Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm

What do you get when you mix a web that remembers everything with software that can mine the depths of that everything to draw a frighteningly accurate picture of everyone, everywhere, all the time? You get what we're all going to get with the Trump administration using Peter Thiel's Palantir platform to create meta-files on every American citizen and very likely a lot of non-American citizens. This move comes after months of allowing ex-POTUS darling Elon Musk's DOGE pillage federal databases that were once considered sacred for the personal files of American citizens and files relating to government activities. Musk, who recently fell out of favor with Trump over something to do with a fist fight, a lot of drugs, and the deputy chief-of-staff's wife, wrote that, "without me Trump would have lost the election". More to come no doubt.Meanwhile, Neil Patel's NP Digital is being sued by FTX, the crypto-scheme that made Sam Bankman-Fried infamous. Among a number of other accusations, FTX suggests NP Digital was selling them the same services it sold similar services to other business for 12X less than it charged FTX. Google notes it is seeing more searches using AI, Reddit is suing Anthropic for training on Redditor data, Amazon wants to go robot, X disallows AI models from training on X user content, Google says Gemini 2.5 Pro codes, and we discuss the Great Decoupling of clicks and impressions, and much much more. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Google AI Overviews are expanding test markets in Europe to Turkey, Sweden, and the Netherlands in advance of Google I/O. Google launched a free Generative AI Certification training program with the actual certification exam costing $99US. Google introduced "Discussions" in beta. Discussions is meant to replace Reddit as a primary source of livetime AI training resources by encouraging search users to add comments and conversation about specific topics which can then be used throughout the Google ecosystem. AI training is even more important as Google continues to commit to an AI Everything stance. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Grok has evolved from plucky truth-teller to insane drunken uncle over night with talk of genocides against white South Africans and questions about the validity of facts about the Holocaust. xAI suggests a rouge programmer is responsible however the chatbot's offensive rewriting of history continues at time of recording. Speaking of Grok, the Technology Transparency Project publicly flagged several X accounts as likely linked to US-sanctioned terrorist organizations. The group suggests terrorist groups are using Grok to write propaganda on their behalf. Furthermore, they suggest terrorist groups are using the X tip-button as a monetization tool. In other news, a Michigan State University researcher has linked belief in fake news stories to an emerging psychological issue called Problematic Social Media Use syndrome. In other news, Bing Search APIs are set to retire on August 11, 2025. The APIs will not be replaced however users are urged to consider Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents to incorporate realtime web data with generated LLM responses. We also learned that Google has been rethinking their search stack and are considering how fundamental components of search can be reimagined in a LLM environment. AIOverview links are all considered position 1 in Search console while 43% of AI Overview links point back to Google search results. All this and a lot more in a heavily Googlized edition.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Google is fast approaching the FIND OUT stage of its multiple anti-trust cases with the US Department of Justice and EU regulatory bodies. It is very possible the DOJ could order Google to sever its relationship with its Chrome browser in coming months. That leads to speculation on what other decisions might be coming down and how throwing spanners into the cogs of the machine Alphabet has built might effect Google's operations in the future. Those wags at OpenAI suggested they would be happy to take Chrome off Google's hands if the courts order it. Meanwhile, there's more controversy over OpenAI's restructuring plans, Google was caught forcing Motorola to block Perplexity.AI on certain phones, Meta's oversight board is suddenly worried about Meta's new policies effecting human rights, US search ad revenues grew by nearly 16% in 2024, and according to Gemini "You can't lick a badger twice". We know that last statement to be untrue but won't be answering any questions about it. All this and much much more in this edition of Webcology.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Mikkel deMib Svendsen is a SEO Legend. One of the original SEOs, Mikkel was known around early search conferences as the man in the bright orange suit. His almost adversarial take on Google in the early days set a tone and standard for how SEOs felt about working with the search engines in a friendly game of cat and mouse. Mikkel has continued practicing SEO while pursuing several other life passions, including a highly successful side-career as a potter and pottery instructor on YouTube where he has a popular channel. He has also released a massive and highly comprehensive SEO Master Course. We caught up with Mikkel in late March 2025 and got this interview. