Technology
AI Search and Syndicated Content - How syndicating content impacts visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini
This episode explores the complexities of content syndication and its impact on visibility across various AI search tools, including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. The discussion highlights ...
AI Search and Syndicated Content - How syndicating content impacts visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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So, you're syndicating content, but do you know if you're site-tracking or the syndication
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partner? Or maybe it's another site downstream that's scraping the syndication partner. Do
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you have any idea? And not just across Google services, but across AI search like chat
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CBT, perplexity, clawed, etc. Longing to be covering that topic today. But before I begin,
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make sure to subscribe to my channel so you don't miss any future videos. So today I'm
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going to be covering syndicated content and its impact across AI search tools like chat
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CBT and perplexity. In 2023, I did a similar study, but for Google services like the 10
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blue links, Google News, the news tab and search, discover, etc. It was super interesting
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to dig in. And basically, it was a mess, right? There was no rhyme or reason why one would
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rank over another whether it's your site or the syndication partner or Yahoo or MSN or
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some other site downstream scraping the syndication partners. It was total mess. Usually both URLs
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were indexed and there was no rhyme or reason why one would rank across all these services
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and it was usually split across those as well. And I even saw like logo problems where the
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wrong logo was showing up with the wrong article. So there was lots of weird stuff going
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on. I wrote a post now that I just published to focus more on AI search this time. So the
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first thing is you can actually go and check out my article from 2023. It might be good to
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actually start there. So you see how it impacts Google services and then go to this post which
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covers AI search. So the methodology that I use. So I took nine different publishers that were
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syndicating content. Most of them were to Yahoo or MSN. But again, there's, you know, sometimes sites
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are publishing to or syndicating content to a number of publishers outside of Yahoo and MSN.
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Or there are sites scraping Yahoo or MSN that could end up ranking as well. Anyway, so I checked
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Google services for those sites. So what was ranking in the 10 blue links and AI overviews in the
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news tab in Google news, et cetera. And then I checked chat, chat, GPT perplexity, clawed and
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Gemini. Again, very, very interesting stuff. So the first thing I wanted to cover is just the
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influence of traditional search rankings. So we know that there's a ton of overlap. If you're
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trying to rank in AI search tools like chat, GPT and perplexity and Gemini with SEO, right? So if
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you're doing the right things, becoming an authority, you know, building your brand, writing great
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content over time, that can actually help with ranking in AI search, right? But for this study,
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it was really interesting to see that that wasn't always the case where it followed what Google was
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ranking, right? In Google's all over the place, by the way, with which version it was ranking. So
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it kind of makes sense that that would kind of blend over to AI search as well. But I just wanted
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to quickly cover that. So let's go through some examples from my testing. You know, they say a good
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pictures worth a thousand words. Well, I have several really good pictures for each example here
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that I think you'll get it pretty quickly. So I have four different examples. Let's run through
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them. So the first example, so in Google surfaces, in the 10 blue links, the syndication partner ranks,
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Yahoo, as you can see here. So the original content, not ranking. And these are not little publishers,
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by the way. It's not like, you know, they're small niche publishers or anything. These are, you know,
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midsize to large scale publishers that are syndicating content. Then in the news tab,
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the original content ranks. So already you can see discrepancy there in the AI overview. Neither
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URL rate. That was interesting as well. And in Google news, the original URL also ranked. So
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kind of all over the place with Google services. Then in AI search, chat GPT, the original URL was
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cited prominently. Right? So in the answer and in the citations and the main sources. Great.
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In perplexity, the third party syndication partner cited prominently. Yahoo Finance was ranking
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number one in the sources. And then in the sources panel, in that view, you could see Yahoo Finance
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there. So you could see up in the answer, Yahoo Finance. And then in the sources panel, them as well.
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The original article was not there. In Claude, the original URL was cited, but Claude was saying that
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failed to fetch the content. So I wrote a whole separate post about JavaScript rendering and how
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that can cause massive problems with ranking in AI search because the AI search tools don't render
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JavaScript based content. I don't really know what was going on here, but it's worth noting that
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this happened. But at least the original content was was signaled here and cited. And then in the
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answer, the original content was there too. In Gemini, neither you were all cited. So again,
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a weird kind of glitch and problem there. So let's go to example two in Google services.
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In the AI overview, the original content seemed to rank. I thought it was the original content,
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but it wasn't. It's another site that picked up this indicated content. So it was naming the
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original source in the snippet there, but it was like a third party. So it wasn't even the first
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syndication partner that I was looking for. Again, something that can happen in worth noting.
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In the 10 blue links, the original URL ranked. Great. So it's not weird. So in the AIO, a third,
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you know, like three levels down publisher that I guess either is another syndication partner or
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scrape the syndication partner ranked, but in the 10 blue links, the original source ranked.
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News tab, neither URL ranked. And in Google News, similar to the news tab, Google News didn't return
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much for the query. So it was kind of a weird one there. So let's jump to AI search for the second
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eight example. In chat, the original URL cited and third party URL did not rank. So you could see
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here right in the answer, the original source and number one in the sources. That's great.
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In perplexity. Again, the third party syndication partner ranked. And again, it was Yahoo Finance.
