Things We Actually
Know About.
No filler. No AI generated listicles. Just practical insights from a decade of doing this work. Written by two people who argue about algorithms at dinner.
How to Build a Pricing Page AI Can Quote
Assistants answer cost questions with whatever figure they can find. Publish the real number, mark it up with the right type and keep every copy in agreement.
How to Write an Alternatives Page AI Will Cite
The page that names your competitors is the page that gets pulled into comparison answers. How to write alternatives pages that are fair, dated and quotable.
Bing Indexed but Not Served: How to Fix It
Pages indexed, no errors in Webmaster Tools, and Bing impressions at zero. The 500 character support ticket that got a suppressed domain restored in two days.
How to Get Cited by Microsoft Copilot
Copilot grounds its answers in Bing, and Bing now reports every citation. How one small site went from 2 Copilot citations a day to 30, and how to repeat it.
How to Get Cited by Claude
Claude searches through Brave, runs three crawlers that all obey robots.txt, and qualifies what it cannot support. How to become a source it will name.
Why Review Platforms Cite You 3x Harder
A review page about you carries roughly three times the citation weight of a page you wrote about yourself. The uncomfortable maths of self description.
Most AI Citation Opportunity Is Not in English
Localised pages win 85 to 96% of non English AI citations. The cheapest untapped surface in AI visibility is the language you are not publishing in.
YouTube Is the Most Cited Domain in AI Search
YouTube is the most cited domain on ChatGPT and Perplexity, and the reason has almost nothing to do with video. It ships a machine readable transcript.
Reddit Is an AI Citation Engine You Cannot Buy
Perplexity cites brands at roughly 13% against ChatGPT's 0.6%, and the gap is largely Reddit. What that means if you have never posted there.
Listicles Get 44% of AI Citations. Get on Them
Industry research puts listicles at roughly 44% of AI citations, and almost none of them are yours. How to earn a place on a list you do not own.
AI Search Market Share 2026: A Quarter Moved, Most Sites Did Not
Gartner projects AI assistants handle roughly a quarter of searches in 2026 and more than half by 2028. What that shift actually changes, and what to do when you cannot outspend the incumbents.
MCP Servers: How to Let AI Agents Actually Use Your Product
A citation gets you mentioned. An MCP server gets your product used inside the answer. What the Model Context Protocol is, who governs it, and the smallest server worth shipping.
ChatGPT Ads: What Paid Placement Does to Earned Citations
An ad buys the slot, a citation buys the sentence, and only one survives the budget ending. What advertising inside the answer changes, plus the fourth OpenAI crawler almost nobody has in robots.txt.
Pay Per Crawl: What Crawler Tolls Mean for Your Site in 2026
HTTP 402 came back after thirty years so publishers could charge AI crawlers, and new domains now start closed by default. The three lanes a crawler meets at your edge, and how to tell which one you are in.
Product Feeds for AI Agents: Why a Landing Page Is Not Enough
Agents comparing products do not read your hero section, they read structured data. What a machine readable product feed contains, which formats matter in 2026, and how to publish one.
RSL: The Content Licensing Standard for AI Crawlers
RSL is a machine readable licensing file that states the terms on which AI may use your content. What it declares, how it differs from robots.txt and llms.txt, and whether it is worth publishing yet.
IndexNow: The Fastest Way Into Bing, and Therefore ChatGPT
IndexNow tells Bing and Yandex a URL changed instead of waiting to be crawled. Since ChatGPT search leans on the Bing index, it is the shortest path from publishing to being citeable. Setup in under an hour.
JavaScript and AI Crawlers: Why Static HTML Still Wins
Most AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript. If your content only exists after hydration, they see an empty page. How to test what a crawler really receives, and the render strategies that survive.
How to Write So AI Lifts Your Sentences
Models quote passages, not pages. The unit of AI citation is a self contained sentence, and most writing advice optimises for the wrong length. How to write a page that is easy to quote correctly.
