Journal
What it takes to be found now.
Plain, sourced answers on getting a website found on Google and recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Grok. Written with the rules PARCHMNT applies to every page.
Topics
Do Blog Posts Need Images to Rank? What Google's Docs Say
Blog posts do not need images to rank, but real photos and alt text win image search, trust and AI answers. Which images help a post, and which ones to skip.
After publishingOctober 29, 2026Do Internal Links Help a Page Rank? Yes, and How to Place Them
Do internal links help a page rank? Yes. Google's documentation says links are how it finds and understands pages. Which anchors, from which pages, how many.
TechnicalOctober 29, 2026Does Blocking Google-Extended Hurt My Rankings? No, and Here Is Why
Does blocking Google-Extended hurt my rankings? Google says no. What the token actually controls, what it does not, and how to decide with the docs open.
AI searchOctober 29, 2026Does Your robots.txt Block AI Crawlers? How to Check in Two Minutes
Does my robots.txt block AI crawlers? How to check for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended, and which lines to change.
AI searchOctober 29, 2026How Do AI Assistants Choose Which Sources to Cite? Three Stages
How do AI assistants choose which sources to cite? Search first, then passages, then trust signals: what each company documents, and where each assistant looks.
TechnicalOctober 29, 2026How Long Does It Take Google to Index a New Page? Days to Weeks
How long does it take Google to index a new page? Google says days to weeks, and nothing is guaranteed. What speeds it up, how to check, and when to worry.
KeywordsOctober 29, 2026How Many Words Should a Blog Post Be to Rank? What Google Says
How many words should a blog post be to rank? Google says it has no preferred word count. What complete means, and where the 1,500 word targets came from.
After publishingOctober 29, 2026How Often Should You Update Old Blog Posts? Follow the Evidence
A calendar is the wrong trigger. How often should you update old blog posts: the four signals that say now, what to change, and how to date it honestly.
KeywordsOctober 29, 2026How to Check If a Keyword Is Worth Writing About (Before You Spend a Day on It)
Search volume is an estimate and difficulty scores are guesses. How to check if a keyword is worth writing about by reading Google's first page, in ten minutes.
AI searchOctober 29, 2026How to Get Cited by Perplexity (What Its Crawler Docs Actually Say)
Perplexity cites pages its crawler can read that answer directly. How to get cited by Perplexity: the robots.txt lines, the page shape, and where it looks.