https://seomadman.com Method-first investigations with a stated hypothesis, sample and published limitations. en https://seomadman.com/research/ai-brand-visibility-factors-ahrefs-75k-brands https://seomadman.com/research/ai-brand-visibility-factors-ahrefs-75k-brands Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs correlated 12 metrics with brand mentions in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews: web mentions beat backlinks, and it warns of no causation. research ai-search https://seomadman.com/research/bing-sitemap-lastmod-accuracy-study https://seomadman.com/research/bing-sitemap-lastmod-accuracy-study Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Bing's own study of sitemaps found 18% of lastmod values set incorrectly, usually to the generation date, and Google says it only trusts accurate ones. research technical-seo indexing https://seomadman.com/research/content-freshness-ai-citations-ahrefs-study https://seomadman.com/research/content-freshness-ai-citations-ahrefs-study Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs compared the age of 16.975 million URLs cited by AI assistants against organic Google results. Here is the method, the numbers and the limits. research ai-search https://seomadman.com/research/reddit-top-3-share-se-ranking-core-update-study https://seomadman.com/research/reddit-top-3-share-se-ranking-core-update-study Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SE Ranking tracked 100,000 keywords in 20 niches and measured Reddit's share of Google's top three results. This piece reviews its method and limits. research core-updates https://seomadman.com/research/sistrix-ctr-serp-layout-study https://seomadman.com/research/sistrix-ctr-serp-layout-study Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Sistrix analyzed 80 million keywords and found position 1 averages 28.5% CTR, ranging from 13.7% to 46.9% depending on the SERP layout. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/ai-overview-ctr-field-experiment https://seomadman.com/research/ai-overview-ctr-field-experiment Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A randomized Chrome-extension experiment hid AI Overviews for 1,065 searchers. This piece analyzes Agarwal and Sen's SSRN study of the CTR impact. research ai-search https://seomadman.com/research/author-byline-eeat-searchpilot-ab-test https://seomadman.com/research/author-byline-eeat-searchpilot-ab-test Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SearchPilot ran a real controlled SEO split test on author bylines and bios. Result: no detectable ranking gain, and possibly a small loss. research content-strategy https://seomadman.com/research/canonical-vs-redirect-duplicate-signal-searchpilot-test https://seomadman.com/research/canonical-vs-redirect-duplicate-signal-searchpilot-test Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A SearchPilot split test added 301 redirects atop an existing canonical tag for trailing-slash duplicates. The result stayed inconclusive. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/internal-linking-crawl-budget-botify-case-study https://seomadman.com/research/internal-linking-crawl-budget-botify-case-study Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Botify's case study of a US auto marketplace ties internal-link depth to crawl activity: a 19x increase in crawling once linking was fixed. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/title-tag-rewrite-definitions-compared https://seomadman.com/research/title-tag-rewrite-definitions-compared Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs found a 33.4% title rewrite rate, far below Zyppy's 61.6% and Search Engine Land's 76%. The gap traces to how each study defines a match. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/ai-crawler-policies-news-sites https://seomadman.com/research/ai-crawler-policies-news-sites Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez We read the robots.txt of 60 publishers and SEO vendors. News sites block AI crawlers almost universally. The SEO industry does not. research ai-search technical-seo indexing https://seomadman.com/research/internal-linking-crawl-depth-zyppy-study https://seomadman.com/research/internal-linking-crawl-depth-zyppy-study Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Zyppy's 23-million-link study and Google's own crawling documentation show why pages with few internal links struggle to get discovered and clicked. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/review-aggregaterating-schema-requirements https://seomadman.com/research/review-aggregaterating-schema-requirements Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's own review-snippet documentation names exact required properties and exact abuse rules. Most markup fails one of those, not from being absent. research structured-data https://seomadman.com/research/pagination-infinite-scroll-indexing https://seomadman.com/research/pagination-infinite-scroll-indexing Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez rel=next/prev has been dead as an indexing signal since 2019, per Google's own words. Infinite scroll without real URLs is the same mistake in new clothes. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/backlinks-ranking-correlation-2026 https://seomadman.com/research/backlinks-ranking-correlation-2026 Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Backlinko's 11.8M-result study and Ahrefs' 1M-keyword study both find a positive link between referring domains and rank, but the coefficient is weak. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/hreflang-error-prevalence-2026 https://seomadman.com/research/hreflang-error-prevalence-2026 Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Two widely repeated hreflang error statistics do not trace to any real source. Here is what could be verified instead, from Google's own documentation. