For a while now I've been rambling about something I call Digital Karma ...

The basic idea: not all websites are equal. Not all links are equal. And in a world where AI systems are doing more of the "reading" than humans are, trust might eventually get measured differently than it does today.

Traditional SEO treats every site like a solo competitor fighting for attention. I've been wondering what happens when sites start acting more like a network. A federation even.

This week we kind of accidentally built the first working version of it.

It Started With a Signal That Wasn't Doing Anything

One of our sites already had a karma.json file. Inside that file, a scoring system. Part of the score measured something called federation presence.

The signal existed. The concept existed. But honestly ... it wasn't doing much yet. More future planning than present reality.

Then while working through some AI infrastructure stuff, something clicked.

The federation signal wasn't supposed to measure links. It was supposed to measure relationships.

That's a completely different thing.

Roles Instead of Links

Most websites link to other websites. That doesn't mean much on its own.

The constellation idea takes a different approach -- each site declares a role.

  • Supplement Apothecary owns supplement protocols and product knowledge.
  • Age Better Today owns educational content and aging science.
  • Natural Herb Library will eventually own reference data and ingredient documentation.

Instead of every property trying to cover everything, each one is responsible for a specific layer of knowledge. And those relationships are machine-readable ... not just visible to humans. That's the part that matters.

We connected Supplement Apothecary and Age Better Today this week using federation files. Each site now declares its role, its peers, its relationship to the constellation, and verifies those relationships exist on the other end.

Small network. But a connected one. That's not the same as a collection of sites that happen to be owned by the same person.

Does Anyone Care?

Does Google care about this? No idea.

Does ChatGPT? No idea.

Will any AI system eventually use signals like this? Genuinely don't know.

But 25 years of doing this has taught me one thing ... the real opportunities don't have a name yet when they show up. A network with clearly defined responsibilities is easier for both humans and machines to understand. Understanding creates trust. That part I'm confident about.

Whether it ever becomes a ranking signal is almost beside the point. The architecture makes sense on its own.

What's Next

Right now the files are maintained manually, which works fine as a proof of concept.

Eventually I want a portfolio scanner that:

  • Verifies constellation relationships
  • Validates schema
  • Calculates karma scores
  • Flags broken federation links
  • Monitors AI endpoint health

At that point Digital Karma stops being a thought experiment. It becomes a measurable system.

For now -- one small step. We'll see where it goes.