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Google introduced its new Ad Strength Best Practices Guide which got hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger to pine for the days when the SEO world used cool names like "Ad Strength" to describe stuff. Google has again been declared a monopoly by yet another US court while, just to keep up, a UK based class action over Google's search dominance has been approved. It wasn't a great week for Google legally. It wasn't a great week technically either as a bug continues to exclude the first image in many Product Snippet image carousels. A Financial Times interview with Google head of search Elizabeth Reid suggests Google is getting strong user feedback about AIO results and is looking for new ways to connect originating websites with information in AIO results. We go on to discuss censorship in social media, particularly at Facebook and TwiXter. Bing Answer Snippets is starting to self-reference back to its own search results. Google says structured data does not make your site rank better, again. Google also noted that international search TLDs (ie: Google.ca, Google.co.uk. Google.fr, etc...) will be phased out in 2026 though localization will continue to play a factor in certain result sets. All this and a lot more in a fast paced newsy sort of edition.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A far less political edition than most this year let's Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger spend more time talking about tech news, web marketing, and SEO. We start by marking the movement of Mordy Oberstein as he leaves a highly successful tenure as head of branding at website builder Wix. More than anyone in our memory, Mordy helped Wix overcome what was a difficult reputation which stands as stellar testimony to his powers as a brand marketer. We note how Google Business Profiles is still broken, weeks after reporting the interface was riddled with bugs. Matt Mullenweg's for-profit arm of WordPress, Automattic laid off 16% of its workforce in order to improve profitability and capacity to invest as he moves to restructure Automattic. We also talk about Tinder and flirtbots, the assumption of a right to bend copyright rules by OpenAI, Elon Musk's xAI's $33billion purchase of X (TwiXter) from owner Elon Musk, Bing's expanding Copilot, the gravity effect large brands have at Google, and a lot more fun techie stuff. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The March 2025 Core Update continues to roll out though early indicators are showing in search console. Google Business had a reverficiation bug that caused chaos for a few days that appears to be fixed. The White House announced it was going to order a dramatic downsizing of the department of Education and a French scientist was denied entry to the US after messages critical of Trump were found on his phone, which has terrifying implications for the future of American education and training. The US Court of Appeals rejected copyright protection for AI generated works without a human author while Spain announced it would impose massive fines for not labeling AI generated content as such. The EU has again charged Google with violating EU anti-trust rules, setting the stage for another series of rulings against the search giant. OpenAI released o1-Pro which will be the company's most expensive model yet. Facebook's efforts to supress Shara Wynn-Williams book, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism has created a Streisand effect by creating ten times the publicity the book previously had. In other news: Danny Sullivan talks about Optimizing for Google AIO, links in AIOs don't necessarily lead to the same sites on Google search, Google is testing a radically expanded number of search options beyond AI Mode, Google Assist is replaced by Gemini, and Google is crawling JSON files daily. All this and much more in a long but interesting episode.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Traditionally a warning to tyrants and rogue emperors, todays middle of March madness opened with news of Google Core Update rollout, a major vulnerability in a popular WP SEO plug-in, and signs American search users are indicating they're thinking about being in a very sour mood. We also note it is the 15th anniversary of the week Rhea Drysdale saved SEO from a notorious trademark abuser. The Googleopoly woke up to see the US DOJ's 4 remedies to settle the larger of two anti-trust cases. OpenAI calls for free access for all copyrighted materials for AI Training (citing national security), while the Columbia School of Journalism notes how AI Search engines are "confidently wrong too often". Speaking of tyrannical behaviour, Mullenweg is still wegging out over WPEngine and Meta wants its advertisers to connect to GA4. We also talk about how to talk to Google AIO to learn what it thinks about your business, site reputation abuse, robots.txt, low effort content, and so much more...Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Olesia Korobka joins us to talk about the SEO Charity Conference taking place online on March 27 for the Ukraine Animal Relief charity SEO for Paw founded by Anton Shulke. Before Olesia jumps in, we talk about Tuesday's State of the Union address in which, among other things, the CHIPS Act was threatened in a weirdly long ramble about bad deals. We also talk about Elon Musk's continued misadventures due to DOGE's misunderstanding of COBOL. Which somehow brought us to talking about Sergey Brin's musings about how a 60 hour work week (Five 12 hour days) brings the perfect blend between hard work and achievement. He figures that's what's necessary if his people ever want to achieve AGI before anyone else does. Achieving AGI is important and could be worth incalculable riches. The most advanced LLM, ChatGPT4.5 places the value of PHD level workers at about $20,000/mth, according to a new service ChatGPT is considering. Meta is about to deploy innumerable AI Agents in service of businesses on Facebook and Meta. It was revealed that Google Ads has mystery shopper ratings but it's a mystery how that works. Google Search Liaison gained an assistant named Rajan. Androids got a brand new scam buster. That and a whole lot more on an outrageous rollicking show. Don't forget about the SEO Charity event on March 27. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

