Hey Reader!
I’m embarking on a redesign of the Analytics Playbook website, and instead of keeping it on WordPress, I’m experimenting with moving to Astro which means that I’m basically making websites by hand again, like what I did when I first started in this field way back in 2000.
One big advantage to using something like Astro is site speed. There isn’t a database behind the scenes, it’s just flat files, so as far as visitors and Google are concerned, I got significantly faster.
It isn’t necessarily news that static sites are fast, rather it's how much weight websites have accumulated over the past 26 years. For example, using a database to store text that rarely ever changes. Or, a page builder so nobody has to write HTML. Then of course we need a caching plugin to undo the cost of the page builder and the database. Somewhere in there "easy to edit" turned into an expensive, heavy website with a sunk cost fallacy built in.
Now, I'm not suggesting you go rip out your CMS. Editors need to edit, and a flat-file repo is a rough ask for a multi-person marketing team. But here's a question I'd ask instead: is there a layer in your stack or your processes you couldn't explain to someone else if they asked why it was there? Other than “that’s what we’ve always done”?
Maybe that’s a good place to start digging.
What I’m Reading
Usually this section is about something I've written recently, but I'm taking a bit of a break from writing, so instead here is a book recommendation. I've been reading Never Always, Never Never by Patrick Gilbert, and it's doing a good job of making me rethink how I approach client projects, especially with AI reshaping what service delivery even looks like right now.
Learn more about it here
If you give it a read, tell me what you think!
Articles Worth Your Time
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Google folds Local Services Ads into the main Google Ads platform
Google is retiring the standalone Local Services Ads dashboard and moving pay-per-lead advertisers into the regular Google Ads platform, starting with a phased rollout in August 2026. Home and storefront service categories go first (plumbing, HVAC, electrical, appliance repair, house cleaning, lawn care, roofing, pest control, moving), with broader categories and non-US accounts following through 2027.
I’m pleased about this because reporting on LSA has always meant working out of a separate silo (if you could at all), and folding it into Google Ads should make it easier to see pay-per-lead performance alongside everything else you're running for a client. If you manage LSA accounts for local service clients, make sure to get historical performance reports exported before the migration date! Google says access to past reporting will disappear once the switch flips.
Read the article
An SEO roadmap is not the same thing as a task list
Whenever I’m building a dashboard for a client, I start by asking about goals and sometimes (often) instead of goals, I get a spreadsheet of prioritized marketing tasks. That is not a roadmap, it’s a to do list. I’m absolutely going to use his road trip metaphor from now on — that you wouldn’t spend your vacation driving around and deciding where to turn based on what looks the most scenic at the time. So why do that with your marketing strategy? A real roadmap starts from a destination with actual business meaning, a revenue target or a market position, something a CEO would recognize, and works backward from there.
Read the article
Answer engines are breaking attribution, and proxy metrics are the fix
Siteimprove's piece on AEO attribution lays out something you probably already know, and that’s every attribution model your team has ever used, first-touch, last-touch, multi-touch, data-driven, assumes somebody clicked. Zero-click search reached 68 percent of Google queries in early 2026 according to SparkToro, and when an AI answer settles a decision without a click, there's nothing left for those models to credit.
The proposed fix is proxy measurement: share of answer engine voice, citation rate, prompt coverage, and branded search lift. None of these replace a clean attribution chain, but they're the closest thing available right now to seeing whether your brand shows up in the conversations happening before someone ever lands on your site.
Read the article
Where You Can Find Me
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Inside Google Ads Live: Toronto
Thursday, October 29, 2026 | CN Tower, Maple Leaf Cinema | Toronto, ON
My session is called "Crossing the Valley: Getting AI Out of the Demo and Into Your Day". Get tickets here
October's coming up faster than you'd think, and tickets are still available.
That's it for this edition of The Huddle. As always, if you have questions or want to share what you're working on, just hit reply!