---
title: Research | Tanuj Sharma
url: https://tanujsharma.xyz/research
---

# Research

Working studies on how Google and AI assistants like ChatGPT find, index and recommend websites. Hypotheses stay marked as hypotheses until there is first-party data to back them.

### [What 400K+ crawled-but-not-indexed URLs can teach us about large-scale SEO.](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/crawled-not-indexed-large-scale-seo)

Programmatic SEO · Ongoing · Dataset: 400K+ URLs · Updated October 2026

A working study of crawl behaviour, page differentiation, internal linking and site architecture across a large programmatic URL inventory.

### [How AI referral traffic behaves differently from traditional search.](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/ai-referral-traffic-vs-search)

AI search · Ongoing · Dataset: External benchmarks + first-party measurement in progress · Updated October 2026

A study of what happens after someone arrives from ChatGPT, Perplexity or another AI assistant instead of a traditional search engine.

### [What happens when you remove thousands of low-value URL combinations?](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/removing-low-value-url-combinations)

Technical SEO · Experiment in progress · Dataset: Large programmatic URL inventory · Updated October 2026

A controlled experiment in reducing redundant programmatic URL inventory and measuring what changes in crawling, indexation and search visibility.

## How these studies work

- **One question per study.** Each study starts with a question I could not answer from existing advice.
- **Every claim is labelled.** Fact: published by a primary source such as Google, and linked. Observation: something I saw in the data. Interpretation: what I think it means. Hypothesis: what I expect but have not tested yet.
- **Sources are numbered.** Every outside claim links to where it came from, so you can check it.
- **Results need a comparison.** I only call something a result after comparing before and after, or changed pages against unchanged ones.
- **Studies change in public.** When new data comes in, the study is updated and the change is logged with a date.
- **Failures get published.** If an experiment does not work, that is still the result, and it goes up too.

## Research into practice

I publish what I learn here. At MarketingPal, I use what holds up to run search and marketing for lean teams. https://marketingpal.co