A quick but hardly deep dive into what Elon Musk's D.O.G.E. is doing and the technologies they're abusing to do it starts a conversation about the newest outrages of the week from around the Oval Office. We also talk about OpenAI4.5, a delay in data from the GSC API, CoPilot flying folks into the wrong repositories, the Chegg vs. Google case, Bing's AI Search tests, Google's crawler update spikes and crawl efficencies, Scrubbing search results, and nearly a dozen other Googley things. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The American president declared himself a king this week. In the meantime, Meta is laying off thousands of people and deleting a number of old live broadcast recordings. TikTok is restructuring towards laying offs too. Google Reviews and Google Business are fixing bugs while Google's Business Profiles support team is absolutely backlogged. Whoddathunkit but,AIs like ChatGPT and DeepSeek might cheat to win simple games. Google makes the Gemini App the only way to access Google's AI on iOS. Google's Ad-Tech users can now target national security decision makers and people with chronic diseases. Most importantly (besides the king thing), Kevin Indig writes-up a meta-study he did of 19 serious studies of Google AI Overviews in Search Engine Journal in a long but SEO must-read article. Lots of other fun Googley stuff in a fast paced episode unafraid to say, "the king is a fink".Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Google fixes a few bugs, gives a quick "how-to" around tabbed navigation, advises about on-page hash-links, and provides a great tutorial on using GA4 and GSC together. Google also increases its results return-speed by 67milliseconds. That's the good stuff this week however it wasn't a good week from a classic "Don't be Evil" perspective. This week Google complied with the executive cultural nullification order to rename the Gulf of Mexico, scrapped a pledge to only use AI for peaceful purposes, shuttered DEI initiatives, and complied with another executive cultural nullification order by removing significant holidays such as Black History, Pride, Holocaust Memorial Day from Google Calendars. We also cover other changes to Google's SERPs, Yahoo!'s AI Answers using "Learn More" links, Facebook whistleblowers, the Scarlett letters AI, the BBC's analysis of LLM written news, and Reddit blaming Google for the evils of weaker than expected growth. Compliance is a bug and that bug is now a feature.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The sudden appearance of DeepSeek, an AI developed in China at a micro-fraction of the costs of American AIs has driven conversation this week as its very existence drove down the valuations of the techogiants who thought they had the lock on development of AI models. Gavin Klondike, our resident AI expert, joins us to explain the 5Ws (who, what, where, when, and how) of DeepSeek. We also dive into the Verge's clickbaity treatment of clickbait SEO, the sub-Reddit Revolution as links from X get banned by many Mods, more WP-Drama as cleverly outlined in a Roger Montii piece, more on AI Overviews, and well, much much more. A longer but way more in-depth episode with a great interview to open it.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This edition moves back and forth between coverage of several unique areas of search, AI, and web work. We start covering the DataCoup, which is our "deal-with-it" name for the changes being made by Elon Musk and his crew of youthful hackers to the very nerve centers of the US Government and the suspicion an off-the-books version of Grok is being trained on US government data. We note that DeepSeek is likely helping the Chinese state harvest American data almost as quickly as Elon Musk is hovering it up. We report on the use of updates to old press releases to inflate US Immigration activity in the news, Google's rollback of DEI efforts, Whoopi's phoney weight loss ads, YAIhoo being copiloted by Copilot, and the ChatGPT growth study from SEMrush, along with the SEER Interactive study showing AI Overviews destroying organic and PPC CTRs. We mention changes to Google's Quality Rater Guidelines to account for heavy handed use of AI, and Gary Illyes call for websites to focus on originality in content in 2025. We also move through the weekly parade of SEO tips and updates. A fun, fast paced newsy sorta episode.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The power of the Billionaires' businesses mixed with the powers of The State. An image from the inauguration showing Mark Zuckerburg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and other tech giants in the very front row showed us how clearly and forcefully the new Technoligarcy is taking charge. That is the very definition of fascism in action. In this episode, Jim and Kristine talk about the shift in power and work to work through their thoughts on how the futures of search, social media, free speech, and democracy itself will play out. And then we talk tech with a full sheet of news stories including, OpenAI's Operator, Operation StarGate, YahAIoo!, Scamtastic SEO problems, Google blacking-out scrapers and crawlers and most SEO Tools, the mislogic of recommending structured data, and a heck of a lot more. Come for the stunned faces, stay for great radio!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 this new regime than reality does. ChatGPT moves towards agentatic services like scheduling and performing recurring information tasks. Google Gemini joins other AI companies in a training content deal with Associated Press. Gemini is pushing its way into Google productivity products but there's a catch, it comes with monthly fee. Meanwhile, Google saw it's search market share dip below 90% for the first time in the last decade. There's some really cool old-schooly Google SEO news, including advice on author names and comments in reviews, how Google's Web Vitals Chrome extension has been moved to Chrome DevTools Performance panel by default, how all you need is ULR consistency (and more...), and, well, more. