Notes on AI SEO
& the editorial stack.
Yasin Kaya and Hasan Orgun publish practical dispatches on what's actually working in 2026 — LLM visibility, structured data for AI assistants, editorial infrastructure, and search performance in a post-ChatGPT world.
Schema.org Adoption Gaps Are the SEO Industry’s Biggest Unspoken Failure – Here’s How Lazy Agencies Keep It That Way
The SEO world loves to pretend schema.org is a solved problem, but lazy agencies and clueless “10x” outfits have turned structured data into a joke. Here’s why ignoring schema mean…
IndexNow Is a Marketing Scam: The Truth About Its Zero Impact on Real Crawl and Ranking Signals
IndexNow promises instant indexing and better rankings, but it’s nothing more than a marketing stunt serving vendor egos, not site owners. Here’s why it’s a hollow band-aid.
Yoast and Rank Math’s AI Features Are SEO Dead Weight in 2026: Why Plugin Bloat Kills More Than Your Site Speed
Yoast, Rank Math, and their AI gimmicks are nothing but SEO dead weight, dragging down sites with bloat while peddling hollow promises. It’s time to call out this lazy plugin…
Why Consumer Brands Betting on LinkedIn’s ‘Creator Economy’ Are Smarter Than You Think
Consumer brands like The League are ditching the social media noise to capitalize on LinkedIn’s creator economy, targeting a wealthy, intentional audience rather than chasing empty…
Publishers Admit Defeat in Traffic Wars, Celebrate Commerce Conversion Gains Instead
As traffic declines, publishers like Forbes and Apartment Therapy prove that commerce conversions and CTR matter more than ever, exposing the futility of chasing raw audience numbe…
NHL’s TikTok Play Exposes How Legacy Sports Suck at Global Growth
The NHL’s TikTok blitz to grow beyond North America is less innovation and more lazy marketing, exposing the league’s cluelessness about real global expansion.
Retailers Deploy Fuel Perks Amid $4 Gas to Trap Shoppers—A Short-Term Band-Aid on a Long-Term Crisis
As gas prices soar above $4, retailers scramble to offer fuel discounts that promise relief but deliver little more than a marketing band-aid on a systemic crisis.
YouTube’s Audio Ad Pivot: SiriusXM Gets the Sales Play, Everyone Else Gets Left in the Dust
YouTube’s exclusive deal with SiriusXM to sell “audio-first” ads isn’t innovation — it’s a power grab that squeezes advertisers and stifles competition in digital audio.
Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist Nails the Human Element Missing from Marketing’s Machine Age
Tom Fishburne’s Marketoonist exposes the marketing industry’s dangerous drift away from human insight toward soulless automation and AI hype.
IPA Calls Out ‘Opaque’ Walled Gardens, Demands Industry-Wide Measurement Overhaul
The IPA is calling out the marketing industry’s dangerous reliance on opaque walled garden data and demanding a shift to transparent, joint measurement standards.
Santander’s ‘Digital with a Human Touch’ Is Just Another Bland Global Brand Play
Santander’s new global brand positioning touting a “digital with a human touch” approach is just another shallow corporate play. It masks deeper strategic laziness with buzzwords a…
Sanlorenzo’s Brand Playbook: Why Luxury Yachts Are Finally Learning from Fashion and Cars
Sanlorenzo is ditching specs-heavy yacht marketing in favor of emotional branding inspired by luxury fashion and automotive giants. It’s a necessary shake-up in a stale industry.
Account-Based Marketing Didn’t Just Happen—It Was Engineered by a Relentless Visionary
Account-based marketing was never an accident or a buzzword; it was a deliberate, disciplined shift pioneered by Bev Burgess that B2B marketers still fail to execute properly.
PayPal’s Streaming Adtech Play: A Clumsy Power Grab Targeting TV Advertisers
PayPal’s new streaming TV ad partnerships with Spectrum Reach, Tubi, and Warner Bros. Discovery are a desperate bid to turn payment data into ad dollars—without truly understanding…
Social Media Week 2026: What Actually Moved the Needle and What Was Just Noise
Social Media Week 2026 brought the real social media operators together to cut through the noise and call out the industry’s lazy strategies and hype. Here’s what actually ma…
Code and Theory Hires JJ Schmuckler to Babysit CMOs Lost in the AI Fog
Code and Theory’s new president JJ Schmuckler is stepping into the AI chaos to help CMOs cut through the hype and grasp what actually matters in digital transformation.
