Insights on ASO, SEO, GEO and AEO Field notes.
Essays from the people doing the work. ASO, SEO, GEO and the organic growth sequence that makes every paid dollar work harder later. No fluff, no listicles, no LinkedIn reposts.
Every essay. 110 and counting.
Agent search optimization: how AI agents pick the site they act on.
When an AI agent shops, books or compares for someone, it runs its own searches, opens a handful of sites and finishes the task on one. Here is how that search works, and what decides whether it ends on yours.
Agentic browsing SEO: the browsers that act for your buyers, and how they read you.
ChatGPT Atlas is gone, Chrome has an agent built in, and Claude now acts in the browser without asking at every step. Here is where agentic browsing stands in November 2026 and what it means for your pages.
AI agent traffic: how to measure the visits your analytics can't see.
Automated requests passed human ones on Cloudflare's network this year, and many AI agents look like ordinary Chrome. Here is how to find agent visits in logs, your CDN and GA4, and what to report.
AI agent readiness checklist: 20 checks before agents come shopping.
Most sites are not ready for AI agents, and the gaps are rarely exotic. Here are 20 checks in five groups, the order we run them in during an audit, and the free tools that cover most of them.
Agentic commerce optimization: how to get AI shopping agents to pick your product.
AI shopping agents choose from product data before they ever see your design. Here is what OpenAI's product feed and Google's UCP checkout actually require, and the order to fix things in.
App Store screenshot sizes for 2026: what Apple actually requires.
Apple lists more than forty accepted pixel sizes, but you only have to upload two sets. Here is which two, what every other size falls back to, and the full table from App Store Connect.
The App Store subtitle: 30 characters that rank and sell.
Apple counts your subtitle in search and shows it under your name everywhere on the App Store. Here is the limit, how it interacts with the keyword field, and how to write one.
App Store keywords: how to fill the 100-character field.
The keyword field is the only place on iOS where you can add search terms nobody sees. Apple's rules are short, and most wasted characters come from breaking them.
App Store promotional text: the line you can change any day.
Promotional text sits above your description and changes without a new build. It doesn't help ranking, which is exactly why most teams misuse it.
How to write an App Store description people actually read.
The App Store and Google Play both give you 4,000 characters. Only one of them uses it for search, and on both, the first line does most of the work.
What is app store optimization (ASO)? A plain guide for 2026.
ASO is SEO for the App Store and Google Play: getting found in store search and turning more page views into installs. Here is how it works, and what has changed now that AI reads your listing too.
How to build an agent-friendly website, per Google.
Browser agents now fill forms and click buttons for people. Google's web.dev team published what makes a site easy for them to use. Most of it is accessibility you should already have.
Deep link vs App Link on Android: the difference that costs installs.
Both send a URL into your app. Only one proves you own the website, and that proof is what removes the "Open with" dialog between a click and your app.
Universal links vs deep links on iOS: the short answer is universal links.
Custom URL schemes still work, but Apple strongly recommends universal links. Here is why, and the two files that make them work.
What is generative engine optimization (GEO), and how does it work?
GEO started as a 2023 research paper and became a job title. Here is what the paper actually tested, what worked, and what GEO means in practice now.
Google Play screenshot size, icon size and feature graphic size: the 2026 requirements.
Every size, format and limit Google Play Console accepts for screenshots, the app icon and the feature graphic, plus the rules that get graphics rejected, in one table you can hand to a designer.
How to increase app downloads in the Play Store, organically.
The ten levers we pull, in the order we pull them. They took one portfolio past 700,000 installs with zero ad spend, and they cost time, not media budget.
How to rank on Perplexity: a practical Perplexity SEO guide for 2026.
Perplexity searches the web for every answer and shows its sources. Ranking on Perplexity means getting cited by Perplexity as one of those sources. Here is what Perplexity documents, what studies show, and how to track it.
How to appear in AI Overviews: Google's own guide, step by step.
In 2026 Google published an official guide to appearing in its AI features. It confirms some advice, kills several "AI overview optimization" tactics, and adds a Search Console setting most sites don't know about.
The Search Console generative AI report: your AI Overview data, explained.
For two years Search Console hid AI Overview traffic inside ordinary web results. Now there is a dedicated report, and a switch that decides whether your site appears in AI features at all.
What is Assistive Agent Optimization (AAO)?
