Senior SEO Manager at Optimal · Austin
Hayden Schuster
I build the systems that make complex sites visible. So the right people find you, trust you, and choose you.
24Ksearch clicks across my own sites in September 2026, up 21% on August. Google and Bing, data through Oct 10, 2026. Month by month
I cannot turn this off. It runs in the background constantly. Press Play: every line you clear unlocks a dated result from one of my sites, and every third one is a miss I learned from.
Game over
What changed:
The full storyHow the board pays out
Every line you clear on the board above unlocks a dated result from one of my sites, and every third one is a miss I learned from. The top ten scores stay on the table.
- slide (hold to glide)
- Z turn
- faster
- Space drop
- C hold
- V verify
- Esc pause
- Drag the piece, or hold an arrow, to slide
- Tap the board to turn (the left edge turns it the other way)
- Flick down or tap Drop to place
- Tap Hold at the top to save a piece
- Tap Verify to fix the lowest unfinished row
Fill a row to clear it. Combos, back-to-back four-line clears, T-spins and a clean board pay extra, and it speeds up every 5 lines. Every level charges Verify, this site's own move: it fills the gaps in the lowest unfinished row and clears it, the way a check fixes a page. From line 10, every ten lines one of my misses rises from the bottom as a red row: clear it to read what went wrong.
93 days in a row with 100+ Google clicks, The Crawler's Cookbook, and still going. See every high score
High scores
- 1You?any score gets on
Top 10 on this site, up to 8 letters each. Beat the last row and the board asks for your name.
What I do for enterprise brands
At Optimal, a OneMagnify company, I work on SEO and AI visibility for enterprise brands across many industries. Every account starts from the same place: who is searching, what they typed and what they need to do next. How I work
- 1Strategy for search and AI answers Where a brand should show up, in Google and in the answers AI tools give, and what it takes to earn that.
- 2Roadmaps built around how customers search No two brands share priorities. Each gets a plan that fits how its customers decide, built from who is searching and what they need next.
- 3Programs that hold up at scale Templates, content programs and structured data that have to stay right across hundreds of pages, because one bad template repeats everywhere. I fix the source, never the output.
- 4Measuring AI visibility How AI tools mention, cite and describe a brand, against its competitors, so the work is judged on what searchers did, not on what we shipped.
- 5Getting the right people in early Developers, design, data, PR and paid search in the room before anything is built, so good ideas don't die in a ticket queue.
- 6Checks that keep the work right A wrong fact or a broken page gets stopped before anyone sees it, so the same mistake doesn't happen twice and the next project starts ahead.
One system: get found, get understood, get chosen
Everything I do on a site serves one of three outcomes. Miss the first and nobody sees the page; miss the second and nobody trusts it; miss the third and they pick someone else.
- 1 Get found Can the person with this need find the right answer?
- 2 Get understood Can they quickly tell what the answer means for their situation?
- 3 Get chosen What makes this answer worth trusting and acting on?
Why it adds up: when something goes wrong, I fix the process, not just the page. Each lesson stays learned, so every project starts where the last one finished. Search changes every week, so the system does too: what I've changed my mind about.
Eevee is the system before it specializes. Each pillar is an evolution, built for one job.
How my own sites are doing
They're growing, mostly from pages that answer one question well, with a miss or two along the way that I learned more from. Every site, and what happened on each or the month-by-month dashboard
One block per site, by search clicks in the last 28 days against the 28 before them: 2 up more than 10%, 4 fell or held within 10%, 4 under 50 clicks or not measured yet.
UpFell or flatToo small or not measured
| Site | State | Last 28 days |
|---|---|---|
| The Crawler's Cookbook | Up | +18%, 14.7K clicks |
| The Quack Report | Up | +22%, 1.3K clicks |
| WireRef | Fell or flat | -12%, 2.4K clicks |
| GageRef | Fell or flat | -10%, 235 clicks |
| Title Town PDX | Fell or flat | -50%, 206 clicks |
| CheckMyTap | Fell or flat | -34%, 115 clicks |
| UpOrbit | Too small or not measured | 15 clicks |
| RatingPlate | Too small or not measured | 10 clicks |
| Hear Homer | Too small or not measured | 6 clicks |
| SaltCellCheck | Too small or not measured | No search data yet |
The numbers, month by monthSearch clicks across my sites, data through Oct 10, 2026
Search clicks across my sites, month by month
September 2026: The Crawler's Cookbook's best Google month yet (13.8K clicks), WireRef's best Bing month yet (2.8K clicks), and 93 days in a row of 100+ Google clicks.
- September vs August+21%24K search clicks, from 19.7K
- August vs July+39%19.7K search clicks, from 14.2K
- Best month on recordSeptember24K search clicks
Search clicks up 21% in September, a new best month, and the fifth month in a row it grew.
- April 2026: 1 decision, and what happened after
- July 2026: 1 decision, and what happened after
- September 2026: 2 decisions, and what happened after
April 2026
A measured result, , WireRef
Stopped fighting Google for my reference sites and went where the decisions were happening
- Google: 0 clicks in the 28 days before, 1 in the 28 after, too small to read
- Bing: no data
Compares periods; does not prove cause.
July 2026
A measured result, , The Crawler's Cookbook
Answered a question fans kept asking before anyone had the answer
- Google: 1.8K clicks in the 28 days before, 6.6K in the 28 after, up
- Bing: 608 clicks in the 28 days before, 971 in the 28 after, up
Compares periods; does not prove cause.
September 2026
A mistake, and the fix, , The Crawler's Cookbook
Put every reader correction on the Cookbook in public, fixed or not
- Google: 9.7K clicks in the 28 days before, 12.8K in the 28 after, up
- Bing: 1.2K clicks in the 28 days before, 1K in the 28 after, down
A mistake, and the fix, , The Quack Report
Stopped building fan features that need a crowd to work
- Google: 323 clicks in the 28 days before, 216 in the 28 after, down
- Bing: 600 clicks in the 28 days before, 933 in the 28 after, up
Compares periods; does not prove cause.
| Month | Search clicks | Change from the month before |
|---|---|---|
| April | 1.7K | first month |
| May | 4.4K | +159% |
| June | 7.6K | +74% |
| July | 14.2K | +87% |
| August | 19.7K | +39% |
| September | 24K | +21% |
These compare periods; they don't prove what caused a change. Sites under 50 clicks are too small to read much into.
What I'm writing about
The recommendation layer in AI searchHow AI answers pick which brands to name, the three tests content has to pass, and the receipts from a fan site that wins.I post what I learn on LinkedIn first, usually right after I've learned it the hard way.
Follow on LinkedInLately on LinkedIn
- The Quack Report“Live and breathe Oregon Duck Football? Cool, same.”
- Poll: where people start a major purchase“My research habits have changed a lot recently, so curious where everyone is starting the process these days.”
- The recommendation layer“Like it or not, there’s a new decision-maker in town.”
The rest are on my profileFollow on LinkedIn
Off the clock
I'm from Portland, OR, and recently moved to Austin, Texas, where I'm currently melting in the sun.
I was going to Autzen Stadium before I could walk. Add the Seahawks, the Blazers and the Timbers, and you've got most of my personality. The rest is Bella, my corgi.
- Ducks
- Seahawks
- Blazers
- Timbers
- DCC
- Portland, home