Martin Kramer on the Middle East

Martin Kramer on the Middle East describes itself simply: "Martin Kramer is a historian and analyst of the Middle East and Israel. This website is home to his weblog Sandbox and a large selection of his published work." To AI engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, though, it is barely visible: it scores 4.7 out of 10.

On the page itself the strengths are clear: a clear heading structure, crawler access and the files AI engines look for and sitemaps and entity links AI can follow. It is passable on a partly stated business identity. What holds it back is structured data describing the business and credibility markers like credentials or reviews.

Away from its own site, other sites link to it and it comes up on Reddit. There is some, but not much, sign that the domain is only lightly established. Beyond that, AI engines do not yet recognise it as a distinct business, there is no press coverage to draw on and nobody is discussing it where AI engines look. Those are earned elsewhere on the web, not fixed on the site itself.

AI crawlers have visited once in our tracking, including ClaudeBot (Anthropic). It does link out to several social profiles, which helps engines tie the brand together.