Notes / SEO / May 15, 2026
How To Build Local Pages That Win In AI-Powered Search
Introduction Local AI search rewards better pages. Learn exactly how to build them. Are your location-based pages showing up when AI-powered search answers local...
Shalin Siriwardhana
Search, growth, and digital strategy notes.
Personal notes on SEO, AI search, content strategy, and durable organic growth.
Notes / SEO / May 15, 2026
Data Shows AI Overviews Exposing Negative Reviews Without User Intent. What To Do Next
Introduction Why does AI pull a 2023 Reddit thread into a 2026 comparison query? What makes AI cite some complaints about my brand and skip others? How do I get AI to...
Notes / SEO / May 15, 2026
Direct Traffic & Popularity – Correlation, Not Causation
Introduction Last week, Cyrus Shepard published an AI citation ranking factors study , and it created a lot of noise on X, LinkedIn, and a number of private WhatsApp...
Notes / SEO / May 15, 2026
Stop Treating AI Visibility As One Problem. It’s Actually Three, On Three Different Layers
Introduction When a brand stops appearing in ChatGPT, or when its share of voice in Perplexity drops by half over a quarter, the typical response from the marketing org...
Notes / SEO / May 15, 2026
Your client sent ChatGPT SEO advice: Here’s how to respond
Introduction "Hi Frank, I had ChatGPT look at our SEO and it has a bunch of recommendations. Can you take care of this for us?" We're all getting some version of this...
Notes / SEO / May 14, 2026
Lessons Learned From Adobe’s 2026 Q2 AI Traffic Report
Introduction The sign on AI-referred traffic conversion flipped. I'm not sure if enough of us have noticed. Twelve months ago, visitors arriving at U.S. retailers from...
Notes / SEO / May 14, 2026
Google Research’s ALDRIFT: AI Answers That Do More Than Sound Plausible
Introduction Google Research published a paper that studies how to make generative AI systems produce answers that do more than sound plausible. The researchers say that...
Notes / SEO / May 14, 2026
Why Your SEO Work Isn’t Getting Implemented (The IT Line Of Death)
Introduction I recently spoke with an SEO who, along with his entire team, had just been laid off. The company was rapidly losing organic traffic , leadership was...
Notes / SEO / May 14, 2026
Condé Nast CEO: Plan As If Search Traffic Will Be Zero
Introduction Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch says he told company teams to plan their businesses as if search traffic were zero. Lynch made the comments in an...
Notes / SEO / May 14, 2026
Why good content still loses in Google Search
Introduction Create helpful, high-quality content, and you'll rank. That's been the prevailing wisdom in search for over a decade. But "create great content" was always...