Latest / Online Reputation Management Podcast / Parasite SEO in 2026: Leveraging Third Party Corroboration (James Dooley Interviews Charles Floate)
Transcript
- James Dooley: Parasite SEO in 2026. There is no better person to talk about this than Charles Floate. Charles, parasite SEO has become more important than ever for third-party corroboration, building reputation and creating consensus. You recently posted about it and it looks like many sites have surged back to number one positions. What is your take on parasite SEO right now? Charles Floate: It has been a bit of a rollercoaster over the last few years. In 2023 and 2024 it really took off, especially after the Helpful Content Update in 2022. Charles Floate: Then Google introduced the site reputation abuse policy. The idea was that if you were using parasite SEO, they would remove that subfolder from the index. Later, they expanded it to potentially remove entire domains. Charles Floate: That scared a lot of publishers, but in reality it has been more propaganda than enforcement. Since the policy came in, only a small number of sites have actually been penalised. Charles Floate: At the same time, there are easily over a thousand sites being used for parasite SEO right now. With the latest updates, there has been a strong increase in Google trusting large news domains again, especially for high-value queries. Charles Floate: These are typically hard queries that would normally require years of authority building. Instead, you can place content on a high authority site and rank quickly. Charles Floate: For example, major publishers like Reuters have ranked across huge keyword sets using press releases or sponsored placements. A single placement can generate return very quickly if it ranks for competitive terms. James Dooley: For someone watching this, how do they know which sites to use? If they spend money on a placement now, it might not perform the same as it did a few months ago. How do they find the right third-party sites to leverage? Charles Floate: The key thing is that parasite SEO is cyclical. Certain domains gain weight at different times. Charles Floate: Platforms like Reddit and LinkedIn have had big spikes and drops. Reddit has been more consistently strong. Some platforms like Reddit and YouTube act as long-term parasites because Google gives them inherent trust. Charles Floate: That trust exists because of partnerships or ownership links with Google, so they get favourable treatment. Charles Floate: Other sites like large news publishers tend to rank strongly for a few months, then drop off after Google adjusts. Charles Floate: When that happens, it is often due to manual classifiers or adjustments that limit what those domains can rank for outside their core topics. Charles Floate: The strategy is to continuously monitor the search results. You need to track what is ranking, what is rising and what is falling. Charles Floate: After major updates, look at the biggest winners. That often reveals new parasite opportunities that most people miss. James Dooley: Do you ever use parasite SEO to influence things like AI outputs or query fan-out? Charles Floate: Yes, absolutely. When AI Overviews first launched, we theorised that parasite SEO could be used to influence them. Charles Floate: If you rank multiple pages across the top 100 results, you can control the consensus. AI systems pull information from those results, so if a large portion of them repeat the same message, that message gets reinforced. Charles Floate: Right now, there is limited fact-checking in AI outputs. That makes them easier to influence than people expect. James Dooley: There is a common idea that if something is mentioned once or twice online, it is just an assumption. But once it is repeated across multiple sources, it becomes treated as fact. That seems to align with what you are saying. James Dooley: Is there a different approach when using parasite SEO for ChatGPT compared to Google AI Overviews or Gemini? Charles Floate: Yes, there are clear differences. Most of the time you are relying on grounding, not training data, especially with Google AI Overviews. Charles Floate: ChatGPT relies more on training data but still pulls heavily from Bing results. That means you are dealing with different ranking systems. Charles Floate: You will not rank in the same positions across both Google and Bing because the algorithms are different. Charles Floate: When it comes to safeguards, Gemini currently has very limited verification. OpenAI has increased safeguards significantly. Charles Floate: For example, if you ask ChatGPT for the best online casino, it will not provide an answer. Google can still show AI Overviews for similar queries in some cases. Charles Floate: That means different strategies are required depending on the platform. James Dooley: It is a complex landscape. Parasite SEO now goes beyond traditional rankings and into AI systems as well. James Dooley: If anyone watching wants to go deeper, leave a comment with your questions on parasite SEO strategies. Also check out other episodes with Charles on selection rate optimisation and SEO strategies for 2026. James Dooley: Charles, it has been a pleasure. Charles Floate: Thanks for having me.