Sal TalashField notes on the web

Sheet 00Toronto, CanadaSix notes

Sal Talash

Field notes on the web.

Six numbered notes on how a small-business website gets made, named, found and kept: type and colour, real or generated images, a .ca domain, Google’s AI Overviews, AI crawlers, and the public help for starting a company in Toronto. Kept by the founder of UOVA.

Read note 01 How I review a website

Gluten-free birthday cakes in Leslieville | Juniper & Rye juniperandrye.ca
CakesOrderVisitOrder

Bakery · Leslieville, Toronto

Gluten-free birthday cakes, baked to order in Leslieville.

Order by Thursday, pick up on Saturday. Every allergen is listed on the order form.

Order a cake
alt="A three-layer birthday cake on the counter"Photo · real
Order by Thursday
Pick up Saturday
Allergens listed
Juniper & Rye · Leslieville, Toronto
N°01Type and colourN°02ImagesN°03DomainN°04SearchN°05CrawlersN°06Toronto Fictional example
Fig. 0 A small-business homepage, assembled as you scroll. Each step is one of the six notes.
  1. 01Type and colourTwo faces, one accent
  2. 02ImagesPhotograph facts
  3. 03DomainA .ca says “here”
  4. 04SearchNo special file
  5. 05CrawlersOne bot per job
  6. 06TorontoHelp close to free
N°02Generate mood. Photograph facts.N°01A system nobody can find is not a system.N°05These rules are not a form of access authorization.
N°04There is no special file, markup or schema for AI Overviews.N°03The .ca is a quiet signal worth sending.N°06Some of its most useful help is close to free.

Sheet 01Contents

Six notes, numbered.

Each one answers a question small businesses ask about their websites, from the official documentation, with the sources listed and dated.

  1. N°01Type & colour4 min

    Two typefaces, one accent colour: a type and colour system a small brand can actually keep

    How to choose fonts and a palette that survive a real website, real signage and a real Instagram grid, with the accessibility numbers that keep them honest.     Type & colour FIG. 1 — TWO FACES, ONE ACCENT Aa g line length 45–90 characters cap x-height baseline desc. ink 17.6:1 accent 3.1:1large only text 5.0:1≥ 4.5 ✓
  2. N°02Images4 min

    Real photography or AI imagery? A rule for every image on a small-business website

    Where generated images help, where they quietly damage trust, and what Google and the provenance standards now expect you to disclose.     Images FIG. 2 — PHOTOGRAPH FACTS, GENERATE MOOD FACT — must be realpremises · people · product · work MOOD — may be generatedtextures · diagrams · campaign art
  3. N°03Domains5 min

    Should your business use a .ca domain? Who can register one, how, and how not to lose it

    CIRA’s Canadian Presence Requirements in plain language, why you buy through a registrar, what French accented names involve, and the expiry timeline every owner should know before the renewal email goes to spam.     Domains FIG. 3 — HOW A .CA EXPIRES yourname.ca up to 45 days30 days EXPIRYauto-renewedat the registry DELETEDredemptiongrace period TO BERELEASEDthen open to all registered for 1 to 10 years at a time
  4. N°04Search4 min

    How a small business shows up in Google’s AI Overviews (it is less mysterious than it sounds)

    Google says there is no special file, no special markup and no special trick. What it does say, what it leaves out, and where I would spend the time instead.     Search FIG. 4 — NO SPECIAL FILE, NO SPECIAL MARKUP bakery near queen and broadview gluten-free AI OVERVIEW source ↓ indexed · eligible for a snippet
  5. N°05Crawlers4 min

    GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended: a robots.txt guide to AI crawlers for people who run websites

    Each AI company now runs several bots with different jobs. Blocking the wrong one can remove you from AI search while doing nothing about training. Here is what each token controls, from the vendors’ own documentation.     Crawlers FIG. 5 — ONE BOT PER JOB robots.txt TRAININGGPTBot · ClaudeBot · CCBot · Google-Extended Disallow: / SEARCHOAI-SearchBot · Claude-SearchBot Allow USER-TRIGGEREDChatGPT-User · Claude-User Allow
  6. N°06Toronto4 min

    Starting a company in Toronto? The public help that costs little or nothing

    City consultations, a library card that opens a 3D printer, a $60 registration and a startup loan programme with mentoring attached: what the official pages actually offer, and what they do not.     Toronto FIG. 6 — WHAT STARTING UP COSTS, PUBLICLY $10$100$1k$10k$100k $0consultation · library hub $60name registration $300incorporation $5,000micro-grant up to $75,000startup loan log scale · as listed on the official pages, 1 Oct 2026

Sheet 02Method

How I review a website.

Seven passes over any small-business site, in the order a stranger meets it. Each restates something I have written, with the original source. Try the controls: the page on the left is the fictional bakery from the cover.

Gluten-free birthday cakes in Leslieville | Juniper & Rye juniperandrye.ca
CakesOrderVisitOrder

Bakery · Leslieville, Toronto

Gluten-free birthday cakes, baked to order in Leslieville.Welcome to our website.

Order by Thursday, pick up on Saturday. Every allergen is listed on the order form.

