the whole industry.
Luckily, since we do a lot of work in the US, the AI Overviews are now so prominent in the SERPs in the US that even the marketing directors and C-suite we deal with—who aren’t particularly savvy on SEO—are noticing the change in UX. They’re noticing themselves that they’re not visiting as many websites to get the information they’re looking for.
A long time ago, zero-click searches were just for things like, “What time is it in New York today?” Whereas now, they’re happening across everything. I think the education is happening for the user as they use it. So that’s helping. But yes, we’re sending a lot of red traffic graphs year-on-year at the moment, and to be honest, there’s not a lot I can do about that.
Rishi Lakhani: I’m taking a completely different approach. I’m treating impression growth as a positive metric. It doesn’t matter if traffic’s not growing directly in line with it.
Because I say to my clients: “Look, what’s one of the primary things you want people to know about you? You want them to know that you exist—that’s the first thing. Then, coming to your website and buying something is the second reaction. The primary action is brand awareness. How much do you spend on, let’s say, external advertising? How much do you spend on display advertising?”
So, calling out your SEO just because you're getting a significant amount of impressions but not enough clicks means you're theoretically losing out on the visibility that people are going to see.
Thankfully, none of my clients have the 'alligator' kind of approach, which is great—because obviously, we’ve been optimizing significantly for AI and click-through. And we’re getting a lot of clicks from AI, by the way—we track that. But we still also record impression growth as a positive metric.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes—I think it is. So it’s about connecting, maybe, the impression metrics—trying to be able to connect them eventually to conversion metrics. How much is this augmented, increased visibility also having a reflection in, let’s say, traffic?
It could be direct traffic—traffic to the homepage. Because, as you were saying before, Gareth, for instance, the LLMs tend to cite or link mostly to the homepage. But it could also be branded terms—branded searches—because people are doing a search journey around a specific service, product line, or just information, and they keep seeing you.
Visibility in the SERPs, for instance—so they start to associate your brand with those terms. And from there, they start doing that kind of brand research. This is something that I saw—especially in the travel industry—happening even more with my travel industry clients.
And the other part is trying to find the formula to say, “Okay, we have an increase in visibility, but maybe the traffic is shifting. It's not necessarily diminishing overall—it’s diminishing organically, but it might be improving from other sources.” And then trying to find these connectors—which are the conversion. Where this visibility is connecting with conversion.
Rishi Lakhani: One way you can check this—and we’re actually running this kind of analysis for a particular client of mine—is for a subset of terms where we know we’ve got very strong AIO visibility.
We’ve also got paid ads running for those terms. And we’re adjusting our paid ad messaging to slightly reflect the AI Overview messaging as well. And we’re seeing very significant growth in click-through on those ads—and in conversions as a result.
Whereas before, our click-through rate—though we’ve always been in that space—was somewhere around 2 to 3%. Now, after showing up in the AI Overview, we’re seeing that CTR grows to 5 to 6% sometimes. So you can correlate that growth and say, ‘Actually, that AI Overview is a great advertisement for people to click on your brand, the minute you’re there on the sponsored space.”
Personalization Challenges in AI and LLM Search Reporting
Gareth Hoyle: A lot of the challenges I have today—and I can only imagine them becoming more and more of a pain in the butt come down to the fact that we're used to personalization of search on Google but when we start to think about AI, and the amount of information it actually knows about us—as we do more and more searches within its window—the game changes.
So, let’s say I’m looking for some jewelry. And let’s say AI—as this sort of all-think being—knows that I like silver, and that Rishi likes gold, just for argument’s sake. And Gianluca, you can like platinum—we’ll include you in this example.
So really, if I’m looking for a new necklace or bracelet, AI already knows I wear silver, not gold. So in theory, it’s going to deliver me a totally personalized buying experience. But when it comes to measuring that—how much visibility you have in LLMs—how on earth are these tools going to keep up? I mean, if you think about Semrush, Ahrefs, and all the sort of rank tracking that we do, they can just pull generic SERPs.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah. That’s why—and this is not because it’s our host for The Search Session—Advanced Web Ranking, for instance, in their free AI Overview tool, is always measuring the visibility of AI Overviews both when you're logged in and when you're not logged in.
