Everyone says I need AI. Can someone start at the bloody beginning?
You ask what AI could do for your business. Someone tells you to optimise your workflows, improve your prompts and prepare for generative discovery....
Read article →
The studio journal
Curious by nature.
Practical by choice.
What’s changing in websites, search and AI. What we test, what we find and what’s worth doing about it.
Fresh thinking. Same caveman.
New to all this? Start with the beginner guides →
Field notes / Latest firstHover for colour. Tap + for colour; tap the image to read.
ChatGPT Now Suggests Plugins Mid-Conversation. Does Your Business Need One?
A post doing the rounds this week calls ChatGPT plugins the biggest free distribution channel of 2026. For a software startup, that may turn out to be true....
Read article →
YouTube Is Everywhere in Google AI Overviews. So Why Does ChatGPT Barely Cite It?
YouTube appears in roughly one-third of cited Google AI Overviews answers in LLM Pulse’s current data. In ChatGPT, the picture looks completely different.
Read article →
Lovable Changed. Here’s What Your AI Visibility Test Might Be Missing.
In August 2025 we wrote that Lovable sites were hard for Google and AI tools to read, because their pages were built in the visitor’s browser. On May 13,...
Read article →
We Documented Every Piece of AI-Assisted Code on a Live Website. The Index Is 232 Pages Long.
AI visibility is not something you add to a website. It is what is left over after hundreds of small technical decisions.
Read article →
What Should an AI Visibility Audit Actually Include?
An AI visibility audit that runs a prompt once and screenshots the answer has measured nothing. AI answers change from run to run, so one missing citation on...
Read article →
AI Bots Visit Our Website. AI Cites Us. Where Are the Visitors?
AI tools can request your pages and cite your content while your analytics records no AI referral visits. Understanding that apparent gap starts with what...
Read article →
Building My Dog Pal With Codex: From Everyday Dog Care to Private Beta
You’ve just come back from a walk. Your dog ate less than usual this morning. There’s a medication to remember tonight, and somewhere on your phone is a...
Read article →
Your Website Can Ask Better Questions
You know the conversation you have with a potential customer before they become a customer?
Read article →
Your Correction Is Live. That Does Not Mean It Has Been Delivered.
You changed the price. You fixed the wrong date. The editor shows the new version, the page loads fine, and you moved on.
Read article →
Your business exists. Does AI have a bloody clue what it does?
I wrote a book for business owners who want clearer answers, not another marketing acronym.
Read article →
Your Page Looks Fine. The HTTP Header Says Otherwise.
Check HTTP headers and robots directives that affect indexing and snippets, and compare the server response with what the visible page shows.
Read article →
Your Website Loads. But What Does an AI Crawler Actually Receive?
Your browser can display content that was missing from the HTML your server first sent. JavaScript may add the pricing table, populate the FAQ, or load a...
Read article →
Your Robots.txt Allows AI Crawlers. Your Firewall May Still Block Them.
A growing number of websites have done the responsible thing: opened robots.txt to the AI crawlers they want, checked the syntax, and moved on. Some of those...
Read article →
Google Says Do Not Chunk for AI. Microsoft Says AI Selects Chunks.
One of the articles that brings us the most readers argues that the opening of a page, roughly the first 30%, does the heavy lifting in whether AI systems...
Read article →
You Ask One AI for Help. It Builds a Team.
What Codex subagents are, how the lead agent coordinates them, what you can inspect and control, and why using them well looks more like management than...
Read article →
Organic Traffic Hit Zero After a Lovable Migration. Here Is What Actually Brought It Back.
From May 1 to May 28, 2026, GA4 recorded zero organic-search sessions for a small service website. Not low. Zero across the measured 28-day period.
Read article →
How to Build an AI Citation Benchmark: Prompts, Competitors, and a Weekly Measurement You Can…
Most attempts to measure AI visibility die of ambition. People try to track every prompt, every engine, and every competitor, produce a spreadsheet nobody...
Read article →
Did LinkedIn Just Become the #1 AI Citation Source for Professional Queries.
Two research releases from the same firm, four months apart, tell a more interesting story together than either does alone. In March 2026, Profound reported...
Read article →
Position One Is No Longer the Finish Line. Being Cited Is the Next Contest.
For twenty years the goal of SEO was a number: position one. That number still pays, but on a growing share of searches it no longer collects the whole...
Read article →
You Answered the Question. The AI Asked Five More.