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Right. So that's not good for the original source. In Claude, both URLs were cited and they
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were listed side by side in the answer. Super interesting. Right. So just again showing just the
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weirdness when you're syndicating content on how these tools, including Google, kind of pick this
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up and what they present. And the source listing shows both, right. So the syndicated content
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and the original content, both there in the 10 results. So Gemini, neither you were always
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cited, but no sources were cited at all. And by the way, I noticed this several times while
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testing Gemini. So I need to do more research there, but it seems like Gemini's not actually
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dishing out sources as much as the other AI tools. When I changed the prompt slightly to more
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of a question, Gemini did cite sources and the original URL ranked. That's good at least.
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But I definitely had to kind of tweak the prompt there to have it more question like.
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Okay. So as you can see, there's a lot of confusion so far with the first two examples. Let's
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go into the third. Google services. In Google search, the syndicated URL, the syndicated URL ranks
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number one in the AI overview and number one in the 10 blue links. So that's amazing coverage
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before the syndication partner. In the news tab, Yahoo, also ranks number one. So the original source,
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not cited, not listed and not ranking. Google news, even though this syndicated content ranked
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across other Google services, the original content ranked in Google news. Again, this is all over
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the place. This is all you need to say, right? So it's like in other surfaces, right? You have
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the syndication partner and then in Google news for some reason, you have the original content,
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great for the original content and the site owner, but not great across other Google services.
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But let's jump into AI search. So for chat, GPT, the syndicated URL cited as the source,
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but in the more section, I covered this in other posts. It's not in the core citations,
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it's down in the more section. And there were two URLs from Yahoo there, one related to the topic
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and the other, the actual syndicated content. In perplexity, like chat GPT, the third party
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URL cited as a source and also like chat GPT, there was a second article from Yahoo about a similar
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topic. So there you go. So you have two Yahoo URLs there. Then this is just the source's view.
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Again, both Yahoo articles listed there. Kind of interesting to say. Then in Claude,
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again, both URLs rank in their side by side in the answer. So it's just Claude going,
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hey, it's the same article, but let's put them together for everyone to say. So kind of weird,
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it's good coverage for the content overall, but maybe not the greatest coverage for the original,
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which is splitting time here with the syndicated content. And in Gemini, neither URL was cited,
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but the sources were super interesting for this prompt. Check this out. Perplexity finance was
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cited several times by Gemini and filled up the entire source's list for the most part. There
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was one other site in there. So as you can see here, perplexity ranking all over the place here.
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Kind of interesting and what I said is it's something to watch out for if perplexity expands
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verticals beyond just finance. So if they get into other areas, maybe perplexity starts getting
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cited by Gemini all over the place. I don't know if that's going to happen, but it was really
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interesting to see this. An example for the final one, and I saved the final one because it's
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the unicorn. So this site, the original owner site content owner, ranked across everything
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every time. The syndication partner never showed up. So I can't say why this is happening,
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but it was really interesting to say. So here in Google Services, the AI overview, the original
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content ranks number one in the AIO and number one in the 10 blue links. In the news tab, it ranks
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number one in the news tab. In Google News, it ranks number one in Google News. Again, a unicorn.
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In AI search, chat GPT, the original article ranks in the answer and in the sources.
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Perplexity, the original content ranks. Also in the sources panel. And in
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claw, the original URL was cited, but ranked below other sources. The syndicated content didn't
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rank, but still the original content was ranking there. So again, this is, oh, sorry, I missed
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Gemini. And in Gemini, not only did it rank prominently, but other articles from the same site
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were ranking along in the sources panel. So again, this is a total unicorn. I can't explain why it was
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happening. You know, just interesting to see. And again, the results overall are all over the
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place. So you have to understand this if you're syndicating content. So I ended the article with
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just some recommendations for site owners, right? So there are ranking challenges for the original
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publishers. That's obvious. So if you really want to limit the problems with your visibility,
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try and know index the syndicated content. That's a big ask, right? And you have to get that into
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your contracts. But that's the best way to make sure that your content ranking and the syndication
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partner does not steal your visibility essentially. Kinetic organization does seem to help based
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on my research, but it's not foolproof. So again, a lot of times both are indexed, both can rank
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across Google services and AI search tools. So if you can't know index, definitely try and
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canonicalize to your original source. And again, negotiate these with your syndication partners,
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right? If you can in the contracts, make sure at a minimum you have a canonicalize to your
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content on your own site and know index the syndicated content if you can. I would definitely run
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through this analysis just like I did, but for your own site, right? Run through a lot of examples,
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see what's going on across Google services and then across AI search tools like chat,
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CBT and perplexity and Gemini and cloud. You might be surprised with what you see. You might be a
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unicorn. I definitely surfaced a unicorn as I showed before. Or you might not be and you might be on
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the other side where the syndicated content ranks across everything. But anyway, run your analysis,
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document everything you can so you can see over time what's going on. Maybe things change,
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right? Maybe the core systems on these AI search tools are changing and suddenly you start to rank
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more. Or the syndication partner starts to rank more. You won't know this unless you really dig in
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and start to track it and document everything over time. So that's it. So I hope this helped.
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If you're a news or media publisher and you're syndicating content, understand that just like with
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Google services, rankings and visibility are all over the place. You might rank, they might rank,
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a third party down the line that's scraping content or another syndication partner might rank.
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It's really hard to say. So dig in, see what you find. And again, subscribe to my channel,
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make sure you don't miss any future videos. I appreciate that. And until the next video, good luck.