NOTES
Notes on building
stronger signals.
No 3,000-word guides, no "10 tips for success." Just the specific things I'd fix on a home service website, written so you can act on them the same afternoon.
Fifty Amsterdam websites, read the way a machine reads them
Loodgieters, elektriciens, tandartsen and fysiotherapeuten, scored across seventeen checks. Median 57/100 — and not one of the 49 readable sites publishes a price a model could quote.
READ THE STUDY →AI doesn’t rank you. It remembers you.
A 1968 psychology experiment explains why your #1 Google ranking doesn’t get you cited by ChatGPT — and why 53.7% of AI search categories still have no owner at all.
READ THE STUDY →The Fool’s Game
I know how to get a website into the answers people read instead of clicking. Some of that method is durable; some of it works today and costs you later. Here is the line drawn out loud, with every paid price visible and the public scan kept automated.
SEE THE PRICES →Most of your visitors are machines
In June 2026 bots passed humans: 57.3% of requests for HTML. Most of that is background noise — but one kind of machine is a customer’s proxy, it grew 7,851% in a year, and it reads your page as an accessibility tree rather than a picture. Seven free checks tell you whether it can get in.
RUN THE DOOR TEST →How Claude reads your website
Anthropic publishes the whole mechanism and almost nobody reads it. Three crawlers — and most sites block the wrong one. A fetch tool that cannot read JavaScript. And a citation that carries exactly 150 characters of your writing.
READ THE BREAKDOWN →210 contractor sites. One blind spot.
I scanned 216 real U.S. home service websites the way an AI reads them; 210 came back readable. Average 72.3/100 — and the failure isn't technical. Publishing real prices separates the top group from the bottom by 83 points.
READ THE STUDY →Google keeps 58 of your 100 clicks
The 2026 field guide to generative engine optimization, with the studies attached. Why brand mentions now beat backlinks three to one, why llms.txt turned out to be a dead end, and why 1.2% versus 35.9% is the best news a local business has had all year.
READ THE GUIDE →Does your business show up in ChatGPT?
A homeowner asks an AI for a plumber at 9pm and gets three names. Here's the 10-prompt check that tells you whether one of them is yours — and the four signals that decide it.
RUN THE CHECK →The Bounce Model: stress-test paid traffic
A visible scenario, not a forecast. Replace every assumption with reached-content, call and booking events from your own analytics.
READ THE NOTE →Your website is a guy named Dave
He takes six seconds to say hello. He keeps the phone number in his back pocket. He goes home at 5 sharp, even on a Saturday flood. Meet your worst-performing employee — and his annual review.
READ THE NOTE →What a slow website costs a contractor
I loaded 100 contractor websites on a phone and timed every one. 30% took over three seconds. The worst weighed 19.2 MB. Here's the bill — and how to check yours in 30 seconds.
READ THE NOTE →How to show up when your customers ask AI
Homeowners now ask ChatGPT for a plumber instead of Googling one. Five concrete steps to get your business named in that answer — and one thing not to waste money on.
READ THE NOTE →