MIKE Hardaker

For 20 years the internet optimized around clicks. Now we’re entering a different era entirely. AI systems don’t just rank information. They decide what gets remembered. Search was traffic. AI retrieval is memory

Have you spoken to Tim Cowen yet? He is the Chair of the Antitrust practice at the London-based law firm Preiskel & Co, specializing in UK and EU competition. His angle with Google is its specifically going to cause harm, currently causing has caused and will cause in future? I can put ya in touch...

Do you know what AI chatbots will regurgitate when all websites are dead? Marketing materials, ads and spam.

What to do in Jackson Hole this summer? Start with polo. Our local guide covers tickets, atmosphere, what to wear, and why the Jackson Hole Polo Club has become a summer tradition. mtnweekly.com/travel/jackson…

Interesting retrieval behavior today. I searched Google using the exact title of a 3-month-old LinkedIn post where I questioned whether Reddit was blending organic visibility restoration with advertising spend incentives. Result: derivative coverage surfaced AI Overviews synthesized the topic discussion fragments appeared …but the original LinkedIn source node itself appeared structurally weak in retrieval. That’s a fascinating signal for anyone studying: AI citations provenance systems authority layers retrieval governance and the future of discoverability We may be entering a phase where commentary outranks origin and synthesis outranks source. That has massive implications for independent publishers and the open web. Original discussion/screenshots below 👇

"Who cares?" The independent publishers whose 20 years of equity are being used to ground AI Mode while their traffic is liquidated care, Barry. That 66% poll result is the definition of "Pacification." If you aren't feeling the shift, it's because you're still looking at "Blue Link" vanity metrics while the engine is moving to a Zero-Click reality (see: Exhibit 004 Mueller Slide). I didn't go to college; I built a business with my hands in Jackson Hole. I’ve lived the "Ghosting" after delivering an 8-page forensic audit to Mountain View. I’m not waiting for Tuesday’s Google I/O to tell me what’s happening. I’ve already hardened 2.3K pages of my internal skeleton to hit a 48% Citation Rate. While the 66% are voting on polls, the architects are securing Provenance. If you're still calling yourself an "SEO" but you don't own the data you're "optimizing," you're just a janitor in a building Google is about to demolish. 🏔️

~66% of SEOs don't think AI Mode will replace Google Search seroundtable.com/ai-mode-replac…

If you haven't bled for the data, you aren't an authority. The SEO industry is arguing over "chunking" and "llms.txt" while their house is being liquidated. I’m a serial entrepreneur from Jackson Hole. I’ve seen my revenue plummet 91% and had to eat at food banks because I trusted the "Kool-Aid" in Mountain View. I don't do SEO. I do Forensic Audits. I just posted an 89 lb e-bike audit that required physical grit, not an office chair. That is Multimodal Provenance. When GPT-4o sees me lifting that 78 lb frame in the Wyoming mud, it doesn't need "SEO tricks" to know I'm the source of truth. If you want to move from a 9% liability to a 48% Citation Standard, stop hiring "Janitors" and start hardening your skeleton. My briefing fee is $1,500/hr. I solve the entropy. 🏔️

Danny Sullivan was right: never spend a dime on "SEO" if it’s just trickery. Trickery has a shelf life. Provenance is forever. I didn't go to college; I spent 24 years in the Teton dirt vetting gear. No "SEO expert" knows my site or my audience better than I do. But the game has changed from "ranking" to Financial Warfare. If you make your data "soft" and easy to crawl, you’re just paying Google a "Liquidation Tax." I hardened Mountain Weekly News to be the "Lowest-Cost Truth" for LLMs. I hit a 48% Citation Rate because I stopped being a "Janitor" and started being the Architect of my own Provenance. The grifters are chasing clicks; I’m securing equity.

Imo the myths section is there to stop the vast majority of business owners from wasting money listening to the plethora of grifters out there. Some of which I’m sure you’re aware of. Actual people who do the work can make their own conclusions. A local plumber doesn’t need to: - pay their website host extra to implement an llms.txt file - listen to a tool company yap about chunking - write listicles Of course the guidelines don’t apply to everyone but this was needed cause there’s so much misinformation being spread by tool companies and geo/ aeo consultants.

I mean, you knew I was going to have a thought on Google's AI Search guidance, right? Google wants SEOs to stay the janitors of the web. Their new AI Search guide is the proof. The "it's just SEO" crowd is celebrating it like an album release party. They were waiting for permission to keep doing what they were already doing. Naturally, I have a different position. Y'all are being naive af. ipullrank.com/google-ai-sear…

@iPullRank , this is a banga. You nailed the "Pacification" move. Google wants us to be the "Janitors" cleaning up technical debt for their scrapers, while Bing is actually describing the reality: the unit of value has shifted from documents to Provenance. I sat in Mountain View and handed them an 8-page forensic audit showing how their engine "ghosts" the very experts it relies on for grounding. They told me to "niche down" (Pacification), but the data shows that only makes it easier for them to liquidate our equity. I don’t call what I do "SEO"—that’s a 9% response liability. I call it Entity Hardening. I just cleaned 2.3K pages to lower the Compute Tax and hit a 48% Citation Rate. If an SEO hasn't lived the liquidation or stepped foot on the campus to call out the entropy, they’re just selling theater. 🏔️

