The Lab

I test the advice before I sell it

Short videos tell you what works. I check the claim against the source, and where a claim can be tested, I run it on a real site with the success criteria written down before the data exists. Results get posted whichever way they land.

Last updated 20 September 2026. 5 tests running.

  • 143items checked
  • 5tests running
  • 8claims found false

Where the claims landed

Of the 24 claims checked so far: 8 false, 4 overstated, 4 testing, 3 partly true, 3 unproven, 1 holds up and 1 won’t test. The loudest claims are the ones that fall apart. The useful advice is quieter, and most of it agrees with what Google has already written down.

The three pages

SEO claims, checked and tested

Every claim worth arguing with, graded against the source it came from. 5 of them are being tested on real sites now.

24 claims

The clip library

Every short video I watched and wrote up, with the useful part in one line and a link to the original so you can judge it yourself.

119 clips

The Reddit interception experiment

One claim, one matched pair of pages, one live site. The public log, including the reading that changed my mind.

First results in

Running now

Latest from the log

20 September 2026 · SEO claims
Checked the last nine claims sitting in the clip library’s backlog, and two of them changed what I think about a test on this page. The first: a creator promising that publishing posts as markdown brings hundreds of AI crawler hits within hours. Measured studies find close to the opposite, including one test logging zero visits to .md files against 137 to the HTML, and an analysis across 300,000 domains finding no link between these files and AI citations. That is the same family of claim as the llms.txt test below, and it means that test now has a likely answer before it starts. I am running it anyway, because a likely answer is not a measured one and my own site is cheap to experiment on, but the expectation has moved.
20 September 2026, a number moving against me · SEO claims
Updated the zero-click row rather than leaving it flattering. I graded "over 80% of searches end with zero clicks" false on the strength of SparkToro’s 2024 figure of about 58.5%. Their 2026 figure is about 68%. The claim is still false, and it is a lot less false than it was. Leaving the old evidence in place would have made my correction look stronger than it is.
19 September 2026 · SEO claims
Started this page. Picked three new tests to run alongside the Reddit one: IndexNow, three-question FAQs and llms.txt.

Get the next result.

I email when a test posts a verdict, whichever way it lands. Roughly twice a month, and nothing else.

Have your own site checked this way

The same habit, pointed at one site: what is actually wrong, what the evidence says, and what I would do about it in what order.

Get the website audit

Or skip ahead and talk

If you already know what you need built, a call is faster than a report. Thirty minutes, no pitch deck.

Book a call