Tim Cook Made Apple Ads Invisible Gold; John Ternus Faces the Nightmare of Scaling That Secret Sauce
Tim Cook turned Apple’s discreet ad business into a silent revenue powerhouse. His successor, John Ternus, faces the brutal task of scaling that success without selling out Apple&#…
Hulu’s Get Real House: Brand Cameos Masquerading as Reality TV Stardom in Year Two
Hulu’s Get Real House doubles down on branded content by weaving brands directly into its reality show this year, turning participants into walking commercials. It’s a move that hi…
IndexNow’s Real Impact on SEO? A Peak Nothingburger Exposed with Traffic Logs and Crawl Data
IndexNow is hyped as a crawl-boosting miracle, but traffic logs and crawl data show it’s a peak nothingburger. Microsoft and lazy SEO vendors are selling smoke, not results.
Core Web Vitals Are a Nothingburger – Here’s the Real UX Signal Google’s Hiding From You
Everyone’s lost their minds chasing Core Web Vitals like they’re the holy grail of UX, but Google’s hiding the real user experience metric that actually moves the needle. Spoiler: …
Yoast and Rank Math AI Features Are Garbage: Stop Trusting Plugin Buzzwords and Fix Your Content Yourself
The so-called “AI-powered” features in Yoast and Rank Math are a marketing stunt. If you rely on these plugins to write or optimize your content, you’re wasting t…
The IndexNow Illusion: Why Microsoft’s ‘Instant’ Indexing Is SEO’s Biggest Lazy Grift of 2026
IndexNow promises instant SEO indexing miracles, but it’s nothing more than a lazy rebrand of existing crawl habits—peddled by Microsoft and co. as the next big thing.
The Devil Wears Prada 2: How Brand Placements Just Became a Runway for Corporate Sellouts
The Devil Wears Prada 2 isn’t just a movie sequel; it’s a parade of shameless brand placements by Diet Coke, Grey Goose, and L’Oréal. Welcome to the new era of corporate grift.
Shawna Thomas Trades CBS Morning Chair for MS NOW’s Executive Producer Role — Here’s Why It Matters
After five years leading CBS Mornings, Shawna Thomas is moving to MS NOW, signaling a shift from traditional broadcast news to digital-first, interactive storytelling.
The Trade Desk Ditches Its Overhyped ‘Periodic Table’ Dashboard for Customizable Metrics—and It’s About Damn Time
The Trade Desk is quietly retiring its infamous Periodic Table dashboard in favor of customizable metrics, finally dumping a bloated, one-size-fits-all design that frustrated adver…
Why PR’s Obsession with Influence Is the Brand Growth Scam Nobody Calls Out
The PR industry’s obsession with influencer marketing is a smoke-and-mirrors hustle selling vanity metrics over real growth. It’s time brands demand accountability.
Vox Media’s Roll-Up Bubble Bursts: The Grim Reality Behind the Acquisition Frenzy
After a decade of aggressive acquisitions, Vox Media is offloading many of its brands, exposing the harsh realities behind the digital media roll-up craze.
UK Retailers Are Blind to AI Shoppers Because Their Sites Are Garbage for Machines
AI-driven shopping is booming, but most UK retail sites remain unreadable to AI, killing their visibility and sales. Here’s why that’s a colossal mistake.
Midlife Women Are Being Erased by Lazy Marketing — Here’s Why Brands Must Stop Ignoring Them
Advertising’s depiction of women over 40 is a lazy, male-driven echo chamber that ignores a powerful audience. Brands must overhaul their creative teams or keep losing relevance.
‘Who Owns Growth?’ The Marketing Industry’s Hollow Role Inflation Crisis
New ‘growth’ roles are more window dressing than real change. Without structural shifts, marketing’s latest trend is just cargo cult bullshit.