Mike Buckbee
Dev+Founder+Dad -> Wafris, SendCheckIt, Knowatoa, ExpeditedWAF.
Mostly post about cybersecurity and AI SEO stuff.
Discover how your brand ranks in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini at knowatoa.com/bsky
- 4. AI Search Ranking Fluctuations If you've noticed your AI search visibility bouncing around, this explains what's actually happening and what you can do about it. Link: knowatoa.com/guides/ai_se...
- 3. The B.I.S.C.U.I.T. Framework Our comprehensive approach to AI search optimization. If you only read one thing, make it this. Link: knowatoa.com/guides/biscu...
- 2. The Myth of AI Search Unoptimizability I keep hearing from folks that "you can't optimize for AI search." ...which is just weird so here's some more of my thoughts on why we keep talking past one another. Link: knowatoa.com/guides/ai_se...
- We just reorganized our Guides to modern search (with AI) to better surface the advice that we keep putting out into the world. And while there's a lot on that page, I've handpicked four that I think are particularly useful for folks working in search marketing right now:
- 1. The AI Search Optimization Loop This is the practical framework for how to actually improve your AI search visibility. No magic, a repeatable process. knowatoa.com/guides/ai_se...
- Character.AI remains one of my big AI blindspots where it's both immensely popular and just sort of personally offputting. But the more I hesitantly look at it (and ask Steve Harrington questions about how life is in Hawkins after Vecna has been defeated), the more I've come to view it as a-
- potentially really important new visibility channel. There's a long standing joke in the SEO world about how YouTube is the second largest "search engine" after Google, though most people don't really think of it that way. I'm honestly wondering if Character.AI is going to see a similar-
- trajectory where it's not directly a search engine, but millions of people spend hours a day interacting with it, asking it questions and from that Google (who owns it now) has this massive channel for incredibly targeted advertising. With that in mind, it's interesting to see Google and-
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View full threadWaiting to see what happens is a valid approach, but I think it's crucial to understand that you could still be held responsible. Link: techcrunch.com/2026/01/07/g...
- While lots of marketing people continue to argue on LinkedIn about whether or not AI search is real, we're starting to see some of the grim reality of it. It's clear that different industries are adopting AI at different rates, but far and way AI has taken over software development. To date the-
- major case study for the impact of AI search on traditional search has been StackOverflow, which seen a 78% decline in questions asked over the past year. However, StackOverflow has simultaneously been dying of self inflicted wounds for a long time, so it been a shaky indicator of the broader-
- impact of AI search. This week however Tailwind (a much beloved CSS framework) announced layoffs of 75% of their staff as a direct result of AI search disruption. Their business model has been: 1. Developers try and use Tailwind 2. They run into issues 3. They search for solutions like "how do-
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View full threadAs both a developer and marketing person I'm personally seeing many friends with things like software development courses, tutorials and websites also actutely feeling this same pain. Link: github.com/tailwindlabs...
- I keep seeing articles arguing that AI search "hasn't arrived yet" or that it's some small, separate thing you can ignore. I understand where this comes from, but I think it fundamentally misreads what's happening. This isn't me arguing, but just look at the data: 750 million people use ChatGPT-
- every month. That's roughly 10% of all adults worldwide. 51% of AI usage is search-like tasks: seeking information, getting practical guidance, making decisions. AI use is sticky. The longer someone uses these tools, the more they use them. People use AI for higher-value searches: complex decisions-
- that blend research with advice. And even if none of that was true and Sam Altman turned off the OpenAI servers tomorrow, you have to look at what Google is doing. Google has made the decision that every search is now "AI Search". AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini are what search is right now-
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View full threadattention. It's whether you'll be visible when it matters.
- Simon Willison, someone I look to for practical LLM expertise, shared his 2026 predictions this week. He believes we hit a real turning point in November 2025 with GPT-5.2 and Claude Opus 4.5. He predicts that LLM code quality will become "undeniable" in the next year, and that we'll solve-
- sandboxing problems for AI agents. On the cautionary side, he warns about possible security problems as coding agents gain more control. Whether AI will create more or fewer software engineering jobs remains an open question for him, the classic Jevons Paradox. What I really like about Willison's-
- analysis is his healthy skepticism. He isn't out there saying AI will do absolutely everything. Instead, he points out specific ability levels that AI has now reached. Then, he thoughtfully considers what those practical changes actually mean. For those of us watching AI search, the main takeaway-
- is that the models powering these systems just got significantly better at reasoning. I think this matters a lot for how AI search engines gather information and which sources they choose to cite. Link: simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/8/l...
- There was a time where a lot of genuinely smart people thought that people would flock en masse to voice ordering assistants like Siri or Alexa…and that never really happened. I think a lot of that is that the voice UX was pretty poor and the opportunity to look at quality/price indicators was non-
- existent. Put another way, consumers reasonably want to do at least some basic level of research before they buy something, which is why I think that AI + Voice might actually work this time around. People are already doing a lot of research and questions already via AI services, so stretching-
- one level further to actually completing a purchase feels like less of a leap. And now we have tools like Copilot Checkout which lets you buy things right inside Bing, MSN, and Edge AI chat, sort of a digital wallet + chatbot combo which close the loop from the search discovery to the purchase.
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- OpenAI officially launched ChatGPT Health this week, and I have to say, one statistic buried in their announcement really caught my eye. Here's a number that everyone in healthcare marketing should be paying attention to: 230 million users ask ChatGPT health questions every single week. So, a-
- quarter-billion health questions on ChatGPT each week means we're seeing a massive shift in where people are getting their health information. This is happening right now, whether traditional healthcare SEO is ready for it or not. I'd initially taken this to be just more of a "wellness" app (like-
- Apple Health) that could interact with the kind of data you'd get from meal tracking or workout tracking apps and then give you feedback. But OpenAI clearly wants ChatGPT Health also be a very serious healthcare product (and they want the revenue that comes along with it), so to see them pushing-
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- This week, we've seen Grok, Elon Musk's AI on X, generating explicit images of women and children. AI Forensics actually found about 800 pornographic images and videos that were created using the Grok Imagine app. Even more concerning: organized Telegram communities with thousands of members have-
- been systematically bypassing Grok's (weak and inadequate) safety rules. After a huge public outcry and some serious threats from regulators, Grok finally turned off image creation for most users this week. Now, only people who pay for a subscription can access it. However, I've heard reports-
- that the separate Grok Imagine app still works for non-paying users. In one of those "worst person you know makes a good point" moments, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the content "disgraceful." He demanded X "get a grip" on the situation and said that all options were on the table,-
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- We've been busy creating practical guides to help you navigate AI search. Here's what's new:
- www.knowatoa.com/guides/biscu... The B.I.S.C.U.I.T. Framework - Our comprehensive framework for winning in AI search engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. This breaks down the exact steps to get indexed, ranked, and discovered across all major AI platforms.
- knowatoa.com/guides/ai-se... The Myth of AI Search Unoptimizability - Debunking the claim that AI search can't be optimized. AI search results are predictable. You can influence them strategically.
- knowatoa.com/guides/sourc... Sources and Citations in AI Search - Understanding how AI search engines use sources and citations, and how to optimize your content to become a cited reference instead of just background noise.
- Instagram's head of product recently didn't exactly say that it would be easier to "fingerprint" real media than to try and spot fake media, but he acknowledged that trying to detect AI-generated content is a losing battle. He's surprisingly nuanced and candid in his Threads post about the future-
- of Instagram's relationship with AI content and the tension between crafting a perfect little square image and it being a little too perfect. Link: www.threads.com/@mosseri/pos...
