AI and modern search

Search isn't ten blue links anymore.

Writing on AI Overviews, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, and how content needs to be structured to survive summarization, extraction, and multi-source synthesis across new surfaces.

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How AI search understands your content

What AI-driven search needs to understand a page, why clarity beats completeness, and where most content fails.

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How I think about AI and modern search

Modern search systems don't send users to your page to read it. They pull pieces out, reassemble them into answers, and cite you if you're lucky.

Pages with original data, explicit structure, and direct answers get cited. Pages that restate what ten other sites already said get compressed into nothing.

From the Modern Search Systems page on the old version of this site, first published January 2026.

Ask Bella

Ask Bella Hayden's corgi. Answers from this site, every fact sourced.

BELLA

WOOF. I'm Bella, Hayden's corgi, and he's my human. Ask me about him: what he does, how he works, what he's built. Every answer here was written ahead, checked against this site, and cites numbered sources you can tap.

How it works: answers written ahead and checked against this site's pages, plus a search of the site that quotes it word for word. Every claim has a numbered source you can tap. Nothing is generated while you wait, nothing is made up, and nothing you type leaves your browser. Every answer, in plain HTML

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