What changed since the 2025 version of this list
The first version of this post had 5 newsletters on it. All 5 are still here, which is a huge credit to them: They pivoted to the AI search era while holding their quality and without abandoning the SEO updates and best practice coverage that got them onto the list in the first place.
What changed is the job the newsletter has to do. In 2025 a good one told you what Google had done that week, while in 2026 it also has to cover what ChatGPT, AI Mode, Perplexity and Gemini did, whether the tool claiming to measure any of that can be trusted and which of the two piles deserves your Tuesday morning.
| Newsletter | Who runs it | Cadence | Cost | Best for | Sign up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #SEOFOMO | Aleyda Solis | Weekly, Sundays | Free | The one newsletter to rule them all | seofomo.co |
| AI Marketers | Aleyda Solis | Weekly | Free | AI news without the SEO news attached | aimarketers.co |
| Core Updates | Mark Williams-Cook, Candour | Weekly, Mondays | Free | Google updates and what they actually mean | coreupdates.com |
| Growth Memo | Kevin Indig | Weekly, plus premium briefs | Freemium | Original research and data you can present | growth-memo.com |
| Suganthan’s newsletter | Suganthan Mohanadasan | 2 to 4 a month | Free | How ChatGPT and Perplexity really pick sources | suganthan.com |
| Metehan’s SEO and AI/ML | Metehan Yesilyurt | 2 to 4 a month | Freemium | Large-scale experiments on crawler behaviour | metehanai.substack.com |
| Lily Ray’s Substack | Lily Ray | Occasional | Free | Where AI search tactics damage content quality | lilyraynyc.substack.com |
| Search to Sale | Freddie Chatt | Weekly | Free | Ecommerce SEO tied to revenue | searchto.sale |
| Blue Array | Blue Array team | Weekly, Sundays | Free | Original commentary from a working agency | bluearray.co.uk |
| Leadership in SEO | Harry Clarkson-Bennett | Roughly weekly | Freemium | Publishers, teams and career progression | leadershipinseo.com |
Free. Weekly, on a Sunday. seofomo.co
Aleyda Solis‘ #SEOFOMO is probably the most popular newsletter in the SEO community and for good reason, because I personally cannot live without it. Every week Aleyda, owner at Orainti, curates the latest industry news, guides, case studies and tools into a bite-sized digest that can save you hours of scrolling and it manages to fill the gaps even for people with actual SEO FOMO who think they don’t miss a thing. Like me. It’s the go-to resource if you want to stay on top of search updates without getting lost in endless LinkedIn threads.
One thing has changed since I first wrote this up: It’s no longer an SEO newsletter with occasional AI coverage. Every issue in 2026 runs as SEO plus AI search, so the AI Mode studies, the citation research and the tooling news land in the same digest as the Google updates. I rate that more highly than it probably sounds, because keeping the two apart in your reading is exactly what makes people treat AI search as a side project.
More than 45,000 people get it, it’s free, it’s grown into a hub with a job board and meetups and she runs SEO giveaways frequently. So make sure to sign up and avoid SEO FOMO.
Sign up: seofomo.co
More from Aleyda
- MarketingFOMO - the same treatment for marketing generally, perfect for generalists.
- learningseo.io - THE SEO learning roadmap, free, with an AI search section added.
- learningaisearch.com - the AI search equivalent, open, no sign-up and vendor-neutral. It’s in my best free AI search courses round-up too.
- SEOFOMO News - her Chrome extension, so you miss nothing between issues.
Free. Weekly. aimarketers.co
This was a single line under Aleyda’s name in the 2025 version and it has earned its own entry since. AI Marketers is her AI-only spin-off: AI news, guides, automations and tools for marketers, with none of the SEO news attached.
This one is written for marketers by someone who does the work, so it treats the automation and tooling side as seriously as the visibility side. If AI has taken over half your job in the last 18 months without anyone rewriting your job description, this is the newsletter that acknowledges it.
Sign up: aimarketers.co/subscribe
Candour’s Core Updates: Best for Google algorithm updates
Free. Weekly, on a Monday. coreupdates.com
Candour‘s Core Updates Newsletter, run by Mark Williams-Cook, breaks down recent algorithm changes, experiments and tactical advice in a way that’s accessible and practical. I find it especially valuable as a way to cut through the noise and understand the real-world impact of Google’s updates and the most important not-to-be-missed SEO news and innovation.