When someone types a question into some AI search systems, the system may not run only that one search. It can quietly generate several related searches, run...
Read article →
More Web Page Requests Now Come From Machines Than People. Here Is What That Actually Means.
Cloudflare’s June 2026 data shows bots overtaking humans in HTTP requests to HTML content. Requests are not visitors, but the shift still matters.
Read article →
Your Website Has Three Viewers Now. You Do Not Build Three Websites.
Three audiences, one site. Clean structure, honest labels, one page meaning one thing serves all of them.
Read article →
We Ran an Agent-Readiness Scanner on a Website We Manage. Then We Ignored Half the Results.
Some red marks are must-fixes. Some are theatre. Here is how to tell the difference before you ship anything.
Read article →
AI Can Now Act on Your Website, Not Just Read It. Is Yours Ready?
AI-ready website content helps agents understand services, follow clear paths and take supported actions. See what a website needs beyond readable copy.
Read article →
Your Sitemap Gets You Discovered by AI. It Does Not Get You Cited. Here Is What Does.
A sitemap gets a crawler to your front door. Whether it stays and cites you is a different question.
Read article →
Microsoft Clarity Now Shows When AI Bots Crawl and Cite Your Site. Here’s How to Read It.
For two years the honest answer to “is AI actually reading my site” was a shrug. Microsoft Clarity changed that. Its AI Visibility section, free and now...
Read article →
A Firm Was Building Authority on Platforms It Did Not Own.
A professional services firm came to us with a quiet problem. They were publishing genuinely good articles, the kind that prove a firm knows its field, but...
Read article →
AI Visibility Is Finally Measurable. Here’s What to Track Every Week.
Track AI visibility with practical weekly metrics for citations, branded demand, search performance, referral activity and the business outcomes that matter.
Read article →
AI Recommends You. Then Your Buyer Goes to Check. What Do They Find?
Here is the part of AI search nobody optimizes for. A buyer asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, your name comes up, and then they do not buy. They open a new...
Read article →
The Pages AI Cites Don’t Show Up in Your Google Rankings. Most of Them Aren’t Even on Page One.
Here is something that breaks the usual advice. When ChatGPT or Google’s AI names a source, most of the time that source is not ranking anywhere near the top...
Read article →
The Em Dash Is Not Proof of AI. Treating It That Way Is the Mistake.
An em dash is not proof that AI wrote a piece of content. Learn why punctuation is a weak detection signal and what useful editorial review looks like.
Read article →
I Said Don’t Bother With llms.txt.
A few weeks ago I wrote that llms.txt is mostly a waste of time. The crawler logs backed me up, the studies backed me up, and Google said on the record it...
Read article →
The Duplicate Content Rule Was Built for Google. AI Search Plays by a Different One.
Does duplicate content hurt SEO? Learn how Google consolidates repeated pages, when canonical tags matter and why AI search treats distribution differently.
Read article →
AI Is Citing You. But Is It Getting You Right?
Getting cited by AI feels like the win. It is only half of one. When an AI links your page as a source, there is a real chance the claim it attached to your...
Read article →
Google Changed Its Algorithm and Its Search Box in the Same Week.
On May 21, 2026, Google started rolling out a core update. Two days earlier, at Google I/O, it announced that AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users...
Read article →
Getting Cited by AI Is Not the Goal. Getting Absorbed Is.
You can be cited by ChatGPT and still contribute almost nothing to the answer. The link sits at the bottom of the response, the user never clicks it, and...
Read article →
Everyone Told You to Add llms.txt. The Crawler Logs Say Otherwise.
llms.txt may be the most confidently recommended AI visibility tactic with the least evidence behind it. A plugin will generate one for you. A dozen guides...
Read article →
The Ghost Citation Problem: When AI Reads Your Content and Recommends Your Competitor
Your content gets cited by AI but your brand never appears in the answer. Here’s what a ghost citation is, why it happens, and what to do about it.
Read article →
The Three-Bot Problem: Why Blocking One AI Crawler Does Almost Nothing
OpenAI runs three separate crawlers. Anthropic runs three more. Each one does a different job, accepts different instructions, and produces a different...
Read article →
Your Homepage Is Not Your Reputation Layer
Most people assume that if they clean up their website, add schema, and write better copy, AI will start recommending them. That is part of the story. But...
Read article →
Google Is Citing Itself More Than Anyone Else in AI Mode
Google.com is now the single most cited domain in AI Mode. Including YouTube, Google-controlled properties account for roughly 20% of all AI Mode citations....