Search moved from links to answers. It is now moving from answers to actions. AAO is the work of making sure an AI agent can find you, understand you and finish the task with you.
WebMCP explained: should your website expose tools to AI agents?
Instead of an agent guessing which button to click, your page tells it: "here is a search tool, here is a booking tool, here are the inputs". It is promising, experimental and changing monthly.
Web Bot Auth: how AI agents prove who they are, and why your firewall should care.
A user-agent string is a claim anyone can make. A signature is proof. The agents your customers use are starting to sign their requests, and that changes how you should handle bot traffic.
Markdown for agents and Content Signals: serving AI efficiently, and on your terms.
Two small, separate ideas from the agent-readiness world: give agents a lighter version of your page when they ask, and tell them in robots.txt what they may use it for.
Agentic commerce protocols explained: ACP, UCP, AP2 and x402, and what merchants should do now.
Four acronyms promise to let AI agents buy for people. One flagship launch has already been rolled back. Here is what each protocol does and where to spend your effort.
GEO for B2B service firms: CA firms, consultancies and agencies.
Most GEO advice is written for e-commerce and SaaS. Service firms sell expertise, not products. The way AI assistants decide to recommend them is different, and so is the work.
GEO for Indian SaaS startups: a practical playbook.
Indian SaaS companies sell to two audiences: India, where buyers ask about GST, UPI and rupee pricing, and the world, where they compete with everyone. AI assistants answer both, differently.
Local AI search in India: getting recommended for "best X in [city]".
"Best physiotherapist in Jodhpur" is now asked in chat as often as typed into Maps. The businesses that get named have done the local basics properly, and then a bit more.
"Crawled – currently not indexed" on a small site: how to diagnose and fix it.
Google visited the page and chose not to keep it. On a small site, that is usually a quality or duplication signal, not a bug. Here is how to tell which, and what to do.
Copilot citations disappearing? How to diagnose your Bing AI visibility.
One site watched daily Copilot citations fall 97% from their peak in a few weeks. Spikes and drops are normal. Here is how to tell a normal drop from a problem.
Schema for the AI era: what Google says you don't need, and what still helps.
Vendors sell "AI schema" as the key to AI Overviews. Google's own documentation says there isn't any. Structured data is still useful, just not for the reasons being sold.
Guide pages vs blog posts: which get cited more by AI?
A study of over a million cited URLs found pages under /guide/ were cited 42% more than average. Before you rename your blog, read what the study can and can't tell you.
Google's 2026 spam updates: a timeline, and what small sites should actually do.
Four spam updates in seven months, none with a named target. Here is the dashboard-sourced timeline, without speculation, and the checks that are worth your time.
SEO vs GEO vs AEO: an honest take from an agency that sells all three.
Sceptics say GEO and AEO are SEO rebranded to sell retainers. They are mostly right, and the part where they are wrong is worth knowing.
Is ChatGPT citing my website? Five free ways to check.
There is no "ChatGPT Search Console". But between your analytics, your server logs and a few deliberate prompts, you can see most of what is happening.
Store listing experiments that move the needle, and how to avoid the ones that lie.
Play Console's A/B tests are free and powerful. They are also easy to misread. Here is how they work now, and the habits that keep a "winner" from being noise.
App Store product page optimization: how Apple's A/B tests work, and how to read them.
Apple lets you test up to three alternate product pages against your original. The rules differ from Google Play's in ways that change how you plan a test.
App Store Creative Assets and the Asset Library: what WWDC 2026 changed for creative.
Images and video can now appear in the product page header and in organic search results, and creative no longer has to wait for an app release. Here is what is confirmed and what isn't.
Apple Personalized Collections: can ASO influence them?
A new App Store surface recommends apps to each user, with a short note explaining why. Apple hasn't said how apps are chosen. Here is an honest read of what helps.
App Store in-app events: a practical guide for small app teams.
In-app events give you extra cards in search, on your product page and in recommendations, without paying for them. Most small apps never publish one.
Google Play pre-registration: launch with installs on day one.
A new app's first week decides a lot about its ranking. Pre-registration lets you collect users before launch and have the app installed on many of their phones the day it goes live.
How to reply to Google Play reviews, and why it moves your rating.
A reply is the only marketing message a user asked for. On one client app, reviews that got a reply were revised up +1.62★ on average. Here is how to write them.
The Google Play Data safety section: get it right, then use it to convert.
