Webcology

This was a technical heavy show focusing on talking announcements from Pubcon, Google’s Feb2023 Product Reviews Update, how Bing uses AI content, changes to credentials at Search Console, Russian propagandists exploiting Twitter verification, and the cases in front of the US Supreme Court that might threaten Section 260. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https:...

This was a news and review show, wrapping up a number of weeks of talking about AI's effects on the search and on digital marketing. Going into the show hosts Jim Hedger of Digital Always Media and Kristine Schachinger of Sites Without Walls are expected to cover a lot of Google news and announcements. Almost predictively, AI managed to dominate a lot of the conversation despite our best inten...

Earlier this week, Microsoft and Google both announced they’re introducing different types of AI into search and related products with staged press events. Both of today’s guests have spent a lot of time thinking about and working with machine learning and AI in their digital marketing careers. Duane Forrester thinks about emerging technologies from the point of view of a leading business tool mak...

We had a truly interesting show following last week's Yandex data leak. Mike King, CEO of iPullRank sits in as a guest for the full hour. This is the first week Kristine Schachinger from Sites Without Walls in Las Vegas has sat in the official co-host's seat. Welcome home, Kristine! This is the second week in a row I was able to write the intro to a guest while listening to their music on...

This was Dave’s last show as cohost and it was a special one. Over the past few weeks, we have been witnessing and in many cases, participating in the greatest transformation of the digital age. The AI revolution is in full swing and Dave is an emerging expert in the fields of AI and machine learning relating to the search. We have also seen significant changes in how Google wants to look at conte...

Today we spoke with the Founder of Inlinks and one of the truly great innovators in the SEO world, Dixon Jones. Dixon has made or been at the C-Level of two of the most important SEO tools, Majestic and Inlinks. Dixon was Marketing Director at Majestic from 2009 to 2018, leaving to help found InLinks. Based in the UK, his team at Majestic won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation for char...

2023 is going to be a year of extraordinary change. The last three years feel like a coiled spring with a build-up of so much potential energy prepared to become kinetic it will feel like the advent of mass-computing all over again. This might be particularly jarring for some and present ranges of opportunities previously unknown for others. What’s happening right now is the predecessor of what mi...

Twas two weeks before Christmas and across the wide web SEOs were hitting their desks with their heads Google had come to update itself Guaranteeing no downtime For us little elves Along with a number of other Googley things, Jim Hedger and Dave Davies talk about getting Scroogled again this year.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A most excellent news round-up day with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies rolling through several major stories that affect the search industry this week. The biggest story in tech is the massive fallout from Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. It feels like the social media universe is reordering itself as Twitter and Facebook (Meta) face the biggest challenges in their histories. Advertising Inquiries: ht...

Today on Webcology Kristine Schachinger from Sites without Walls cohosts with Jim Hedger from Digital Always Media. They talk about The return of conferences and the State of Search Conference – last week in Dallas TX. They also dive into Barbados SEO – two weeks from now, as well as The 2022 Social Media Big Tech implosion AND MORE! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Op...

Ash is currently the in-house enterprise and multi-national SEO manager at  carsales.com.au/   Carsales.com.au , by the way, has a massive global footprint making Ash responsible for overseeing car sales sites around the world as well as Australia. He’s worked with Suncorp, Australian National Bank, Optus (2 nd  largest wireless carrier in AUS), Sensis – Aussie mega info corp, and several other co...

Jim Hedger and Dave Davies have a fun rambling trip through Google’s most recent September Core Update and the newest Products Review Update, both of which stopped rolling out on September 26. Explaining how Google is merging its newly gained powers of perception with its foundation in link references, Jim and Dave explore the history and implications of Google's algorithm and core updates ove...

Jim Hedger and Dave Davies cover a lot of ground today with a long talk about the Google Helpful Algorithm Update as its rollout appears to be winding down. While it’s too early to tell exactly how Helpful is going to fall out and its effects could take months to sprawl across the web, the update is having a substantial effect on sites that were actually affected.  Advertising Inquiries: https://r...