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 synthetic data to putty over an increasingly pockmarked information environment. While highly informed D-list celebrities berate government officials for their hiring practices and inability to control the weather, we discuss how AI generative results removes the concept of "canonically correct" answers in place of a response generated to answer a series of queries as well as possible but not necessarily the same way twice. Facebook has signaled its allegiance to the new order citing the reelection of President Trump as a cultural tipping point at the same time politicized messages overwhelmed the factual information that might help people in what has become the biggest natural disaster in American history. We even try to draw ourselves back as we note how much we don't want to be political but all this is happening in the environment we work in and we slowly realize that maybe there's no way to not be political when talking about what's going on. Damn...Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 its own vortex in which all that falls in gets weirder and weirder and weirder. Here's a short list of some of the strange stuff we look at this week. Google has decided to be a start-up again. Apple is trying to save Google from the DOJ preferring the status quo over alternatives. Elon Musk's arguments have attracted odd bedfellows in his suit against OpenAI. Kekius Maximus rules Supremacists, and OpenAI's o3 cheated its ARC-AGI test and isn't that smart after all. That's just a start to the strange as we start this new year. We also talk about a lot of Google and Bingly stuff. Best wishes for 2025.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 marketers, each with a unique perspective on the industry. This is the last show of 2024. On behalf of the hosts, producers, and everyone associated with Webcology, thank you for listening and have a save and happy holiday period. Best wishes for 2025 from all of us.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 with and are committed to developing a better builder for SEOs and professional website developers. Amir himself has brought his decades of education, experience, research, and well earned knowledge to Duda since he cofounded the company in 2009. This was a fun conversation that moves through a range of topics from industry trends to personal and professional decision making.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 WordPress against WP-Engine in court. Meanwhile, Google throws stones in a grand glass house accusing OpenAI of using its heft to manipulate the generative AI market. The text to video AI Soro has been released to a growing group of testers, Microsoft scraps Skype subscriptions, and the most important story of all, Google releases first version of its quantum chip "Willow". The future happened five minutes ago in a parallel dimension. The infinite number of moose at the door should have said something.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 Core Update). We also talk about Bluesky's growth and vibe, using AI in unmanned weaponry, Bing withholding data from ChatGPT in Webmastertools, new search features at Bing, new features at Wix Studio, new features for YouTube creators, new rules at Google for dating ads, the very real possibility of Duplicate Content Blackholes in the ether of Google's cyberspace, and a whole lot more. Tune in for an interesting conversation about a sea of upcoming change in the world of search.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 news before heading off on well deserved four day weekends. - We cover the ongoing Google Core Update, new news in the ongoing series of WPScandals, the awful BlueSky profile posing as Bill Slawski, LinkedIn trying to up its social game by issuing do's and don'ts, the Australian social media ban for minors under age 16, and a lot more... A long but fun and just about to be post-turkey dinner relaxed edition.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 BlueSky on the horizon. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger also talk about Gemini AI making death threats, paid advertising appearing in AI Overviews, Bing inserting paid ads into organic search results, SearchGPT becoming the third largest search engine after Google and YouTube by market share, the existence of Google Site Wide, Google Lens for Shopping, and more content avoidance advice from John Mueller. More newsy this week than most but entertaining and hopefully sort of enlightening too.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 expected throughout the federal government affecting so many different sorts of outcomes, it's difficult to say with certainty what is going to happen and when. The one guarantee is things are going to get weird, and likely very quickly. The show goes on to cover happenings with OpenAI, SearchGPT, TwiXter, how a flock of bees thwarted Meta's most recent nuclear ambitions. We outline how Microsoft Bing wants to give someone a million dollars and ten people ten thousand dollars, how Google search snippets sometimes contradicts itself, the mundane existence of Google's Jarvis AI, and perhaps the weirdest outcome of all, Trump's anticipated shift of course on the Google anti-trust suits. A wise Gonzo journalist once wrote, "When the going gets weird, the weird get going", and in the spirit(s) of Hunter S. Thompson, that's more or less what we're going to do.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. Oh, and it wasn't about the content. Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about the disappointment and what disappointed publishers might do. They also talk about how Google has rolled AI Overviews out to over 100 countries, how Google is looking at similarity of content across websites, the no-data bug in GSC, SearchGTP, and the costs to Microsoft of growth through the development OpenAI. The show also looks at a number of pre-election issues and laughs about the 20 decillion dollar decision the Russian courts have leveled against Google. A fun news banter sort of show.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 week, leading SEO and Digital Marketing Tool Maker, SEMrush acquired one of the industry's leading information resources when it purchased Third Door Media. Third Door publishes Search Engine Land and MarTech, and also organizes the Search Marketing Expo series of conferences. Meanwhile, Google is replacing it head of search, Prabhaker Raghaven with long time Google executive and Raghaven assistant Nick Fox who becomes head of Google's Knowledge and Information division. Bing is pulling back on several under used features shown on its search results page while both it and Google move to publish full recipes in search results, denying the original writer's a click. Over to our nuclear energy desk it seems that Amazon and Google are also entering the elite nuclear powered corporation category, joining Microsoft in making deals with commercial nuclear energy produces, developing their own small-scale nuclear generation capacities, or buying and refurbishing mothballed reactors such as the Three Mile Island plant. We also share a week's worth of Google information, updates, and explanations.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 very possibly sacrificing small animals on the beach at midnight. Meanwhile SEOs contemplate what a DOJ mandated break-up of Google might look like while at the same time thinking about how to guide clients through questions about AI bots. X changes the way it pays content creators, and Bing has another one of its own Generative Search Experience rolling out. To round things out, Google pulled a manual job on Forbes Advisor over Reputation Abuse. Google is also rolling out newly AI organized search results and clarifying support for robots.txt fields while dropping support for the "noarchive" meta tag directive. More importantly, Google has updated its Web Search Spam Policies to be clearer about Site Reputation Abuse. We sort of learn how Google pays for all this, by seeing nearly 9,000 ad campaigns established every second!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 provides the engineering for WordPress. From Mullenweg's perspective, WPEngine has contributed too little of either after extracting hundreds of millions in revenues over the years. From WPEngine's perspective, "WTF eh?" Webcology hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger try to make sense of a fight that threatens the web's very understanding of what Open Source means. Meanwhile, Sam Altman has pushed OpenAI away from being a non-profit to being a for-profit benefit organization with Altman enjoying a 7% stake in the newly constituted company. This has pushed several key figures at OpenAI, including CTO Mira Murati and Chief Research Officer Bob McGrew to resign in the past week. In other news, Google has killed its helpful Cache feature while updating its Web Search Spam policies. Google also reported and is fixing a noindex bug that caused several JavaScript driven pages to be indexed when Google couldn't read the protocol. The show covered a lot more Google news in what was a busy post-COVID show after Jim caught and was sidelined last week by his first (and hopefully last) bout with the virus.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 introduction of Gemini AI to Google's productivity suite including the feature that can turn your notes into a generic podcast. BTW, "Rutabaga". That's this week's safe word that proves we're real. Kristine introduces a story that suggests families should come up with safe words to combat AI loan scams in which the scammers run a short clip of a voice through AI to convince people's parents to send them money. Twixter is leaving San Francisco and the right wing American propaganda network, Tenet Media is shuttered by the DOJ because they're a front from Russian malfiance. We also talk about a lot of Googley goodness including Martin Splitt's declaration that no Exif Data was parsed to generate those search or image results, Google's spam warnings about misuse of their Indexing API, the move from FID to INP, and how changing your heading heirarchy isn't the massive fix you might think it is. Remember, rutabaga. Accept no substitutes.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 Overviews in results. Webcology hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about the effects of this core update, the new International Framework Convention on AI, the DOJ indictment of Russian backed American far-right media empire, advances at OpenAI, how Elon Musk has torched tens of billions of his friends' monies, more legal troubles in Google's present and future, SearchGPT, and a lot of SEO thoughts about Google. This was a fun and fast paced episode.