Graphite
Updated 2026-11-12Graphite is a growth-marketing agency focused on SEO and AEO, with Webflow and Fourthwall as reference customers, a proprietary Topical SEO platform, and recent research on ChatGPT prompt tracking, AI response collapse, and the scale of AI search.
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 combines SEO and AEO services with proprietary software. Its Topical SEO platform, launched in 2024, includes a Topic Graph database, topical-authority scoring, and real-time monitoring. An Internal Links API supports programmatic internal linking.
Founder Ethan Smith frames the practice around “Owned AEO” and “Earned AEO,” covering a company's own content and its presence in outside sources. Graphite's Webflow case study reports that LLM share of voice rose from 33% to 64% and the share of signups attributed to LLMs doubled from 4% to 8%.
Its Five Percent research series also challenges AEO measurement practices. An August 2026 study found that forcing ChatGPT to search changed visibility scores by 20 points on average for prompts that would not naturally trigger search. Graphite recommends letting the model decide whether to search and reporting the grounding rate for each prompt.
Best for
Companies seeking an agency to run SEO and AEO together, with proprietary topical-authority and internal-linking technology supporting the work.
Pricing & trial
Pricing not public; free-trial availability is not documented.
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 | Yes | docs |
Graphite's Internal Links API provides a programmatic SEO surface, but broader capabilities for building agents are not documented.
Reference customers
Webflow, Fourthwall.
Case studies & customer stories
Recent moves
- 2026-10-27A Digital Content Writer vacancy was observed on October 27; the role's opening date is unconfirmed. source
- 2026-10-24SEO/AEO Growth Lead and Growth Director vacancies were observed on October 24, both combining SEO and AEO client work; their opening dates are unconfirmed. source
- 2026-08-01Published research finding that forced web search changed ChatGPT visibility scores by 20 points on average for prompts that would not naturally trigger search. source
- 2026-06-24Published a simulation study reporting response collapse in 79.6% of runs when AI systems retrieved their own generated content. source
- 2026-04-20Published a Similarweb-based study estimating 45 billion monthly AI assistant sessions globally, equivalent to 56% of search engine volume, with 83% occurring in mobile apps. source
- 2026-04-16Published an analysis of more than 40,000 U.S. websites reporting that organic search traffic declined 2.5% year over year in 2025. source
Company, Financials & Funding History
Founded by Ethan Smith, Graphite is headquartered in San Francisco. It expanded from a boutique agency model into self-service software with the 2024 launch of its Topical SEO platform, while continuing SEO and AEO client services.