16.1% of New SEO Projects on GitHub Now Put AI in Their Name, Up From 3.3% in 2024

Summary

Picture an agency owner who has used the same rank tracker and site crawler for ten years and opens GitHub to find a replacement. Half the new tools on the first page call themselves agents, GEO checkers or MCP servers. The SEO toolkit is being rebuilt around AI.

SEO tools have always been a busy corner of open source: crawlers, meta tag checkers, sitemap generators, rank trackers. We looked at every new GitHub repo with SEO in its name since April 2023 and checked how many also name AI.

In 2026, 16.1% of new SEO repos are AI-related, nearly five times the 2024 rate. They also take most of the attention: 65.6% of the stars new SEO repos earned in 2026 went to AI-related projects.

What we measured

We used GH Archive, the public log of GitHub events, in Google BigQuery. We kept repositories with SEO as a word or prefix in their name (excluding words such as Seoul), removed probable forks, and used each repo's first recorded event as its creation date. We started in April 2023 to avoid counting old repos that first showed activity in early 2023.

We flagged a repo as AI-related when its name also contains AI, LLM, GPT, RAG, agent, MCP, a major AI model or company name, or GEO, AEO or AI visibility terms. We compared shares, recorded stars and how many repos were updated in three or more months.

AI-related SEO repos went from rare to one in six

Share of new SEO repos with AI-related names, by half year.

The share rose in almost every half year, from 2.6% in early 2024 to 16.3% in early 2026. Meanwhile the number of new SEO repos more than doubled, from 7,570 in 2024 to 16,680 in 2026 through October 20.

AI-related SEO tools take most of the attention

Recorded stars and activity by the year a repo first appeared.

In every year, AI-related SEO repos were more likely to earn a star than other SEO repos. The 2026 share is driven by a few popular AI SEO toolkits, so treat it as a sign of where attention is going, not a measure of quality.

GEO checkers and SEO agents lead the AI wave

We grouped the 2,687 AI-related SEO repos first seen in 2026 by keywords in their names.

Classic SEO jobs such as keyword research and audits are a small part of the AI-related wave. The two biggest groups, about two in five projects together, either measure AI search visibility or try to automate SEO work end to end with agents.

What this means

The tools SEO providers use are changing fast. More of them now check how a site appears in AI answers, not just where it ranks on Google. If your SEO reports still only show keyword positions, you are missing part of the picture. Reporting on AI search optimization should show which AI answers mention you, for which questions.

Ask your provider how they track whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI features mention your business. If you want a quick baseline first, our free AI visibility audit shows where you appear in AI answers today, which makes it easier to judge any LLM optimization your provider proposes.

Limits

We matched repo names only. SEO tools without SEO in their name, and AI features not mentioned in the name, are missed.

GH Archive recorded far fewer star events in 2026 and had collection gaps in October 2025 and August to October 2026. Star figures for 2026 are understated and come mostly from a few popular repos.

Two AI SEO toolkits account for most of the 2026 AI-related star total, so the 65.6% share reflects concentrated attention.

First seen is the first recorded public event. Fork removal is a name-based heuristic.

Frequently asked questions

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