And there is, somehow, a certain kind of consistency between the metrics. They tend to be quite close to each other—but they’re not the same. Sometimes, for instance, it appears that the AI Overview is actually more visible when you’re not logged in—at least in certain industries.
Gareth Hoyle: I feel like the only thing you can really measure is day one, minute one of LLM search. Because as soon as you do a second search—and you’re logged in…
Rishi Lakhani: It changes. And not only that, but when we’re talking about SEO, we’re talking specifically about Google’s results. Forget about LLMs in general. We’re talking about Google here right now.
Those kind of commercial searches, Gareth, are already so manipulated by different products, right? So, for example, if you type “jewelry” into Google right now, the first thing you're going to see is that it’s location locked. You’ll get sponsored product ads, then probably a map pack with local businesses that sell jewelry.
Then you’re going to see a bunch of organic results—followed by more sponsored listings. Then there’s another whole batch of product ads in the middle of the page. You’ll likely get a big “People Also Ask” pack—they use those a lot in this space. Then you’ll start seeing “People Also Buy From,” which is another featured pack. Then there’s “Shops,” “Sponsored Shops,” and “Sponsored Brands,” and finally “People Also Search For.”
So in that whole space, they still haven’t figured out how to personalize it—even though they know you right now. We are far away.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes. Recently, I’ve noticed something in my day-to-day. I don’t know if you received a sort of pop-up from Google. One day I opened my Gmail, and suddenly Google presented me with a couple of pop-ups—asking for permission to use the information it has about me, when I’m logged in, across its whole ecosystem: Gmail, Google Search, YouTube, Google Workspace.
So, whatever I’m writing, it’s like a buying checklist in a Google Doc. And this is exactly what they were already announcing at the last Google I/O. Because now, we keep thinking of Google as Google, but we should actually start thinking of Google as Gemini. Gemini is now feeding the entire Google ecosystem.
And that’s where concepts like memories come into play. In Gemini, memories are usually retained for three months. After three months, that memory disappears, and you have to rebuild it—for certain things, like in the Gemini chat app, for instance.
So I think everything we’ve been talking about in this conversation—about being a brand, acting as a brand, aiming for visibility, being memorable—all of it connects here. Because once a person starts doing even one action, we just need one click to enter into the Chrome memory of that user. And that gives us more chances to be represented in personalized search. At least, that’s what I’m thinking. I don’t know if you’re seeing it the same way.
Gareth Hoyle: It has to be a flush at some point, because trends change. I feel like I’ve spent half my SEO career guessing what’s actually working on Google—and experimenting with client money to try and get them increased visibility. All we can really do is experiment, honestly.
And, you know, it’s going to be another 10 years of reading blog posts, reading case studies, going to conferences, and learning from people’s personal experiences about what’s working for them.
Google’s algorithm was never publicly released. We never really fully understood it. And I don’t even think the developers building the AI algorithms—like at Gemini—fully understand how they work. So, I don’t know. We’re just going to have to figure it out as we go. As we always do in SEO.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’re not really going to know. And this is exactly why—over the last, I think, 10 years—when you were introducing me, you said digital marketing communication strategiest—I took SEO out of my title over 10 years ago. I don’t focus on a single channel anymore. I focus on the channels that work.
So when a client comes to me and says, “I need SEO,” I might say, “Actually, SEO isn’t right for you—PPC is better. Let’s go down that route.” It’s about getting the right communication to the right audience. So yes, SEO has been a big part of my life, and I’ve done a lot in SEO—but I don’t define myself as an SEO.
Life Beyond Marketing: Passions, Travel & Role Models
Gianluca Fiorelli: Cool, cool. Looking at the clock—it’s almost one hour, so let’s close the SEO, search, and marketing conversation here.
