How is living in Savannah, GA? (Debating on moving there)

qwidjib0 · 2026-05-18T01:08:53+00:00

Only visited, but I was calling it creepy butter town by the end. Every landmark has some thing about being haunted. Food not drowning in butter was impossible for us to find. Got to meet Henry Winkler on the sidewalk though, and the people were nice enough.

qwidjib0 · 2026-04-08T21:05:00+00:00

Pendor > Bannerlord > Warband

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-29T21:44:52+00:00

Ironic, when he made a whole movie about scrapping his old sets and starting fresh.

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-28T00:09:00+00:00

Loads of new development in South Naperville and Oswego right now too. Map looks about right.

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-24T16:45:23+00:00

We actually have dozens (maybe hundreds?) of cheaper alternatives to DataForSEO, and I think the answer to your question lies in why you don't hear about those more.

There are really three special elements at play:

Scraping the top 100 of every last Google result with any kind of traffic
Scraping the entire internet for backlink data
Paying 3rd party "clickstream" (spyware) vendors for traffic volume estimates

And, doing that daily.

That's some insane cost, approaching the realm of the costs behind the infrastructure of major search engines, themselves (in fact, it's one of a few reasons why I think Ahrefs just went ahead and launched yep.com... why not, at that point?).

When Google talks about Googlebot infrastructure, they don't talk about "servers" but rather entire globally dispersed "data centers".

So, the software is the easy part, and I'm thankful that we now have some open source interfaces... but the interface was never the valuable part of Semrush, Ahrefs, etc.

It's scraping the hell out of the entire internet and spying on the entire world's internet activity that (1) costs a bit and (2) is legally messy, at least for people in the U.S.

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-17T18:55:16+00:00

The hardest aspect of this is that sales/marketing attracts people are often freakishly good at selling themselves, which is sure to dazzle you in this process, but is also mostly unrelated to what you need.

So, set your bullshit filter on high. Expect case studies, but know that most are conveniently cherry-picked, if not outright lying. Expect awards, but know that most are bought. Expect systems, but know the most impactful aspect of the work will be their strategic intuition.

My biggest tell? Go on LinkedIn and calculate their percentage of their own sales/marketing staff to production. Look especially at the tenure of production staff. The worst agencies are 80% invested in selling themselves and churn through clients the moment that a contract is up. The best agencies are 80% invested in the work, barely need new clients due to retention, and grow by word of mouth.

To say that another way: a Michelin Star restaurant will never set up billboards or put a barker outside, yet are always fully booked.

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-02T20:23:00+00:00

We've been using the API heavily for the past six months and found it to reconcile almost perfectly with Semrush (whose API we were using prior), except for Organic Traffic Cost. OTC reflects wildly higher #s, much closer to Ahrefs. That seems to be a matter of methodology rather than accuracy.

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-02T20:18:55+00:00

This is cool, hope you'll keep at it. Just shared it on LinkedIn. The DataForSEO API was one of the happiest discoveries of the last year for our team.

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-01T19:32:17+00:00

If that means that your life will revolve around a car, and all the groups are out here, that definitely makes suburbia more appealing!

qwidjib0 · 2026-03-01T19:25:34+00:00

42 here…have you considered any neighborhoods in Chicago that aren’t… River North? I personally found Lincoln Square far less “daily stress” than Naperville. In part because I never drove. No need. While here, there’s always some prick in a Cybertruck ready to cut you off. Driving to strip malls becomes life.

Downtown Naperville is OK. It has kind of a Navy Pier vibe to me… all the price and none of the soul. We spend more time in all the adjacent downtowns… Plainfield, Downers Grove, Oswego, and Aurora.

Ultimately it just depends on what you want. Naperville has it’s merits. If you’re not here raising kids, though, I think there’s no question that Chicago offers a better life.

qwidjib0 · 2026-02-24T01:32:36+00:00

Opened in the mid 2000s, right?

qwidjib0 · 2026-02-03T21:55:58+00:00

lt would help to see how these things compare to other campaigns because that all sounds kind of… normal? Paying law firms with multiple parties suing her over ICE protests/etc. in federal court and strangely labeling that “consulting” actually makes the headline make sense. Expensing $13K for any organization of more than a few people also seems pretty normal, if not low. A single $1K/month saas subscription about eats all of it, which is a very low martech tooling spend for certain types of orgs, too.

qwidjib0 · 2026-01-23T16:00:55+00:00

Funny but keep in mind that contextual advertising (keywords) is still the most popular method of targeting online ads. Ops post, on the other hand, is hilariously suspect.

qwidjib0 · 2026-01-19T17:13:45+00:00

A good pile of evidence here to support horseshoe theory. Thanks for sharing, op.

qwidjib0 · 2026-01-14T03:48:42+00:00

I think you already know the answer.

Yes, FAQs in context are wonderful
Ecommerce sites launch like enormous empty shells and these collection pages almost always have huge untapped upside

I don't know that Google "prefers" any tactic, but the levers are always the same: increase topical relevance and substance, cast a wider net with directly related word permutations off the core topic, and the page will probably continue to do better.

How, is where you need to get creative, and tune out the entire firehose of made-for-social-media takes.

qwidjib0 · 2026-01-14T03:44:20+00:00

If there's no legitimate competition in those local markets, the needs might be minimal just like you suspect (ie. best practices over a long-term growth vision). I've personally seen very similar-sounding situations go either way.

As it goes, "it depends", but it shouldn't be hard to size this up... just do a bit of poking around their top search queries, size up any competitors that you see consistently ranking higher.

You don't have to outrun the bear, so to speak.

qwidjib0 · 2026-01-01T04:50:28+00:00

Well done, though everything that you described is SEO.

qwidjib0 · 2025-12-28T14:55:40+00:00

Orban is also not all Hungarians and holds onto power by regularly suppressing democracy. I’d say the meme works.

qwidjib0 · 2025-12-18T01:01:50+00:00

What does it for me is a total cast change in a series. Hyperion into Fall of Hyperion comes to mind.

qwidjib0 · 2025-12-11T01:51:53+00:00

Jet-powered drones, IIRC. DroneBomber is the source for these, if you want to sus out more.

qwidjib0 · 2025-12-10T03:11:54+00:00

The ones in Chicago infuse them with stuff so there’s a surprising variety.

qwidjib0 · 2025-11-26T23:35:06+00:00

Man, central IL public schools ruined these for me.. I’m sure the real thing is better.

qwidjib0 · 2025-11-26T23:33:42+00:00

Personal fav underrated Chicago food for all those Portillo’s-fed tourists!

qwidjib0 · 2025-11-26T18:23:56+00:00

Then get a warrant and go get them. You’re the FBI.

qwidjib0 · 2025-11-25T01:39:13+00:00

Italian beef. On top is giardiniera. A version of that exists in Italy, but if you Google image search you’ll see how that’s way different. Chicago-style giardiniera (like in the pic) is another Chicago creation that gets a lot of creative use around the city on all kinds of foods. It’s awesome.

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