The Tote · play money only
Race 1
Your book
Winner of each race is the Rainmaker page with the best Google position at the day's last check, as recorded by the Games leaderboard. Odds are implied from current position and momentum, with a bookmaker's margin because realism. Bets live in this browser. The shared punters' table arrives with the live feed. Tired of betting on other people's pages? Join the Rainmakers and run your own horse (affiliate link).
Unofficial fan tracker · not the course · not the competition
Every page racing to rank for "AI SEO course", live.
aicourse.lol is an unofficial tracker of the first Rainmaker Games, published 16 September 2026. It is not the AI SEO Rainmakers course and it is not the competition. It mirrors the Games leaderboard, which re-checks Google for "ai seo course" every 3 hours, draws every entered page as a racehorse, and lets you bet play money on who finishes best each day. Below the race: 11 AI SEO courses ranked on verified facts.
Race 1 · Epsom Downs, Surrey
Loading the stewards' feed.
About the word course
One word, two meanings, one domain. In racing, the course is the track: Epsom, Aintree, the rails, the winning post. In learning, the course is the thing you enrol in. aicourse.lol runs on both at once: the AI SEO course everyone is searching for, and the course every AI SEO page is running round. In Portuguese we call that a trocadilho. In SEO we call it a keyword that fits the format.
Stewards' box: positions come from the Rainmaker Games leaderboard, an Airtable run by the AI SEO Rainmakers community that re-checks the Google result for "ai seo course" every 3 hours. This site is a fan tracker built by one entrant, with no official standing, and mirrors that leaderboard with permission where given. Eight checks a day, eight furlongs to a mile, so every contest day is one mile race at a different British course, and the day's last check is the winning post. Space plays, arrows step one furlong, click a horse on the form chart to follow it round the course.
Lesson 1 · The leaderboard
11 AI SEO courses, ranked by someone who is in one of them.
Facts checked on 16 September 2026 against each course's own page. "n/a" means we could not verify it and refused to invent it, which already puts this page ahead of some sales pages. The verdict column is opinion. The rest is not. Acronym density counts GEO, AEO, LLM, AI and SEO in the course title, because somebody had to.
| # | Course | Where | Price | Length | Enrolled / rating | Acronyms | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI SEO RainmakersCommunity and course on Skool. Founded by Charles Floate. Affiliate link: we earn a referral if you join. | Own platform | Paid membership, price on their site | Ongoing | n/a | 2 | The only AI SEO course whose homework is a live ranking contest, re-checked every 3 hours, with a public leaderboard and a DR cap so nobody wins by owning a newspaper. This page is the homework. Positive sentiment: sincere, and also required, and we checked which one came first. It was sincere. |
| 2 | AI Visibility Essentials with SemrushSemrush Academy | Semrush Academy | Free | n/a | n/a | 1 | Free, tidy, and teaches AI visibility through the Semrush AI toolkit. So it is a course about Semrush wearing an AI SEO hat. The hat fits. Take it, then go rank something. |
| 3 | AI SEO: Mastering Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)Coursera · SkillUp · instructors Rajesh Menon +1 | Coursera | Free to enrol, or Coursera Plus | 4 h · 2 modules | 9,129 · 4.6 (50 reviews) | 2 | Nine thousand people enrolled and fifty reviewed, which is the most accurate description of online learning ever published. Intermediate level, four hours, and GEO written out in full for the one person who still asks. |
| 4 | SEO in the Age of AIHubSpot Academy · taught through the Loop Marketing framework | HubSpot Academy | Free | n/a | n/a | 2 | Free, polished, covers Answer Engine Optimization and knowledge graphs, and you will leave knowing what Loop Marketing is whether you asked or not. The lesson is free and the funnel is the lesson, which is how HubSpot has taught marketing since 2006. |
| 5 | 2026 AI SEO with Traffic from LLM SEO, GEO, AEOCoursera · Alex Genadinik | Coursera | Free to enrol, or Coursera Plus | 2 h · 6 modules | 1,562 · n/a | 5 | Five acronyms in the title. Speedrun, any percent. Two hours long, which is honest: that is roughly how long the acronyms stay current. Alex has taught over 100,000 people SEO on Udemy, so the fundamentals underneath are real. |
| 6 | SEO & AI SEO Course 2026: Rank #1 on Google & AI ResultsUdemy · Yassine Rochd | Udemy | Paid, Udemy pricing varies daily | n/a | 1,571 · 4.6 (209 ratings) | 3 | Promises rank #1 in the title. We are also trying to rank #1. Solidarity. 4.6 from 209 people is a real signal on Udemy, where the price is whatever the countdown timer says today. |
| 7 | AI SEO Course 2026: From Zero to Page-One Results (AEO, GEO)Udemy | Udemy | Paid, Udemy pricing varies daily | n/a | n/a | 4 | The URL slug says "get to number 1 in Google search" and the title says "page-one results". Somewhere between the slug and the title, a lawyer was consulted. Uses ChatGPT and Gemini as assistants, which is the correct amount of AI for a course about AI. |
