Warming Notes

    Patterns from the gap between buying a domain and building the business.

    A glass building facade at twilight with layered reflections creating abstract geometric patterns, cool blue tones with fading amber light.

    How AI Crawlers Decide What to Index (And What They Skip)

    GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended are new, opaque, and growing fast. Here's how AI crawlers make indexing decisions, what they look for, and why blocking them might be costing you visibility.

    June 18, 2026
    10 min read
    Bret SiersBret Siers
    A close-up of a green leaf backlit by warm noon sunlight, its intricate vein structure clearly visible against translucent green tissue.

    Schema Markup for Small Websites: Do You Actually Need It?

    Schema markup sounds like something enterprise sites need. It's not. Here's what schema types matter for small sites, why they matter more than you think, and how to implement them in an afternoon.

    June 17, 2026
    9 min read
    Bret SiersBret Siers
    An aerial view of a city grid at night with scattered amber lights against a dark urban landscape, most buildings dark and unlit.

    How to Get Your Site Into ChatGPT and Perplexity Answers

    Getting cited by AI search engines isn't about gaming a new algorithm. It's about making your content easy for machines to read, summarize, and attribute. Here's the specific playbook.

    June 17, 2026
    10 min read
    Bret SiersBret Siers
    A dawn landscape with warm amber light breaking over a single path leading toward a distant horizon, the sky split between fading darkness and emerging light.

    What Is GEO? A Guide to Generative Engine Optimization in 2026

    GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is what happens when ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini become discovery gatekeepers alongside Google. Here's what it means for domain owners, not enterprise marketing teams.

    June 16, 2026
    11 min read
    Bret SiersBret Siers
    A wide panoramic view of a white concrete building facade under overcast sky, clean geometric lines and high negative space.

    The Beginner's Guide to Making Your Website Machine-Readable

    Most websites are built for human eyes only. In 2026, machines read your site before any human does. Here's every layer of machine readability, from basics to advanced, with a 30-minute audit checklist.

    June 16, 2026
    15 min read
    Bret SiersBret Siers
    An overhead view of a desk with a laptop, keyboard, and mouse under artificial light, the clinical aerial perspective of a workspace under audit, mechanical and technical in its arrangement

    The Real Cost of "Set It and Forget It" Domain Management

    Auto-renew keeps the name in your account. It does nothing for the SSL cert, the DMARC record, or the stale WHOIS that quietly decay in the background. Here are the six hidden costs of passive domain management, and why "paid for" isn't the same as "taken care of."

    June 12, 2026
    12 min read
    Bret SiersBret Siers

    Got a Domain War Story?

    Share your battles with expired domains, epic flips, or times you stuck it to the big guys. We love a good underdog story.