{
  "name": "The 18-Year Shift: Link Building to AI Search",
  "source": "https://www.bestseopodcast.com/research/link-building-to-ai-search",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0",
  "attribution": "The Best SEO Podcast",
  "as_of": "August 2026",
  "method": "Single-show corpus (The Best SEO Podcast, 682 episodes, 2009-2026). Each topic scored per year as episode share (% of episodes mentioning it) and rate (mentions per 100,000 words). See /research/link-building-to-ai-search#method for the full method and the alternative explanations ruled out.",
  "years": [
    2009,
    2010,
    2011,
    2012,
    2013,
    2014,
    2015,
    2016,
    2017,
    2018,
    2019,
    2020,
    2021,
    2022,
    2023,
    2024,
    2025,
    2026
  ],
  "episodes_per_year": [
    41,
    44,
    43,
    44,
    39,
    45,
    44,
    49,
    47,
    38,
    28,
    33,
    24,
    31,
    29,
    38,
    45,
    19
  ],
  "words_per_year": [
    233082,
    267920,
    272805,
    223860,
    198780,
    274193,
    278979,
    309513,
    327805,
    232506,
    167610,
    230778,
    162299,
    193871,
    162868,
    280146,
    442441,
    178739
  ],
  "topics": {
    "link building": {
      "share": [
        44,
        50,
        23,
        41,
        51,
        40,
        27,
        20,
        49,
        42,
        50,
        36,
        42,
        61,
        34,
        26,
        29,
        21
      ],
      "rate": [
        53.2,
        33.2,
        10.3,
        48.7,
        56.8,
        39.0,
        17.6,
        8.7,
        34.5,
        56.3,
        63.2,
        29.5,
        25.9,
        74.3,
        46.7,
        73.5,
        6.3,
        7.3
      ]
    },
    "social media": {
      "share": [
        56,
        100,
        100,
        100,
        100,
        100,
        100,
        100,
        100,
        97,
        96,
        97,
        92,
        77,
        79,
        92,
        82,
        95
      ],
      "rate": [
        132.6,
        331.4,
        414.2,
        308.2,
        277.7,
        274.3,
        258.1,
        306.0,
        240.4,
        148.4,
        194.5,
        123.9,
        79.5,
        95.9,
        79.8,
        70.3,
        63.7,
        49.2
      ]
    },
    "AI/LLM": {
      "share": [
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        0,
        10,
        34,
        78,
        100
      ],
      "rate": [
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        0.0,
        13.5,
        7.9,
        47.2,
        76.1
      ]
    },
    "AEO/GEO": {
      "share": [
        0,
        2,
        9,
        2,
        3,
        7,
        5,
        2,
        9,
        13,
        7,
        3,
        12,
        10,
        7,
        8,
        38,
        63
      ],
      "rate": [
        0.0,
        0.4,
        2.9,
        0.4,
        0.5,
        1.8,
        0.7,
        0.3,
        2.4,
        10.8,
        1.2,
        0.4,
        3.7,
        2.1,
        1.2,
        1.1,
        9.3,
        33.0
      ]
    }
  }
}