What we've measured.
What AI actually says about small businesses, measured one question at a time.
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The four gates
Every AI answer about your business passes four checkpoints. Miss one and the others stop mattering.
Apr 7, 2026 · 4 min read
Google shipped a switch on 31 August, and a regulator is the reason
For two years there was no way to be in Google Search but out of its AI answers. Now there is, and it makes the old advice wrong twice over.
Sep 1, 2026 · 3 min read
There are three slots. Nationally that's a lottery. In your city it isn't.
The leader in a national category takes 55 to 78 answers in every 100. The company in the middle takes 8. Measured one city at a time it is a different fight, and the only version of it a normal business can win.
Aug 27, 2026 · 5 min read
An AI agent can now legally shop on your website
A US federal appeals court, 4 August 2026: "the Assistant is a tool, not a person."
Aug 24, 2026 · 3 min read
The strongest measured signal isn't your website. It's YouTube.
Across 75,000 brands, the thing most closely associated with appearing in AI answers was how often a brand is mentioned in video. Backlinks barely registered. Here is what that does and does not mean.
Aug 19, 2026 · 5 min read
The AI is still recommending a company that stopped competing three years ago
Every stale answer in your category is a slot held by someone who isn't defending it. That's the opening, and there is a measurable way to find yours.
Aug 13, 2026 · 5 min read
If you opened after 2023, half the models don't know you exist
Five of the ten systems people ask for recommendations answer from memory alone. Their memory was written before you existed. Here is the sixty-second test, and the half of the market you can actually buy.
Aug 6, 2026 · 5 min read
Being mentioned is not being recommended
Two companies, two very different numbers, and a published claim that doesn't survive being checked. The distinction underneath it is the most useful thing you can learn about measuring this.
Jul 30, 2026 · 5 min read
ChatGPT's advertising business reached a billion dollars in under two hundred days
About one in four ChatGPT answers now contains an ad. The organic answer is getting narrower.
Jul 23, 2026 · 3 min read
We looked for the file everyone tells you to add. Almost nothing has ever fetched it.
They checked 137,210 sites: 97 in every 100 of those files were never opened once in a whole month. Here is how to spend that hour better.
Jul 16, 2026 · 3 min read
How to read an AI visibility study
Five questions that separate a measurement from a marketing asset. Use them on us too.
Jul 8, 2026 · 4 min read
Half the traffic on the web is no longer human
And AI training is now 52 in every 100 requests made by bots, up from 22 a year ago.
Jun 26, 2026 · 3 min read
1,885 pages added structured data. What moved wasn't the code.
Citations barely shifted, except on the pages whose code carried real prices and real specifications.
Jun 18, 2026 · 3 min read
Put your prices on the page
In the best-controlled study of what gets cited, stating a price was a gatekeeper. Formatting was in the weakest tier.
Jun 10, 2026 · 4 min read
What gets quoted is a paragraph, not a page
Nearly half of Google's AI citations link to a specific sentence. Here is what those sentences have in common.
Jun 2, 2026 · 4 min read
What we can't promise, and why nobody else should either
Nobody controls what these systems say. Anyone guaranteeing you a place in an AI answer is either lying or doesn't understand how they work.
May 21, 2026 · 3 min read
Most of what an AI says about you was written by somebody else
Your own website is roughly a quarter of it. Here is where the rest comes from.
May 13, 2026 · 3 min read
Nobody can sell you an AI ranking
Ask the same model the same question twice and you get a different list of companies. Here is what can be measured instead.
May 5, 2026 · 3 min read
You are not competing for the question your customer asked
The model rewrites it into several questions you never see, then answers those. Here is what it adds.
Apr 23, 2026 · 3 min read
Most people block the wrong robot
There is no single "AI bot". Blocking the wrong one removes you from ChatGPT entirely, and the one everyone recommends never did the job it was recommended for.
Apr 15, 2026 · 4 min read
We run one of these a month. If you want to know where you sit in yours, that's what the walkthrough is for.
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