Adaptive search mode, entities in Brand Radar, and more (July + August 2026)

Site Explorer now has an Adaptive organic traffic model you can enable in settings. It assigns individual CTR weights to 15 SERP feature types, including AI Overviews, instead of lumping them together.

Estimates are recalibrated monthly against real Web Analytics data, and you can switch between the old Static mode and Adaptive anytime.

The new mode is also available via the API with the traffic\_mode=adaptive parameter.

NOTE

Adaptive mode becomes the default after testing wraps up.

AI appearances in Top Pages

The Top Pages report now shows how many AI responses each page appears in, across different AI platforms, except search-query-based AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The column is sortable, exportable, available via API, and requires a matching Brand Radar subscription.

Entity matching

Brand Radar now extracts entities from AI responses and uses them in report setup, filters, and the overview. You can match a brand as an entity instead of plain text, which helps with ambiguous names like Apple or Notion.

Each term supports Entity is, Entity contains, or Text matching, with optional Company or Product category filters.

AI adjusted volume

AI visibility reports now use a new AI adjusted volume instead of Google search volume.

For each prompt, Ahrefs finds the parent keyword, takes its Google volume, and multiplies by that platform's estimated usage ratio. The same prompt gets a different volume on each platform, and can be used by your API with the new **search\_volume\_type** parameter.

NOTE

A temporary toggle in each report header lets you revert to the old calculation. It disappears after September 30, 2026.

Doubled prompt dataset

The Brand Radar prompt dataset has grown from around 14 million to 30 million prompts. The source is the same (Google's People Also Ask), but a lower search volume threshold now pulls in more questions.

Country distribution stays roughly the same, and about 5% of prompts refresh each month.

Google Analytics import without Ahrefs script

You can now view imported Google Analytics data in Web Analytics even if the Ahrefs script is not installed. Connect a Google account with GA access, and after the first import, GA becomes the default dataset for that project.

With both sources connected, you can switch between Ahrefs, combined, or GA alone.

NOTE

Reports and filters unsupported in GA-only mode are hidden automatically.

That's all for this month. Check out our full changelog for the rest of the smaller updates, or leave any feature requests on our Canny board. Enjoy!

Post byKamila Olexa

Kamila has 6 years of experience in growth marketing, leading SEO strategies and paid advertising campaigns for early-stage startups and growing companies such as Better Stack. She builds her own projects and publishes in-depth analyses and experiments at Content Levers.

Reviewed by

Andrei Țiț

Your weekly marketing’s must-reads

Join 284K marketers for weekly news, useful reads, industry updates, and the memes you didn’t know you needed.

Explore what’s inside the newsletter →

Blog

The Beginner’s Guide to SEO ↗

A beginner’s guide to SEO basics, with resources to help you start ranking higher.

Product

Legal info

Cookie Settings

English