Who Are the Top 10 SEO Experts in the World?

Many "top SEO experts" lists come from companies that rank themselves or their clients near the top. Kevin Indig, who is on our list, studies how Google treats these pages. Indig wrote in August 2026:

We set four tests, left out CrawlRaven staff, and linked each claim to the person's own work.

How we chose the ten

Each person passed four tests. The tests favor people who publish work you can read and check today.

1. They publish work you can check. This includes research with a clear method, documentation, tools or public answers.
2. Their work is current. They published or updated it in 2025 or 2026, so it covers AI Overviews, AI Mode and the measurement gap.
3. Other SEOs use it. People who do SEO cite it, link to it and debate it.
4. The list covers different jobs. We picked people from Google, research, technical SEO, strategy and news.

We ignored follower counts, paid placements and conference appearances. We grouped the list by type of work: Google first, then research, then AI search and strategy, then updates and news. The numbers do not rank the people.

The top 10 SEO experts

The table gives a quick summary. Below it, each entry gives the person's role, in their own words or their employer's, and links to their work.

1. John Mueller: Google's Search Relations lead

Google lists him as Search Relations Lead on its Search Off the Record podcast page and as a Search Advocate on its blog. He answers site owners' questions on Reddit and Bluesky. Many of Google's 2026 statements on AI search first appeared there.

• Read him for: Google's view, fast. In 2026, he explained how Search Console counts AI impressions. He also called llms.txt "purely speculative for now".
• Start with: our page on who John Mueller is. It lists his 2026 statements on AI search with dates and links.

2. Gary Illyes: how Google crawls

Google's podcast page lists him as a Search Advocate who has worked on Search since he joined Google in 2011. He writes about how Googlebot finds, fetches and processes pages.

• The robots.txt standard. He co-wrote RFC 9309, the Robots Exclusion Protocol. The IETF published it in September 2022. It defines how a robots.txt file works.
• Inside Googlebot. In March 2026, he published "Inside Googlebot: demystifying crawling, fetching, and the bytes we process". The post includes the line "Crawling isn't magic; it's a highly orchestrated, scaled exchange of bytes."
• Search Off the Record. He co-hosts Google's Search podcast with John Mueller, Lizzi Sassman and Martin Splitt.

3. Rand Fishkin: zero-click data

Rand Fishkin is co-founder and CEO of SparkToro and a co-founder of Moz. SparkToro's studies measure how many Google searches end without a click to any website.

• The 2024 zero-click study: Datos clickstream data showed that 58.5% of US and 59.7% of EU Google searches ended with no click.
• The 2026 follow-up: Similarweb data showed that 68.01% of Google searches from January to April 2026 ended without a click.
• The 2024 Google API leak: Fishkin published the story on 27 May 2024. An anonymous source had shared the documents, and an update to the post named the source as Erfan Azimi.

The two studies used different data panels, so do not subtract one figure from the other to get a trend. Our post on Anthropic's SEO job listing covers what the numbers mean.

4. Kevin Indig: how people use AI answers

Kevin Indig's about page describes a growth advisor who previously led SEO and growth at Shopify, G2 and Atlassian. Indig writes the Growth Memo newsletter and studies how real people use AI search.

• A user study of AI Overviews (May 2025) watched 70 users across 8 tasks. Search Engine Land reported that 19% of mobile and 7.4% of desktop searchers clicked a citation.
• An AI Mode behavior study (October 2025) covered 250 sessions.
• "Has Google demoted listicles?" (August 2026) analyzed 5.32 million search results. We quote it at the top of this page.

5. Cyrus Shepard: what winning sites share

Cyrus Shepard runs Zyppy and its Signal newsletter, and previously led SEO and audience development at Moz. Shepard's studies measure what sites that do well in Google have in common.

• "5 Data-Backed Features of Websites Winning Google in 2026" (April 2026) studied more than 400 sites.
• The 2026 ranking factors expert survey (September 2026, with Dawn Shepard) collected 13,665 data points from 131 SEOs.

6. Lily Ray: core updates and AI search

Lily Ray announced Algorythmic in April 2026 and stayed on as VP of SEO and AI Search at Amsive. Ray's core update analyses show which sites win and lose when Google updates.

• The December 2025 core update analysis (January 2026) used SISTRIX and Similarweb data.
• A Gemini RAG analysis tool (December 2025), published on lilyray.nyc.

