Blog Posts and Articles

Articles

• Atlas shrugged - 10/23/2025
  ChatGPT Atlas, OpenAI’s shiny new “AI browser," promises seamless web assistance but raises old questions about transparency, data ethics, and the erosion of the web’s long-standing bot covenant.
• Digital and Disinformation - 9/21/2020
  Manipulation and disinformation in search exist – and SEO professionals play a crucial role in fighting them. Here are a few ways to start.
• What We Do in the Shadow DOM - 3/13/2020
  Working on a site that uses Web Components or JavaScript frameworks? Then you'll find practical value in learning about the Shadow DOM from this guide.
• The SEO’s Introduction to Rendering - 12/18/2019
  YSK Google cannot rank what it cannot render. if your site uses JavaScript (95% do!) or struggles with speed or mobile-first, it's time to learn WRS
• Teaming up with Google to bust SEO myths about JavaScript - 10/1/2019
  Behind the scenes of SEO Mythbusters! In this episode I talk JavaScript Myths with Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Martin Splitt.
• What Is Ethical SEO? - 10/1/2019
  Humans crave ethics. Ethically-sourced. Ethically-raised. We’re drawn to the idea of ethics because it gives us a framework to understand the impact of our existence.
• SEO’s Guide to Lighthouse Performance Metrics - 1/28/2022
  We all want to create more performant sites-- but how do we do it? This guide breaks down the metrics behind your Lighthouse Performance score.
• SEO Guide to Angular: Calm the F*ck Down - 5/23/2019
  JavaScript frameworks are a boss fight for SEOs. They're tricky, require strategy, and can result in a respawn if you don't pull it off. Don't panic. Read on.
• Crafting Effective Category Pages - 10/19/2016
  A great category page works for users arriving at any step in the buyer’s journey. It lets them complete the action that led them to your site. The trick to a great category page? It’s in how you pull it off.
• ChatGPT Atlas system prompt leak summary - based on CL4R1T4S repo - 1/1/1970
  We deserve AI transparency. This summary of the ChatGPT Atlas system prompt leak uses Gemini 2.5 Pro to present the rules, constraints, stated facts, and functionalities of the model —along with a test plan for verification.
• No, your AI doesn't care about you - 10/23/2025
  AI isn't your friend. Chatbots have no skin in the game, no empathy. Even if you believe LLMs can think, they don't want you to get better. You are nothing more than an account ID measured in time on site.
• The Agentic Emperor Has No Scruples - 10/23/2025
  Now that you've been so thoroughly soaked in the hype of generate AI, it's time to firehose you with the next big thing: Agentic AI. It's like a personal assistant that loves phishing links and is more vulnerable to threats than a rabbit in the wolf enclosure.
• AI's thinking and big cult dreams - 10/23/2025
  Sam Altman has been vocal about his ambitions to "create something closer to a religion" with his "thinking" AI revolution. Apple's research paper shows that at minimum that thinking is a lie. Maybe this is our cue to hedge bets. Maybe we shouldn't go all in on the new Metaverse until they've got the legs figured out.
• NFTs, Metaverse, and AI Hype - 10/23/2025
  In 2021, prestigious auction house Christie's sold an NFT for $69M. People got excited and bought in. The market cap reached $376B. Three years later, 95% of people holding NFT collections have an investment valued at zero. Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed, "Metaverse isn't a thing a company builds. It's the next chapter of the internet overall." I enjoy both pointing out the absurdity of tech trends and making a point. Before you re-work your org, tech stack, and reporting models for AI, consider that the the baseline for traffic from AI Search is >1%.
• How SEO trackers made life harder for SEOs by inflating impressions - 10/24/2025
  When ChatGPT openly bragged about using Google SERPs, Google didn't give a public response. Instead, they quietly pulled the plug on a URL parameter that enabled mass scraping and posted job listings for anti-scraping engineers and analysts.
• BrightonSEO recap and speaker decks - 10/24/2025
  A first person recap of BrightonSEO San Diego held September with links to speaker decks
• Bad Office Hours: Summer possum edition - 10/27/2025
  Earlier this summer I went to Phoenix, AZ to meet up with friends. Within an hour of the triple digit heat, I had burned my feet and taken on the mental facilities of a possum startled by the vicious sun. This is relevant because it's the only way to describe the energy of July's Google Search Console office hours.
• Congratulations, bad office hours class of 2024 - 10/27/2025
  Ladies and gentlemen of the Bad Office Hours class of '24, wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. For SEO matters, consider the sage advice of Google SEO Office hours with John Mueller and Gary Illyes. If that sounds like too much work, try my unlicensed satirical takes
• Bad Keynotes: Google’s Elizabeth Tucker at SMX Advanced - 10/27/2025
  We're taking bad office hours to the main stage for Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz interview Elizabeth Tucker, director, product management, Google Search.
• Google Search Console bad office hours, April 2024 - 10/27/2025
  Your favorite ever-patient Search Console advocates are back after a 3-month hiatus to answer your burning questions. Their answers are measured and poised– full of infuriating nuance and tact. Here’s your palate cleanser for that.
• Bad Santa's Office Hours Q&A - 10/27/2025
  Ho, ho, harumph! Let's take all the good will John, Gary, and Martin poured into this month's SEO Office Hours and shove your stocking with Bad Santa's answers.
• August 2023 Google SEO office hours - 10/27/2025
  Google Search advocates sit down monthly to answer burning SEO questions and help the community with generous insights and endless patience in a Q&A style format. This is not that. These are the same questions from Google Search's August 2023 Office Hours -- but wrong answers only
• Google Search (bad) office hours July 2023 - 10/27/2025
  July 2023's Google Office Hours gave us a rapid-fire 28 questions in 19 minutes. The GSC team answered them gracefully. Let's fix that with bad office hours.