No Hacks Podcast

Host and produce the No Hacks Podcast, a weekly podcast where I interview industry experts on creating better online experiences.

Curate and connect with a diverse range of guests, including growth marketers, experimenters, and designers, to share actionable insights with our audience.

Developed a streamlined production workflow, handling all aspects of recording, editing, and distribution to ensure high-quality episodes.

Podcast Host

Web Performance Tools

Co-founded Web Performance Tools, a company dedicated to simplifying workflows for digital professionals through innovative tools tailored for modern challenges.

Leading the development of key products, including Coheseo for optimizing ad campaigns and Podpacer for enhancing podcast production efficiency.

Focus on building intuitive, user-friendly solutions that empower users to achieve better results with less effort.

Collaborate with a diverse team to continually improve and expand our product offerings, ensuring they meet the evolving needs of their users.

Co-Founder

E-commerce Growth Consultant

Maksimer AS

Growth Strategist

WordPress

WordPress core contributor for five major releases:

4.0 - https://wordpress.org/news/2014/09/benny/
4.1 - https://wordpress.org/news/2014/12/dinah/
4.2 - https://wordpress.org/news/2015/04/powell/
5.3 - https://wordpress.org/news/2019/11/kirk/
6.1 - https://wordpress.org/news/2022/11/misha/

Core Contributor

Instacart

Performance optimization - shoppers.instacart.com

Website optimization consultant

Noite Labs OÜ

CRO consultancy, on-page and technical SEO, web analytics measurement plan development and implementation.

Founder, website optimization consultant

CRO specialist, senior web analyst

Krokedil

Klarna implementation specialist, WordPress/WooCommerce developer

Alpha Brand Media

Alpha Brand Media is an independent, online media publisher that owns and operates websites in 9 diverse categories, with over 4 million monthly visitors.

Our mission is to cultivate visitors to our diverse network of media properties that range from finance to fashion to industry news and lifestyle coverage, while creating unique advertising and promotional opportunities for those who need to get in front of a qualified, targeted and loyal audience.

WordPress developer

Host @ nohacks.show podcast | Chief Growth Officer @ FOSH

I’ve spent over 15 years in the world of web development and optimization, and I still love the challenge of creating websites that are not just fast and SEO-friendly, but genuinely enjoyable for users. My work is all about finding those little tweaks that make a big difference in performance and user experience.

On the side, I host the No Hacks podcast, where I get to chat with some of the smartest people in the industry about how we can all create better online experiences. The podcast has become a space where I can share what I’ve learned, explore new ideas, and connect with others who are as passionate about tech as I am.

Whether I’m coding a site or recording an episode, I’m always curious, always learning, and always looking to improve. That’s what keeps me excited about what I do every day.

I solved the greatest tech "Dilemma" of the 21st century.

In 2002, Kelly Rowland used Excel to text Nelly.

I think she used an n8n workflow to connect her spreadsheet to a texting app. Shame on us for laughing at her.

P.S. Airtable and Telegram shown in the screenshots because it's 2025.

Slobodan Manić

Making humans happier by making websites fast, semantic, and accessible. AI seems to like it, too | Host of the No Hacks podcast (200+ eps)

Just a quick reminder that I will be talking about "Optimising Websites for AI Agents" at Conversion Hotel in less than three weeks.

My "timeline of crazy sh*t" slide just got an update!

Of all the "it's a jungle out there" keynotes (this year the theme is jungle) it looks like mine will be the most "it's a jungle out there". And the monkeys seem to be throwing poop at each other.

Open article: Amazon sues Perplexity over 'agentic' shopping tool by reuters.com

Perplexity AI logo is seen in this illustration taken January 4, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Amazon sues Perplexity over 'agentic' shopping tool

In case you missed the story: ChatGPT prompts may not stay between the user and the platform.

Last week Jason Packer and I figured out what was going on and how prompts get leaked to Google Search Console, now Ars Technica published the story.

This led to OpenAI acknowledging the issue and claiming they fixed it.

Read the full story by Ashley Belanger here:

Open article: Oddest ChatGPT leaks yet: Cringey chat logs found in Google analytics tool by arstechnica.com

Oddest ChatGPT leaks yet: Cringey chat logs found in Google analytics tool

Perhaps your week was not great, but at least your ChatGPT prompts are not being leaked for anyone to see them.

Oh, wait... they are?

Figuring this out with Juliana J. (link to her article in the comments) and Jason Packer (link to his article in the post) was fun.

Open article: The Old Rules are Dead (ChatGPT Scrapes Google and Leaks Your Prompts) - Quantable Analytics by quantable.com

The Old Rules are Dead (ChatGPT Scrapes Google and Leaks Your Prompts) - Quantable Analytics

I'm a big "sliding doors" person. Not the 1998 movie distributed by Harvey Weinstein's Miramax! 

I think every person has at least a few of those moments that end up completely changing their life. 

