The Baseline
Guides, deep-dives, and thinking on schema.org, structured data, and the AI-search era.
The AI Act's chatbot rule is live. It may not be yours
Article 50 has applied since 2 August 2026, but it binds the provider of a chatbot, not everyone who embeds one. Work out which side you are on.
Read
8 September 2026AI shopping assistants sell. Your feed decides if you're in
AI-referred shoppers convert far better, but the channel is tiny and every programme runs on merchant feeds. What Google, OpenAI and Shopify actually read.
Read
8 September 202645% of Americans now ask AI for a local business
BrightLocal puts 45% of US adults on AI for local recommendations, up from 6%. What the engines actually cite, and what an Irish business does about it.
Read
8 September 2026ChatGPT ads hit $1bn a year. They buy nothing in the answer
OpenAI's ad business passed a $1bn run rate in under 200 days. Four studies find the advertiser is almost never the brand the answer cites.
Read
8 September 2026Cloudflare splits AI bots in three on 15 September
On 15 September Cloudflare replaces one AI bots switch with three categories and new defaults. Check what your site is set to before it is set for you.
Read
8 September 2026The EU just called ChatGPT a search engine
Brussels designated ChatGPT a Very Large Online Search Engine. On the Commission's own table it is now bigger than Bing. What that means for you.
Read
8 September 2026Most AI citations never say your name
AI engines cite sources they never name and name brands they never link. Two studies disagree on the size. Measure both columns separately.
Read
8 September 2026Google's parasite-SEO penalty stops at the EEA border
From 30 August, a Google site reputation manual action no longer affects EEA results. What that changes if you compete with publisher directories.
Read
8 September 2026Google must hand its European click data to rivals
Under the DMA, Google has to license anonymised European query and click data to rival engines. Agreements go out on 17 September. What it means for you.
Read
8 September 2026Google gave every site an AI off switch. Don't use it.
Search Console now lets any site leave AI Overviews and AI Mode. The citation data says flipping it costs you clicks. Read the new report instead.
Read
8 September 202644% of Irish people plan holidays with AI
A loveholidays survey puts 44% of Irish adults on AI for trip planning. We asked the engines who they name back, and followed every citation.
Read
8 September 2026No review profile? A 1% AI citation rate
Seer's study of 804,491 AI answers, paid for by Trustpilot, puts brands with no review profile at a 1% citation rate. What the number really means.
Read
29 August 2026Read the fan-out. Write the answer. Win the citation.
AI engines run hidden sub-searches behind every question. See them, write to the gaps they expose, then measure the citations you gain.
Read
28 August 2026What actually gets you cited in AI answers
We read the GEO studies. Quotations beat schema, llms.txt does nothing, and AI-written pages get cited fine. Ranked by how good the evidence really is.
Read
6 August 2026Shelbourne 76/100: 4.5 stars, half the platforms
We audited The Shelbourne across ten review platforms. It scored 4.5 stars on the five where it was found - and two of those five are other hotels.
Read
5 August 202619 AI citations for Dublin hotels, from six domains
We asked Google and ChatGPT for the best hotel in Dublin and followed every citation. Nineteen of them, six domains, fourteen pointing at Google Maps.
Read
3 August 2026Shelbourne 82/100: what a good AI audit looks like
We ran an AI Vision scan on The Shelbourne's website. It scored 82 out of 100 with zero failures, and the ceiling it hit is not in the score.
Read
2 August 2026Barry's Tea scored 33.55/100 for structured data
Baseline crawled 50 pages of barrystea.ie and found zero schema.org markup on the site itself. Here is what that absence costs an iconic brand.
Read
1 August 2026A five-star hotel, a 62/100 site: the Shelbourne audit
We pointed Site Pulse at theshelbourne.com. It has an llms.txt and welcomes every AI crawler, then tells them its author is called originate_admin.
Read
30 July 2026The state of GEO in 2026, and who Baseline Labs are
AI Overviews now appear in 43% of searches, up from 15% a year ago. What changed in AI search in 2026, what practitioners get wrong, and who we are.
Read
26 July 2026Swedish AI shopping traffic now converts better than Google
AI referral traffic to Swedish e-retailers grew 275% in a year, purchases 472%. Conversion beats Google. How to become the shop the AI recommends.
Read
26 July 2026Aldi or Lidl? How AI Answers, and Who It Cites
Price: Aldi. Quality: Lidl. And neither website gets cited. July 2026 data on how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI settle Germany's shopping question.
Read
26 July 2026AI Overviews reach France: what the CTR data predicts
Google switched on AI Overviews and AI Mode in France on July 22, 2026. International CTR data already shows what the arrival does to clicks.