Order a cake
alt="A three-layer birthday cake on the counter"Photo · real
Order by Thursday
Pick up Saturday
Allergens listed
Juniper & Rye · Leslieville, Toronto
Fictional example

  1. Pass 1 of 7

    The five-second test

    The headline has one job: tell a stranger what you do, for whom, and where, before they decide to leave. Show the page to someone for five seconds, close it, and ask what the business does and where.

    People scan. In Nielsen Norman Group’s classic study, 79% of test users scanned any new page; only 16% read word by word.

    SourceNielsen Norman Group, “How Users Read on the Web”

  2. Pass 2 of 7See note 01

    Contrast, measured, not judged

    WCAG 2.2 sets the minimum at 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. WebAIM’s 2026 analysis of a million home pages found low-contrast text on 83.9% of them.

    Keep the exact brand colour for large shapes and backgrounds, and make a darker variant of it for text and small UI. Drag the grey and watch the ratio.

    18.8:1Passes AA

    SourceW3C, Understanding WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 1.4.3

  3. Pass 3 of 7

    The tab and the search result

    The page title is the blue link in Google, the text on the browser tab and often the bold line in a link preview. Google’s guidance: a good title is “unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page.”

    “Home” is not a title. Neither is the same title on every page.

    SourceGoogle Search Central, “SEO Starter Guide”

  4. Pass 4 of 7See note 02

    Every image makes a claim

    If a customer would rely on it, it must be real: the premises, the people, the product as sold, finished work. Generated imagery is for mood: textures, diagrams, campaign art.

    Every meaningful image gets accurate alt text. WebAIM’s 2026 report found missing alternative text on 53.1% of home pages.

    SourceWebAIM, “The WebAIM Million” 2026 report

  5. Pass 5 of 7

    The first screen arrives first

    Do not lazy-load the hero image; mark it with fetchpriority="high" instead. Set width and height on every image and video so the browser reserves the space before the file arrives.

    Cookie notices and promo bars injected at the top after load push the page down. Overlay them at the bottom instead.

    Sourceweb.dev, “Optimize Cumulative Layout Shift”

  6. Pass 6 of 7

    Keyboard only, then 200%

    Unplug the mouse. Can you reach every link, button and form field with Tab, see where focus is, open and close the menu, and submit the form?

    Then zoom to 200%. Content should reflow without horizontal scrolling or overlapping.

    SourceGovernment of Ontario, “How to make websites accessible”

  7. Pass 7 of 7

    The card in the group chat

    Most people meet a website before they visit it: as a search result, a browser tab or a shared link. The card comes from og:title, og:image and og:url.

    Make a dedicated share image at least 1200 pixels wide, keep its text away from the edges, and paste the link to yourself before you share it widely.

    SourceThe Open Graph protocolLongerSal Talash on Medium: Why your website’s link preview looks wrong

Sheet 03About

About Sal Talash.

Sal Talash is the founder of UOVA, an AI website builder and creative studio in Toronto: describe a business, get a designed website, then edit it.

These field notes are written for the people who run small businesses and the people who build their websites. Each one starts from a question owners ask, and answers it from the official documentation, quoted and dated, rather than from opinion.

More of his writing, and how to reach him, is on his main site.

Plate A UOVA’s home page: the headline “Dream it. Build it.” above a prompt box that reads “Describe what you want to create…”, with starter ideas such as Lighting brand and Dental clinic.
uova.com The prompt box on UOVA’s home page, recorded from the public site on 1 October 2026.
Plate B The UOVA blog cover: the headline “Crafting culture” beside a staggered row of images, among them a hummingbird and a camera crane.
uova.com/blog The cover of UOVA’s blog, recorded the same day.

Sheet 04References

Elsewhere.

Profiles

  1. 4.0Main sitesaltalash.vercel.app
  2. 4.1LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/sal-talash-ba14a0222
  3. 4.2Field notes on the websal-talash.vercel.app
  4. 4.3YouTubeyoutube.com/@saltalash
  5. 4.4Mediummedium.com/@saltalash
  6. 4.5Bloggersaltalash.blogspot.com
  7. 4.6Xx.com/saltalash
  8. 4.7Pinterestpinterest.com/saltalash97
  9. 4.8Quoraquora.com/profile/Sal-Talash
  10. 4.9DEVdev.to/saltalash
  11. 4.10Vimeo: a short tour of UOVAvimeo.com/1234304088
  12. 4.11LinkedIn article: Focus is a list of things you have agreed not to dolinkedin.com/pulse/sal-talash-focus-list-things-you-have-agreed-do-sal-talash--cgpsc
  13. 4.12Medium: Core Web Vitals for small-business sitesmedium.com/@saltalash/sal-talash-core-web-vitals-for-small-business-sites-what-the-three-numbers-mean-and-what-actually-79657c2dcffe

Writing elsewhere

  1. LinkedIn · 2026-09-20Before you publish an AI-built website: six practical checks
  2. LinkedIn · 2026-09-20A website handoff should make the next change easy
  3. LinkedIn · 2026-09-24The two-minute decision record
  4. Medium · 2026-09-20Turn “make it feel premium” into feedback a designer can use
  5. Medium · 2026-09-20A contact form is not finished when the success message appears
  6. Medium · 2026-09-24Write errors that help people recover
  7. Medium · 2026-09-27The real cost of a website builder is the second year
  8. Blogger · 2026-09-27A better brief for an AI-built website