Let’s talk about you. I’m going to ask just a quick question—something so people can get to know you a bit better, beyond the great marketers you are. Let’s follow an order so we don’t overlap—it’ll be the same question for both of you. First Gareth, then Rishi. If you weren’t working in marketing, what job did you want to do when you were a kid?
Gareth Hoyle: I think it would always be something sales-based. The way my dopamine works—I have to achieve something. I mean, I have dream jobs too. I’d love to be a test pilot for SpaceX—that would be pretty cool. Or a professional padel player. But I think those days are gone… not sure my knees have it in them anymore. I played for three hours today, as we discussed earlier, Gianluca—and honestly, I can’t wait to get out of this chair and stretch my legs! But yeah, I think whatever I ended up doing—if it wasn’t in marketing—it would be something where an inquisitive mind would thrive.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And you, Rishi?
Rishi Lakhani: My first love has always been entertaining people, right? And I think I still do that—through writing, talking, and experimenting.
I used to DJ, and to be honest, for a very long time, my path was quite straightforward. Either I was going to go into marketing, or I was going to go down the route of running clubs, organizing nights and events, managing bars and pubs—that kind of thing. So yeah, if I had to switch and couldn’t do marketing anymore, that’s probably the route I’d go.
Gareth Hoyle: Well, the other thing we’re both very passionate about is coin collecting. Like, silver coins, gold coins. Fun fact for you: Rishi is actually mentioned in my will. If I die before him, I don’t want my family to just hand off my coin collection to a random collector—because some of those coins are worth more than others. So I think that quite possibly we would’ve worked in numismatics.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Oh, that’s a cool and interesting profession! Let’s switch gears and talk about travel. Especially you, Gareth, have traveled a lot. And I think you, too, Rishi. So, what’s one place you still haven’t been to, but really want to visit?
Gareth Hoyle: Mine is so easy. I’ve never been to South America. I was just speaking with my good friends Olga and Genco—and between us, I think we’ve completed Europe. I’ve been everywhere in Europe except maybe Liechtenstein and Andorra. I’ve been all over the U.S., all over Mexico, all over the Caribbean. But I’ve just never made it to South America.
And I don’t know if it’s because the business language there isn’t English, so there aren’t as many events that would naturally take me there. But I honestly think that my personality—and my love of partying—would fit perfectly in Cartagena, Medellín, São Paulo. I could absolutely spend months of my life traveling around South America.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I can see you dancing a good bachata or salsa.
Gareth Hoyle: I think I’d be alright over there. So yeah—that one’s easy.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah, I’m actually with Gareth—exactly the same: South America. But the surprising thing about where I’ve never been in my life—and you’ll be amazed at this—is that I’ve never been to America.
Gareth Hoyle: Oh, wow.
Rishi Lakhani: Never been to America. I just refused to go to any conferences for a very long time. I’ve always been invited to speak, to get involved—but I’ve just never, never been to the States. It’s just never appealed to me. I’ve been all over the world, speaking at conferences everywhere—but America is the one place I’ve never been.
Gareth Hoyle: I love the U.S. I mean, it’s not without its flaws—every country has them—but yeah, there’s loads of the U.S. I’d love to explore. Hey, you know what we need to do? Figure out how to crack the code of Google AI Overviews, sell our agencies, and then travel the world forever. That would make me happy.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Last question. What person, public or not, do you look at as your role model and why?
Rishi Lakhani: This is a tough one.
Gareth Hoyle: It’s hard to pinpoint one person in particular. Where I tend to have a lot of respect for people is when they’re achieving not only professionally, but also personally. So at work, we do a four-day week. We could do a whole session on that, Gianluca, but we won’t go into the details right now. For me, progressing in life doesn’t necessarily mean getting a bigger job, a bigger salary, or a bigger company. It’s about the happiness you get from your overall life.
