Journal
Field notes from the build side of marketing.
Plain-spoken writing on WordPress and flat-file builds, migrations, accessibility, security and how AI search actually reads a website. For the agencies and marketing teams who have to ship.
Latest
- Filed under
- AI & Search
- Published
- Reading time
- 10 min read
What AI search optimization actually means (and what it costs to ignore)
GEO, AEO and AI visibility are the same job with different labels. Here is how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google and Claude actually pick pages, what the 2026 numbers say, and what a marketing team should do.
More from the journal
04 articles-
How to choose an AI search optimization agency: 12 questions that expose the pretenders
A buyer's guide for marketing directors and agency VPs evaluating AI search optimization services: twelve questions on measurement, method, deliverables, honesty, ownership and pricing, with the answers to expect. 10 min read -
How to write an llms.txt that AI crawlers will actually use (with examples)
A worked llms.txt example for a multi-location business, what the 2026 server-log studies say about who fetches it, which generators to avoid, and why the file only pays off as part of a layer. 12 min read -
What actually gets a business cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI
The 2026 studies are in: schema alone doesn’t move AI citations, llms.txt is barely fetched, and what works is where the answer sits on the page, how fresh it is, whether anyone else mentions you, and whether you can measure any of it. 7 min read -
Your Website Now Talks to AI — Not Just Google
If you’ve searched for anything lately, a lawyer, a restaurant, a plumber, there’s a good chance you didn’t scroll through ten blue links to find it. You asked ChatGPT. Or Perplexity. Or you got a full answer right at the top of Google before you even clicked anything. That’s not a fad. It’s a permanent shift in how people find businesses, and it changes the rules… 4 min read