Users see your Data safety section before they install, and Google can block updates if it's wrong. Most teams fill it in once and forget it. It deserves more care than that.
Google Play ASO statistics 2026: primary sources and our own numbers.
ASO stat pages are full of numbers with no source. Every figure here links to where it came from: Google's documentation, a named study, or our own Play Consoles.
AI search statistics 2026: primary sources only.
Most AI search stat roundups copy each other. This one traces every number to the study or document it came from, and says when a number is shaky.
Which Indian languages should you localize your Play listing into first?
Global "which language first" guides stop at Hindi. India has a dozen languages with tens of millions of speakers each. Here is how to choose the order from data, not habit.
ASO for utility apps vs games: what actually differs on Google Play.
The fundamentals are the same: be found, then convert. But games have their own programme, their own surfaces and different buyers. Here is what changes.
How long does ASO take on Google Play? It depends on which lever you pull.
Published answers range from "one day" to "six weeks", usually without data. The honest answer: conversion changes show in days, rankings in weeks, and ratings on a schedule you can calculate.
Does keyword density matter on Google Play?
Every ASO blog has a number: 2%, 3%, five mentions. Google has never published one, and its policy actively punishes repetition. Here is what to do instead.
Google Preferred Sources in AI Mode: how new sites can still get picked.
Google now lets users pick sites they trust, and labels those links "Preferred" in AI Mode and AI Overviews. It rewards loyal audiences, which is hard for new sites. Not impossible.
Grounding with Bing Search, explained for marketers.
A developer feature in Microsoft's AI platform quietly decides which websites many AI agents can see. Here is what it is, in plain terms, and what it means for your site.
AI Overviews vs AI Mode: what changes for SEO.
Both are Google, both use your content, both now have their own impressions report in Search Console. But one sits on top of the results page and the other replaces it. The difference matters for clicks.
Early-stage SEO: the first 90 days on a new domain.
A new domain has no history, no links and no rankings. The first three months decide whether it gets indexed, trusted and found. This is the plan we run.
In-house vs agency for GEO: what a small business should actually do.
We sell GEO, so read this with that in mind. Here is an honest breakdown of what the work is, what you can do yourself, and when paying someone makes sense.
Freshness and AI citations: how often should you update your pages?
AI assistants lean towards newer content than Google does. That doesn't mean changing the date every month. Here is what the data supports.
Cross-promotion inside a kids app portfolio: what worked across five titles.
A single app is a lottery ticket. Five related apps can send users to each other. Here is how the Gyan Studios portfolio did it, and the Families policy rules that still apply to your own apps.
App size, low-end phones and conversion in emerging markets.
In India, a big download is a reason not to install. Google measured it, we lived it, and the fix is mostly engineering that the ASO team has to ask for.
App Store Tags: what Apple's AI labels mean and how to influence them.
Apple now reads your metadata with a language model and decides what your app is about. You can remove a tag. You can't write one. The only lever is what you give it to read.
Custom store listings vs custom product pages: the same idea, two different rulebooks.
Both stores let you show different visitors a different page. Google lets you change almost everything; Apple lets you change the visuals. Both now let you target search keywords.
Sitemap lastmod and dateModified: when to change them, and when not to.
Setting every page's lastmod to today feels harmless. It teaches Google to ignore the field. Here is the rule we use, and the code that enforces it on this site.
What is AI share of voice, and how do you calculate it?
Rankings don't exist inside a chatbot answer. Share of voice does. A definition, a formula you can run in a spreadsheet, and the mistakes that make the number meaningless.
YouTube for GEO: why video mentions correlate with AI citations.
In the biggest brand-visibility study we know of, YouTube mentions were the strongest single correlate of being named by AI assistants. Here is what that does and doesn't mean.
ASO + SEO for apps with websites: one keyword strategy for Play and Google.
Your store listing and your website target the same people with different words, owned by different teams. In 2026 that costs you twice: once in search, once in AI answers.
Can you use competitor names in your app store keywords?
It is the oldest ASO shortcut: put a bigger rival's name in your keywords and catch their searches. Both stores say no. Here is the wording, the risk, and what works instead.
How to write help center pages that AI assistants cite.
When someone asks ChatGPT how to do something with your product, it needs a page to quote. Since August, it is more likely to look on your own domain for one. Most help centers aren't built to be found.
Guided Search on Google Play: ranking when organic results start on screen 4.
