Confessions of an SEO®

This week's topic comes from Google's own podcast - Search Off the Record where Danny Sullivan provides Google's take on whether or not we should change our content formats ONLY to help get cited by AI models more. Needless to say, I share my "irreverent" opinion backed up with never before shared testing data that backs up one of Google's patents which supports chunking...

New Season's first episode. In this week's show there's some confession and then an insight on what a horizontal analysis brought forth about backlinks for semantic graph. Last week's episode https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/helpful-content-analysis-tool-vizzex-season-5-episode-51/ ⁠ Mentioned in the show ⁠ Test Semantic Software on Wordpress. Apply to be a part of the be...

Last episode of Season 5 and I get to play with the cure for any Helpful Content issues on your wordpress sites - and this is just the beginning. Apply to be a part of the beta for Vizzex. https://vizzex.ai/ Last week's episode https://carolynholzman.com/a-few-of-my-favorite-things-in-2025-season-5-ep-50/ Mentioned in the show Decoding the Helpful Content System of Google Test Semantic Softwar...

Wow, episode 50 with one more left in Season 5. In this show I share my favorite episodes over the last 49. Join me as I countdown my top 3 favs. Last week's episode https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/a-good-kind-of-sticker-shock-season-5-ep-49/ Mentioned in the show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2025-12-01/Disinformation_report Top 3 favs #3 - Season 5, ep...

This week I share one of the most offline kinds of marketing that this SEO loves because it leverages a revenue stream that is easy to forget and costly to ignore. Last week's episode https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/written-in-the-logs-googleothers-gemini-alignment-season-5-ep-48/ Test Semantic Software on Wordpress - Apply here: https://vizzex.ai/ Tools that I use and recommend: In...

Its almost like the move to Gemini was planned for a long, long time. Recent server logs revealed an expanded type of crawler with a distinctive pattern seen prior to the change to Mobile First on Halloween on October 2023. Last week's episode https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/podcast/vector-embedding-for-2025-alec-season-5-episode-47/ Mentioned in the show: https://www.webmasterworld.com/sea...

In this episode we're playing the 'connection' game again - using my favorite crayon, The Helpful Content System Analysis and how vector embedding explains in more engineering jargon the same thing I've been saying. Don't worry I explain what I mean so it makes sense to an non-SEO person. Beta Sign up - Google Form Last week's episode https://carolynholzman.com/breathing-th...

This week's topic was inspired from a Twitter post from Suganthan Mohanadasan suggesting that the SEO community has a mental health issue - we're arguing now over everything - no consensus anywhere. And no one is talking about it. Let's dive into this on this week's Confessions of an SEO. Last week's episode SEO vs GEO vs AIO equals IR Mentioned in the show: Twitter post https:...

This week's topic is "What Do We Call What We Do?". Is it still SEO? Or is is GEO or AIO? Lots of discussions but ultimately I think there's a more accurate description - IRO - Information Retrieval Optimization. IMHO we are doing is what we have always done - optimize for Information Retrieval. Last week's episode The Halloween Google Update That Never Happened Mentioned in...

Thank you to Ahrefs for being the sponsor of this episode. Check out the Webmaster Tools - https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This week's show topic is a response to the speculation of a Halloween Google Core Update. Since I had the data from all the dates in question, I thought it might be f...

Thank you to Ahrefs for being the sponsor of this episode. Check out Brand Radar https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This week's topic was inspired from a fellow SEO, Shaun Anderson, creating his breakdown of Google's internal Content Warehouse API documentation that was leaked in May 2024. I...

This week I took everyone with me on my new project - more of a cautionary tale for business owners but wow was it entertaining, subtly sad and ultimately resolved even if the friendship didn't make it. I'm definitely enjoying this new to me project and looking forward to setting up the basics out of the gate. Here's what happened this week. Last Week's episode ⁠⁠ https://www.confe...

Never listen to news articles on the radio while in your car about electric infrastructure unless you like to torture the brain on un-sustainability issues. In this week's show let's talk about how civil war battlefields and AI power demands intersect and how that depressing concept lead me to a positive, more hopeful place about the capacity for the human brain to find a new way for an ol...

Thank you to Ahrefs for being the sponsor of this episode. Automate technical SEO with Ahrefs https://ahrefs.com/ai-tech-seo?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025. This week's show is me parsing out the answer to a question that I regularly get asked in my forensic analysis consulting. The TOP issue that I find regularly in my co...

This week's show caps off a spectacular September for Google. This latest in the madcap adventures of dog in the manger style approach - Google killed off the &num=100 parameter. The backbone of many SEO tools using the Google API. While ruled a monopoly, they get to keep Chrome and have to share their index data. Let's connect the dots. Last Week's episode https://www.confessionsofanseo.com/p...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Apply a brand marketing use case to monitor and measure using Ahrefs. https://ahrefs.com/use-cases/brand-marketing?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This show is kind of a follow up to Season 1, episode 2 "Why I Dislike Client SEO" . But in this episode I parse out why we...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Get tickets and check out the speaker lineup for Ahrefs Evolve. https://ahrefsevolve.com/?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This time every year since 2022, I take the time to celebrate the "birthday" of this project. It is, outside of Google, the longest running SEO test...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Use Ahrefs for Competitive Intelligence. You can get started with Ahrefs for free today! https://ahrefs.com/use-cases/competitive-intelligence?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This week's topic is about where Google stops and Chrome begins and much like the judge in the antitr...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Learn about Ahrefs Web Analytics. You can get started with Ahrefs for free today! https://ahrefs.com/web-analytics?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This week's topic is about the recent incident where Googlebot and even Bingbot stopped crawling some particular sites. Lots of i...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Learn about Ahrefs Brand Radar Addon. You can get started with Ahrefs for free today! https://ahrefs.com/brand-radar?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 In this episode I share my thoughts about the opening at Google for the New Google Search Liason position. It has a new name and de...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Learn about Ahrefs Always-On-Audit tool. Get started with Ahrefs for free today! https://ahrefs.com/site-audit?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 In this episode I confess that I haven't been fully vocal about what has shifted but more importantly what has been rattling in my he...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Learn about Ahrefs Marketing Platform and their GBP Monitor. Get started for free today! https://ahrefs.com/gbp-monitor?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 This week's episode was a reality check on an article that was teasing with providing from fresh take on Google's indexa...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Learn about Ahrefs Marketing Platform's Site Explorer in Webmaster Tools and get started for free ⁠https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025⁠ Catching up in Linkedin this week was sobering reality. None of us like it - and the way past this is likely thro...

This past week I witnessed Google's crawling system quietly issue a type of crawler that I hadn't seen before. Its a googlebot along with a South Korean's search engine crawler agent that has a particular crawling function. In this episode I talk about how I know this came from Google and due to the specificity of how the string is styled and the timing of Korean language and support in Gemini and...

Thank you to Ahrefs for sponsoring this episode. Learn about Ahrefs Marketing Platform's Site Audit in Webmaster Tools and get started for free https://ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools?utm_source=CarolynHolzman&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=partnerships&utm_content=Q2_2025 Hreflang. International SEO. Shopify ability to create subdirectories to target international audiences. Couple th...