Three SEO tools that UK agencies and in-house teams use heavily have shipped significant updates between October 2025 and September 2026. Screaming Frog released SEO Spider 24.0 on 19 May 2026. Sistrix published its Q2 2026 changelog on 31 July 2026, and Ahrefs published its July and August 2026 roundup on 29 September 2026. This roundup covers only features each vendor has documented itself.
Key takeaways
- Screaming Frog, Sistrix and Ahrefs now all connect to AI assistants through MCP and are investing heavily in tracking brands in AI answers.
- Screaming Frog 23.0 moved to Lighthouse 13 audits, so a missing PageSpeed issue has usually been renamed or merged rather than fixed.
- If you use Screaming Frog PageSpeed data in Looker Studio, edit your scheduled tasks after upgrading so the columns keep populating.
- AI visibility metrics are vendor estimates built on sampled prompts and modelled volumes, so treat their trend lines as directional.
The details
There are two clear trends. First, all three tools now connect to AI assistants through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Second, all three are spending heavily on tracking how brands appear in AI-generated answers. Alongside that, crawl and audit features keep moving with Google's own tooling, including Lighthouse 13.
Screaming Frog SEO Spider (London-based developer)
| Version | Date | Headline changes |
|---|---|---|
| 22.0 | 10 June 2025 | Semantic Similarity Analysis, semantic content cluster visualisation, custom multi-export, Google Sheets download |
| 23.0 | 20 October 2025 | PageSpeed integration moved to Lighthouse 13 "Insight Audits", Ahrefs v3 API, Crawl Retention |
| 24.0 | 19 May 2026 | SEO Spider MCP, Auto Compare Crawls, issue tables in crawl emails, Find Uncrawlable Links, Arm64 Linux builds |
| 24.3 | 29 June 2026 | Bug fixes (latest version on the official release history at the time of writing) |
Version 23.0 matters most for anyone running speed audits. Screaming Frog mirrored Lighthouse 13's restructure. It added seven new issues, such as Document Request Latency, Improve Image Delivery, LCP Request Discovery and Forced Reflow, removed or consolidated eleven, and renamed six. For example, Enable Text Compression, Reduce Server Response Times and Avoid Multiple Page Redirects are now grouped under Document Request Latency. Screaming Frog warned that this is a breaking change: Looker Studio scheduled reports using PageSpeed data may have columns that stop populating until the scheduled task is edited. The same release moved its Ahrefs connection to Ahrefs' v3 API, which is available on any paid Ahrefs plan but requires re-authentication.
Version 24.0 added an MCP server, so crawls can be run, analysed and exported from AI assistants such as Claude and LM Studio. Screaming Frog notes that "not every feature and function is currently supported" through MCP. Auto Compare Crawls compares the last two scheduled or CLI crawls in a project. Find Uncrawlable Links flags links that do not follow Google's link best practices, such as span or div elements with href attributes, onclick navigation and javascript: links.
Sistrix
Sistrix, widely used by UK agencies for its Visibility Index, has put most of its 2026 effort into AI search:
- Q1 2026: Google AI Mode added to Prompt Tracking alongside ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews. A Looker Studio connector exposes the full API, including AI visibility data. Onpage Projects were also reworked.
- Q2 2026: Prompt Research groups AI prompts into topics, based on what Sistrix says are over 62 million real user questions. Other additions include AI tag suggestions in Prompt Tracking, domain-to-brand linking so that citations can be measured as well as mentions, seven "AI Deep Dives" reports, and an MCP server that now uses OAuth, so all users can connect without an API key.
The Q2 changelog does not say which countries Prompt Research covers, so UK users should check availability in their own account.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs publishes a monthly changelog. Its notable 2026 updates include:
- January 2026 (published 6 February): global keyword research in Keywords Explorer, backlink page-type data, and bulk AI content detection in Site Audit.
- April and May 2026: Grok added to Brand Radar, followed by prompt-based indexes for Google AI Overviews and AI Mode.
- July and August 2026 (published 29 September): an Adaptive organic traffic model. Ahrefs says it weights clicks separately for 15 SERP feature types, including AI Overviews, and recalibrates monthly against Web Analytics data. Brand Radar also gained entity matching and an "AI adjusted volume" metric, and its prompt dataset grew from about 14 million to 30 million prompts.
What this means for UK businesses
For technical SEO teams in the UK, the Lighthouse 13 change is the one most likely to cause confusion. If an old audit name disappears from your crawler or reports, the issue has usually been renamed or merged, not fixed. Our guide to PageSpeed Insights scores explains what the numbers mean.
The AI-tracking features are real and well documented, but they are estimates. They are built on sampled prompts and modelled volumes, not on data from Google or OpenAI. Ahrefs' change in how it calculates prompt volume shows that the methods are still changing. Treat trend lines as directional rather than as precise figures.
MCP support makes it quicker to ask questions of your crawl data. It does not replace checking the underlying report before you act.
What to do now
- Update and re-check scheduled reports. If you use Screaming Frog with PageSpeed data in Looker Studio, edit your scheduled tasks after upgrading, as Screaming Frog advises.
- Re-authenticate integrations. The Ahrefs v3 connection in Screaming Frog needs the new OAuth flow.
- Turn on crawl comparison. Auto Compare Crawls (Screaming Frog 24.0) is a quick way to spot regressions between scheduled crawls.
- Fix uncrawlable links. Replace
javascript:andonclicknavigation with real<a href>links. Our internal linking guide covers why this matters. - Cover the basics in one pass. For a quick technical check without a desktop crawler, run a free website audit with MakeItFlow. It covers Lighthouse performance, Core Web Vitals, on-page tags, robots.txt, sitemap, DNS, email authentication and security headers in one scan.
Frequently asked questions
What is the latest version of Screaming Frog SEO Spider?
At the time of writing, the official release history lists version 24.3, released on 29 June 2026, as the latest. The last major release was 24.0 on 19 May 2026.
Why did some PageSpeed issues disappear from my crawl reports?
Lighthouse 13 consolidated and renamed many audits into "insights", and tools such as Screaming Frog (from version 23.0) followed suit. For example, several image audits are now grouped under Improve Image Delivery.
Are AI visibility metrics in these tools accurate?
They are vendor estimates based on sampled prompts and modelled volumes. They are useful for spotting trends and comparing against competitors, but they are not official usage data. MakeItFlow does not offer AI visibility or rank tracking. It focuses on technical site health, with paid plans adding monitoring and history.
Sources
- SEO Spider Release History (Screaming Frog)
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider Update – Version 24.0
- Screaming Frog SEO Spider Update – Version 23.0
- SISTRIX Updates in the Second Quarter of 2026
- New in July and Aug '26 (Ahrefs)
- Global keyword research and more, January 2026 (Ahrefs)
Written by the MakeItFlow team
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