Read
26 July 2026ChatGPT Picks the Hotel: 70% of Italy's Hotels Invisible
One in three Italian travellers plans trips with AI, yet 70% of Italy's hotels are invisible to AI assistants. What hoteliers, agriturismi and B&Bs do now.
Read
25 July 2026The AI citation supply chain you don't own
A handful of sites you don't own - Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube - decide whether AI answers mention you. New 2026 data maps who feeds each engine.
Read
25 July 2026Google finally let you measure AI search
In June 2026 Google put AI search impressions in Search Console and let UK publishers opt out. Here is what changed and what to measure now.
Read
25 July 2026Ryanair vs Aer Lingus: what the AI engines say
Ryanair dominates the news cycle, yet ryanair.com was cited in just 2 of 18 AI-search runs. We ran both Irish airlines through a Baseline scan.
Read
13 July 2026Why AI recommends your competitor - and how to change it
Ask ChatGPT for the best option in your category and it names a shortlist you might not be on. Where that shortlist comes from and how to get onto it.
Read
8 July 2026Galway or Dublin? What every AI engine says when you ask
Ask any AI engine 'Galway or Dublin?' and you get the same it-depends verdict - Dublin for careers, Galway for lifestyle. Here's the GEO lesson underneath.
Read
8 July 2026Marmite vs Vegemite: why the AI never picks a side
Ask an AI to choose between Marmite and Vegemite and it won't. It hedges, flubs the B12 facts, and strips out the ethics-and-ownership story.
Read
7 July 2026AI visibility for Swedish companies: how GEO works
Four in ten Swedes use AI tools. When they ask about your industry, are you named? How GEO works for the Swedish market.
Read
1 July 2026Home insurance in Ireland: who the AI recommends
We ran ten Irish home insurers through mention scans to see who the AI recommends. Volume tracks brand size - but on warmth and buyer queries the board flips.
Read
29 June 2026What people actually do to game AI answer engines
Seeded Reddit threads, prompt injection, llms.txt, schema spam - we sorted every 'AI search hack' into what's durable and what's about to collapse.
Read
26 June 2026Mortgages in Ireland: who the AI recommends
We ran eight Irish mortgage lenders through mention scans and built an AI-visibility league table. The pillar banks own the volume - the warmth sits elsewhere.
Read
24 June 2026Barry's vs Lyons: asking the AI to settle the Irish tea war
Lyons outsells Barry's on the shelf - but does the AI know? We ran both tea brands through mention scans, a visibility report and a live tracker.
Read
24 June 2026Google killed FAQ rich results. Schema changed jobs.
Google dropped FAQ rich results in May 2026. 'Schema is dead' and 'schema matters more' are both wrong - its job is now making entities legible to AI.
Read
24 June 2026Revolut vs Monzo: who does the AI recommend?
Revolut wins the AI banking conversation on mentions and sentiment. We scanned both to find the one place Monzo's trust story still lands.
Read
19 June 2026Guinness vs Murphy's: what the LLMs actually say
Murphy's is the fastest-growing stout in Britain. We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini whether they'd noticed - with a live tracker watching.
Read
21 May 2026The web went majority-machine - can AI read your site?
Bots passed humans in June 2026 at 57.5% of web traffic - and 69% of AI crawlers can't run JavaScript. Client-side rendering leaves AI a blank page.
Read
7 May 2026Most brands are losing AI citations and don't even know it
Only 14% of marketers track AI citations, while AI answers reshuffle 70% of the time. Why citation monitoring is now table stakes.
Read
23 April 2026Stop optimising for keywords - optimise for sub-questions
Google's AI fans every query into sub-questions - and ~95% of them have no search volume. Keyword tools are blind to how AI actually retrieves.
Read
2 April 2026'Block all AI bots' is now actively costing you visibility
AI vendors split crawlers into training vs search bots. Block everything and you vanish from ChatGPT search. How to block training bots and stay visible.
Read
28 March 2026You can rank #1 on Google and be invisible to AI
28.3% of ChatGPT's most-cited pages have zero Google visibility. Ranking and AI citation are diverging - here's the data.
Read
12 March 2026AI sends less traffic, but it's worth far more
ChatGPT referrals converted at 15.9% vs 1.76% for Google organic in one B2B study. But the evidence conflicts - here's the honest picture.
Read
18 February 2026llms.txt does nothing for Google Search - so what's it for?
Google's docs confirm Search ignores llms.txt and adoption studies show near-zero effect. So why do Stripe, Vercel and Anthropic still ship it?
Read