Small business▼−3Since September 2026: 23% → 20%, −3 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
20%from 23% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 8 pointsRank 1 of 80, unchanged
4 categories · RankedSurfer SEO
160Judge labels
28First choices
27Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
4Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10-05.2, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
20% in SEO for small business buyers
Rank 2 of 78 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
1 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 17% of its 58 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of Surfer SEO →By buyer segmentStrongest at small business.
Small business1 of 84
20%57 labels
accepted challenger
Mid-market2 of 78
17%58 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise6 of 59
6%26 labels
criticized challenger
In seo · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named Surfer SEO for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO and content optimization platforms | Marketing | 17% | 2 of 78 | 17% | 58 | accepted challenger | ▼−8Since September 2026: 25% → 18%, −8 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| Content marketing platforms | Marketing | 2% | 14 of 135 | 0% | 5 | under 10 labels · led by HubSpot Content Hub at 33% | ▲+2Since September 2026: 0% → 2%, +2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| AI visibility and answer engine tracking tools | Marketing | 0% | 40 of 90 | 0% | 2 | under 10 labels · led by Otterly at 20% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| AI marketing agents | Marketing | 0% | 117 of 157 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by HubSpot Breeze at 24% |
Movement
Since September 2026, Surfer SEO held within the floor in all four categories: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · SEO · by segment
Mid-market▼−8Since September 2026: 25% → 18%, −8 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
18%from 25% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 3 pointsRank 1 → 2 of 71
Enterprise▲+4Since September 2026: 2% → 7%, +4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
7%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 7 pointsRank 8 → 6 of 58
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | 25% | 18% | ▼−8Since September 2026: 25% → 18%, −8 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 1 → 2 of 78 |
| Content marketing | 0% | 2% | ▲+2Since September 2026: 0% → 2%, +2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 32 → 14 of 135 |
| AI visibility | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 42 → 40 of 90 |
| AI marketing agents | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 117 of 157, unchanged |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated Surfer SEO across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated Surfer SEO across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 6 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 4 |
| Grok 4.1 Fast | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 1 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 8 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Kimi K2 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 7 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 6 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 1 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct27 labels4
Paraphrase29 labels15
Comparative41 labels10not counted in share
Budget-constrained22 labels4
Scale-constrained16 labels5
Negative25 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative160 labels in all, every segment counted; 28 of the 38 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“More comprehensive than Clearscope or Frase... Pick Surfer if you want one platform to manage the entire content process from planning to publishing.” Kimi K2 · SEO · comparative prompt · first choice
“Surfer SEO is considered one of the best tools for content optimization as it analyzes what's already ranking and provides data-backed guidance” Llama 4 Maverick · SEO · comparative prompt · first choice
“the best single-platform pick is usually Surfer SEO ... best value for optimization on a budget at about $89/month” Perplexity Sonar · Content marketing · budget prompt · first choice
“Surfer SEO: A content-optimization tool that analyzes top-ranking pages for a target keyword and provides a structured brief” Llama 4 Maverick · SEO · paraphrase prompt · first choice
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“Surfer SEO if you publish at volume (credit economics will hurt you)” Kimi K2 · SEO · negative prompt · hard negative
“Surfer SEO's recent price changes and costly AI add-ons... have made many users seek better solutions... complex to use and difficult to fully leverage.” Muse Glimmer 30B · SEO · negative prompt · soft negative
“Surfer — because the scoring can be mistaken for an objective quality metric, and the product leans into AI-assisted generation.” GPT-5.4 mini · SEO · negative prompt · soft negative