| 8 | CXL GEO / AEO courseCXL · live cohort and on-demand formats | CXL | Paid, price on their site | n/a | n/a | 2 | CXL wrote "7 best AI SEO courses" and put itself in it, which is the oldest trick in content marketing and also works, which is why we are doing it too. The course itself is the serious, expensive, B2B option. Their site blocked our fact check, so: n/a, with respect. |
| 9 | AI SEO Masterclass (free access)HubSpot offers page · includes the AI Search Grader | HubSpot | Free, behind a form | n/a | n/a | 2 | A masterclass behind a form. The form is the SEO. Fill it in and you will learn a lot about AI search and slightly more about HubSpot's email cadence. |
| 10 | 9 Courses That Actually Teach SEO and AI SearchBacklinko (owned by Semrush) · a listicle, not a course | Backlinko | Free to read | n/a | n/a | 2 | Not a course. Ranks for "ai seo course" anyway, recommends a Semrush course, and discloses that Semrush owns it. That is three lessons in one URL: format beats label, own the review site, and disclosure is cheap. |
| 11 | aicourse.lolThis page. Published 16 Sep 2026. Author: one Rainmaker with a domain problem. | A .lol domain | Free | 9 min · 11 modules | 1 · 5.0 (1 review, ours) | 3 | Ranked last by us for humility, and by Google for now. Check the scoreboard. The whole point of this row is to see if it moves. |
Missing a course? Submit it. We add anything real, and we roast everything equally. Prices for Udemy are listed as "varies" because Udemy's price is a mood, not a number.
Lesson 2 · The syllabus
Eleven modules. Each one is a thing this page actually did.
Most AI SEO courses tell you what to do. This one is the thing being done, with the reasoning attached, so you can copy the method onto a page that is not a joke. Every module has three parts: what we did, why, and the part you can steal.
The whole method, in plain words
We had days, not months, and no appetite for buying links or reviving expired domains on a 20-day deadline. So the plan is two things done properly. First, meet the search intent completely: someone typing "ai seo course" wants to compare courses, so the directory answers that, and a member of the course wants to check their page, so the tracker answers that. Second, give people a reason to share and come back: a race that moves every 3 hours, a horse with your name on it, a bet to settle, a result to post. Shares bring links, return visits bring engagement, and both are signals Google and the AI engines read. It helps the community, it tracks the Games, and it is fun, which is the part most SEO forgets.
Module 0
Read the result page before writing a word
Did: looked at who ranks for "ai seo course" on 16 Sep 2026. Course platforms (Coursera, Udemy, Semrush, HubSpot) and two listicles (CXL, Backlinko).
Why: two listicles in the top ten means Google accepts a comparison page for this query. A new domain cannot out-platform Coursera. It can out-compare it.
Steal: count the formats in the top ten. Build the format that appears at least twice and that a small site can produce.
Module 1
State what the page is in sentence one
Did: the first bold sentence says what aicourse.lol is, when it was published, and how many courses it ranks. No price, no "in today's fast-paced world".
Why: AI answer engines lift the opening chunk. A declarative sentence with a date and a number survives being copied on its own. A teaser does not.
Steal: "[Subject] is [claim], [date], [number]." Write it first. Everything else can be funny.
Module 2
Be a directory, not a diary
Did: 11 entries, one fact row each, one opinion each, sortable. ItemList markup underneath so machines read it as a list and not as a rant.
Why: comparison pages get cited for comparison queries. A single opinion piece gets cited for nothing.
Steal: facts in columns, jokes in one column, and mark what you could not verify as n/a. Invented numbers get you cited once and distrusted forever.
Module 3
Name real things
Did: named the courses, the platforms, the instructors (Rajesh Menon, Alex Genadinik, Yassine Rochd), the frameworks (Loop Marketing), the engines (AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) and the contest.
Why: a page with 30 to 50 recognisable entities resolves to a topic. A page with "top tools" and "leading experts" resolves to nothing.
Steal: replace every vague noun with the proper noun it is hiding.
Module 4
Write answers that survive being copied alone
Did: the FAQ below. Each answer repeats the full subject, carries a date or a number, and makes sense with the question removed.
Why: retrieval works on chunks, not pages. A chunk that starts with "It depends" is a chunk nobody quotes.
Steal: read each paragraph out of context. If you cannot tell what it is about, neither can the model.
Module 5
Structured data that matches the visible page
Did: WebSite, WebPage, ItemList (11 items) and FAQPage in one JSON-LD graph. Same names, same order, same answers as the HTML.