I have many friends in the industry—and I won’t embarrass them by naming them—but I look at their lives and think, “You know what? You’re doing well.” Like, you’re living in Bali for a bit, in Portugal for a bit, in London for a bit. You’re traveling around, you’re happy, you’re achieving the “digital nomad” lifestyle—although I hate that term. But it works. It’s that… well, you know, the laptop lifestyle kind of thing.
Rishi Lakhani: Interesting that you bring that up—because I was just thinking about Nick Wilsdon. He’s not doing the digital nomad thing, but what he’s doing in Ireland is insane. I was thinking—it’s quite impressive, right?
Gareth Hoyle: Yeah—he’s reinvesting a lot of his digital marketing agency profits into builders, diggers, and rebuilding an Irish castle. But again, he’s happy. He’s living a good life. His children are happy, his wife is happy—he’s happy.
And he’s still achieving at work. But he’s not doing 18-hour days, six days a week. The traditional way to “achieve” was to work harder than everyone else. I’m very much in the camp of I will outsmart you, rather than outwork you.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah.
Gareth Hoyle: And that’s where I have a lot of respect for people. Like I say, I can’t pin it on just one person. For me, it’s that balance in life. I want to live, and I almost already do. I mean, I played padel for three hours today. To me, that’s freedom and winning—having the ability to do what you want, where you want, and go when you want.
And yeah, sure—that’s not the traditional entrepreneur or business owner model. I mean, Elon Musk—who’s an ass, by the way—sleeps in the factory. That’s not winning for me.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I also really dislike that kind of culture. I think it’s very toxic. And to conclude—what about you, Rishi?
Rishi Lakhani: My personal kind of role models, the people who really impress me, are those I see doing clever things in the industry. People who are doing really smart stuff.
I mean, Dixon is definitely one—he’s been a veteran of the industry, but he’s still building new things. Also, I’ve known this person for a very long time, but over the last four or five years, my respect for him has grown significantly. And that’s Mark Cook. He’s a very smart cookie. The stuff he builds, the things he discovers. When I describe to him an abstract concept, he’ll sit there, stare at me, and then come back and say, “Is this what you’re trying to achieve?”—and he’ll understand it straight away.
I’ve had so many interesting conversations with Mark, and I find his brain functions in a very clever way. It’s at a level beyond mine because he can physically execute some of these hard, technical things. I’m incapable of building it myself. I can think, I can conceptualize—but I always need someone with development skills to actually make it happen. At the same time, he knows how to get it done.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I totally hear you.
Gareth Hoyle: We all have high-functioning autism—let’s be honest.
Rishi Lakhani: Yeah.
Gianluca Fiorelli: I always joke—but it’s not really a joke, it’s reality—that I come from the humanities. I don’t come from the developer world. So for me, some things, even if I try, are completely foreign. It’s like a barrier.
Okay—thank you, guys. It’s been a real pleasure to have you here during this one-hour conversation. I’m sure all the people watching us—and listening to us—will have enjoyed it.
And please remember, this is also a podcast, so you can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, not only watch on YouTube or on the Advanced Web Ranking website.
So, let me say goodbye to our guests. I hope to see you soon in real life—and maybe in the future, in a new episode of The Search Session.
And for you guys—this is the classic creator thing—remember to click on the big Subscribe button, and ring the bell to be notified when a new episode of The Search Session is out. Thank you, and bye-bye!
Rishi Lakhani: Bye-bye!
Gareth Hoyle: Salut!
Podcast Host
Gianluca Fiorelli
With almost 20 years of experience in web marketing, Gianluca Fiorelli is a Strategic and International SEO Consultant who helps businesses improve their visibility and performance on organic search. Gianluca collaborated with clients from various industries and regions, such as Glassdoor, Idealista, Rastreator.com, Outsystems, Chess.com, SIXT Ride, Vegetables by Bayer, Visit California, Gamepix, James Edition and many others.
A very active member of the SEO community, Gianluca daily shares his insights and best practices on SEO, content, Search marketing strategy and the evolution of Search on social media channels such as X, Bluesky and LinkedIn and through the blog on his website: IloveSEO.net.
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