From the journal

What we are thinking about.

Notes from running 8 publications and building tools for them. Restaurant SEO, local marketing, the boring parts that move the needle.

Santander’s Global Branding Shuffle Is a Wake-Up Call for Marketing Growth Strategies
ai-seo Nis 26, 2026

Santander’s Global Branding Shuffle Is a Wake-Up Call for Marketing Growth Strategies

Santander’s global rebranding exposes the fallacy of fragmented marketing strategies and underscores the necessity of unified brand positioning to drive genuine growth.

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Rank Math’s AI Features: Overhyped, Underperforming, and a Total Waste of Time
ai-seo Nis 26, 2026

Rank Math’s AI Features: Overhyped, Underperforming, and a Total Waste of Time

Rank Math’s so-called AI SEO “boost” is nothing but smoke and mirrors. It underdelivers while bloating your site with useless code—don’t buy the hype.

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AI Content Detectors: The Nonsense Gatekeepers That Are Broken Beyond Repair
ai-seo Nis 26, 2026

AI Content Detectors: The Nonsense Gatekeepers That Are Broken Beyond Repair

AI content detectors are a laughable joke pretending to police quality and originality—when they’re just glorified noise machines that hurt more than they help.

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Core Web Vitals in 2026: Why This Signal Has Flatlined and You're Still Chasing It
ai-seo Nis 26, 2026

Core Web Vitals in 2026: Why This Signal Has Flatlined and You're Still Chasing It

Core Web Vitals peaked in 2021 and have been a glorified performance placebo ever since. Yet lazy agencies and Google’s PR machine keep feeding you the same tired hype.

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Yoast’s AI Features Are a Joke—Stop Letting That Plugin Write Your Content
ai-seo Nis 26, 2026

Yoast’s AI Features Are a Joke—Stop Letting That Plugin Write Your Content

Yoast’s AI “content creation” is garbage disguised as innovation. If you’re trusting that plugin to spin your SEO magic, you’re already dead in the water.

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Why Your Brand’s Value Proposition Is Dead Without Consistent Experience
ai-seo Nis 26, 2026

Why Your Brand’s Value Proposition Is Dead Without Consistent Experience

Brands that rely solely on price are doomed. Real value comes from consistent, positive consumer experiences that justify premium pricing and build loyalty.

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Advertisers’ Blind Faith in Digital Ads Is Fueling a Bot-Driven Money Sink
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Advertisers’ Blind Faith in Digital Ads Is Fueling a Bot-Driven Money Sink

Digital ad spend is ballooning, but a stealthy army of bots is devouring budgets under advertisers’ noses. It’s time to call out the industry’s complacency on invalid traffic.

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Sainsbury’s £1.3bn Price War: Personalised Value or Just Marketing Noise?
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Sainsbury’s £1.3bn Price War: Personalised Value or Just Marketing Noise?

Sainsbury’s claims sales growth after a £1.3bn price investment, branding it as "personalised value" — but is this just another retail price war dressed in marketing jargon?

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Asos Throws the Kitchen Sink at Marketing to Mask Growth Woes — Why ‘Balanced’ Is Just Code for Confused
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Asos Throws the Kitchen Sink at Marketing to Mask Growth Woes — Why ‘Balanced’ Is Just Code for Confused

Asos’s new ‘balanced’ marketing strategy is less a breakthrough and more a scattershot scramble to fix deeper growth issues with buzzword-laden gimmicks.

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The ‘More With Less’ Lie: How Top Marketers Are Being Set Up to Fail on Budget Pressure
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

The ‘More With Less’ Lie: How Top Marketers Are Being Set Up to Fail on Budget Pressure

A survey of top marketers managing £45bn in ad spend reveals nine in ten face brutal budget pressure. It’s time to call out the ‘more with less’ narrative as a toxic grift that’s setting marketing up to fail.

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Top Marketers Reveal What Real Marketing Looks Like — Spoiler: It’s Not Buzzword Bingo
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Top Marketers Reveal What Real Marketing Looks Like — Spoiler: It’s Not Buzzword Bingo

Marketing’s top execs call out the industry’s buzzword nonsense and push for real accountability, creativity, and measurable impact in 2026 campaigns.

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Marketing Week Awards Deadline Exposes How Top Marketers Still Miss the Mark
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Marketing Week Awards Deadline Exposes How Top Marketers Still Miss the Mark

As the 2026 Marketing Week Awards deadline passes, top marketers tout tired marketing clichés while ignoring what truly drives measurable results.

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Devonshires Breaks Legal Mold by Hiring First-Ever CMO — A Move Most Law Firms Still Fear
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Devonshires Breaks Legal Mold by Hiring First-Ever CMO — A Move Most Law Firms Still Fear

Devonshires shakes up legal marketing orthodoxy by appointing its first-ever CMO to unify growth strategy — a move most law firms still refuse to make.

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Sainsbury’s £1.3bn Price War: Why ‘Personalised Value’ Is Just Marketing Spin
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Sainsbury’s £1.3bn Price War: Why ‘Personalised Value’ Is Just Marketing Spin

Sainsbury’s £1.3bn price push isn’t innovation—it’s a tired discount war dressed up as “personalised value.” The real retail challenge? Stop slashing prices and start delivering real customer experience.

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Asos Throws Marketing Spaghetti at the Wall: Balanced Strategy or Just More Noise?
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Asos Throws Marketing Spaghetti at the Wall: Balanced Strategy or Just More Noise?

Asos’s new ‘balanced’ marketing strategy is less innovation and more marketing grift, doubling down on buzzwords while ignoring core business issues.

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The ‘More With Less’ Delusion: How Top Marketers Are Still Falling For Budget Squeeze Bullshit
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

The ‘More With Less’ Delusion: How Top Marketers Are Still Falling For Budget Squeeze Bullshit

Nine out of ten marketers managing £45bn ad spend claim budget pressure, but it’s just an excuse for strategic failure and agency complacency. Here’s why.

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SEO Agencies in 2026 Are Mostly Selling You Snake Oil - Here's How to Spot the Grift and Fix It Yourself
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

SEO Agencies in 2026 Are Mostly Selling You Snake Oil - Here's How to Spot the Grift and Fix It Yourself

If you’re still trusting SEO agencies in 2026, you’re probably funding a grift masquerading as expertise. Here’s how to call bullshit and reclaim your rankings.

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Structured Data for Google AI Overviews: The Biggest Missed Opportunity No Publisher Is Exploiting
ai-seo Nis 25, 2026

Structured Data for Google AI Overviews: The Biggest Missed Opportunity No Publisher Is Exploiting

Everyone’s obsessed with flashy SEO hacks, but the real goldmine—structured data powering Google’s AI overviews—remains untouched by lazy publishers and clueless agencies.

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