Field notes

Learn how machines choose.

Practical writing on AI visibility — GEO, AEO, AIO, SEO, and the local layer — from the team that measures it for a living.

AIO

AI Overviews Are Coming for Local Search. Be Ready.

Local searches are starting to get AI-generated answers built from profiles, reviews, and quotable pages. How AI Overviews and the local pack now interact.

August 12, 2026·4 min read
GEO

GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot: A Field Guide to AI Crawlers

Who's who among AI crawlers — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, CCBot — and a sane allow/block policy for local businesses.

August 11, 2026·4 min read
Strategy

The 30-Minute DIY AI Visibility Audit

A practical 30-minute checklist: five money questions in three engines, robots.txt and llms.txt checks, a GPTBot fetch test, schema check, and a GBP review.

August 4, 2026·4 min read
AEO

People Also Ask Is a Map of What AI Will Be Asked Next

People Also Ask boxes are free question research and a preview of tomorrow's assistant queries. How to mine PAA for FAQs, content plans, and exact phrasing.

July 28, 2026·4 min read
AEO

Featured Snippets vs. AI Overviews: What's the Difference?

Featured snippets extract one passage from one page; AI Overviews synthesize many sources. What changed at position zero, and how one body of work wins both.

July 21, 2026·4 min read
SEO

Site Speed Is an AI Visibility Problem Now

Slow pages don't just hurt Google rankings — they stop AI engines from fetching and quoting you. The double penalty, and the fixes that pay off twice.

July 14, 2026·4 min read
GEO

How ChatGPT Decides Which Local Businesses to Recommend

What we can infer about how ChatGPT picks local businesses to recommend — readable sites, entity clarity, reviews, and consistency — and how to earn a spot.

July 7, 2026·4 min read
AIO

How to Become a Cited Source in Google AI Overviews

A practical path to getting cited in Google AI Overviews: index health, answer-shaped passages, schema grounding, real question phrasing, and patient monitoring.

June 23, 2026·4 min read
AEO

E-E-A-T for Local Businesses: Being Someone, Not Something

E-E-A-T translated for local businesses: named people, real credentials, authored pages, and reviewed-by lines — why sites with faces beat anonymous brochures.

June 16, 2026·4 min read
GEO

GEO, LLMO, AISO, AEO: Every AI-SEO Acronym, Explained Once

GEO, LLMO, AISO, AEO, AIO — a dozen names for two crafts. Here's what every AI-search acronym actually means, which are synonyms, and which matter.

June 9, 2026·4 min read
Local SEO

Your Reviews Are Marketing Copy Now. AI Is Reading Them.

AI assistants read your reviews, summarize the sentiment, and quote the details. How to earn better reviews ethically — and the shortcuts that backfire.

June 2, 2026·4 min read
SEO

Do Google Rankings Still Matter in the AI Era?

Rankings still matter in the AI era — they feed the citations AI engines lean on. But they no longer measure winning on their own. The two-scoreboard reality.

May 26, 2026·4 min read
GEO

Your Firewall Might Be Blocking AI. Here's How to Tell.

WAFs, CDNs, and bot protection quietly block AI crawlers by default. Here's how to check your logs, confirm the block, and let the right bots back in.

May 19, 2026·4 min read
AEO

FAQ Pages That Earn AI Citations (Not the Ones You Have)

Most FAQ pages answer questions nobody asks. How to source real questions, match assistant phrasing, wire up FAQPage schema, and put FAQs where they belong.

May 12, 2026·4 min read
Strategy

How to Measure AI Visibility (Before You Try to Improve It)

Before you try to improve AI visibility, baseline it: citation audits with money questions, AI referral tracking in analytics, and crawler hits in your logs.

May 5, 2026·4 min read
AIO

What Kinds of Searches Trigger Google AI Overviews?

Question-shaped, comparison, and local-intent searches trigger Google AI Overviews most often. What we know about the pattern and how to plan content for it.

April 28, 2026·4 min read
GEO

How to Check If ChatGPT Can Actually Read Your Website

Robots.txt checks, curl user-agent tests, and JavaScript blind spots: a practical walkthrough to find out whether ChatGPT can actually read your website.

April 14, 2026·4 min read
Local SEO

NAP Consistency: The Boring Fix With Outsized Returns

What NAP consistency is, how machines cross-reference your listings, where mismatches come from, and a methodical way to find and fix them for good.

April 7, 2026·4 min read
AEO

Answer-Shaped Content: How to Write So Machines Quote You

Machines quote pages that answer first and explain second. The answer-shaped format — question heading, direct answer, support — with before/after rewrites.

March 24, 2026·4 min read
GEO

What Is llms.txt and Should Your Business Have One?

Plain-English guide to llms.txt: what the standard is, what goes in the file, why it's cheap insurance for AI visibility, and how to publish it on any site.

March 10, 2026·4 min read
Local SEO

The Google Business Profile Checklist That Feeds AI Answers

A Google Business Profile checklist for the AI era: the fields that matter, why profile data feeds AI recommendations, and how often to update it.

February 24, 2026·4 min read
AEO

The Schema Markup a Local Business Actually Needs

Cut through 800 schema types to the few a local business needs: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, and Person — what each tells machines and what to skip.

February 17, 2026·4 min read
SEO

A Technical SEO Checklist for Local Businesses (No Jargon)

A no-jargon technical SEO checklist for local businesses — speed, mobile, indexability, broken pages, HTTPS, duplicates — plus what to ask your web person.

February 10, 2026·4 min read
Strategy

Ten Blue Links Are Over. What Replaces Them Decides Who Gets Found.

Search is fragmenting into answers across Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Why the end of ten blue links changes who gets found — and how to measure it.

February 3, 2026·4 min read