James Dooley: Parasite SEO in 2026. There’s no better person to talk about this with than Charles Floate. Charles, it’s great to have you on. Parasite SEO has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to ranking through third-party corroboration, building reputation, and creating consensus online. I recently saw a tweet from you where it looked like several sites had suddenly skyrocketed again and jumped to the number one positions in Google. What’s your take on parasite SEO right now in 2026? Charles Floate: There’s been a bit of a rollercoaster trend with parasite SEO over the last few years. In 2023 and 2024 it really took off, especially after the Helpful Content Update in 2022. That’s when people started using parasite SEO heavily. Then Google introduced the site reputation abuse policy. The idea was that if you were using parasite SEO, they would penalize the subfolder or remove it from the index. Later, they expanded the policy to suggest they could remove an entire domain from the index. That scared a lot of publishers. But from what we can see, this policy has largely been more propaganda than reality. Since the policy was introduced, maybe two dozen websites have actually been penalized for site reputation abuse. But worldwide, there are probably at least 1,200 websites currently being used for parasite SEO — and that’s just paid parasite placements. With the latest algorithm update, there’s been a massive uptick again in Google trusting and ranking content on major news domains, especially for YMYL queries that normally take years to rank for. Instead of building a website and authority for years, you can sometimes buy a press release, guest post, or editorial link on a high-authority news site and rank very quickly. A good example recently was Reuters. It was ranking incredibly well across a wide range of competitive keywords through press releases. If you’re targeting high-value keywords like casinos, Turkish hair transplants, or weight loss supplements, even a $1,000 press release can generate a strong return if it ranks. James Dooley: For someone watching this, how do they figure out which sites are worth using? Because if they spend $1,000 today on a placement, the site might not rank the same way it did a few months ago. What’s the best way for someone to identify the right third-party websites to leverage — whether that’s for rankings, sign-ups, or building that third-party consensus? Charles Floate: The first thing to understand is that parasite SEO is cyclical within Google’s algorithm. Certain domains will get stronger weighting at different times. For example, Reddit and LinkedIn have both had huge spikes and dips in visibility. Reddit, in particular, has had more spikes than dips over the last few years. There are also long-term parasite platforms like Reddit and YouTube that can rank for years because Google has a fundamental bias toward those platforms. To be honest, part of that bias exists because those companies have partnerships with Google or are owned by Google. If those relationships didn’t exist, they probably wouldn’t get the same treatment in the algorithm. Other sites — like major news publishers — may rank strongly for two, three, or four months and then drop off. Often this happens because Google recognizes how effective those sites have become and applies some form of manual classifier or internal adjustment to limit their rankings. It’s not always a traditional manual penalty. Sometimes it just means that Google prevents those domains from ranking for queries outside their typical topical categories. Because of that, parasite SEO requires continuous research. You need to constantly analyze what’s ranking, which sites are rising, and which ones are falling. If a Google update just happened, one of the best things you can do is check the “biggest winners” charts. Often you’ll find hidden parasite domains that people haven’t noticed yet. James Dooley: Do you ever use parasite SEO to manipulate the synthetic queries that come from things like query fan-out in AI search? Charles Floate: Yes — absolutely. When SGE (which later became AI Overviews) was first announced, we theorized that parasite SEO could be used to influence those outputs. For example, if you rank multiple parasite pages within the top 100 results, you can begin to dominate the consensus that the AI model sees. Let’s say you have 40 out of the top 100 results all saying the same thing. When the AI extracts snippets from those results, it will see that repeated information and assume that it represents consensus. At the moment, there’s still limited fact-checking and verification happening within AI overviews. So they can actually be manipulated quite easily, even for queries where you might expect additional safeguards. James Dooley: There’s a great quote from Dejan that fits perfectly here. If something is only mentioned once or twice on the internet, it’s just an assumption. But if something gets repeated five or ten times across different websites, it starts to become treated as fact — even if it isn’t actually factual. So when it comes to parasite SEO, is the strategy different depending on whether you’re targeting ChatGPT or Gemini AI Overviews? Charles Floate: Yes — definitely. The first difference is that most AI results rely on grounding rather than training data. Gemini’s AI Overviews mostly pull from grounded search results and don’t rely heavily on training data when displaying sources. ChatGPT is slightly different. It still relies heavily on Bing search results but also uses its training data. Because Bing and Google have different ranking algorithms, your parasite pages may rank differently across each engine. You might rank number one in Bing but only number five in Google, or vice versa. When it comes to Gemini, there’s still very limited fact-checking, verification, and safeguarding. OpenAI, on the other hand, has increased its safety controls significantly over the last couple of years. For example, if you ask ChatGPT for the “best online casino,” it may refuse to answer that question. But if you search Google for the same query, you can still sometimes trigger AI Overviews with recommendations. Certain industries like gambling have fewer AI Overviews in Google, but they still appear for some queries. James Dooley: It’s a fascinating time for SEO. Parasite SEO isn’t just about ranking in Google or Bing anymore — it can also influence large language models and AI search systems. If you want us to go deeper into parasite SEO strategies, leave a comment below. And make sure you check out some of the other episodes where Charles and I discuss topics like Selection Rate Optimisation and other SEO strategies that are working in 2026. Charles, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Charles Floate: Thanks for having me.