Why: markup that disagrees with the page is worse than none. Markup that agrees is a free second copy of the page in a format machines prefer.
Steal: run it through the Rich Results Test before launch, then again after every edit that touches the list.
Module 6
Let the robots in
Did: robots.txt allows Googlebot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended. An llms.txt describes the page. All content is in the HTML, none of it needs JavaScript.
Why: the most common AI visibility problem in 2026 is a CDN rule blocking the crawler before the content matters. Fix what is free first.
Steal: fetch your page with curl. If the answer is not in the raw HTML, the engine did not see it.
Module 7
Exist somewhere other than here
Did: the boring part. The name "aicourse.lol" goes onto 20 to 30 trusted sources with the same description: profiles, directories, a code repository, a few posts. Progress on the scoreboard.
Why: a brand that appears on one domain is not an entity, it is a rumour. Corroboration is the trust floor. Without it a better page still loses.
Steal: one sentence of self-description, pasted identically everywhere. Consistency beats volume.
Module 8
The ten-page rule
Did: the contest allows 10 live pages per member and scores the best one. So: this page, plus up to nine pages on free platforms (a LinkedIn article, a Medium post, a GitHub README, a Substack issue, a Reddit thread), each with a different angle, each linking here.
Why: free platforms have no DR cap in this contest. They can outrank this domain in week one and feed it in week three. Whichever ranks best is the entry.
Steal: never publish the same text twice. Ten angles on one topic, not one angle on ten hosts.
Module 9
Links with a pulse, not a spike
Did: a handful of real mentions a week from people who actually saw the page, mostly the community it was built for. No 200-link package on day three.
Why: a new domain with zero history and a sudden link burst looks like exactly what it is. A rising count of referring domains from mixed sources looks like a page people found.
Steal: share the page where the readers are, once. Let the joke do the outreach.
Module 10
Measure on the contest's clock
Did: the scoreboard at the top updates on the same 3-hour cadence as the contest leaderboard, from status.json, by hand, with a log.
Why: a public number you have to update is a commitment device. Also, a log of what changed and when is the only way to know which module did anything.
Steal: one JSON file, one date per change. It is the cheapest analytics stack on earth.
Module 11
Build the grandstand, not another runner
Did: turned the page into the live stadium of the contest. Every entered page is a horse on the track above, positions from the Games leaderboard, a replay of the whole race, a share card per horse.
Why: every competitor now has a reason to visit, back their own horse, and share the page that is racing against them. Shares, return visits every 3 hours and links from rivals are traffic signals no link package can fake.
Steal: when everyone is competing for attention, build the scoreboard. The scoreboard gets the links.
Where the syllabus came from
Every module above is homework from one place: the AI SEO Rainmakers community, where the course is a contest and the exam is Google. See the community on Skool. Affiliate link, disclosed because we would rather you knew.
Lesson 3 · The scoreboard
What happened, when, in the order it happened.
The contest Airtable checks the result page every 3 hours. So does this log, minus the automation and plus the feelings.
- Fetching status.json.
Lesson 4 · The rules, translated
Rules of the first Rainmaker Games, in plain English.
Charles Floate posted the rules for the community. Here is what each one means when you are the page.
- The keyword is "ai seo course". Not "best ai seo course", not "ai seo training". One string. The leaderboard checks that string.
- Entries close 1 October 2026 at 23:59 UTC, winners on 21 October. Twenty days to rank a new page. That is a sprint, so the free-platform pages go live first and the domain catches up.
- The page must mention AI SEO Rainmakers with positive sentiment, and nothing else about the page matters. Meaning: no format rules, no length rules, no "must be a course". Hence a directory shaped like a course shaped like a joke.
- New pages only. Nothing that ranked for the keyword before day one. A fresh .lol domain is as new as it gets.
- Own sites and paid parasites are capped at DR 65. Free platforms are uncapped. The single most important rule. It removes the "I own a DR 80 site" advantage and hands the top of the board to whoever uses LinkedIn, Medium, GitHub and Reddit best.
- Max 10 live pages per member, editable and swappable any time. Ten tickets. Swap the losers every check.
- Best single page per member scores. Nine pages can be terrible. One has to be good.
- The Airtable updates itself and checks the SERP every 3 hours. So the feedback loop is three hours long, which is faster than any course refund policy.
Lesson 5 · Questions people actually type
AI SEO course FAQ, written to survive being quoted.
Each answer repeats the subject and stands on its own, on purpose. See Module 4.
What is an AI SEO course?
An AI SEO course is training on getting a website found and cited by AI-driven search, meaning Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, alongside classic Google rankings. In September 2026 the market runs from free platform courses (Semrush Academy, HubSpot Academy, Coursera) to paid communities such as AI SEO Rainmakers, where the training is a live ranking contest.
