Recently, I found myself in another conversation that has become increasingly familiar. A senior executive had received a warning from an AI visibility assessment vendor that the company was not sufficiently prepared for AI search. Among the recommendations was something I have seen appearing more frequently: the company needed an llms.txt file. Suddenly, an emerging,…
I wrote an article about auditing publisher websites last week, and it took a little piece of my soul. Like a Horcrux, but without me being a spectacularly evil wizard hellbent on world domination. Allegedly. I argued that SEO auditing should be broken down into four parts: Technical SEO. Content. E-E-A-T. Entities. I think almost…
It’s 7:40 a.m. You haven’t opened Google Ads once. Instead, you type a prompt: “Across all my accounts, what did we spend yesterday? Flag anything more than 20% off pace and tell me what changed.” Ninety seconds later, you have the answer. Three accounts that matter, and the specific reason for each. You follow up:…
Of all the characters you might expect to trigger school closures and police investigations, the Cat in the Hat probably would not be high on the list. Yet a creepy internet reinvention of the Dr. Seuss character is now causing very real disruptions across the United States. Over the past several weeks, AI-generated and manipulated…
Schema markup won’t make AI systems cite you directly, but it does help search engines like Google, Bing, and answer engines like ChatGPT understand who you are, verify your claims, and decide whether to feature you. I’ve supported schema for years, and although the benefits took time to show, the efforts I made on client…
Getting ready for a date usually comes with a fairly predictable checklist: Take a shower, apply deodorant, and find a shirt that has recently been through the washing machine. But one corner of the internet would like men to reconsider all three. Meet “pheromone-maxxing,” the latest “maxxing” trend circulating among some young men online. The…
Google Ads has steadily automated more of the decisions advertisers once managed directly. Bidding is an obvious example, but the shift has gone much further. Google now has more influence over which searches ads can match to, where ads appear, how budgets get allocated, and even which creative combinations users see. For advertisers, that changes…
New allegations surfaced that the Rank Math WordPress plugin has introduced a functionality that silently gives the company administrator-level permissions over WordPress sites. The access is triggered when a user is connected to a free Rank Math account and the user opens the plugin’s Help & Support section. Allegedly There Is Zero Consent Or Notification…
The Hamptons’ most talked-about dinner party of the summer will have to wait a little bit longer. Gwyneth Paltrow’s closely watched dinner honoring OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been postponed, according to The New York Times. The private gathering was originally scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 29, at Paltrow’s home in Amagansett, New York. This Tweet…
Google’s new Preferred Sources embed removes one action from the process of adding a publication as a Preferred Source. With the embed, a reader adds the site and returns to the article. A deeplink sends the reader to Google’s source preferences tool, where the site still has to be selected and confirmed. This simple guide…