For broad searches, Google Play now shows ads, Gemini-written lists and follow-up prompts before the classic results. Position one isn't the top of the page any more.
Keyword-targeted custom store listings: build for intent clusters, not single keywords.
Google Play can show a tailored listing to people who arrived from a specific search. Used well, it is the biggest conversion lever in the console. Our best example converted at 31.7% against 18.7%.
The Google Play short description: 80 characters that rank and convert.
It is the only line of text many visitors read before deciding. It is indexed for search. And most apps spend it on an adjective.
Per-device visibility loss on Google Play: diagnosing the 8% phone-model threshold.
Your overall crash rate is fine. Installs from one popular phone have quietly collapsed. That is what the per-device threshold looks like, and it hits hardest in markets full of budget phones.
Google Play promotional content for small apps, not just big games.
Most guides to Play's promotional content feature big games and big events. Smaller apps can use it too, if they have something genuinely new to say and submit it properly.
The ASO audit checklist we use on every Google Play app.
Thirty checks in the order we run them, updated for CTR reporting, Ask Play and Guided Search. Work top to bottom; the early sections usually pay back fastest.
robots.txt for AI crawlers: which bots to allow, block or limit.
"Block AI" and "allow AI" are both the wrong question. Each company runs separate bots for search, training and user requests, and blocking the wrong one removes you from answers.
llms.txt vs robots.txt vs sitemap.xml: what each actually does for AI.
Three plain-text files at the root of your site. Two are standards every crawler reads. The third is a proposal with a lot of enthusiasm and, so far, very little evidence.
Brand mentions vs backlinks for AI visibility: what the data says.
For AI Overviews, being talked about correlates far more strongly with visibility than being linked to. Here are the numbers, their limits, and what a small brand can actually do about it.
FAQ sections after FAQ rich results: still worth it for AI answers?
Since 2023, most sites don't get FAQ rich results any more. The visible FAQ section is still one of the most quotable blocks on a page, if it is written for readers rather than for markup.
Designed for Families ASO: keywords, screenshots and ad rules that don't get you rejected.
Kids apps play by stricter rules on Google Play. Most rejections come from settings and SDKs, not from the listing copy. Here is the checklist we run before a kids title ships.
Kids app keyword research: how parents and kids actually search on Google Play.
Kids apps have two searchers: the parent who types the age and the subject, and the child who types the character. The method we used to find both, and when the searches spike.
ASO for India in 2026: regional languages, low-end phones and data-light listings.
India is a Google Play market with English, Hindi and Hinglish searches, phones with 1GB of RAM and users who share them. A playbook from a team that grew a portfolio there.
Hindi store listings on Google Play: when they help and when they don't.
A Hindi listing reaches the users whose phones are set to Hindi. That is a real audience, but a narrower one than most teams assume. How to decide, write and test one.
Hinglish keywords: how Indian users mix scripts in Play Store search.
Search for "ghar ka kharcha" and you are searching in Hindi with an English keyboard. Few ASO tools handle it. Here is a manual method that works.
Answer-first content: the structure, schema and tracking we use for AI answers.
Answer engine optimisation is mostly page structure. This is the template every article on this site follows, what it is based on, and how we measure whether it works.
GA4's AI Assistant channel: what it tracks and what it misses.
Since May 2026, GA4 sorts AI referrals into their own channel automatically. It is a big improvement. It is also incomplete, not retroactive, and blind to most app traffic.
How to build a 50-prompt AI visibility tracker in a spreadsheet.
Paid AI visibility tools are useful, but a fixed prompt panel in a spreadsheet answers the main question for free: are the assistants naming and citing you more this month than last?
Bing Webmaster Tools for AI search: a 2026 checklist.
Most teams set up Search Console and forget Bing. In 2026 that means ignoring the index behind Copilot, and the only free report that shows AI citations by page.
Scaled content abuse explained: how to publish many articles without tripping Google.
Google ran four spam updates in 2026. The policy behind most worries is short and specific. Here is what it says, and the rules we follow so that publishing often stays safe.
Conversion rate vs CTR on Google Play: why your 2025 numbers no longer compare.
Three things changed at once: what counts as a success, who counts as a visitor, and which users are counted. Here is how to report across the break without fooling anyone.
Ask Play: how Gemini rewrites your store listing, and how to control what it says.
