I downloaded twenty years of my own backlink data and ran a survival analysis on it. 1,301,839 links. 22,260 referring domains. Not one of them bought (I don't pay for links). Three things came out that I did not expect. First: the median referring domain stops linking after 1,080 days. Just under three years. Half of everything I have ever earned is already gone. That is not a failure — it is what links do. But it means a link building program that stops is not a program that plateaus. It reverses. Second: links from strong domains last about four times longer than links from weak ones. @Majestic Trust Flow 61+ domains hold a link for a median of 9.2 years. Trust Flow 0 domains manage 2.4. We price links on the authority they pass today and completely ignore how long they will exist. Cheap links are cheap twice over. Third, and this is the one that changed how I think about reclamation: 97.4% of my lost links disappeared while the source page was still perfectly reachable. Four links out of 645,202 were lost to a 404. Links do not die because pages die. They die because someone edited the page, or redesigned the site, or migrated the CMS. The page is still there. The editor is still there. That is a warm prospect, not a dead one — and it means monitoring for 404s to catch link loss catches essentially nothing. Full case study, including the parts where I found broken links on my own site: advancedlinktraining.com/cas…

New site, CheckaDomain.com. Lots of work done on the site to make it load quickly. Several tools available, such as bulk checks and checking a domain on multiple TLDs for availability. #domains

The SEO industry may be entering another familiar cycle. This time, instead of companies buying backlinks to manipulate traditional search rankings, marketers are beginning to experiment with buying brand mentions intended to influence AI-generated responses in Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and other large language model systems. At the Search Central Live Shanghai 2026 event on May 15th, Gary Illyes from Google reportedly warned against buying or manipulating brand mentions for the purpose of appearing in AI-generated answers and AI search experiences. Why Paid AI Mentions Could Become the Next Google Penalty billhartzer.com/seo/paid-ai-…

Google just confirmed what many of us who have been doing SEO for decades have been saying all along: “AI SEO”, GEO, AEO, and all the other AI buzzwords are still just SEO. After nearly 30 years in this industry, I’ve seen the same cycle happen over and over again. New buzzwords. New acronyms. New “must-have services” agencies suddenly want clients to pay extra for. Now it’s AI. Here’s the reality: if your SEO strategy is solid, you should already be benefiting from visibility in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Bing AI. If not, your SEO has problems. In my latest article, I break down Google’s new AI optimization guide, the myths Google just debunked, why most “AI SEO” sales pitches are nonsense, and what actually matters moving forward. And yes… I rant a little. Read it here: billhartzer.com/seo/google-c…

As you probably know, I run a stolen domain name recovery service (@dnaccess). I help companies and individuals get their domain names back when they're stolen from them. I've recovered hundreds of domains over the past few years that I've been doing this. I was made aware of a recent case where a web designer literally stole two domain names from a non-profit organization in Connecticut (I grew up in CT). The non-profit helps veterans and victims of domestic violence furnish their homes. They provide everything from the furniture down to the silverware. If it wasn't for this non-profit, the veterans and victims of domestic violence would be moving into an empty home. The non-profit hired this web designer to redo their website. They've owned the domain names since 2010. During that process, the web designer logged into their domain registrar account and transferred the domain names to themselves, which is actually stealing the domain names (a cybercrime). The web designer is demanding about $5,000 to "get the domain names back". I've personally spoken with the web designer several times on the phone and emailed back and forth. He won't give them back. So, the non-profit has filed a police report about the theft. I've made it my mission to get these domain names back for this non-profit. We're starting a GoFundMe to raise enough money for a legal fund to cover things like UDRP fees and other legal expenses. Any additional funds will go directly to the non-profit. They have a thrift store in Middletown, Connecticut where they accept donations of furniture and household goods, but they also need funds to cover other basic operating expenses such as gas to fill the delivery trucks. Officially we're kicking off the campaign next week. Social media, press/media, a full digital PR campaign is coming, but I could always use some help with it. Not asking for money or social shares, etc. yet. But if you'd like to help with the digital PR side of things, let me know. On the domain name side of things, I'm also looking for some legal help with this, as well.

The Chipotle AI bot can help with your order. It's free to use. But did you know it can also help you code?

Is it normal to transfer a domain to a dev? Absolutely not. Once you transfer the domain name to the dev, that's going to be an issue 99 percent of the time. You'll lose the domain name to the dev, and they'll now, technically. own your domain name and won't give it back to you. I run a stolen domain name recovery service and I can tell you that's the majority of the calls and emails we get, asking for help recovering the domain for a client. Company transfers domain to dev or web designer. When the site is ready to go live, all of a sudden company owes $5k more (as an example) or they won't give the domain back. That's usually when the company comes to us. At that point, we (@DNAccess) step in, contact the dev or web designer, and they refuse to return the domain. So, at that point they've potentially committed a cybercrime and/or extortion and we instruct the company to file a police report. Sometimes that's enough for them to get it back. You're not going to get any help from any domain name registrar because it's now a civil issue: you transferred the domain to the dev or web designer. You know who stole the domain name. The domain registrar will not have any thing to do with it anymore. So, your options at that point are to file a UDRP (costs $1500 to do it yourself and $3k-5k with a domain attorney), or you can file a lawsuit against the dev or web designer. Whatever you do, do NOT transfer a domain name to a dev or web designer. Way too risky, even if you 'trust them' to do the right thing. Some registrars have a system where you can delegate access to someone to make some changes. But you'd better off using Cloudflare for the DNS and allowing the dev to access Cloudflare (you can share the account with them). Then you will not lose your domain name. This is the equivalent of you signing over the title of your vehicle to your mechanic because they need to work on your car. They'll then sign over the title back to you when they're finished fixing your car. Uh, no.

A student newsroom lost control of its domain name. Someone else picked it up. A fake news site went live. That’s exactly what happened to the CU Independent (@The_CUI). After the original .com domain expired, a third party acquired it and launched an AI-driven site that now pretends to be the “real” student publication—complete with a fabricated About page, fake reporters, and mass-produced content. The real newsroom had to move to a new domain just to survive. This isn’t a tech hiccup. It’s a domain ownership failure with real consequences. When a domain expires, anyone can buy it. When that domain carries trust, history, and search authority, the damage multiplies fast. I wrote about what went wrong, how AI makes this problem worse, and why organizations—especially student newsrooms and nonprofits—must treat domain names like owned assets, not renew-and-forget subscriptions. This is also why domain recovery exists. Through @DNAccess, we’ve recovered over 500 domain names for companies and individuals after situations just like this. If your domain matters, control it. If you’ve lost one, recovery is possible—but time is never your friend. Read the full story: billhartzer.com/domain-names…

Most SEOs don't know this about Google. facebook.com/share/r/15WTCWY…

Currently testing my new WP plugin that solves an issue that most sites have. So far testing is going well. The plugin will be available soon. Export the list of URLs from the "Video isn't on a watch page" list in Google Search Console, put that list into the plugin, and it will create those pages for you. More details: hartzer.com/blog/yt-bulk-wat…