“Traditional "On-Page NLP" and TF-IDF Optimizers (Approach with Caution) * Examples: Surfer SEO, Frase, Clearscope” Gemini 3.5 Flash · SEO · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Surfer SEO, over the 160 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Surfer SEO was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as Surfer SEO, over the 160 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Surfer SEO was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Surfer SEO. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 147 of the 160 answers that named Surfer SEO and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
blog.hubspot.com79
trysight.ai66
rankability.com38
semrush.com37
frase.io33
zapier.com32
airops.com28
onelittleweb.com28
surferseo.comYour site28
conductor.com27
368 of the 396 domain citations in answers naming Surfer SEO came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
surferseo.com ranks first on Google for the category's searches. In the answers, Surfer SEO takes 17% of first choices and Semrush takes 21%.ShowHide
Search and answers
surferseo.com ranks first on Google for the category's searches. In the answers, Surfer SEO takes 17% of first choices and Semrush takes 21%.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimatesPosition for “seo and content optimization platform”
1
Position for “best seo and content optimization platform”
–
not in the top ten
- Searches for its name, Google
- 5,400 a month (“surfer seo”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 146 a month
- Organic visits to its site
- about 99,288 a month
- Searches its site ranks for
- 9,291 · 186 in the top three
- Sites linking to it
- 19,949
- Paid Google search
- No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
17%
rank 2 of 78 in SEO
Segment leader
21%
Semrush
- First choices
- 28 across its categories
- Named in
- 160 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 147 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
What it publishes
ShowHide
What it publishes
ShowHideAddresses on surferseo.com
1,014
subdomains included
Content
340
counted in the table below
Documentation
159
Product · Integration
9 · 6
| Kind | Pages | Last 90 days | 2025-10 to 2026-09 | Latest | Categories named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blog | 256 | 166 | 2026-09-17 | SEO | |
| Conference or event | 30 | undated | SEO | ||
| Case study | 29 | 29 | 2026-09-09 | SEO | |
| Comparison | 11 | 5 | 2026-09-25 | ||
| Glossary or explainer | 11 | 2 | 2026-09-09 | SEO | |
| Template or tool | 2 | 2 | 2026-09-09 | SEO | |
| Webinar or virtual event | 1 | undated |
Most recent
- 2026-09-25Llm scraped ai answers vs api results comparison
- 2026-09-172026 ai seo workflow blog
- 2026-09-17Ai citation report blog
- 2026-09-17Ai citations first 100 words blog
- 2026-09-17Ai content detection blog
- 2026-09-17Ai content optimization blog
How it is countedHide how it is counted
Every page surferseo.com exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.
Names read as Surfer SEO
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Surfer SEO; a claim can dispute any of them.
Surfer 10SurferSEO 9Surfer SEO (Enterprise/Business) 1
Follow Surfer SEO
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
Surfer SEO is its own company.ShowHide
The company
Surfer SEO is its own company.
ShowHideIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- AI Visibility Platform for maximum organic growth
- For
- SEO specialists, AI visibility teams, content managers, marketing agencies, in-house teams, and businesses optimizing content for search engines and AI
- Price stated
- AI Search Analytics 82 USD per month billed yearly; Standard 99 USD per month billed yearly; Pro 182 USD per month billed yearly; Peace of Mind 299 USD per month billed yearly; Discovery 49 USD per month billed yearly; Enterprise Custom Tailored packages surferseo.com/pricing
- Starting price
- 49 surferseo.com/pricing
- Free plan or trial
- Get a FREE AI Visibility Audit—straight to your inbox. No account or credit card required.; Try Surfer for free surferseo.com
- Integrations claimed
- 6 surferseo.com · 7 surferseo.com/integrations pages disagree
- Certifications
- ISO 27001 certified
- Hosting
- Europe
- Customers named
- BoltClickUpmatthewwoodward.co.ukDiggity MarketingMongoose MediaMy Content PalHostingerPlanable
What Surfer SEO's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: surferseo.com, surferseo.com/pricing, surferseo.com/solutions/teams, surferseo.com/category/case-studies, surferseo.com/integrations. A claimed page can correct any of them.
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Surfer SEO's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Surfer SEO, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Surfer SEO by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where Surfer SEO is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name Surfer SEO, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Surfer SEO is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.ShowHide
Badges
Wins only: a badge exists where Surfer SEO is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.
ShowHideSurfer SEO is among the products AI models recommend first in SEO and content optimization platforms this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.
Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges
Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides
Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer
Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.