Guides to website SEO and AI search
Short, practical, and honest about what moves rankings and what does not.
Google plans a shared AI training opt-out in robots.txt
Google plans to support one shared robots.txt rule to opt out of AI training across providers. It is not live yet and does not touch Google Search.
Google clarifies favicon rules: redirects must work
Google's favicon guide now says Googlebot must follow any redirects from your home page to the page with the favicon. How to check your site.
Google updates its user-generated spam guidance
Google's spam guide now names shared pages, generated content and web apps, and says to keep pages not meant for Search out of the index.
Google core updates explained: what to do after one
What a Google core update is, how to check whether it hurt your site, what Google recommends you do, and the quick fixes to avoid.
Google ranking volatility spiked October 24: what to check
Rank trackers showed heavy Google volatility on October 24. Google has not confirmed an update. Here is how to check whether your site was hit.
Studies: AI search sends a fraction of Google's traffic
Three new studies show AI assistants send a small share of the visitors and sales that Google does. What this means for your SEO priorities.
Patching PHP? How to go offline without hurting SEO
PHP shipped fixes for two critical flaws on October 21. If you take your site offline to patch, serve HTTP 503, not errors, timeouts or 404s.
ChatGPT traffic showed as direct? It was a bug
From about Oct 8 to 15, ChatGPT links lost the tag that marks ChatGPT visits, so analytics counted many as direct. A fix is out. How to read your data.
Core Web Vitals fixes: LCP, INP and CLS in plain English
What LCP, INP and CLS mean, how to read your scores, and the fixes Google recommends first. A practical Core Web Vitals guide for site owners.
Test: ChatGPT and Claude still miss JavaScript content
A new test found that ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity missed page text that JavaScript adds. Gemini did not. What it means and how to check your site.
Google adds more links to AI Mode and AI Overviews
On October 15, 2026, Google announced more inline links and a test for official sites in AI Mode and AI Overviews. What changed and what to do.
Which AI crawlers to allow in robots.txt
Search crawlers and training crawlers are different bots. Many sites block both by accident and vanish from ChatGPT search, Copilot or Perplexity answers.
llms.txt: what it does, and what it does not
llms.txt is a proposed file that lists your key pages for AI tools. It is cheap to add, but it is not a ranking factor, and Google says it does not use it.
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