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 the core update, some sense of recovery is being felt by many publishers who were hurt during the September and March Helpful Content Updates but there is still a few weeks to go so show hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger warn webmasters to temper their expectations. OpenAI and Anthropic have agreed to allow government to access major new AI models during development to help ensure safety, Twixter is actively interfering in the upcoming November election while it threatens a Brazilian judge who threatens to shut it down in Brazil. This as presidential hopeful Donald Trump threatens to throw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in jail if he interferes in the upcoming election. Yelp is filing its own antitrust based action against Google while a judge in one of the ongoing antitrust cases admonishes Google for not playing fair in court. It's been a busy week. The show does spend a lot of time on a lot of Google SEO matters but it says a lot about the state of the industry when working through SEO issues is less complicated than the legal and ethical challenges facing the biggest platforms in the industry. As we said, it's been a busy week but it's the last days of summer and a long weekend is coming up and September brings serious season back upon us next week.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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's still a few weeks to go before Google placements even out. When the update does end, how the search results will be composed and look for users might change. Jim and Kristine also talk about findings from Mark Traphagen at SEOClarity suggesting that higher rankings lead to higher chances of seeing links in AI Overview results, major issues with AI image generators, the arrest of Telegram app founder Pavel Durov, California's attempts to govern AI at the state level, Perplexity's plans to introduce ads to its AI features, the rise of children's accounts on Twixter, and a lot of Googley SEO stuff. - Note: our apologies for the late show. Jim's Aunt Lynda passed and it was a rather brutal week.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about what Google's goals with this update and what website owners can do in the early to mid days as the full rollout is expected to take about four weeks. It was a busy week beyond the core update. Kristine and Jim also discuss Google's two antitrust cases, updates to ChatGPT, a myriad of difficulties presented by Elon Musk, data delivery issues from Google Search Console, a creepy new feature found in knowledge panels, GSC Recommendations, the expansion of Google AI Overviews, how Google tracks crawl budgets, the absurd speed of Effingo, and a whole lot more. Stick around to the very end to hear Google's John Mueller read his latest robots.txt file.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 District Judge Amit Mehta wrote in his decision which has the potential to reshape the business of Internet dominance. We asked lawyer, journalist, and former WMR.FM host Bennet Kelley to explain the scope of the charges and how the ruling might affect Google's future. Bennet is the founder of the Internet Law Center and is considered on of America's top Internet lawyers. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger also discuss the new British government's reaction to Elon Musk's push for racial disharmony in the UK and Europe, an exodus of leadership at OpenAI, the new Search Console feature Google Recommends, and the coincidental timing of Google's announcements it would allow pubic hair grooming ads while it is also testing the new "Snippets you may like" label. From what we hear about anti-trust rulings, the first cuts are the deepest.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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, which apparently is coming soon. They also discuss the new EU AI Act which went into effect on August 1st and tries to govern AI's impacts by grading AI dangers in five easy grades ranging from unacceptable to minimal, election interference at TwiXter, Bing's side by side SERP layout showing a generative AI answer beside ten blue links, the new competition between Microsoft and Open AI as Open AI introduces SearchGPT, Reddit$pectations of pay to crawl, Wix's new AI, how Google actually crawls JavaScript, Google's attempt to outfake deepfakes, How Google's new Hidden Gems and the old Hidden Gems have nothing to do with each other, and much much more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 update could bring hope or redemption or maybe a bigger bit of traffic. Meanwhile, Google is musing about adding more new and improved AI Overview responses in search results. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about Google's intentions and a number of other topics including Bing's new SERPs that put a Generative Response alongside traditional ten blue links in a split-screen layout, Google's $60MM exclusive access to Reddit data, the advent of ChatGPTSearch, the CloudStrike outage, and a lot more! Meanwhile, a bunch of web based businesses are still stuck at a crossroads, waiting for something to come, something that's almost here, something that'll move them forward. Estragon: Let's Go - Vladimir: We can't. - Estragon: Why not? - Vladimir: We're waiting for Googdot.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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 imminent Google Core Update, the harmful empathy-gap in A.I., Microsoft Word's new surcharge for custom image generation, more speculation from the great Google May 2024 API Leak, A.I. in local search results, research into Google AIO keyword trends, idle crawler rendering, the goodness of CWVs, and a whole lot more. Tune in, fill up, and enjoy.