Archive
Selected Writing
Observations, technical research, and insights regarding web performance and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).
Why an AI Company Bought a Concert App — and What It Tells You About Your Website
Suno's acquisition of Songkick isn't a music story. It's proof that intent data is the currency of the AI era — and your business either publishes it or gets invisible.
Part 1: Schema That Actually Gets Read
The LocalBusiness, Service, and FAQ schema we shipped on this site before it earned a single visitor — and why the order matters.
Part 2: NAP Consistency, the Boring Fix With Outsized Payoff
Name, address, phone — the same three lines checked in four places. Skipping this quietly undercuts every other traffic effort.
Part 3: One Service Page, Built to Convert
The seven-section layout every service page on this site follows — and why the Service schema from Part 1 depends on it existing.
Part 4: Tracking the Traffic You're About to Get
The three conversion events we wire up on day one — and why tracking more than that early on is just data noise.
Part 5: UTMs Before You Need Them
A UTM naming convention set up before the first campaign link goes out, so the tracking from Part 4 doesn't fragment into a mess.
Part 6: Google Business Profile Setup
Closing the loop between the schema, NAP, and service pages built earlier in this series and the profile that actually shows up in local search.
Your Inbox Is Now an AI Visibility Signal
AI Mode reads Gmail. A brand that stays present in a user's inbox is 53.6% more likely to show up in AI-generated answers — even if nobody opens the email. Here's what that means for how you run email.
Does Google Analytics Slow Down Your Site? We Measured It — Here's What Happened
GA4 cost this site 10 mobile PageSpeed points and 5 desktop points. Here's what analytics scripts actually cost you, and how to keep the data without the penalty.
The Instant Diagnostic Method: How to Prove User Interest in 3 Seconds
How to design your user experience to capture immediate micro-conversions and improve search performance.
AI Is Taking Your Traffic. Social Media Is Handing It Back.
AI search answers on its own page and keeps the click. Instagram does the opposite — it drives ready-to-buy traffic to your site to finish the purchase. Two forces, one destination: the site you own. Here's what that means for where you put your money.
Why Being #1 on Google No Longer Guarantees AI Visibility
Top Google rankings no longer predict AI citations. A Search Atlas study quantifies the gap across Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Gemini — and what it means for cite-ability.
Performance Is Prestige — Rebuilding the Studio From 58 to 100
Thirty years building sites, from tables to today. I rebuilt my own studio site with the GitHub Astro method, deployed on Cloudflare — performance 58 to 100, accessibility 77 to 100, fully legible to AI. Here's how, and what it means for yours.
The Platforms Swapped Jobs on Us — Here's Who Does What Now
Facebook became the events board. Instagram became the buying floor and buried photography. Threads quietly started rewarding the outbound link again. The platforms specialized while no one announced it — and the one place that has to do every job is the site you own.