Webcology

This episode, recorded in the seventh week of the longest Google update ever, covers a lot of news stories as quickly as we can. Stories range from news about AI and the various players in the industry pushing to integrate AI into everything to general advice on dealing with the various Googly issues search brings. We discuss the new sets of Google videos being made available, marvel at John Mueller's unending well of patience,...

Recorded on the 36th day of the March 2024 Core Update, the news segment of the show discusses what we know about the Core Update including that Helpful Content has been rolled into the Core Update. That suggests it will be part of Google's normal operations and that recovery can be possible.  Now, it's said if you don't understand the past you'll never figure out the future. One of the longest serving SEOs in the b...

As Google's March 2024 Core Update marches on towards its eventual end, Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger talk about how a week's worth of rumors, assumptions, and half-baked ideas have led a wide section of the industry to go off half-cocked about the sweeping effects of this update. People are so angry with Google they're deleting and blocking official spokepersons in forums like Reddit while second guessing Google&...

As Google's March 2024 Core Update enters its fourth week, and major league baseball finally returns, hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger cover a lot of conversation, theory, and the rising F.U.D. about the update. There are a lot of rumors, deep anger and resentment, and some genuinely bizarre advice being shared in SEO forums. There is also some genuinely good research and discussion happening in other SEO circles but i...

As the March 2024 Core Update enters its third week, hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger work to dissect and discuss different aspects of it. The Great Spam Hunt part of the update was said to have ended earlier this week and the fallout has been massive. Along with sites caught in the initial manual penalty sweep, countless niche sites have seen dramatic losses of traffic. Is a recovery possible and if so, what do webmasters...

In the second week of the largest Google Core Update in Google Core Update history Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger are joined by Patrick Hathaway, cofounder and CEO of what is arguably the most cost-effective crawler/auditor tool out there, Sitebulb. During a core update, there's not a lot of work you can do on content that's going to make a difference until the update is over. What you can do is trim the sails and batt...

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, except for those times when March comes in like a lion and takes out a wide swath of sheep. Then they just say, "whoa!". So Google rode into March like a hungry lion with a staggeringly complicated Core Update, a very serious shellacking of manual penalties, changes to who can monetize content with AdSense, a multi-sweep set of algorithm updates, and changes to g...

Due to a scheduling conflict, this show was recorded a day late but it went nearly an extra hour overtime because there was just so much to talk about. There was a lot of negative news about AI as AI developers find new sources of content to train on and users find new ways to use and abuse new AI tool sets. From AI developing or enhancing video games to the depravities that have horrified a proprieter of an AI powered porn-site to...

Since leaving Kyiv just after the Russian invasion two years ago, Anton Shulke has been raising funds at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/antonshulke to help pets that got displaced, injured, or abandoned during the brutal ongoing war in Ukraine. Anton joins us to talk about the day-long virtual SEO conference, SEO for Paws (https://fajela.com/events/seo-for-paws/) on February 29 at 10:55 am. Check out the line-up! After speaking with ...

It was a busy news week made up mostly of Google trying to disabuse parts of the SEO community from the idea that E-E-A-T is anything more than an ideal. Google came out and said E-E-A-T is absolutely and unequivocally not a ranking factor, a ranking signal, or a ranking system and that E-E-A-T has less to do with how sites rank as much as it does with things Google Search Quality Raters should look for when evaluating the quality ...

Legendary SEO and all around friendly guy Tony Wright joins hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger for a wide open discussion about the future of SEO. Founder of one of the oldest agencies still operating, WrightIMC, Tony has lived through and adapted to sweeping changes in the course of his career. This episode, recorded on February 8, 2024, covers how to roll with change in a time when even Google itself appears to be having t...

Google's reporting major indexing issues and that seemed like the most appropriate metaphor for this week's show. WTF is going on with Google? The SERPs are weird, the future direction of the company is uncertain, it is sending seemingly strange new messages in Search Console, and sometimes its spokespeople say outright contradictory things. To make it more interesting, Google's recent weirdness is only one of many wave...

Tom Rusling from Audience Key drops in to talk about the myriad of ways Audience Key makes content creation and performance tracking easy, at least, that's what he came to talk about. This was a fun interview covering a lot of thoughts about the emerging content economy, how to build tools that meet SEO needs, and how AI is doing all the stuff AI is doing. We also talk about a massive data breach that compromised over 26 billio...

Three weeks into the New Year and Google has been mostly quiet, with the exception of the hounded and outraged who lost in the most recent updates which may well have been upgrades. Google has undergone several fundamental changes in the past year, the greatest of which are affected by AI. Today we talk about those changes in Google search itself and in the business of being Google. Is Google getting worse? It depends. On one hand,...

Another week, another article explaining how SEO has shaped the Web was written by someone who doesn't appear to understand how SEO shaped the Web. The week hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about a piece that appears in The Verge that almost but not quite gets it and then proceeds to share numerous SEO myths and misunderstandings. We also talk about Google's SGE product carousel, more ways to use schema, and n...

We round up 2023 and look forward to 2024 with what is arguably the most experienced panel in SEO podcasting. Joining Webcology hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger are Ryan Jones - SVP of SEO Razorfish, Topher Kohan - Director of SEO for CBS Sports Paramount Global, Carolyn Shelby - Principle SEO at YoastSEO and Newfold Digital, Doc Sheldon - CEO of Web Narwhal, Grant Simmons - Director of SEO at Clickfluent, and Steve Wiidem...

Gavin Klondike joined Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger to talk about Google's intentions with the SGE moving past the end of the year. Gavin helped explain AI and LLMs earlier this year in our ELI5 episode. This is a fun deep dive into how Google might generate and present SGE results and another good explanation of Googlie AI.

Both Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger have coped with the chaos of personal loss in the last month while talking about months of chaos at Google search. Jim talks about the loss of his father-in-law while Kristine copes with having to leave a condo she's loved living in for nearly 20 years. Meanwhile, over at Google, goalposts got moved to define Parasite SEO, some Gemini videos appear to be far out of a credible viewport, S...

YoastSEO has a holiday present ready for its Pro users, especially those who use WooCommerce. YoastSEO's Principle SEO Carolyn Shelby joins Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger to talk about the new AI feature in this the 24th version of the Yoast SEO tool. Carolyn is one of the longest serving SEOs in the business. Her career, which started in 1995, spans the entire history of digital marketing. She brings nearly three de...