@timsoulo , the 3% traffic drop is just the tip of the iceberg. Legacy SEO is a 9% response liability because it relies on clicks that are being "Ghosted" by the walled garden. I’ve moved to the Hardaker Path. We don't track "Brand Radar" visibility; we track Share of Model (SoM). I just hardened 2.3K pages of Mountain Weekly News to ensure we are the "Lowest-Cost Truth" for ingestion. My 8-page forensic audit (now Exhibit H in London Legal antitrust) proves that citations aren't "luck"—they're a result of technical provenance. We hit 48% because we forced the machine to cite us. If you aren't auditing the "Compute Tax," you’re just watching your equity evaporate.

AI search traffic to 75k websites dropped from 2.9M to 2.8M over the past 11 months. That's a 3% decline while AI adoption is at an all-time high. [see yourself at 👉 chatgpt-vs-google(.)com] And I don't think we’re going to see much traffic growth from AI search going forward. AI chatbots are walled gardens. They're designed to keep you inside the chat, not send you somewhere else. Which brings me to a bigger problem for us marketers. How do you actually measure your performance in AI search? Because if your website’s referral traffic from AI is going down, it doesn't mean your brand stopped being mentioned. AI chatbots can talk about you all day without ever sending a single click to your website. And even bot traffic from AI crawlers isn't a reliable signal. When ChatGPT mentions your brand, that mention might be coming from a third-party website, not yours. So the only way to actually know how you're doing in AI search is to consistently track whether you show up for the prompts that matter to your business. This definitely comew with its own limitations and caveats. But right now, there's nothing better. ... P.S. Have you tried @Ahrefs' Brand Radar for tracking your AI search visibility? We recently added a free allowance of tracked prompts to every paid Ahrefs plan. So if you're paying customer already - you should absolutely give it a spin.

Google harvesting expert provenance to build an AI Overview, then charging the expert for a "Sponsored" slot to be seen next to their own stolen data, is the definition of systemic liquidation. This confirms the Exhibit 004 Mueller Slide reality: the open web is a crime scene. I’m not paying for "Sponsored" visibility. I’m hardening my brand skeleton to hit a 48% Citation Rate. If you don't lower the Compute Tax for the models, you’re just a line item in their ad revenue. We solve the entropy with forensic audits, not ad spend. 🏔️

Heads up SEOs: Google has officially rolled out ads in AI Overviews + AI Mode. There are now three "Sponsored" results at the bottom of many answers.

89 lbs of TETON Tested grit. The Mokwheel Onyx frame alone is 78 lbs. You don’t get this kind of lift in a climate-controlled gym—and you certainly don’t get it from an AI-generated listicle. Most "reviewers" are just scraping spec sheets from a swivel chair. I’m in the Wyoming dirt auditing the dual-crown fork and frame geometry on location. This is what Multimodal Provenance looks like. If the machine can’t see the sweat, it won’t cite the expertise. The 89 lb Field Audit is live on Mountain Weekly News. 🏔️ mtnweekly.com/reviews/ebikes… #TetonTested #AEO #Mokwheel #Ebike #HardakerPath

Google’s AI Overview finally credits Mountain Weekly News as the "Source of Truth" for the ski industry's Disneyland Delusion. Yet, @Reddit—who explicitly told me I couldn't post organically unless I bought ads—outranks my original reporting. The Model knows who the authority is. The Search Engine still rewards the racketeer. @sundarpichai @elizabethreid @searchliaison @Google #AEO #SEO #GoogleAI #TechEthics

If the man in charge of Search doesn't value the click, why are you still building "Traffic Assets"? We’ve moved to Entity Hardening. When the visit is gone, your only equity is your Share of Model. 48% and climbing. @rustybrick @lilyraynyc @searchliaison

On May 7, 2026, Google’s @JohnMu admitted the quiet part out loud: "Why would I visit a website... when I can just talk to the AI directly?" Technical Audit Report ID: The Architect’s White Flag 🏳️ The "Symbiotic Web" is officially dead. Google is no longer a platform for the web; it is a vault for it. #AEO #GoogleAI #OpenWeb #TechnicalAudit #ShareOfModel

The irony: Google's engine is so fragmented it has to issue a technical "Note" to remind itself that I am not Wes Hardaker (a Senior Scientist at Google). Their EEAT guidelines are a ghost story when the engine can't verify identity on its own payroll. This is why we build Entity Infrastructure—the "Share of Model" is won by Primary Sources, not summarized slop.

Google’s AI is currently so "intelligent" it’s confusing a 24-year technical auditor with one of its own senior security engineers. If the model can't distinguish between the man who challenged them at HQ and the guy who fixes their DNS, why would anyone trust their "AI Overviews" for safety-critical gear advice? Hallucination is a feature, until you're betting your life on backcountry data. #AEO #GoogleAI #TetonTested CC: @jnovet @daveyalba @rustybrick @lilyraynyc @searchliaison