Dan Petrovic

Dan Petrovic is an Australian SEO specialist and Managing Director of DEJAN, with extensive experience advising major global brands on organic search visibility and search strategy. His work focuses on understanding how search systems operate, then applying those findings to technical SEO and large scale optimisation. Petrovic has conducted original research into Google ranking systems, user behaviour as a potential ranking signal and the ways people consume online content. His technical work covers crawling and indexing, alongside SERP features and Google Discover. He received two Google awards for discoveries involving APIs that exposed aspects of internal systems and algorithms. He also identified and reported a core Google search and ranking security issue that was subsequently patched. His broader research includes contextual link analysis and organic link earning, supported by experimentation designed to identify repeatable relationships between search systems and user behaviour.

Petrovic also researches AI driven search, with particular attention to how AI models represent brands and how those representations affect visibility in generative search experiences. His work uses mechanistic interpretability to investigate model representations and model steering experiments to test whether AI generated outcomes can be influenced. This research connects with his earlier work on natural language interfaces and Google’s development toward conversational search. He has presented at international industry events including SMX and MozCon, as well as SEO Week New York and Semrush Spotlight. His education work includes advanced SEO workshops and industry training, supported by long running involvement with Griffith University through guest lectures and advisory activities. His published research has received international industry recognition, including inclusion in Moz’s Top 10 content of the year.