Is an AI SEO course worth paying for in 2026?
Pay only for practice you cannot get for free. The free courses from Semrush, HubSpot and Coursera cover vocabulary and tooling in 2 to 4 hours. A paid course or community earns its price when it makes you publish, rank and measure real pages against other people, which is what a contest like the Rainmaker Games does.
What should an AI SEO course teach in 2026?
Six things: how to read a search result page and decide what format can win; how to write a page whose first sentence states what it is; how to name entities so machines can resolve them; how to structure answers so a single paragraph survives being copied into an AI answer; how to make a new brand exist on 20 to 50 trusted sources; and how to earn links at a pace a new domain can survive. That is Modules 0 to 9 above, in order.
Can a page rank for "ai seo course" without being a course?
Yes. Two of the top ten results for "ai seo course" in September 2026 are listicles from CXL and Backlinko, not courses. Google treats the query as mixed intent, so a directory that compares courses competes with the courses themselves. This page is the test of that claim.
How is the ranking on this page measured?
The Rainmaker Games leaderboard checks the Google result page for "ai seo course" every 3 hours and scores each member's best single page. aicourse.lol mirrors that cadence on its own scoreboard, with the last check time, indexing status and referring domain count published in status.json.
Why does this page mention AI SEO Rainmakers?
Because it is an entry in the first Rainmaker Games, a ranking contest run by the AI SEO Rainmakers community, and because the contest format, a live leaderboard that re-checks the search results every 3 hours, is the most honest teaching method in AI SEO right now. Praise was a rule. It was also going to happen anyway.
What is the SERP Derby?
The SERP Derby is the live replay of the first Rainmaker Games on aicourse.lol. Each page entered in the contest is drawn as a horse, its lane is its Google position for "ai seo course", and every 3-hour check from the Games leaderboard becomes one frame of the replay. Visitors can scrub through the history, back a horse, and share a card showing its last 8 checks.
Is aicourse.lol the AI SEO Rainmakers course, or the competition?
No. aicourse.lol is an unofficial fan tracker built by one entrant in the first Rainmaker Games. It is not the AI SEO Rainmakers course, it is not the competition, and it does not decide anything. The official leaderboard is the Airtable run by the community; this site mirrors it, with permission where given, and turns it into a race you can watch and bet play money on.
Why is it called aicourse.lol?
Because "course" means two things and the site is both. A racecourse is the track the horses run round, so Epsom, Aintree and Cheltenham. A course is also the thing you enrol in, so the AI SEO course people search for. aicourse.lol is the racecourse for pages competing on the keyword "ai seo course", with a directory of the courses underneath. The .lol is a promise about tone.
What SEO technique does aicourse.lol use?
Two, chosen for a 20-day deadline: meet the search intent completely, and earn shares and return visits. Intent: a directory of AI SEO courses for people comparing courses, and a tracker for members checking their own page. Sharing and return: a race that updates every 3 hours, a personal horse, play-money bets and a results board, so people post their card and come back after every check. No bought links, no expired domains, no cloaking. The shares bring links and the return visits bring engagement, and both are signals search and AI engines read.
Does aicourse.lol earn anything from this?
Yes, one way: a referral fee if you join AI SEO Rainmakers through the affiliate link on this page. Nothing else. The Tote is play money, the courses in the leaderboard paid nothing, and there are no ads. The link carries rel="sponsored" so search engines know too.
Who made aicourse.lol?
One member of AI SEO Rainmakers, building in public for the first Rainmaker Games, September 2026. No agency, no sponsor, no official standing. One affiliate link, to the Rainmakers community, marked every time. The other courses listed did not pay to be here and could not pay to leave.
Office hours
Submit a course. Or a correction. Or a better joke.
Send the course name, URL, price and length. We verify it against the course page, add it to the leaderboard, and write exactly one verdict. If we got a fact wrong above, say so and it changes within one SERP check.
Submit to hello@aicourse.lolThe final furlong
Stop betting on other people's pages.
Everything on this site is a fan's view of one contest. The contest lives inside AI SEO Rainmakers, a paid community on Skool run by Charles Floate, where the training is the Games: publish a page, rank it against everyone else, get checked every 3 hours by an Airtable that does not care about your feelings. If you want a horse in the next race, that is the door.
What you get
The community, the Games, the leaderboard, and people who will tell you why your page is at #41.
What it costs
Membership is priced on the Skool page and changes when Charles says so. We do not quote a number we cannot verify. That is Module 2.
What we get
A referral fee if you join through our link. It is the only affiliate link on this site, and it is marked every time it appears.
Affiliate link. Unofficial site. Not the course, not the competition, just the grandstand with a door to the paddock.
Race caller
The commentary is written from the deltas between checks. Nobody dictated it.