Graphite
Updated 2026-10-02Growth-marketing agency turned AEO operator, San Francisco. Best known for the Five Percent research series and founder Ethan Smith's AEO playbook. Recent work: a June 2026 model-collapse simulation, the 45-billion-session AI search study, and an August 2026 finding that forced search inflates prompt-tracking numbers.
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 started as a boutique growth-marketing agency and turned its SEO practice into a product. In May 2024 it launched a self-service Topical SEO platform: a Topic Graph database, topical-authority scoring, real-time monitoring, and an Internal Links API. Beta client Fourthwall reported 2,301% traffic growth and a 936% SEO revenue increase in nine months. The agency model still runs underneath, which is why this sits on the Hire side of the AEO/GEO market rather than the Buy side.
The research engine is doing as much work as the product. The Five Percent series publishes original studies built on Similarweb panel data and large keyword samples, with named authors carrying PhDs. The findings tend to cut against consensus: organic search traffic fell only 2.5% year over year in 2025, not the 25-60% drops in industry commentary. AI assistants generate 45 billion monthly sessions, 56% of search engine volume, with 83% of that inside mobile apps everyone else was missing. Rand Fishkin publicly challenged the methodology on the second one and Ethan Smith answered back.
Graphite's category POV is that AEO measurement is not yet trustworthy. Its August 2026 piece named a specific defect: some prompt-tracking tools force ChatGPT to run a web search when collecting responses, which no user does. On prompts that don't naturally trigger search, visibility differs by 20 points on average. The recommendation is to let the model decide and report grounding rate per prompt. Worth noting Graphite sells AEO services while its rivals sell the tracking tools.
Best for
Teams that want AEO and topical-SEO work done for them by operators with a public research record, rather than a dashboard they have to staff.
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 | — |
The Internal Links API is the one documented programmatic surface, so this is a service engagement first and a platform to build on second.
Reference customers
Webflow, Fourthwall.
Case studies & customer stories
Recent moves
- 2026-08-01Published research finding that some AEO prompt-tracking tools force ChatGPT to use web search, shifting measured visibility by 20 points on average for prompts that don't naturally trigger it. source
- 2026-06-24Published a simulation study finding 79.6% of runs (1,216 of 1,528) end in response collapse when AI retrieves its own self-authored content, and measured 42.7% of June 2026 ChatGPT references as AI-generated. source
- 2026-04-20Published "AI Is Much Bigger Than You Think," measuring 45 billion monthly AI assistant sessions globally, 56% of search engine volume, with 83% happening in mobile apps. source
- 2026-04-16Published "Debunking The Myth That Search Is Dying," finding organic search traffic declined 2.5% year over year in 2025 across 40,000+ U.S. websites. source
- 2026-04-16Published a Topical Authority white paper showing articles scoring above 80 reached first impressions and clicks faster, across 332 articles on 12 websites. 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, who runs the company from San Francisco and has become one of the category's most-cited AEO operator voices, laying out the playbook on Lenny's Podcast in September 2025 and co-opening AEO Conf 2026. The company moved from agency-only to a self-service Topical SEO product in May 2024.
Links
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Last updated 2026-08-23 · refreshed weekly