Graphite
Updated 2026-06-28Graphite is a growth-marketing agency turned self-service topical-SEO and AEO product, focused on topical authority and answer-engine visibility. Clients include Webflow and Fourthwall. Recent work: a June 2026 model-collapse study, "AI Is Much Bigger Than You Think," and a search-isn't-dying analysis.
Three scores, refreshed weekly from live market signals rather than a once-a-year analyst report. Presence is how established a vendor is in the market right now. Velocity is how fast they are shipping, raising, and winning customers. Agent Readiness is how easily your own agents can build on them through an API, MCP server, SDK, or CLI. Scores are relative across the vendors we track; the raw inputs ship in the downloadable dataset.
The Solution & Approach
Graphite (San Francisco) is a growth-marketing agency that turned its SEO practice into a self-service Topical SEO and AEO product. In 2024 it launched a SaaS platform built around a Topic Graph database, topical-authority scoring, and an Internal Links API, moving from a boutique agency-only model to self-service.
The company runs a research-as-marketing engine, the "Five Percent" series, built on Similarweb panel data. Founder Ethan Smith is one of the canonical AEO operator voices. He explained the playbook on Lenny's Podcast, citing that ChatGPT traffic converts six times better than Google and calling AEO the biggest shift in search since Google's Panda updates, and co-anchored AEO Conf 2026 with AirOps and Webflow.
Its studies push contrarian positions on the AEO debate: that AI search is far bigger than web-only analyses show (45 billion monthly sessions, 56% of search engine volume) and that organic search is not collapsing (down only 2.5% year over year in 2025). The 56% finding drew a public rebuttal from Rand Fishkin of SparkToro, and a June 2026 simulation found 79.6% of runs collapse when AI retrieves its own self-authored content.
Best for
Teams that want a topical-authority and AEO program run by an agency with a strong data and research practice, rather than a pure self-serve tool.
Pricing & trial
Pricing not public.
Agent Experience
How you build on this platform (or wire it into your own agents):
| Surface | Available | Docs |
|---|---|---|
| API | No | — |
| MCP | No | — |
| SDK | No | — |
| CLI | No | — |
| llms.txt | No | — |
Graphite exposes an Internal Links API for programmatic internal linking, but the public record shows no MCP, SDK, or broader agent tooling, so build-on-top options are limited.
Reference customers
Webflow, Fourthwall.
Case studies & customer stories
Recent moves
- 2026-06-24Published "AI Responses Collapse When AI Retrieves Its Own Generations," a simulation finding 79.6% of runs collapse when AI retrieves self-authored content, with 42.7% of June 2026 ChatGPT references measured as AI-generated. source
- 2026-04-20Published "AI Is Much Bigger Than You Think," finding AI assistants generate 45 billion monthly sessions, 56% of search engine volume, with 83% occurring in mobile apps. source
- 2026-04-16Published "Debunking The Myth That Search Is Dying," finding organic search declined only 2.5% year over year in 2025 across 40,000+ U.S. websites. source
- 2026-04-16Published a Topical Authority white paper showing top-bracket articles earned impressions and clicks faster, validating its Topic Graph scoring across 332 articles on 12 websites. source
- 2026-03-09Search Engine Land covered Graphite's finding that AI assistants reach 56% of global search engine volume, with Rand Fishkin of SparkToro issuing a public rebuttal on methodology. source
- 2026-02-19Co-hosted AEO Conf 2026, the first conference dedicated to Answer Engine Optimization, with AirOps and Webflow in San Francisco. source
Company, Financials & Funding History
Founded by Ethan Smith and based in San Francisco, Graphite began as a boutique growth-marketing and SEO agency before launching a self-service Topical SEO platform in 2024. Smith has become one of the most-cited AEO operator voices.