The WebDoctor blog
Practical guides to sitemaps, crawling and technical site health, written to be acted on.
Schema Types That Actually Earn Rich Results in 2026
Nine types still earn a visual treatment. Two famous ones were retired. Here is the current list, from Google's own documentation.
Core Web VitalsCore Web Vitals in 2026: Thresholds and What Moved
The metrics did not change this year. Plenty of the tooling around them did. Here is what is actually true right now.
Meta descriptionsMeta Descriptions in the AI Answer Era: What Works
The description tag still has one job, and it is smaller than it used to be. Here is what to write, and what matters more.
HreflangHreflang Mistakes That Kill International SEO
Ten errors account for almost every broken hreflang setup, and most of them fail silently. Here is how to spot each one and correct it.
robots.txtrobots.txt for AI Crawlers: Allow and Deny Recipes
Three recipes and a bot-by-bot table for controlling GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and the rest from one small text file.
SitemapsXML Sitemap Errors: Every Common Failure and Its Fix
Nine failures cause almost every broken sitemap. Here is how to recognize each one from its symptom and fix it for good.
SitemapsXML Sitemap Best Practices That Actually Matter
Half of the standard sitemap advice is folklore. These are the practices search engines actually respond to, and the fields they ignore.
SitemapsSitemap Index Files: When and How to Use Them
One file that lists your other sitemaps: the index is simple, but the rules about nesting, hosts and submission trip people up.
llms.txtWhat Is llms.txt and Does Your Site Need One?
A small markdown file at your site root tells AI systems what your site is and which pages matter. Here is exactly how it works and when it is worth adding.
AI searchAI Readiness: How to Get Cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity
AI assistants only recommend sites they can crawl, parse and trust. Those are three separate problems, and most sites fail at least one without knowing.