Webcology – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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.

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.

Google Russia declares bankruptcy after Russian authorities seize bank account.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/05/googles-russia-subsidiary-is-filing-for-bankruptcy/

Canada forces Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for loss of ad revenue – Search Engine Journal and the misuse of the word tax.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-criticizes-canadas-proposed-link-tax/450878/

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-google-warns-ottawas-online-news-act-would-break-its-search-engine/

-Online News Act, Bill C18 

“to compel global tech companies such as Facebook and Google to negotiate payment agreements with news organizations as compensation for news content that appears on the large platforms.” Modeled on successful Australian legislation 

“There is no link tax. Canadians are not paying for anything, and no money goes to the government. Facebook and Google earn money from having links to news sites on their platforms because the work of independent journalists has value,” Ashley Michnowski, spokesperson for Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said. “We have had constructive conversations with Google, yet they’re pulling from their original playbook in Australia when Google tried to avoid regulation by exaggerating their concerns.”

Facebook’s Most Followed Content is mostly Spam – Facebook transparency Report

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/facebooks-most-widely-viewed-links-dominated-by-spam/450826/

Top 101 SEO Tools that are free – Jon Clark, Search Engine Journal

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-seo-tools-free/435299/

John Mu – Spam is Spam, no matter what language you speak

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-see-search-spam-in-multiple-languages-33438.html

Interaction to Next Paint might become a core web vital

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-web-vitals-fid-with-inp-33429.html

Google Says Ignore Bad SEO advice and Removes Bad SEO Advice.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-drops-word-count-keyword-density-slide-33399.html

All Search related stuff from Google I/O

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-i-o-2022-search-related-announcements-33403.html

Use it or Lose it – Google Search Console will stop gathering data if you stop looking at it

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-stop-collecting-data-33402.html

PageSpeed Insights Adds new Lighthouse Speed metrics

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-lighthouse-page-speed-metrics/449842/

Google Updates Advice on Controlling Titles in Search

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-shows-how-to-control-titles-in-search-results/449866/

The Right to Remove Personal Identifiable information from Google

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-remove-pii-33326.html

Google, “we’re not stealing your content, you’re stealing ours!”

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-stealing-knowledge-panel-content-33328.html

New editor-in-chief at Search Engine Journal, Amanda Zantal-Wiener former Deputy Editor and Content Manager at HubSpot 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/sej-eic-amanda-zantal-wiener/447271/

Using AI, false DMCA notices, and fake lawyers to generate or coerce backlinks

https://www.seroundtable.com/fake-dmca-ai-generated-lawyers-links-33308.html

EU amendments to the Digital Services Act calls for Google to show key parts of algorithm and to perhaps allow users to influence the information they see 

https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/proposal_for_a_regulation_on_a_single_market_for_digital_services.pdf

Google updates 3-strike policy for advertisers adds nine new areas of concern

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ads-implements-3-strike-policy-rule/447780/

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-strike-based-system-9-more-33306.html

Google notes financial impact of Russia’s illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine. 

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-feels-earnings-impact-from-russian-war-on-ukraine/447684/ 

New Google tool allows you to import goals from Universal Analytics (UA3) to GA4

https://www.seroundtable.com/universal-analytics-goals-import-google-analytics-33268.html

Don’t tell them it’s broken Roger, tell them the issue is Statically Evolving. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-analytics-real-time-reporting-bugs-33291.html

Tweak New Twitter

Home > Extentions > Tweak New Twitter

Google AI creating Google sourced Knowledge Panels

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-writing-its-own-knowledge-panels-33290.html

lose-work-without-warning/

Don’t switch horses in mid stream. Don’t change tires while driving. Don’t try to test new URLs on live sites just because. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dont-change-urls-and-change-them-back-seo-33237.html

Ahrefs has raised 1.5Million for Ukraine

https://searchengineland.com/ahrefs-ukraine-fundraising-383731

Guttenberg 13.0 showing features coming in WP6

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wordpress-gutenberg-13/446758/

Best times and worst times to post to social media

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/best-times-to-post-on-social-media-in-2022/446255/

March 2022 Google Product Update has completed its rollout

https://www.seroundtable.com/march-2022-google-product-reviews-update-live-33235.html

Multiple Campaigns + multiple accounts support comes to Google Ads

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-aggregate-reporting-on-manager-level-33253.html

No Technical method for achieving a featured snippet beyond great content

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-featured-snippets-gaining-33249.html

You can’t just write, “I tested this product” and expect a bump from the new Product Update

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-tested-product-reviews-update-33255.html

You need good, original review content.

Google stipulates Ai written content is against guidelines when used to manipulate Google

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-automatically-generated-content-against-guidelines-when-intended-to-manipulate-search-rankings-33243.html

Latency issue in UA3 and GA4 is fixed, again, says Google

https://searchengineland.com/google-claims-to-fix-google-analytics-latency-issues-383524

Today we'll discuss a bubble chart that can help you understand which queries are performing well for your site, and which could be improved.

Data Studio Visualizations

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/performance-optimization-bubble-chart  

AI Content against Google Guidelines

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-says-ai-generated-content-is-against-guidelines/444916/

Wayback Machine archiving Ukrainian Internet

https://spectrum.ieee.org/internet-archive-ukraine

Conference Organizer, Vasil Azarov died earlier this week at age 40. Details of his death are unavailable at this time. Vasil organized the Brand Growth, B2B Growth, and the Growth Marketing Conference. He was also a community advocate and fundraiser.

Google My Business App is being discontinued

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-my-business-app-going-away-33198.html

Facebook WiFi

https://www.facebook.com/facebook-wifi/getting-started

Zuck Bucks – like Whoopie Goldberg’s Flooz but backed by a multi-billion dollar corporation

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/04/07/1528241/meta-is-making-zuck-bucks

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/6/23013896/meta-facebook-zuck-bucks-finance-financial-services-products

Elon’s Twitter

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/elon-musk-twitter-impact/444860/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/04/twitter-shares-soar-more-than-25percent-after-elon-musk-takes-9percent-stake-in-social-media-company.html

Google doesn’t care who produces content as long as it’s good quality content

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-seo-outsource-content-33205.html

Google is rolling out a new label is search results for pages that are recognized as highly cited sources. Plus, Google Analytics 4 is Examined and Jim and Dave discuss this and more with Canadian SEO, Speaker, and Analytics Wrangler Alan K’necht.

Google on support for Ukraine

https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/warsaw-announcing-more-support-ukraine/

TikTok testing search ads

https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-tests-search-ads-383234

Product Reviews Update causing flux

https://www.seroundtable.com/volatility-march-2022-google-product-reviews-update-33177.html

Nofollow links are not followed, period

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-nofollow-dampening-factor-33169.html

Google Now Using MUM For Detecting Personal Crisis Searches & BERT For Detecting Shocking Content

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-mum-bert-crisis-shock-33176.html

MUM – multitask unified model

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-multitask-unified-model-mum-31441.html

BERT - Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-bert-update-28427.html