Read article →
Why ChatGPT Found Your Page and Cited Someone Else
Your page is indexed. Your content is accurate. Your answer is better than the one ChatGPT gave.
Read article →
Two Surfaces, Two Maps: Why AI Mode and AI Overviews Cite Different Pages
AI Mode and AI Overviews are both Google products. They can answer the same queries. In Ahrefs’ dataset, they often reached semantically similar conclusions.
Read article →
The Ski Ramp Pattern: Clear Answers Without a 30% Citation Rule
Put clear answers early without treating the first 30% of a page as an AI citation rule. A corrected guide to useful article structure.
Read article →
The One Schema Property That Tells AI What You’re Actually an Expert In
Most sites that have structured data have the same thing: a name, a URL, a logo, maybe a sameAs link to LinkedIn. AI systems read it and learn that your...
Read article →
Why AI Cites YouTube More Than Almost Anything Else (And How to Get Your Videos Into That Pool)
YouTube is being cited by AI systems millions of times a year. Most of the creators behind those videos have no idea it is happening.
Read article →
6 Months of AI Visibility Work for a B2B Client: What Actually Drove Citations
Six months ago, a B2B client asked one question: why are our competitors getting cited by AI and we’re not?
Read article →
Why Perplexity Cites Different Sites Than ChatGPT (And What That Means for Your Content)
Perplexity and ChatGPT are not two versions of the same thing. They pull from different sources, reward different signals, and cite content for completely...
Read article →
Why AI Systems Misquote You (And Three Structural Fixes That Actually Help)
Being ignored by AI is one problem. Being misquoted is a different one, and in some ways it’s worse.
Read article →
Have Fun Staying Misquoted.
Everyone has a friend who tried AI once, got a wrong answer, and declared the whole thing useless.
Read article →
A Client Lost All Their Web Traffic After Leaving Lovable. Here Is Exactly What Went Wrong.
A client migrated their site off Lovable to Firebase Hosting. Within weeks, organic traffic dropped to near zero. Google Search Console showed 3 pages...
Read article →
YouTube Citations in AI Surged 414%. Here’s What That Means for Course Creators.
YouTube is now the most-cited domain in Google AI Overviews. Not occasionally. Consistently, across platforms, and pulling further ahead every month.
Read article →
ChatGPT Ads Are Here. They Don’t Replace Organic AI Visibility.
OpenAI has said it is testing ads in ChatGPT in the U.S. for logged-in adults on Free and Go plans. Sponsored placements appear when a user is already asking...
Read article →
We Ran an OpenClaw Audit on a Client Site. Here Is What It Found.
The audit found two live articles still broadcasting placeholder titles to every crawler on the internet.
Read article →
LLM Citation Decay: Why AI Mentions Disappear
LLM citation decay can make AI mentions fade after publication. Learn why citations change, what to monitor and how to keep useful evidence current.
Read article →
Schema Markup: What It Can and Cannot Prove
Check existing schema, choose accurate markup and verify one change without promising AI citations. A corrected beginner guide for website owners.
Read article →
Your Old Blog Posts Are Invisible to AI. Here’s How to Fix That.
Most creators already have enough content. The issue is that most of it has aged out of the AI citation window without anyone noticing.
Read article →
Why Your Website Needs a Directory Page (And Why It's Actually an AI Visibility Move)
A directory page isn't just an HTML sitemap—it's a Semantic Crawl Hub for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Learn how to build it properly.
Read article →
Three Words That Can Make Your Website Invisible to AI (And What They Actually Mean)
Schema.org, blog engine, and LLMs.txt sound technical, but they all point to the same issue: machines need help understanding your website.
Read article →
Why Founders, Creators, and Teams Need an Authoritative About Page
If you run a business, create content, or sell expertise online, your About pages are doing far more work than most people realise. Here is how to build one properly.
Read article →
The Internet Is Starting to Sound Like One Loud Person. That’s Your Opportunity.
When enough websites, emails, and blogs use the same AI-generated structures, readers start pattern-matching before they’re even conscious of it. Here is how to cut through the noise.
Read article →
SEO Is Still the Foundation. AI Citations Add a New Layer
Search still matters. Learn how clear website structure, useful content and technical SEO also support visibility and citations in AI systems.
Read article →Put it into practice
Good questions.
Better websites.
Need help applying this to your own website? We can audit it, talk it through or build what’s missing.
Talk to the studio