About Manikandan NagappanI open the crawl before I offer an opinion.
Enterprise SEO, evidence first. AI that operates the tools, not replaces them.
I’m Manikandan Nagappan, an enterprise SEO and AI search practitioner from Chennai, India. Over ten years, from content writing through four product SaaS companies to TCS, I’ve learned that good SEO starts underneath the interface, and only counts once the change ships.
Credited by Search Engine Roundtable for spotting Google search tests since 2017- 10+ years in SEO
- Product SaaS → enterprise services
- Chennai, India
- Technical SEO
- AEO
- GEO
The short version
Who is Manikandan Nagappan?
This site is part professional identity, part working notebook and part testing ground.
Manikandan Nagappan is an enterprise SEO and AI search practitioner based in Chennai, India, with more than ten years in SEO. After product companies Eventjini, Kissflow, Disprz and OneReach.ai, he is now an Assistant Consultant at TCS, Chennai. He writes at SEOAnalyst.me independently, documenting technical SEO, agentic SEO workflows and AI discoverability (AEO and GEO), and separating what he has observed from what is still a hypothesis.
At a glance
Ten years of search, in five numbers.
- 10+ yrs
in SEO, across 5+ teams
- 5X
product sign-ups from programmatic SEO in 12 months, B2B SaaS
- 3X
organic SQLs and YoY ARR pipeline, B2B SaaS
- 3X+
AI search visibility on ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, agentic AI product
- 13
languages of international SEO launched, B2B SaaS
Figures as reported for each role on my LinkedIn profile.
In the news
Spotted by Search Engine Roundtable.
Search Engine Roundtable is Barry Schwartz’s daily search industry news site. It has credited me for spotting Google search tests since 2017, and embedded my conversations with Google’s team.
- Google Tests Videos On Right Side Of Search Results Page, AgainCredited for spotting the test
- Google Tests Search Refinements In Autocomplete For DesktopCredited for spotting the test
- Google Search Tests More Pagination Options: More Results, Infinite Scroll & MoreMy tweet embedded
- After Months Of Testing, Google Launches People Also Search For BoxMy tweet embedded
- The Google Request Indexing Quota Seems To Be EnforcedPart of the embedded discussion
- Google: Capitalizing Words In URL Doesn’t Help Convey EmotionsJohn Mueller’s reply to my question
What I believe
Operate, Don’t Replace.
“AI shouldn’t replace your SEO tools. It should learn to operate them.”
Screaming Frog, Search Console and server logs already hold the evidence. I want AI to connect them, organise what they show and carry out bounded tasks, while a practitioner checks the reasoning and decides what happens next. A convincing demo is a starting point; a dependable workflow takes testing, clear limits and repeat usefulness.
Evidence before opinion
Open the crawl, the logs and the data first. Assumptions are fine as starting hypotheses, as long as someone checks them.
Findings must ship
A recommendation needs impact, scope, dependencies and a place in the queue. Otherwise it stays a slide.
Observed is not hypothesised
AI search changes fast. I label what I have seen separately from what I suspect, so the work stays useful when the systems change.
What I work on
Four areas of SEO and AI search I keep investigating.
Technical & enterprise SEO
Crawlability, rendering, log files and Core Web Vitals, approached as one connected system. Engineering taught me to look for where a problem actually starts.
Read: Log file analysis for SEO →Agentic SEO workflows
Claude Desktop, Model Context Protocol and APIs, wired to Screaming Frog, Search Console and BigQuery. Less repetitive handling, more room to investigate.
See the experiments →Content Quality Intelligence
An evolving build that combines crawl data, Search Console, entities, n-grams and embeddings with observations from AI answers, to make content gaps easier to explain.
Follow the build →AEO & GEO (AI search visibility)
How entities, clear content and supporting evidence shape visibility in AI answers. Query fan-out and product detail pages are my current focus.
Read the how-to guides →How I got here
From content writing to product SaaS and enterprise search.
Ten years, 5+ teams. Product companies taught me speed and ownership. Enterprise services teach me scale and stakeholders.
See the full journey on LinkedIn ↗B.E., Electronics & Communication Engineering
I learned to see websites as connected systems. The OSI model still shapes how I trace requests, rendering and page delivery.
Content writing and the Blogspot experiments
I started out writing content, then built a Blogspot site of my own to learn how websites really worked. Domain forwarding and custom domains eventually became SEOAnalyst.me.
SEO Specialist, Eventjini
Owned 360° SEO, search ads aimed at a lower CPA, and regular technical audits.
SEO Specialist → Senior SEO Specialist, Kissflow
Led programmatic SEO that drove 5X product sign-ups in 12 months, a WordPress to HubSpot migration with zero traffic loss, and multilingual international SEO in 13 languages.
Diploma in Applied Data Science
It connected raw data to business decisions: from what a pattern shows to what should change, and how we’ll know it helped.
SEO Manager, Disprz
Delivered 3X organic SQLs and 3X YoY ARR pipeline, built glossary and FAQ silos with Search Console and BigQuery, handled a site migration, and ran multilingual international SEO for the Middle East and South-East Asia.
AI SEO Manager, OneReach.ai
Owned visibility across Google and AI answers: 3X+ AI search visibility on ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews, schema and topical hubs built for LLM retrieval, and monitoring of prompts, coverage and citations.
Assistant Consultant, TCS, Chennai
Content, SEO, AEO and GEO practice. Here the hard question is rarely “what’s wrong?” It is “how does this get implemented?”
Where to find my work
Don’t take my word for it. Read the work.
Selected writing
Community & conversations
- SEO Community India ↗
Practical observations shared with fellow practitioners.
- SaaS SEO Alliance 2.0, Delhi-NCR
Attended; came back with new questions on entities, measurement and automation.
- Search Engine Roundtable ↑
Credited for spotting Google search tests since 2017.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions
Who is Manikandan Nagappan?
An enterprise SEO and AI search practitioner based in Chennai, India, with more than ten years in SEO. He is an Assistant Consultant at TCS and writes at SEOAnalyst.me independently.
What does Manikandan Nagappan specialise in?
Technical and enterprise SEO, agentic SEO workflows that connect AI to tools such as Screaming Frog and Search Console, content quality analysis, site migrations, international SEO, and AI search visibility through AEO and GEO.
Which companies has he worked with?
Product companies Eventjini, Kissflow, Disprz and OneReach.ai, and currently Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
Has his work been featured in the SEO industry press?
Yes. Search Engine Roundtable has credited him for spotting Google search tests since 2017, including videos in the right panel (2024) and search refinements in autocomplete (2022).
What is the “Operate, Don’t Replace” principle?
His view that AI shouldn’t replace established SEO tools but learn to operate them, carrying out bounded tasks while a practitioner reviews the reasoning and makes the decisions.
Beyond search
When I’m not reading crawl data.
Curiosity doesn’t switch off at the end of the workday.
- Stargazing
- Long solo bike rides
- Singing
- Chess
- Writing Tamil love stories
Bring the question you’re working through.
A technical SEO puzzle, an agentic workflow that won’t behave, or a doubt about how to measure AI visibility. I’d enjoy comparing notes.
Views are my own. SEOAnalyst.me is independent of the organisations I have worked for, work for today or may work for in the future.