7. Mike King: how AI search works

Mike King founded iPullRank and runs it as CEO. King's work is the most technical on this list. It explains how AI search systems choose and use content.

• The 2024 leak analysis: King analyzed the leaked Google documentation, which covered 2,596 modules and 14,014 attributes.
• "How AI Mode Works" (May 2025) introduced what King calls relevance engineering.
• The AI Search Manual: iPullRank's guide to optimizing for AI search, with more than 20 chapters.

8. Aleyda Solis: learning SEO

Aleyda Solis founded Orainti, an SEO consultancy, in 2014. Solis publishes learning resources that suit anyone who is new to SEO or trains a team.

• LearningSEO.io: a free roadmap of reliable guides for learning SEO.
• SEOFOMO: a weekly SEO and AI search newsletter. Its site says it has more than 45,000 subscribers.
• The AI Search Optimization Checklist: updated in May 2026. One line from it reads: "Don't optimize by exploiting AI systems' current weaknesses."

9. Glenn Gabe: update case studies

Glenn Gabe founded G-Squared Interactive in 2001 and helps sites recover from algorithm updates. Gabe's case studies show what sites hit by the same update have in common.

• The May 2026 core update analysis (June 2026). Our May 2026 core update summary covers the dates and the changes.
• August 2026 spam update case studies (31 August 2026). See also our August 2026 spam update post.

10. Barry Schwartz: daily search news

Barry Schwartz is CEO of RustyBrick, founded Search Engine Roundtable, and is a contributing editor at Search Engine Land. Search Engine Roundtable reports many Google statements within a few days.

• Daily coverage. Search Engine Roundtable publishes every weekday. Schwartz wrote every post on its homepage on 11 September 2026.
• Links to the source. Schwartz links to the original Reddit thread or Bluesky post when reporting a Google statement. Search Engine Roundtable reported Mueller's 8 September reply on 10 September.
• Industry news. Schwartz reported Danny Sullivan's move away from the Search Liaison role in August 2025.

Who to read for each job

You do not need to follow all ten. Pick the people who fit your current question:

Who almost made the list

Four people almost made the list. Each one missed one test:

• Danny Sullivan. Sullivan was Google's Search Liaison until August 2025, then moved to a director role within Google Search. Sullivan still speaks in public, for example on non-commodity content in April 2026, but no longer as Google's public liaison.
• Marie Haynes. The Marie Haynes site now focuses on AI strategy, a newsletter and a community. We found less recent public research to link than for the ten.
• Areej AbuAli. AbuAli founded Women in Tech SEO in 2019. The community now has more than 12,000 members. Our first test measures published research, so it does not capture community work well.
• Jamie Indigo. Indigo is Director of Technical SEO at Cox Automotive and gave a talk on AI crawler management in May 2026. We found less published work to link than for Gary Illyes and Mike King.

Test expert advice on your own site

Each study on this list describes many sites. Your site is one site. Before you act on a study, check whether your own numbers match.

For example, the zero-click studies show falling click-through rates on some queries. Connect CrawlRaven's MCP server (paid plans) and run this prompt to check your own site:

For [your site], take my 50 queries with the most impressions. Compare click-through rate and average position for the last 3 months against the same 3 months last year. List the queries where position held but click-through rate fell, and the pages they belong to.

If position held and click-through rate fell, the results page changed, as the studies describe. If position fell, you have a normal ranking problem, and the update case studies will help more. The MCP documentation lists the data the connection can read.

What your own data cannot show

• What searchers saw. Search Console shows that click-through rate fell. It does not show the AI Overview or snippet that took the click.
• AI citations. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity report nothing to site owners. Our page on whether there is a Search Console for ChatGPT explains why.
• Whether a study is right. Your site is one data point. It cannot prove or disprove a study.

Our post on whether SEO is dead in 2026 covers the wider debate about SEO and AI.

Do this now: the 10-minute version

1. Pick one person for each job. Choose one for Google, one for research, one for updates and one for news.
2. Follow their own channel. Read their blog, newsletter or post, not a summary of it.
3. Note the date of every claim. Advice about AI search goes out of date within months.
4. Check the method behind any number. Look at the sample size, the data source and the time period.
5. Test it on your own site. Compare the claim with your Search Console data.