Last week, Cyrus Shepard published an AI citation ranking factors study , and it created a lot of noise on X, LinkedIn, and a number of private WhatsApp groups I’m in. Not only the distinction between what is a factor, and what is a correlation, especially given a lot of studies in SEO and AI are multifarious and have high levels of imponderable complexity. To be clear, this isn’t a criticism of Cyrus’s work; the study is excellent, and the correlation/causation caveat is one he makes himself explicitly. This led me to think about the parallels with other ranking factor studies done previously , which have implied direct traffic is a considerable traditional SEO ranking factor. At the time, these studies received a lot of negative feedback, and this was again discussed by many online after the documentation in Google’s DOJ trial revealed a “popularity” signal. It makes sense for direct traffic to be a component of how popularity is measured through Chrome. Google uses Chrome data to find new websites .…