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Back from a the July 4th long weekend's rest, hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk through events of the last couple weeks, that look like Google and other players in the search world are pulling back from the promise of A.I. generated answers to the real world queries of their users. One example is how Google is showing far fewer A.I. Overviews in result sets today than it was in early May when it announced a disaster ridden shift to the A.I. everything universe. Given the enormous expenses in money and resources used in training, maintaining, and running A.I., economists are speculating on if the hype around A.I. is producing real value or inflating the world's biggest bubble based on rampant speculation. But that's not the confusing part. We also look at some simplified answers to some complicated questions from Google spokespeople who are usually clearer when muddying stuff up. Happily, our reports about the Helpful Content Update and decimation were apparently quite helpful. Some people still think it's Redditiculous how a Reddit expert's opinion can rank above that of a medical, legal, engineering, or other certifiable expert's opinion in search engine rankings. That might be because of the complex dimensions of credible information beyond the flat first one, credibility. Confused? We still are and you might be too but we still gotta sell soap.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It was a particularly newsy and seriously silly week. It was also the end of June which is also the end of the second quarter so, for most SEOs, it's reporting season. This year, reports are made more poignant knowing the end of June is also the end of the line for Universal Analytics data, which gets universally deleted on Monday at midnight. It's also the end of the June 2024 Google Spam Update, which concluded a few hours before this episode was recorded. Show hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about UA3 data, how to assess the Spam Update, the implications of OpenAI's purchase of the data analysis and indexing firm Rockset, Microsoft AI's craptastic views on the social contract of content, how Google Search measures its own quality, if AI can perform an effective and actionable technical SEO audit, and a whole lot more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Covering a busy week in search this episode closes with a 20 minute interview with CEO of A.I. driven search engine You.com, Richard Socher. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about Google's freshly launched June2024 Spam Update, some Reddit heavy SERPS, unstoppable AI Overviews, the beneficial myth of traffic diversity, the ups and downs of crawl spikes, Microsoft's recall of Microsoft Recall, and a whole lot more. In the days before the show was recorded, Jim visited Web Summit's massive Collision Conference 2024 where big money, big ideas, and big organizations meet in a three day intellectual frenzy.   Jim speaks with one of the earliest pioneers of A.I., Richard Socher in a one-on-one interview recorded near the end of Collision 2024 in Toronto. CEO of You.com, Richard leads what is arguably the most innovative newer search engine. Combining generative AI from several sources with algorithmic search, You.com is working to build and perfect a set of highly proficient A.I. assistants designed around the idea that information should be easily accessible and easy to make use of. It was a fun conversation and a great chance to ask questions of one of the driving forces behind A.I. in search.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Amidst months of controversial punishing updates, a disastrous A.I. rollout, and at least a year of questionable search results, SEOs and general search users are starting to ask if Google is actually broken. If it is working as it's supposed to, why are they trying so hard to fix it? Google says it's a matter of perspective so hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger try to walk through both sets of perspectives. The show also covers take aways from Barry Schwartz's SMX Advanced interview with Google's Elizabeth Tucker, Google's most recent responses to The Leak, a lot of turbulence at TwiXter (including Elon Musk's annoyance at the Apple - OpenAI deal), and, of course, the Apple - Open AI deal itself. An interesting week of as many news items as we can fit in an hour long show.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Maybe it's the eye of a hurricane, maybe it's the calm before a brand new storm. It's really hard to tell these days but after a disasterous rock-eating rollout, Google is pulling back on AI Overviews. The SEO world has mixed reactions to The Leak, which is turning out as predicted, much ado about something but we're not sure exactly what. Some sort of garbled sense of stability appears to be returning to the SERPs as the effects of the March 2024 Core Update and the slew of previous and attendent updates start to play together, more or less as Google planned, or so we think. As the dust settles in Googlandia, the effects of flaky search results are showing in user comments with 54% of people complaining they have to look through more results than they did five years ago to find information, often having to rephrase their queries altogether. Meanwhile, OpenAI workers are asking for the "right to warn" of potential dangers, TwiXter has made distributing porn great again while running paid ads against racist and antisemitic hashtags, Microsoft's Recall AI can be tricked into revealing ever-saved personal data, MozCon20 perceives a crisis, and Google says Mobile First is... actually, we're not exactly sure what they were getting at. Confused? You won't be after listening to this.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