It’s stayed free, it still lands on a Monday morning and it now covers AI search as heavily as classic search, which means AI Mode behaviour, AI content labelling and citation data all turn up alongside the core update coverage.
Sign up: coreupdates.com
More from Mark
- Search and AI deep dives - his personal Substack, launched in 2026, for the pieces that don’t fit a newsletter format.
- 500+ unsolicited SEO tips - years of the tips he publishes on LinkedIn, collected in one place.
- AlsoAsked - a great resource for collecting all the People Also Asked questions on any topic, now repositioned around AI search conversation mapping.
- IntentGaps - his newer tool, worth a look if AlsoAsked already sits in your stack.
Kevin Indig’s Growth Memo: Best for original research and data
Freemium. Weekly, plus premium briefs. growth-memo.com
Kevin Indig‘s Growth Memo sits at the intersection of search, product and growth. His weekly essays dive deep into how companies scale using organic channels, often with frameworks and insights you can apply immediately, which makes his thought-provoking content particularly relevant if you’re looking to connect SEO with the bigger picture of digital growth.
What makes it essential in 2026 is that he funds the studies nobody else is funding: AI Mode analyses, million-result citation studies, AI Overview usability research and an H1 2026 halftime report. When a CMO asks why traffic is flat and you need a defensible number rather than a vibe, this is usually where I go looking. More than 28,000 people subscribe and the $150 a year premium tier is what pays for the research.
Free gets you the weekly essays, while premium adds the Growth Intelligence Briefs, a private Slack and the planning tools. Start free.
Sign up: growth-memo.com
Free. Roughly 2 to 4 emails a month. suganthan.com/newsletter
Suganthan Mohanadasan sends this when he publishes rather than on a schedule, so it is less a newsletter than a way of never missing one of his deep dives, which is exactly why it belongs here. He reads ChatGPT’s network traffic instead of guessing from its answers, so his pieces tell you how the thing actually picks sources: ChatGPT cites roughly 3% of what it reads and a brand already present in its opening search query gets cited 68.9% of the time against 2.1% for one it only meets during retrieval. He builds at the same rate, most recently FanoutFox, a free Chrome extension showing the sub-queries ChatGPT and Perplexity actually ran and which pages got fetched against which got cited. He is on my AI search experts list too, at the top of it. Free, 1,210+ readers and he runs the whole list on Listmonk for $8 a month, which tells you most of what you need to know about him.
Metehan Yesilyurt’s SEO and AI/ML Substack: Best for AI search experiments
Freemium. Roughly 2 to 4 issues a month. metehanai.substack.com
Metehan publishes experiments rather than commentary, at a scale almost nobody else bothers with. He published a billion pages to find out when GPTBot would show up and he’s shown how machine-translated Reddit content eats brand visibility in non-English markets.
You read this one for the method. He shows the setup, the sample and the limits, which means you can argue with him and being able to argue with someone is worth far more than another list of best practices with no evidence attached. Be warned that the cadence is lumpy: It arrives when he’s finished something rather than on a schedule. He’s also on my list of AI search experts to follow.
Sign up: metehanai.substack.com
Lily Ray’s Substack: Best for the content quality angle
Free. Occasional. lilyraynyc.substack.com
Lily Ray writes when she has something contrarian to say and in 2026 that has mostly meant documenting where AI search tactics damage the site running them. “Your GEO Strategy Might Be Destroying Your SEO”, “The AI Slop Loop”, “It Works Until It Doesn’t: AI Content Strategies That Backfire”. You can see the through-line.
Low volume, high signal and worth every issue. Set your expectations to occasional though, because there can be a few months between sends and read it as the quality and E-E-A-T counterweight to a feed full of GEO tactics. She’s on my AI search experts list too.
Sign up: lilyraynyc.substack.com
Freddie Chatt’s Search to Sale: Best for ecommerce SEO
Free. Weekly. searchto.sale
Freddie Chatt‘s eCommerce SEO Newsletter is a must-read for anyone working in ecommerce SEO. Each edition shares actionable tips, case studies and experiments focused on how SEO drives revenue in ecommerce businesses and many are shared on LinkedIn too. Freddie blends hands-on advice with strategic thinking, making it especially useful for in-house teams and agencies working on ecom product-led sites.
It’s grown up since I last wrote about it. The newsletter now runs under the Search to Sale brand at searchto.sale with more than 9,600 subscribers and the framing has widened from SEO to search and GEO driving revenue, which is the right move for this audience. The older sign-up page at freddiechatt.com/newsletter still works if you prefer it.