How to Get Cited in Google AI Mode: The 2026 Playbook
Google AI Mode hit a billion users and cites a different set of pages than AI Overviews, the same URL only 13.7% of the time. If you optimized for one, you are invisible in the other. The 2026 playbook, with the data and a test you can run in five minutes.
The Complete AI Crawler List for 2026: Every Bot, What It Feeds, and Whether to Block It
GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and twenty more, in one reference table. What each agent actually feeds, which operators keep their word on robots.txt, how to verify impostors, and three copy-paste crawler policies.
Google Algorithm Updates 2025–2026: What Changed and How to Recover
All nine confirmed updates from March 2025 through July 2026 with dashboard-verified dates — including the May 2026 core update, both 2026 spam updates, and Google's shift to continuous unannounced rollouts.
How to Rank in Google AI Overviews: The 2026 Playbook
AI Overviews now show on 25%+ of Google searches and most teams have no playbook for them. Here is what actually works. The 8 tactics we tested on our own products. Real signals Google uses. The mistakes that quietly tank your visibility.
What Is GEO? The Complete Guide to Generative Engine Optimization in 2026
If you've been hearing 'GEO' everywhere and still aren't sure what it means or why you should care, this is the guide that explains everything without the jargon. How AI decides which brands to cite, what you can actually do about it, and why most agencies are behind on this.
SEO vs AEO vs GEO: What's the Actual Difference?
Three acronyms, three different things, one goal. We break down exactly what each one does, when you need which, and how they work together. No marketing speak. Just a clear explanation.
How to Get Your Brand Cited by ChatGPT in 2026
We reverse engineered what makes ChatGPT recommend certain brands over others. Here are the specific things you can do to make it recommend yours. Based on real data, not vibes.
AI Reputation Management: Control What AI Says About Your Brand
ChatGPT just told someone your product is discontinued. Perplexity confused you with a competitor. Welcome to the new reputation challenge most brands do not even know they have.
Programmatic SEO in 2026: How to Scale Without Getting Penalized
The right way to build hundreds of pages from structured data without triggering Google's thin content filters. Templates, content enrichment, schema, internal linking. The full playbook.
The Technical SEO Checklist for 2026: Everything That Still Matters
Crawlability, Core Web Vitals, indexation, structured data, and the technical fundamentals that AI search has not made obsolete. A practical, prioritized checklist you can actually work through.
The Complete Guide to llms.txt: How to Talk to AI Crawlers
llms.txt is the new file that tells large language models how to read and represent your site. What it is, how to write one, and whether it actually moves the needle for AI visibility.
Schema Markup for AI Search: Structured Data That Gets You Cited
AI engines lean on structured data to understand entities and answers. Which schema types matter now, how to implement them cleanly, and how to validate that machines actually read them.
Entity SEO and the Knowledge Graph: How Google Really Understands You
Search and AI no longer match keywords, they understand entities. How to build entity associations, earn a Knowledge Graph presence, and become the recognized answer in your niche.
GEO for Ecommerce: Getting Your Products Recommended by AI
When shoppers ask ChatGPT and Perplexity what to buy, are your products in the answer? How to optimize product data, reviews, and content so generative engines recommend your store.
What Is AEO? A Plain Guide to Answer Engine Optimization
Answer engines want a direct, trustworthy answer, not ten blue links. What AEO is, how it differs from classic SEO, and how to structure content so engines surface you as the answer.
Perplexity AI Optimization: How to Become a Cited Source
Perplexity cites its sources, which makes it a real visibility channel. How its retrieval works, what kinds of pages it favors, and how to earn a place in its citations.
ChatGPT Brand Citation Tracking: How to Measure AI Visibility
You cannot improve what you cannot see. How to track when and how ChatGPT mentions your brand, the metrics that matter, and how to turn that data into a real optimization loop.
Want This Stuff in Your Inbox?
One email per week. SEO, AEO, and GEO insights from people who actually do this work. No spam. Unsubscribe whenever.