Search, AI search and
what impact that has on your business

Several posts a week, regular roundups, and live tests and experiments on paper. Written for people running a business, not for other SEOs.

All writing, filtered by topic

SEO19 Oct 2026

Why has my organic traffic dropped? How I investigate it

Why organic traffic drops and how to find the cause: Search Console, demand, faults, results-page changes and updates, in the order I check them.

SEO17 Oct 2026

Local search in Liverpool and the North West, now that AI answers the question

Live checks on North West commercial searches show no AI Overview at all. What that means for local businesses, and where AI does change the picture.

Content15 Oct 2026

Being quotable: how to write pages that AI systems cite

What the research found about content that gets used as a source, how to structure a page for it, and why the evidence matters more than…

SEO13 Oct 2026

Structured data in the age of AI answers: what still earns anything

Which schema types still produce a result, what Google says about structured data and AI features, and where markup genuinely helps a machine understand a page.

AI search10 Oct 2026

Buying AI search services: what to ask, what to judge, what nobody can promise

How to read an AI search or GEO proposal, the questions that separate method from pitch, how to judge the scope, and which promises nobody can…

AI search8 Oct 2026

What changes for a small business when the answer arrives before the click

Which queries lose clicks to AI answers and which don't, why brand and commercial searches behave differently, and what to measure when traffic stops being the…

Ecommerce6 Oct 2026

The searches you’re paying for and already rank for

Most stores run Google Ads and SEO separately, and pay twice for some searches while covering neither on others. How to find the overlap.

AI search6 Oct 2026

How to measure whether AI search is costing you traffic

A method for working out what AI answers are doing to your clicks, using Search Console and GA4, and an honest account of what neither can…

AI search3 Oct 2026

AI search in the UK: who answers, who gets cited, and what the data says

How ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot find sources, which crawlers each uses, and what a UK small business can reasonably conclude from the data.

Ecommerce2 Oct 2026

Selling other people’s products: what to do about the manufacturer’s description

If you stock other brands, their copy is on every rival site too. Which products to rewrite, what to add, and what to leave alone.

SEO1 Oct 2026

Is the local search you want to rank for actually a commercial one?

I checked 'seo' plus four North West town names twice. Two stayed muddled and two changed between checks. Here's how to test your own search first.

AI search1 Oct 2026

What AI Overviews actually are, and how Google builds them

Where AI Overviews came from, what Google says is happening underneath, what one actually looks like on a UK commercial search, and what the click research…

Search and AI change every week, and most of what gets written about it is aimed at big companies with big teams. Everything here is written for UK small businesses: what’s changed, what it means for you, and what I’d do about it.

Regular analysis

Four recurring series, each with its own job.

State of Search covers the Google updates, the AI Overviews and AI Mode changes, what the assistants are doing in search, and the things I’d act on. Content Marketing is about platform changes, what’s actually working in content, and where AI genuinely helps in producing it. State of AI picks out the releases that matter to a business rather than to a developer, and what I’m using and testing myself. Direction is the opinion one: where search, AI and content look to be heading, and what that means for how you prepare.

Deep posts by topic

Several posts a week, each answering one question properly. They’re organised by the same areas as my services:

  • SEO: audits, Search Console, schema, keyword research and strategy
  • AI search: AI Overviews, ChatGPT, citations and tracking
  • Content: content plans, refreshes and writing with AI
  • Google Ads: management, brand bidding and paid and organic planning
  • Site migrations: replatforming, redesigns and recovering lost traffic

Guides

For the bigger subjects, the guides are living resources that get updated rather than rewritten, starting with What is SEO?

What makes these posts different

Most search news is repeated from the same few announcements, often without anyone checking what was actually said. Every post here goes back to the primary source, whether that’s Google’s own documentation or the AI company’s announcement, and says clearly what’s confirmed, what’s reported and what’s my opinion.

Each deep post also includes something you won’t get from a news story: what I’ve seen in real data from client and own sites, a worked example, and what I’d do about it if it were my business. If a subject doesn’t deserve a full post, it goes into the weekly roundup instead of being stretched thin.

How it’s written

Every post is written and reviewed by me, with claims linked to their primary sources. The editorial policy explains how, and the AI use statement sets out where AI tools help.

Get started

Proof, not promises.

Tell me what's going on and I'll come back with what I'd do first. No obligation, and no report you need a translator for.

Over 925,000 impressions and 13,795 clicks in a year, from people asking one awkward question: what size do I need?condoms.uk, past 12 months

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Brands and sites I have worked on

Brands worked on across nearly twenty years, in agency roles and directly.