Fatrank Podcast

James Dooley: Parasite SEO in 2026. There is no one better to discuss this with than Charles Flo. Charles, parasite SEO has become more important than ever for ranking through third party corroboration, building reputation and creating consensus across the web. I saw a tweet from you recently showing several sites that suddenly jumped into number one positions. What is your view on parasite SEO right now in 2026?

Charles Flo: Parasite SEO has been on a bit of a rollercoaster over the past few years. In 2023 and 2024 it really exploded, especially after the helpful content update in 2022. That was when the tactic really started accelerating.

Charles Flo: Then Google introduced the site reputation abuse policy. The message was that if publishers were involved in parasite SEO they could have the subfolder removed from the index. Later the policy expanded further, suggesting entire domains could be removed. That made a lot of publishers nervous.

Charles Flo: From what we can see though, the enforcement has been limited. The policy has acted more like a deterrent than a widespread penalty system. Since the policy launched, only a couple of dozen sites appear to have been hit with actual penalties for parasite SEO. Meanwhile there are easily more than 1,200 sites actively being used for paid parasite SEO across the web.

Charles Flo: With the latest algorithm updates there has been another spike in news domains ranking strongly again. Google appears to trust and validate high authority news sites for certain queries, especially in YMYL search categories. Those topics are traditionally very difficult to rank for with a new site because they require years of authority and expert signals.

Charles Flo: Instead, someone can purchase a press release, a guest post or an editorial placement on a large news publication. That article can then rank for extremely competitive keywords. A good example was Reuters ranking strongly for a wide range of terms through press releases. A placement that costs around a thousand dollars can pay for itself very quickly if it ranks for queries such as casino keywords, Turkish hair transplants or weight loss supplements.

James Dooley: For anyone watching this who wants to use parasite SEO, how do they identify which sites to use? If someone spends a thousand dollars today but the domain is not ranking as well as it was a few months ago, how do they decide which third party sites are worth using?

James Dooley: It is not always just about domain rating. Many of these sites do have high authority, but what matters is that the domain has trust, branded search and branded clicks. Those signals can help a page rank for specific keywords. What is the best way for someone to identify the right third party sites for building consensus or generating rankings?

Charles Flo: The first thing to understand is that parasite SEO works in cycles. Certain domains will receive stronger algorithm weighting during certain periods. Platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn have experienced major spikes and also drops.

Charles Flo: Reddit has generally been on the upward side for the last few years. Some platforms such as Reddit and YouTube are long term parasite opportunities. Those domains can rank for many years because Google places strong algorithmic weighting on them.

Charles Flo: The reason is simple. Some of these sites have partnerships with Google or are owned by Google. That relationship naturally influences how the algorithm treats them.

Charles Flo: Other domains such as major news publishers can rank strongly for a short period. They might rank well for two, three or four months and then gradually drop again. Often that happens when Google realises how aggressively those domains are being used for parasite SEO.

Charles Flo: At that point the algorithm may apply a form of manual classification to prevent those pages from ranking for topics outside the domain’s traditional subject area. It may not appear as a traditional manual penalty. Instead it may simply prevent those pages from ranking for certain keywords.

Charles Flo: In practice this means you need to continuously research search results. Watch which sites are rising, which ones are dropping and which domains are currently trusted by the algorithm. When a major Google update happens, it is useful to look at the biggest winners from that update. Sometimes those lists reveal parasite opportunities that most people would never notice.

James Dooley: Do you ever use parasite SEO to influence synthetic queries generated through query fan out in AI systems?

Charles Flo: Absolutely. When Google first introduced SGE, which later became AI Overviews, we theorised that parasite SEO could be used to manipulate those outputs.

Charles Flo: The idea is that you could rank multiple parasite pages within the top results. If you had dozens of pages ranking within the top one hundred results, those pages could dominate the information consensus. The AI system would then see repeated signals across many sources.

Charles Flo: When the model extracts snippets from the top results it may see that forty of the top one hundred results are repeating the same claim. The model then assumes that information represents consensus and amplifies it in the output.

Charles Flo: At the moment there is limited fact checking and verification within many AI systems. That makes certain queries easier to manipulate than people might expect.

James Dooley: That aligns with something Dejan once said. If something appears once or twice online it is treated as an assumption. When the same statement appears five or ten times across different sources it can quickly become accepted as fact.

James Dooley: Even if the statement is not actually correct, the repeated references across third party sites can cause AI systems to treat it as factual information.

James Dooley: With that in mind, is there a difference in parasite SEO strategy when targeting ChatGPT compared with Gemini and AI Overviews?

Charles Flo: Yes, there are differences. Most of the time you are trying to influence the grounding sources used by the AI system. Training data usually plays a smaller role for real time answers.

Charles Flo: Gemini and AI Overviews rely heavily on live search results rather than the model’s training data. ChatGPT still references Bing results quite frequently, but it also relies more on training data compared with Gemini.

Charles Flo: Another factor is that Google and Bing rank pages differently. A page might rank number one in Google but appear much lower in Bing. That means your parasite placements may perform differently depending on which search engine the AI system is referencing.

Charles Flo: Gemini currently has relatively limited fact checking and verification systems. OpenAI has gradually increased safeguards in ChatGPT over the last couple of years.

Charles Flo: For example, if you ask ChatGPT for the best online casino it may refuse to answer that query. Google search results can still display AI Overviews for some gambling related searches, although they appear less frequently. In some cases those overviews will still generate recommendations that ChatGPT will not provide.

James Dooley: It is a fascinating space right now. Parasite SEO can influence rankings not only in traditional search engines like Google and Bing, but also within AI platforms and large language models.

James Dooley: Anyone watching this who wants a deeper dive into parasite SEO should leave questions in the comments. We have also recorded other episodes discussing selection rate optimisation and other SEO strategies that are working in 2026.

James Dooley: Charles, it has been an absolute pleasure.

Charles Flo: Thanks for having me.