Sign up: searchto.sale
More from Freddie
- Summer of SEO - his free ecommerce SEO email course, back for a 2026 edition and now covering AI search and Google’s agentic checkout alongside the ecom fundamentals. It curates tips from some of the best SEO experts in the business (including yours truly) and you’ll get an email a day with actionable advice you can start implementing for noticeable uplift.
Blue Array’s SEO Newsletter: Best for agency-side commentary
Free. Weekly, Sunday at 8pm. bluearray.co.uk
Blue Array’s newsletter is one of the longest-running and most reliable in the SEO industry. Delivered weekly at 8pm on a Sunday, it covers the latest news, Google updates and practical insights and it now explicitly covers GEO alongside organic search. More than 15,000 people get it.
What I particularly enjoy is its mix of curated resources and original commentary from the Blue Array team, because the commentary comes from people running client work that week rather than from an editor summarising someone else’s post. Nobody else on this list gives you a whole agency’s read on the week, so it earns its place for the annotation rather than the curation.
Sign up: bluearray.co.uk/seo-insights/subscribe
Harry Clarkson-Bennett’s Leadership in SEO: Best for publishers and SEO leaders
Freemium. Roughly weekly. leadershipinseo.com
Harry Clarkson-Bennett’s Substack focuses on providing insights and deep-dives for senior publisher SEOs but not just, covering topics such as building SEO teams, developing a commercial SEO mindset and SEO brand building, along with E-E-A-T for publishers, how LLMs are changing search (thanks for the shout out, Harry) and the future of discoverability. It is particularly useful as food-for-thought for both senior SEOs and those looking to climb the career ladder.
It moved up a gear in 2026, because what used to be fortnightly is now roughly weekly with a Weekly Insight series and video editions and there’s a paid tier at $8 a month or $80 a year with the core content staying free. It was the bonus entry in the 2025 list and it’s a full entry now, mostly because honest career and leadership writing in search is thin on the ground and this is the best of what exists.
Sign up: leadershipinseo.com
What is the best SEO newsletter in 2026?
#SEOFOMO by Aleyda Solis, if you’re only picking one. It’s free, weekly, has more than 45,000 subscribers and in 2026 it covers SEO and AI search in the same issue rather than treating AI as a separate beat. Everything else on this list is a specialism layered on top of it: Core Updates for algorithm changes, Growth Memo for research, Suganthan Mohanadasan for how the assistants actually pick sources, Search to Sale for ecommerce and Leadership in SEO for teams and careers.
Which newsletters cover AI search rather than traditional SEO?
Four on this list lead with AI search: AI Marketers by Aleyda Solis for AI marketing news, Suganthan Mohanadasan’s newsletter for how ChatGPT and Perplexity choose what to cite, Metehan Yesilyurt’s Substack for large-scale crawler experiments and Lily Ray’s Substack for where AI search tactics damage content quality. #SEOFOMO, Core Updates and Growth Memo all cover AI search heavily alongside SEO, which means you can read those instead and still keep up with the topic. If the terminology is the bit slowing you down, my AI search optimisation glossary covers AEO, GEO and the rest of the acronyms, while AI Search Optimisation 101 is the framework for doing the work rather than reading about it.
How many SEO newsletters should I subscribe to?
Three or four and fewer than you think you should. The failure mode is subscribing to 12 and opening none of them, which leaves you worse informed than someone reading 3 with attention. Pick one for general curation, one that matches your specialism and one for depth or research, then add a fourth if there’s a gap you keep hitting, such as tooling decisions or leadership conversations. If you sign up to one and stop there, make it #SEOFOMO, because it’s the widest net with the best filter and it covers AI search properly now.
Are any SEO newsletters worth paying for?
Start free, because most of these give you the substance without a card. Two paid tiers are worth considering once you’re reading them regularly. Growth Memo at $150 a year buys original research, the Growth Intelligence Briefs and a private Slack, which makes sense if you present data to leadership. Leadership in SEO at $8 a month or $80 a year makes sense if you manage a team or want to. Everything else on this list is genuinely free.
Work with me on AI search
A newsletter will tell you what happened this week. If you would rather someone looked at your own data with you - the crawler logs, the prompt set, or the reporting nobody can defend in a board meeting - tell me what you are seeing and I will tell you whether it is worth fixing.