I don’t know a lot about art... Actually, that’s not true. I know a hell of a lot about art, including what I do and don’t like. Now, I don’t know a lot about philosophy... Actually, that’s not true. I also know a hell of a lot about philosophy. Life’s weird that way. Weirder still is the decision of the Colorado State Fair to award the first place finish in the Digital Arts category to Jason Alle...

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form: ·          Name:  Google helpful content update ·          Launch Date:  It began to rollout on  August 25th ·          Rollout:  It will take about two weeks to fully roll out ·          Targets:  It looks at content that was created to rank well in search over help humans ·          Search Only:  This currently only impacts...

A lot of search news this week and with Dave on the road in meetings Kristine Shachinger from Sites Without Walls in Las Vegas sat in with Jim to cover it. We started talking about Google's well-named new multi-analytic tag, The Google Tag, and how to properly apply it.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's reporting season and there's fallout on the floor. Shopify lays off 10% of the workforce on bad Ecomm bets while Meta(Facebook) posts its first quarterly loss in the company's history... Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Most SEOs consider Google Search Console (GSC) their source of truth and trust the data to be accurate. What if I told you that GSC doesn’t tell you all of the keywords you’re getting traffic from? In fact, the tool doesn’t show a term for nearly half the clicks. These instances of hidden terms account for 46.08% of all clicks in our study. The study includes one month of data across 146,741 websi...

John Mueller Says Search Result pages are relatively similar to no to low effort category pages.  https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-query-pages-equivalent-to-low-effort-category-pages-33699.html FCC does not have the authority to force Apple or Google to remove TikTok from their stores however the US government continues to warn against it after US data was accessed by ByteDance Engineers...

Several years of Mobile First. What’s changed? https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mobile-first-index-guide/437472/ Google clarifies 15MB is really big https://www.seroundtable.com/google-clarifies-15mb-googlebot-limit-33670.html 8 Tips on Ecommerce from Googler, Alan Kent https://www.seroundtable.com/google-offers-8-tips-on-e-commerce-seo-33676.html FCC Commissioner asks Google and Apple t...

Greg’s Guide to Social Media Algorithms https://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-algorithms/453220/ Roger Montti on LaMDA https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-lamda-sentient/454820/ Google updates its notes on HTTP status codes https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-http-status-codes-googlebot-job-posting-docs-33638.html Google: Hypens over underscores in URLs https://www.seroun...

Google Researcher Punished Saying " Google’s Artificial Intelligence Had Achieved Sentience" as Google placed Blake Lemoine on leave last week after he published transcripts of conversations between himself, a Google “collaborator”, and the company’s LaMDA (language model for dialogue applications) chatbot development system. Is AI sentient? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/...

Google Core Update finished rolling out https://www.seroundtable.com/google-may-2022-core-update-done-rolling-out-33562.html EU Publishers and Webmasters can’t block US traffic without also blocking Google and Googlebot  https://www.seroundtable.com/eu-publishers-block-us-users-google-33557.html Don’t add your company name to image alt-text. It’s redundant, undescriptive, and not helpful https://w...

Reports say Apple is likely to announce a new user-centric web search. However, for the search engine to become functional, Apple wants to wait till January 2023 to do so. Apple published a list of things that might affect rankings back in 2020 • Aggregated user engagement with search results • Relevancy and matching of search terms to webpage topics and content • Number and quality of links from...

Jim and Kristine comment on the sudden passing of the great Bill Slawski, the Dean of SEO https://www.seroundtable.com/rip-bill-slawski-33446.html May 2022 Broad Core Update  https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/05/may-2022-core-update More FAQs being promoted in Rich Results? https://www.seroundtable.com/google-showing-more-search-results-with-faq-rich-results-33479.html Don’t get hung...