Starting the podcast (notice I'm announced as a podcast host, for better or worse) in 2021 was one of those moments.

Learning about semantic web and web standards in 2007 so I can leave my then soon-to-be career in architecture was one of those moments.

Discovering the "experimentation conference" circuit (thank you forever, Jackie Bissell) and all the people involved was one of those moments.

And now they all get to collide on the coldest, rainiest stage of them all, where I will talk about optimising for AI agents. It's not quite CRO, it's not quite SEO, but with every AI company either launching an AI browser or building AI agents* it's as relevant as it ever was and the least relevant it will ever be at the same time.

As my photo suggests, I have some doubts about where the world is going. I hope you do, too. See you all soon an thank you Ton Wesseling for having me at Texel!

* - An AI agent is something that can autonomously complete tasks on your behalf. An AI browser is spyware that has an AI agent in it. If they were fitness coaches, an AI agent would (maybe) help you get fit, while an AI browser would (maybe) help you get fit, but it would "need" to watch you while you shower in order to do it.

I had some fun yesterday. Juliana J. (yes, THE Juliana) pinged me about something she noticed in her Google Search Console. It was showing queries that contain ENTIRE ChatGPT prompts [image 1].

She assembled the modern-day equivalent of three amigos by inviting Jason Packer and me to look into it. It was a weird rabbit hole, but I think we mostly figured it out.

Here's what you need to know.

That URL in the queries (openai.com/index/chatgpt) - it does seem generic, almost like it's the ChatGPT landing page, but no, it's actually the November 2022 ChatGPT announcement post [image 2].

In that page there is a free-to-use, no need to register ChatGPT chatbox. This is not the only openai.com URL that has it, but it's the only one we saw in GSC.

When you type in anything, it opens this in a new tab:

https://chatgpt DOT com/?hints=search&openaicom_referred=true&model=gpt-5

It seems like no matter what you type in, it will trigger the search [image 3]. I also tried saying "hi" and it said it searched the web before it responded. Efficiency, amirite???

Whichever URL you trigger the chat from will be shown in the prompt in the new tab.

I don't know what this all means, other than it shows with a 99.9% certainty ChatGPT does use Google to search (last GSC impressions I can see were registered yesterday), you can use ChatGPT without an account if you're patient enough, and your privacy should matter to you because it doesn't matter to anyone else.

It also means there are people who use these announcement posts as their ChatGPT entry points.

My take: Someone at OpenAI f*cked up and we got to see what we were not supposed to see. If this gets fixed soon, that's your proof this is the case.

And to paraphrase the real Three Amigos (from the 1986 movie), this is what all these big tech companies seem to be doing:

Wherever there is injustice, you will find us. Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there. Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find us... ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY.

No Hacks tried to reach out to Sam Altman for comment.

(but gave up because I don't have his email)

One thing no one else can teach you about AI is...

When you add "AI" to the name of your podcast the number of brain-dead guest pitches will explode. And it's always something like this:

"Your recent conversation with [GUEST_NAME] caught my attention, especially the idea that [TOPIC_THAT_MAY_OR_MAY_NOT_HAVE_BEEN_DISCUSSED]..."

Give me a break.

And it's a three paragraph email, almost every time, with the most boring references anyone can ever think of. It's like cars. Everywhere you look, it's all gray, white, or black. Thanks to my daughter for noticing that and getting happy every time we spot a red one. 

"Why is every red car old" is not what I expected to hear in 2025.

Also, when you add the tagline to the name of the podcast, it also works as a filter for those who say they listened to the latest episode in the email but didn't. I learned this from 💡Daniël Granja Baltazar, thank you 🇵🇹 

Thank you to all the spam-as-a-service platforms like Apollo and Instantly. You really made the world better. Because if anyone can spam anyone, everyone will spam everyone.

Also, it's not the AI that's the problem. It's the lazy humans using AI pretending to do work that never should've been done in the first place. More meaningless BS done faster. 

A mix of slop and spam.

Rant over, or just getting started.

I think you could argue that in the last 12 months 22-year old WordPress had more meaningful updates than ChatGPT.

Does this sound crazy?

ChatGPT added "web search" on October 31, 2024, so it doesn't count here.

I'm not saying the answer is clear, just suggesting that fixing accessibility and performance for millions of websites might be more important than introducing "reasoning" models and GPT-5.

And let's leave the announced features and spyware browser out of this, because most of that is to ChatGPT what WooCommerce is to WordPress - a separate product built on top of the core product. 

Except WooCommerce is real and it works today.

Is BuiltWith data reliable?

The most popular testing platform by numbers of installations in top 1M websites in October 2025 is... Google Optimize (360).

This is the internet AI Agents are supposed to figure out how to work with. 99 out of 100 websites look like the beginning of a Hoarders episode. 

AI Agents powered by LLMs that hallucinate when you ask them a simple question.

Good luck.

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