Webcology

Matt Mullenweg is seeing more legal resistance to his WP-Emperor schtick and reacting like a manbaby about it. In a similar universe, the outgoing President warns of the coming transition to an oligarchy run by big-tech. Meta moves to the far right by removing fact checking and allowing the racist and multi-phobic content back on its platform as alternative facts carry as much or more weight in th...

The world itself is burning as hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk through the sudden and sweeping changes coming to search results pages in 2025. While AI-faked images of the Hollywood sign burning are posted as news on partisan websites we talk about the sudden drought of fresh content for LLMs to train on now that everything ever written has been consumed and the use of AI created sy...

Welcome to the start of the second quarter of the 21st century. In the Chinese zodiac, 2025 is a year of the Snake, a period of extreme transformation as old ways are shed and new ones adopted. It seems like an apt description of what the coming year will be like. Things are going to change and if the news of this week is any indication, that change is so sweeping and encompassing, it is creating...

An all star SEO panel made up of Mordy Oberstein (Wix Studio), Mark Traphagen (seoClarity), and Jenny Halasz (JLH Marketing) joins hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger to look back at the events, changes, and ideas of 2024 and into a new world of even more rapid change as AI grows from its infancy towards its adolecence. An incredibly interesting conversation between five veteran search marke...

Duda's cofounder Amit Glatt found time to sit with us to talk about the history, evolution, and future of the website builder and management platform he helped create. Since its founding 15 years ago, Duda has grown to become one of the top-tier enterprise website builders on the web. Duda feels like it's on a growth sprint right now. They have some interesting tools for web makers to work...

A December 2024 Core Update started running a few short days after the November 2024 Core Update ended and mere hours before this episode was recorded live to podcast. At the same time, Google reported minor but persistent indexing issues. Otherwise, Matt Mullenweg was last seen retreating with his tail between his legs following the judicial spanking he received trying to defend his actions at Wo...

Recorded in the week after Black Friday hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk through a bunch of stories affecting the world of search. The November 2024 Core Update conveniently ended an hour before we went into the recording session. We talk a bit about winners and losers and what we think will be the effects of this core update (while jokingly anticipating an upcoming December 2024 Cor...

Twas the eve before Thanksgiving and through the studio's haunts, no creatures were talking or recording our thoughts. The channels all hummed with inactivity because the producers went home to be with family. When out of the ether some showbiz thoughts clattered, The Show Must Go On!, because nothing else matters. - Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger take a last look at the week's...

It was a busy news week with a continuing November Core Update, Google's Site Reputation Abuse Policy Update and the subsequent major publisher crackdown, the DOJ recommending the sale of Chrome and possibly Android, lost GA4 data, a now missing GSC Experience Report, OpenAI deleting critical incriminating evidence by mistake, Meta level pig-butchering, the TwiXter eXodous, and the promise of...

Recorded two days after the 2024 presidential election, Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger contemplate the outcome and how a Trump presidency might affect the tech and search marketing industries. Tech can expect an era of deregulation, starting with Trump's aim to strip away federal safeguards over AI development, deferring any regulatory oversight to individual states. With enormous shifts...

The Helpful Content Update wasn't about the content and the hope of recovery wasn't about to happen. Web publishes hit by the Helpful Content Update in September 2023 who attended Google's Web Creator Summit at the Googleplex this week were told the hope they'd held for seeing their rankings recover were likely in vain and that those placements were gone and not likely coming back....

Jono Alderson is a well known SEO Consultant, one of the top WordPress contributors, and a bonafide Digital Superstar. He joined Jim and Kristine to fill us in on the backstory and implications of the ongoing drama in the world of WordPress. Jono has been around for a long time. He knows where the bodies are buried and in this interview, he explains how it unfolded to get to where we're at now...

Longtime WordPress contributor Jono Alderson joins Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger to discuss the very weird goings on at WordPress. The interview starts around the 35 minute mark. Before Jono joins us, Kristine and Jim discuss the news of the week including a short update on the WordPress situation and stories from Google, OpenAI, TwiXter, and more. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.co...

A busy, news heavy show has hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger cover three major stories, each of which could occupy a full hour long show. The WordPress mega-drama continues with the founder's faction at Automattic grabbing control of one of their rival WP-Engine's best known custom WP-Contributions, Advanced Custom Fields in a forking incident many think close to theft. Also this...

Jim Hedger returns from bereavement time as he and cohost Kristine Schachinger learn that Matt Mullenweg has found a way to make the WordPress controversy much worse that it was when it started by banning WPEngine, establishing a loyalty pledge complete with a box to check to swear your WP-Loyalty, running down investors, getting himself and the commercial arm of WordPress sued for Extortion, and...

A war is being waged in the deepest heart of the Open Source movement for that movement's very soul. Last week, Matt Mullenweg, the original founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic, the commercial arm of WordPress, laid down his version of the law by banning WPEngine from the greater WordPress environment. The dispute centers around money and time contributed to the collective which provide...

So it seems that anyone who's anyone has an anti-trust suit or some other major legal challenge taking place, especially if you're with Apple or Google. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about the various anti-trust cases covering two types of Googley advertising monopolies and a spiffy tax dodge scheme the EU's angry with Apple and Google over. We also talk about the intr...

The August 2024 Core Update ended a week early and it might still be too soon to tell the winners from the losers but one thing is clear, Google can always be depended on to try to do what's best for Google. Some have seen drops in traffic while others have seen increases and still others have seen no changes at all. This update does appear to be setting a foundation for an increase in AI Over...

As the August 2024 Core Update continues, Google introduces Custom Gems a chatbot framework that promotes the creation and constant training of AI "Experts", digital companions to help Google users go about the business of being hypercreative. This is possibly the greatest challenge to all other AI makers and arguably the most audacious outline for the future of virtual expertise. Back to...

It's been a week since Google dropped the long anticipated August 2024 Core Update. Hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger talk about tempering early expectations in what is almost certainly a multi-faceted update, and discuss what SEOs and site owners might expect as the next three weeks grind on. There are promising signs for some and even some reversals of misfortune for others but there...

To say Google core updates can be pretty big things will seem like an understatement for listeners who got hammered by the Helpful Content Updates that ran in the two previous core updates of September 2023 and March 2024. The much anticipated August 2024 Core Update, the one that hold promise of fixing the mistakes of the past, started to roll out a few hours before this episode was recorded. Hos...

After a lengthy and highly revealing trial a federal court has ruled that Google is using its enormous resources to monopolise the search market in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act. “After having carefully considered and weighed the witness testimony and evidence, the court reaches the following conclusion: Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly,” US Dist...

It'll be coming around Mountain View when it comes. It brings the promise of a new and improved, something. Google spokespersons have given Publishers reason to seize hope while Google PR talks about another shot at integrating AI Overviews into SERPs again. Hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger talk about the pending update while the web world waits for something to come in a Core Update,...

Vladimir: Well, shall we go? - Estragon: Yes, let's go. - Stage Direction: They do not move. -- Many publishers are waiting for an imminent Google Core Update hoping this time the wisdom of compassion and perhaps a rewrite of one or more Helpful Content Update cycles will bring them back to the prominence and profitability of page one placements. Google representatives have suggested this upda...

This is a rare middle of summer heavy news edition but, after a year of constant updates, reactions, retractions, retrenchments, and growing user resentment, it's been a rather busy week for Google. It was also a busy week in A.I., with TwiXter, Facebook, Microsoft, and others. Webcology hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger weave their way through stories ranging from rumours of an immine...