Bio
Mike King brings a rare combination of computer science rigor and marketing practicality to SEO. His foundational argument is that SEO is a subset of information retrieval (IR), the computer science discipline that studies how documents are stored, indexed, and retrieved. Most SEO practitioners operate on an incomplete mental model of how search engines work, optimizing for signals (keywords, links, meta tags) without understanding the retrieval mechanisms those signals feed into.
Operating themes
- Operating thesis: SEO is fundamentally information retrieval, not a marketing channel; understanding how search engines actually process, embed, and rank documents through the lens of computer science, specifically dense and sparse retrieval models, is what separates strategic SEO from tactical guesswork.
- Technical Seo Audit
- Content Optimization Nlp
- Content Seo
- Programmatic Seo
Cards
- The unit of optimization is the passage, not the page, The unit of optimization is the passage, not the page [Tier A]
Sources captured
- 2026-04-22, How AI Mode Works / AI Search Manual, iPullRank (
raw/essays/mike-king--how-ai-mode-works--2026-04-22.md) - 2026-04,
how-ai-mode-works-and-how-seo-can-prepare-for-the-future-of-search.md(operator essay archive) - 2026-04,
relevance-is-not-a-qualitative-measure-for-search-engines.md(operator essay archive) - 2026-04,
the-brave-new-world-of-seo-mike-king-seo-week-2025-summer-drop-ipullrank.md(operator essay archive) - 2026-04,
optimizing-the-new-search-how-relevance-engineering-is-reshaping-seo-mike-king.md(operator essay archive)