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/ai-citation-hallucination-rates https://seomadman.com/research/ai-citation-hallucination-rates Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez GPTZero, the Tow Center and a Cureus study each measured AI citation hallucination differently, and none of their numbers agree with each other. research ai-search https://seomadman.com/research/geo-citation-factors-academic-studies https://seomadman.com/research/geo-citation-factors-academic-studies Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Four 2026 papers measured what predicts citation by AI search engines. Position and relevance win; most citations skip brand domains entirely. research ai-search https://seomadman.com/research/noindex-crawl-budget-reality https://seomadman.com/research/noindex-crawl-budget-reality Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A common crawl-budget fix is backwards. Google's own documentation says noindex still costs a full request before the page gets dropped from the index. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/site-reputation-abuse-what-is-actually-measured https://seomadman.com/research/site-reputation-abuse-what-is-actually-measured Thu, 23 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's manual actions against parasite SEO are 18 months old. Here is what is documented versus what is anecdotal case tracking. research core-updates technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/navboost-doj-trial-click-signals https://seomadman.com/research/navboost-doj-trial-click-signals Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Court testimony and a leaked Google document, read together, describe a click-based re-ranking system Google spent years declining to confirm in public. research core-updates technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/videoobject-schema-required-properties https://seomadman.com/research/videoobject-schema-required-properties Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google documents three required VideoObject properties, not the four often claimed, plus exact date and duration formats and a rich-result caveat. research structured-data https://seomadman.com/research/core-web-vitals-ranking-correlation-2026 https://seomadman.com/research/core-web-vitals-ranking-correlation-2026 Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez CrUX data and a 20,000-URL ranking study both show a link between Core Web Vitals and rank, but Google's own docs put content relevance first. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/javascript-rendering-googlebot-delay https://seomadman.com/research/javascript-rendering-googlebot-delay Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A 2024 Vercel and MERJ study measured the real gap between crawl and render at scale. The median was seconds; the tail stretched to a full day. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/author-schema-eeat-what-is-verifiable https://seomadman.com/research/author-schema-eeat-what-is-verifiable Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez SEO content repeats precise E-E-A-T ranking-weight percentages. We checked the two most-cited figures against their sources and Google's own documentation. research content-strategy https://seomadman.com/research/content-length-ranking-citation-correlation https://seomadman.com/research/content-length-ranking-citation-correlation Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Ahrefs' December 2025 study puts the word count to AI Overview citation correlation at 0.04. Backlinko's 11.8M-result study finds no ranking edge either. research content-strategy https://seomadman.com/research/google-ranking-systems-documented https://seomadman.com/research/google-ranking-systems-documented Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google publishes a real, maintained list of the named systems behind Search ranking. Read directly, not summarized secondhand. research core-updates technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/local-seo-ranking-factors-verifiable https://seomadman.com/research/local-seo-ranking-factors-verifiable Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez A specific local ranking percentage breakdown circulates widely. It doesn't match Whitespark's real 2026 chart, and Google names no percentages at all. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/hreflang-x-default-google-statements https://seomadman.com/research/hreflang-x-default-google-statements Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez x-default has been explained by Google at least three times since 2013. Here is the real, dated wording each time, and what current documentation says. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/https-ranking-signal-2026 https://seomadman.com/research/https-ranking-signal-2026 Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google called HTTPS a very lightweight ranking signal in 2014 and has never revised that number. Adoption data now shows why it barely needs to. research technical-seo https://seomadman.com/research/featured-snippets-what-is-verifiable https://seomadman.com/research/featured-snippets-what-is-verifiable Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Featured snippet prevalence and CTR figures vary by nearly 2x across sources. Here is which trace to a real, dated study, and which don't trace anywhere. research technical-seo content-strategy https://seomadman.com/research/article-schema-no-required-properties https://seomadman.com/research/article-schema-no-required-properties Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT Adam Hafez Google's own Article structured data documentation names zero required properties, only recommended ones, which changes how schema work gets prioritized. research structured-data