Blog

The Page Opens, but Your Link Checker Returns 403: What to Check

A working browser page and a failed automated check can both be real. Separate missing pages, denied requests, rate limits and login walls before changing links.

How to Scan a QR Code on the Same Device: Screenshots, Email and PDFs

Read a QR code already on your phone or computer. Use a saved image, extract it from an email or PDF, and recover when image recognition fails.

Do gumtxxx and okxxxx Need MCP? Start by Helping Buyers Find Things

Should classifieds platforms build an MCP server for sellers or shoppers? A practical look at AI shopping demand, listing quality and useful enquiries.

How to Read a QR Code Without Opening the Link

Read a QR code from a screenshot, inspect the original URL, and trace HTTP redirects before deciding whether to open the destination.

Alternate Page With Proper Canonical Tag: Usually Fine, Sometimes a Warning

Alternate page with proper canonical tag sits under Not indexed, so it reads like a failure. It usually means your canonical tag worked. Here is how to tell when it didn't, using our own home page as...

Redirect Error in Search Console: Google Gave Up Before the Last Hop

Page with redirect is Google following your redirect. Redirect error is Google giving up on it. The four causes, why a manual test can look fine, and the one-line rule that looped our whole site for...

SEO on a Large Site: Stop Watching Where One Keyword Ranks

Thousands of keywords had dropped, across millions of pages, but those pages came from a dozen templates. A rank tracker is an alarm, not a diagnostic tool.

URL Fragments and SEO: Google Ignores Everything After the #

A filter that lives after the # costs Google nothing to crawl and can never rank. That makes the fragment a precise tool on a classifieds site: use it for the filters nobody searches for, and nowhere...

Discovered – Currently Not Indexed Means Google Rescheduled the Crawl

On a small site, Discovered – currently not indexed is almost never crawl budget. It is Google deciding a URL can wait. Here is what moves it, what doesn't, and what our own pages did this month.

Bing vs Google: Bing Sent Our Small Site Nearly 4x the Clicks

Google showed our pages 9,570 times and sent 8 clicks. Bing showed them 593 times and sent 30. Here is what the gap looks like from the inside, and what we changed because of it.

ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS: The Five Causes, in Order

A redirect loop means two rules are each certain they are right. Here is how to find which two, and the five configurations behind almost every case.

Googlebot Blocked by robots.txt, Page Indexed Anyway: The Two Rules That Cancel Each Other

Search Console shows two different rows for robots.txt, and only one of them is a problem. Why a blocked page still gets indexed, and why the fix is to unblock it.

You Decoded the Base64 and Got Gibberish. Here Is What You Actually Have

Base64 that decodes to binary noise usually decoded correctly. The output is a hash, a compressed blob or an encrypted payload — and the length tells you which.

Quishing: What To Do When "Check The URL First" Doesn't Work

A QR code sticker over a parking meter defeats the usual advice, because the preview often does not appear and when it does it shows a link shortener. Here is the procedure that works instead.

"Sitemap Could Not Be Read" in Search Console: Telling a Real Failure From a Display Bug

The error means Google could not fetch your sitemap, could fetch it and disliked it, or fetched it fine and is showing you a stale status. Here is how to tell which.

Does Anything Actually Read llms.txt? Three Measurements Say No

Ahrefs tracked 137,000 domains and found 97% of llms.txt files were never fetched. Adobe's CDN logs found no AI crawler touching them at all. What that means for whether you should bother.

There Is No T:WPA3 — The WiFi QR Code Format, and Why Yours Won't Scan

The WiFi QR format defines three security values, and WPA3 is not one of them. Why generators offering a WPA3 option produce codes phones refuse, and what to write instead.

The Canonical Error Nothing Warns You About: A Tag Pointing at the Wrong URL

A canonical tag that is present, valid and aimed somewhere it should not be produces no error anywhere. It just hands your page's search visibility to another URL. How it happens and how to check.

Crawled, Currently Not Indexed Means Google Read the Page and Said No

Two Search Console labels that sound alike and mean opposite things. Why the sitemap advice is wrong for one of them, and what the status is actually telling you.

Soft 404 on a Page That Opens Fine: What Google Sees That You Don't

Your browser loads the page. Search Console calls it a soft 404. Both are true, and the gap between them is usually a timeout screen, an empty shell, or a robots.txt line blocking the API the page...

Do QR Codes Expire? No, But the Redirect Inside Yours Might

A QR code is a printed string of text and it never changes. What stops working is the redirect a dynamic QR service put inside it. How to tell which one you have, and how to keep a code you can...

Duplicate Without User-Selected Canonical, When You Have a Canonical

The error does not mean you forgot the tag. It means Google either could not see your canonical or saw it and overruled it, and Search Console reports both under one label.

GEO Has No Rank, No Impression, and No Referrer. That Is Why It Gets Billed as Brand.

Generative engine optimisation cannot be measured the way search is measured, because the three things search reporting is built on do not exist in an AI answer. Here is what you can actually count.

How to Find and Remove Duplicate Lines in a List

How to find which lines repeat in a list, how many times each appears, and how to strip them out without losing the order of what is left.

Response Time Benchmarks: Is Your Server Fast Enough?

What server response time measures, how it sits underneath every other speed metric, and how to check your whole top-50 rather than one page at a time.

Bulk URL Checker: Check Links from Excel and Export CSV

Copy URLs from Excel, check them in bulk and export CSV. Follow a tested example and learn what redirects, status codes and response times can tell you.

Why Client-Side URL Tools Are Safer for Your Data

What happens to a sitemap or a URL list after you paste it into a free tool, why some of our tools can avoid the question entirely, and what the ones that cannot do instead.

UTM Parameters Explained, and the 5 Mistakes That Break Them

What each of the five UTM parameters carries, the naming convention that keeps reports from splitting in two, and the five tagging mistakes that corrupt attribution while looking plausible.

301 vs 302 Redirects: Which to Use, and What Breaks

What actually differs between a 301 and a 302, why frameworks hand you the wrong one by default, and how to find and flatten the chains that build up behind them.

XML Sitemap Best Practices: Limits, Index Files and Dead URLs

Audit sitemap URLs, respect size limits and read lastmod correctly. Learn why Google ignores priority and changefreq, and why HTTP 200 is only one check.

How to Find Seed Keywords: A Practical Guide

How to find the one- and two-word terms a whole content plan hangs off, using your support tickets, Search Console and competitors rather than a volume column.

Master URL Analysis: Complete Guide to Regex Patterns & Domain Statistics

How to pull URLs out of messy text, filter them with regex, and read the domain breakdown — with the patterns worth keeping.

QR Code Tools: ZXing Decoder, Wi-Fi Password Reader and Generator

Read a Wi-Fi password from a QR image with a tested example, decode screenshots with ZXing, scan printed codes, or generate a new QR code.

Introducing Our New QR Code Decoder: Scan, Upload, and Decode Instantly

Decode QR codes from a file, a pasted screenshot, or an image URL. The decoding runs in your browser, so the image never reaches our server.

What String Decoder Used For

Why I built a decoder that tries every common encoding at once, instead of making me guess one at a time.

How to Find and Read a Website's robots.txt

Find robots.txt at a website root, fetch and save the file, read User-agent, Allow, Disallow and Sitemap, and distinguish crawling from indexing.

Why this website

Why I created this site — a playground for keeping my coding skills sharp while building the marketing tools I actually needed.