Google Play now lets users ask questions on your listing and answers them with Gemini. There is no setting to switch it off. There is a way to write for it.
Gemini now installs Android apps. Here is the checklist for being the one it picks.
Ask Gemini for an app and it can recommend one and install it without the user ever seeing Play search. Discovery just moved into a chat, and the rules are different.
Your website is now part of your Play listing. Audit it like one.
Ask Play pulls answers from your app's website. If the site and the listing disagree on price, features or age range, Gemini can repeat the wrong one to a user about to install.
App GEO: how to get your app recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
"What is the best app for…" is now a question people ask an AI. The answer names a handful of apps. This is the playbook we use to get a client's app into that handful.
ChatGPT stopped citing Reddit in August. Your own docs just got more valuable.
In one week Reddit went from a regular ChatGPT source to a rare one. Google's AI barely moved. Here is what changed, what is still unclear, and what to do about it.
ChatGPT now searches inside your site. Is your site ready to be searched?
In August, ChatGPT started running site: searches on specific domains, a 46-fold jump in one day. It changes what GEO work actually means.
Is ChatGPT Search still powered by Bing? What we actually know in 2026.
Half the GEO advice online says ChatGPT retrieves only from Bing. The evidence says the picture is messier, and the practical answer is the same either way.
How AI engines choose what to cite: the evidence, not the folklore.
GEO advice is full of confident rules with no data behind them. This is what the primary studies actually show, and the popular tactics they don't support.
How to get a kids app into Google Play's Kids tab: Teacher Approved, explained.
There is no form to fill in and nobody to email. Teachers review your app when it meets the Families policy. Here is what they look at, and how to be ready.
Play Console's new store listing CTR, and why your old numbers just broke.
Google Play now reports clicks, not installs, and counts visitors differently. If your conversion "jumped" this summer, read this before you celebrate.
Your Google Play rating isn't an average. Here is how it really moves.
Most rating calculators assume a lifetime average. Google Play weights recent ratings, which makes recovery far faster than the maths you were shown.
Android vitals and ranking: what happens past 0.47%.
Crash and ANR rates aren't just engineering metrics. Above Google's thresholds, your app gets harder to find. Here is how to read them and how to get back under.
Why did my Google Play installs drop? A 12-point diagnostic.
Before you change the icon, find out what actually broke. The twelve checks we run, ordered from cheapest to most expensive.
How we got our first 1,000 Google Play installs without ads.
No budget, no launch partners, one Android game for kids. What worked, what nearly killed it, and what we would change in 2026.
OAI-SearchBot vs GPTBot vs ChatGPT-User: what each one does, and what to block.
Many sites blocked GPTBot to stay out of AI training, then wondered why ChatGPT never mentions them. They usually blocked the wrong thing for the right reason.
Your React site might be invisible to ChatGPT. Mine was.
Allowed in robots.txt, HTTP 200 for every bot, and still zero readable words. Why client-side rendering hides you from most AI crawlers, and how to fix it.
www vs non-www: pick one, and don't let two layers fight over it.
Search engines treat www and the bare domain as two sites. The fix is simple; the classic mistake is fixing it twice, in opposite directions.
IndexNow for Express and Node sites, in about 40 lines.
Copilot answers come from Bing's index, so getting new pages into Bing quickly is now part of AI visibility. IndexNow is the fastest way to do it.
ASO vs SEO vs GEO vs AEO for apps: one strategy, four surfaces.
A user can meet your app in the store, on Google, inside ChatGPT and in an AI Overview, all in one decision. Most apps optimise one of the four.
Most app store keywords are chosen wrong. Here is the fix.
Founders pick keywords by gut, not by search volume and difficulty. That single mistake caps organic installs before a single download lands.
The growth channel that compounds, the one that just burns.
Paid acquisition stops the moment you stop paying. Organic compounds. Here is the sequence we install so every paid dollar later works harder.
Stop writing for rankings. Write to be quoted.
Classic SEO optimizes for position ten years ago. The pages that win now are the ones structured so both Google and the AI engines can lift a clean answer from them.
How we drove 700K installs with zero ad spend.
The exact organic playbook behind a 700,000+ install portfolio built without a single dollar of paid acquisition, and what transfers to your product.
The feature-shop trap: why post-PMF startups stall.
You shipped 17 features last quarter. Revenue did not move. Here is why, and the one thing to do about it.
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