DONATE here: www.sleepout.org/participants... Next week, I'm chipping in $6,500 and sleeping outside in the freezing Philly cold w @wilreynolds.bsky.social, not b/c I want to (dear god I am not built for sleeping outside in a cardboard box 😅🥶), but b/c it's important. Would 💗 your support

Need recommendations, folks: I'm looking for an eye-level web conferencing camera - one that makes it so I'm not staring into the void when I talk. Anyone had good luck w/ a particular product/setup?

I have yet to see a single GEO/AI optimization "blueprint" that would actually work.

@not-a-robot.com just launched an AI Transparency page. You can learn about the system prompts for each of the major AIs and win your next argument with know-it-all family members. not-a-robot.com/ai-transpare...

Advanced SEO stuff gets me inspired. Then I work on a client site and have to persuade their developers that no, 302-redirecting all broken links back to the home page is not a good idea.

Love this piece about knowledge graphs and ecommerce by @gfiorelli1.bsky.social, except that he slandered me: I, too, love dioramas and beautiful minis. www.iloveseo.net/transforming...

Me, putting Claude Code to good use.

AI can't do content audits, OK? You CAN build a pretty nifty assistant, though, that helps you do audits better. I built one using Claude, ScreamingFrog, Zapier, and Google Sheets. You can read how (and how AI drives me nuts) here: www.ianlurie.com/content/audi...

AI is an assistant. Not a practitioner. All the feckless AI "thought leadership" that has major corporations firing exceptional talent start with one wrongheaded idea: That AI can DO things. It can't DO things. It can help US do things. Please, Alfred implores you. Figure it out.

That moment I edit functions.php and my site doesn't crap out.

I still get the best blog comments:

I sincerely, truly, really want to say, "AIs use LLMs.txt for grounded results." I've seen no evidence. And if I ask the AIs, they say...

Thirty years ago, I started in marketing. AMA

That feeling when a client adopts your messaging suggestions...

I crashed @gfiorelli1.bsky.social's podcast and talked about chunking, why we can't use maps anymore, the difference between discoverability and value, and why SEO is dead. OK, I didn't say that last part. But I made ya look. www.advancedwebranking.com/blog/build-v... Also, my god, that photo.

If removing ?num=100 really generated this swing, scrapers were hitting Google a LOT harder than I thought. This is aggregate clicks and impressions data for some of my biggest clients. Look at the drop starting September 9:

@archive.org preserved the original study, which you can find here. web.archive.org/web/20250911...

Uhm. Sure you’re all gonna tell me this isn’t a big deal, but history says otherwise. www.foxnews.com/politics/nat...

This piece by the iPullRank team is a must-read guide. It's also a great example of good typography, so if you're designer w/ zero interest in AI, you should at least take a look: ipullrank.com/ai-search-ma...

I wrote a whole post about content audits and massive AI models. I'm a huge believer and adopter, particularly for content assessments. Add it to your workflow. Don't REPLACE your workflow. BTW: This is my "stop it" face. www.ianlurie.com/content/use-...

Gianluca Fiorelli gives us yet another super-detailed AI and SEO walkthrough. Love this stuff: www.iloveseo.net/what-framewo...

Finally getting around to playing with @screamingfrog.co.uk's LLM API integration. My goodness, that's cool.

Ah, yes, the first "GEO" toolset where the key feature is... generation of llms-full.txt.

If you're looking for fast, easy image compression with a really cool name, try Squoosh. I recorded a quick how-to: www.ianlurie.com/digital-mark...

OK all you vibe coders: Security is a thing. "Adhere to security best practices. Don't place any API keys, password, or other sensitive information in public repositories or accessible code" is a good STARTING point. For the love of all that's right in the universe, don't launch what you don't know.

Yesterday I said my site "went down." The more accurate version would be, "I quickly rolled out Cloudflare on my site, then ran out the door on a pre-birthday aquarium trip, only to discover I hadn't properly repointed DNS, so my site decided to take the day off."

Yeah, I took an afternoon off. First time in ages. What else happened for the first time in ages? My site went down.

Aggregate Google Search Console data for 40 sites. The Great Decoupling, folks. Time to become marketers again.

I finally found a line that shuts down all SMS spammers:

Being shocked that Trump is burying the Epstein files is like being shocked he's taking away your SNAP benefits. You expected what exactly...?

K, I have learned I have no caffeine tolerance. A typical Diet Coke has, what, 50 mg of caffeine, and I sip it over the course of an hour. I just tried a nutrition supplement - B12 and such - that has 100mg of caffeine (about one cup of coffee). My head nearly exploded.

Love Elmo and I know his account was hacked but if he shows up at my door right now I'm bludgeoning him to death with a menorah.

*Ian shuffles on stage, slightly stooped, using a cane for support* THAT is how we do marketing, goddammit. Gimme an amen. Seriously, this is smart advice. You should've been doing lift-based tracking all along. Now you have to. From @randfish.bsky.social sparktoro.com/blog/exactly...

Up next: Trump refers to Black people as "well spoken" www.theguardian.com/us-news/vide...

In other news, humans surrender last iota of independent thought.

Alfred would like to remind you that yes, the world is kinda shit right now but that’s no excuse to stop giving skritches.

Someone left this in my vegetable garden. No note or anything. Is it a commentary on my gardening? A veiled threat? A compliment?

But he’s a friend to Israel, so it’s ok.

Cat appreciation post.

This is a headline I needed to see: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

People think digital marketers are full of poo because (ironically) we are so, so bad at teaching folks what we do. It's embarrassing to watch.

If it took 8 days to build a massive concentration camp in Florida then it means they could build and house the homeless at any point but choose not to

This timeline...

Claude AI is fantastic, but the "Maximum length" limitation is starting to really chap my hide.

Think about this for a second...

Yes, this.

Never again can anyone ever criticize me for dropping a well-timed, public f-bomb.

From TheAtlantic: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Since the news has forgotten - where are my Los Angeles people at? How’s it going over there?