To cap off a disastrous PR month for Google, Mike King and Rand Fishkin published essays outlining the leak of a trove of Google APIs found in an open GitHub owned by Google. The SEO community's faith in Google had already been badly shaken since the series of updates which started back to early autumn 2023 and culminated in the HCU and March 2024 Core Updates. Now, after seeing what was in the documents, many feel as if Google misled or even lied to them. Debate in the SEO community is now fully engaged and already people are marketing new techniques and strategies based on findings they found in the documents that will go down in SEO history as, “The Leak”. Basically, Mike and Rand dropped what appears to be an 800lb gorilla into our midst and that gorilla needs a thorough examination before we let it run wild. To help us do that, we have in the studio one of the few SEOs we absolutely know to be qualified to dig into these documents. Ryan Jones is the Senior Vice President, SEO at Razorfish. He was instrumental in the dissection of Yandex last year and has spent the last few days digging into the documents and sharing his findings.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Roger Montti, staff writer at Search Engine Journal, joins hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger to share his thoughts on Google's vision of its own future. Roger wrote about this week's Google Marketing Live in NYC in a piece published May 22, "Google To Prioritize AI Overviews Ads Over Organic Search". In it, Roger offers an overview of search results berift of visible blue links. This vision of Google's future will be driven by paid placement rather than the meritocratic set of algorithms Google organic search, which will get relegated so far below the fold it might as well be buried. Any experience with Roger is a well informed though sometimes scary one. This one is both, but, as always, there's hope. You'll want to hear the future Roger sees.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This is a seriously fun and highly interesting interview episode. Rather than obsess on what seems like a bad thing we decided to geek out on that Bing thing instead. One of the most open and interesting voices in search, the Head of Search at Microsoft Bing, Fabrice Canel, joins us to talk about algorithmic search and Copilot. As we all know, Google I/O was stacked with announcements suggesting Google is about to change search results to feature AI Overviews and push organic results into the netherregions of page-2 or worse. Bing is taking a different approach and Fabrice outlines how Bing and Copilot work together to present a different, and what he hopes is far better search experience. Geek-warning: This episode will sometimes venture into the weeds but the conversation is light, witty, and hugely informative.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

There appears to be a shift in Google's philosophies heading into next week's Google I/O conference. Google seems to be trying to change expectations with CEO Sundar Pichai talking about an all AI future and former chairperson Eric Schmidt talking about a future without blue links. Google's reputation for quality has taken a battering recently and many in the SEO community are feeling more than a little misinformed. That's easily understood when you realize Google has used the same terms to describe different things throughout the series of algorithm and core updates that stretch back to last September. In this episode, Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger try to peel back the onion like layers of Googleosopy while trying to offer sensible advice about how to deal with different aspects of the series of updates. Conversation naturally turns to several stories around AI and its efficacy as an engine for information. This was a fun, fast paced episode that tries really hard to keep its patience in the midst of creative destruction.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Happy Cinco de Screwya to everyone about to be impacted... The March 2024 Core Update has ended, sometime last week. It took Google a few days to get around to telling anyone. Perhaps that was because they were too busy experiencing a very difficult week fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities. This was a week of layoffs, job transfers, and lost market share as Google moved to shed expensive people and replace them with less expensive options. It was also a week in which we saw our very first Google dividend (at $0.20/share) and a $70Billion share buyback, both of which set Alphabet shares soaring 15% ahead of news Google was losing market share to Bing and Yahoo. Happy 20th workaversary, Google CEO Sundar Pichai. We also talk about HCU recoveries, Core Update recoveries, tons of things AI, and more on a busy getting over it edition of Webcolgy.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

This episode also covers a lot of the week's general news including the coming of ChatGPT5, Meta's near universal introduction of AI to Facebook and Instagram, TikTok's upcoming turmoil, how plans to kill the cookie have again gone stale, that Webcology was, this week, named among the top SEO podcasts to listen to in 2024 by Search Engine Journal. Thanks to SEJ and to everyone for listening and contributing to our shared industry in whatever ways you do. We cover a lot of other Googley things but nothing compares to the Google April 2024 Rotten to the Core Scandal.  It's been a long week since yesterday's news. Mark it in your calendars and diaries, April 24, 2024 was the day Google's greatest myth was finally busted. Recorded live the day after the world learned conclusively how Google manipulated and degraded results to produce a higher query frequency in order to bump its bottom line, this episode deals primarily with what could be Google's worst week ever. Google broke the Ghostbuster Protocol and merged the paid and organic streams of interest and in a long, detailed, and absolutely damning 4200 word essay released yesterday, former Google insider Edward Zitron fills in the five-Ws; who, what, where, when, and why. The piece traces the devolution of Google search back to an emergency all hands meeting in 2019 and places blame at the feet of the man who previously led Yahoo Search to oblivion's great beyond. A stunning and scandalous story is quickly emerging and this marks the first open chapter.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/webcology/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy