Tag
seo
11 posts
Google Is Right About Google. That Is Not the Whole Map.
Google’s guidance on AI search is useful, but it is not universal law. It explains how Google wants us to think about Google Search, not how every AI system retrieves, grounds, cites and acts on information. SEO is still the foundation, yes, but the new competitive layer is evidence: passages that make sense, claims that can be trusted, entities that are corroborated, and websites that can be understood by both humans and agents.
HCU, thin content and the myth of word count
A few SEO arguments sound right because they are pointing at a real problem, but they still miss the thing sitting in the middle. HCU was not a word-count update, and short content is not automatically thin content. But that does not mean thin content is a myth, or that Google has no way to judge usefulness. The real issue is low-added-value content, the kind that has the shape of expertise, but none of the scar tissue.
Blue Sky Thinking for LLMs: Why AI Citations Will Be Gamed
Everyone now wants the same thing: to be the page ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI results decide to quote when they answer a question. So the obvious search is, how do I get an LLM to cite my content? The honest answer is less comforting than the usual schema-and-optimisation chatter. LLMs want to cite clear, reliable, primary evidence. But the moment that preference becomes commercially valuable, it becomes a target. What begins as a noble little dream of machines rewarding the best source quickly becomes something older, rougher and more familiar: another algorithm people will learn to game.
AI Search Demands Technical Infrastructure, Not Shortcuts
When Google's AI Overview answers a search, it doesn't rank pages anymore, it synthesises claims. If your canonical information is expensive to extract, the system answers using someone else's version of you. That's not an SEO problem in 2026, that's a brand reality problem.
Structured Data & AI Crawlers in 2026: Why Most Schema Hype Is Misplaced
From hands-on experiments in late 2025 and early 2026, one pattern emerges clearly: most AI crawlers do not parse JSON-LD semantically. They tokenize the entire page as ordinary text. Search engines still use schema during indexing, but when their LLMs generate answers, they draw from algorithmic summaries and grounding snippets, not raw structured data feeds. The result? Visible, semantically clear HTML structure beats hidden schema for AI extraction in almost every case.
The Reality of Content Cannibalisation and Query Fan-Out in GEO
Many SEO practitioners now argue that content cannibalisation is less risky in the GEO era, given that LLMs use query fan-out to pull from multiple long-tail pages, even ones with significant semantic overlap. The strategy sounds efficient on paper: create 9-10 ultra-specific pages rather than consolidating into 3-4 broader ones. But 2026 data and real-world tests tell a different story. While AI Overviews do reward specificity and diverse angles, unchecked fragmentation with heavy overlap usually dilutes authority and citation potential. The smarter play, and the one the evidence actually supports, remains intentional intent separation backed by tight topical clustering.
The Timeless SEO Canon: The Lost Map That Still Guides Everything in 2026
Most SEO advice is recycled. This isn’t. The SEO Canon is a distilled knowledge hub of what still works, what’s changed, and what actually matters, built for people who want clarity over tactics and trust over tricks.
Nothing New Under the SERP: Why SEO Fundamentals Still Win
The SEO industry constantly reinvents the wheel with new buzzwords. But the core fundamentals of web promotion haven't changed in decades.
Lost in Semantics: EEAT and the Problem of Artificial Ignorance
EEAT was meant to fix quality in search, but in the age of AI Overviews it's falling short. From keyword stuffing to Artificial Ignorance, why the gaming never really ended.
Programmatic SEO in the Age of AI: From Scale to Signal
Programmatic SEO is evolving. Scale without signal produces noise. Learn how systems are shifting from ranking pages to retrieving and reusing information.
From Semantics to AI: The Same Debate, Repackaged
The industry is splitting over AI, but this is the same cycle we've seen before. Understanding the pattern reveals what really matters: inclusion over ranking.