Already live, no design decision needed
Sitemap
Was broken, so search engines could not get a list of the pages. Fixed, and it now repairs itself if the nightly Guesty update breaks it again.
robots.txt
Was empty. Now welcomes Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini by name and points them at the sitemap.
Summary page for AI tools
A plain page at /llms.txt listing who we are, the awards, and every property by town. It rebuilds itself from the live properties.
Search descriptions
Written for 33 blog posts and the Contact, Cookie and Privacy pages. These are the grey lines under a Google result.
Homepage title
Now "Serviced Accommodation Portsmouth | Blue Puffin Stays". The homepage already ranks about 7th on Google for that search.
Town names
Pages said Norcote, Widley, Fratton or "Southampton, Southampton". They now say Cirencester, Portsmouth and Winchester.
Awards
The 2025 and 2026 LUXlife wins added, four broken award badges replaced.
Privacy policy
The WordPress sample text replaced with a real one.
Proposed, and why
All of these change what a guest sees, so they are Kate's call. In order of what we think matters most.
| Change | Why it matters | See it |
|---|---|---|
| Questions and answers on every page | The single biggest one. AI tools quote the sentence straight after a question. We answer in the first line, no preamble. | example |
| A distances list on property pages | Named places with miles and minutes. Guests ask this constantly, and it is the kind of fact an AI answer repeats. | example |
| Clean property introductions | The pages currently show the Airbnb text, symbols and discount pitches included. A short honest intro instead. | example |
| "Who this suits" on each property | Three lines saying who the home is right for, and who it is not. | example |
| Links between related pages | Property pages average one link in the body. Nothing points to the other homes in the same town. | example |
| An area page per town | A page that answers "where should I stay in Portsmouth" and lists every home there. | example |
| Guides that list properties | The format AI answers quote most often. Ours first, a competitor or two below for credibility. | example |
Where we are today
From the first monthly AI check on 15 September, across 87 answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini:
- Named in 6 of 87 answers. Mostly for small places like Titchfield and Durley.
- Nothing for Portsmouth or Southampton guests, where most of the properties are.
- Found mainly through Airbnb and Booking.com listings, not through our own site.
- Microsoft Copilot cited the site 318 times in 3 months, but over half of those were people already searching "blue puffin stays".
The pattern is clear. People who know the name find us. People describing what they want do not.