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- [00:00]
Narrator/Advertiser
Trust and Will is an online estate planning service. Visit trustandwill.com for details.
- [00:05]
Scott Vanack
Ooh. Trust and Will.
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Testimonial Speaker (Mackenzie)
My dad and I were always close, but some things we just didn't talk about, like his will. After he was gone, we found out he didn't have one, and it created a lot of stress. During a time of grief, creating a
- [00:23]
Trust and Will Advertiser
will can be hard to think about, but avoiding it can lead to greater difficulty for the people you love. That's why Trust and Will makes estate planning simple. Create a will online in as little as 30 minutes.
- [00:35]
Testimonial Speaker (Mackenzie)
Now I have a will in place to make sure my loved ones are protected with Trust and Will. It was easy and affordable, and I got peace of mind knowing my wishes are clear.
- [00:45]
Trust and Will Advertiser
Trust and will get 20% off when you visit trustandwill.com future that's trustandwill.com future to get 20% off. Trustandwill.com F U T U R E
- [01:00]
Mackenzie
My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis. And we raised about $10,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.
- [01:47]
Narrator/Advertiser
GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.gofundme me.com this podcast is supported by GoFundMe.
- [02:06]
Ross Dunn
Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM episode number 522. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my co host is my company senior SEO Scott Vanack. How's it going today, bud?
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Scott Vanack
It's going awesome. I'm just working on a huge project and I'm. The end is in sight, which is always nice.
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Ross Dunn
It is. That's great. So I'm looking forward to seeing it too. No problem.
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Scott Vanack
I hope it's good. No pressure at all. It'll be my whole day tomorrow. I don't mind working on a project for a full day, but it's. It's got to be done. So that's my plan.
- [02:42]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I'm I'm writing an article for Search Engine Land at the end of the month. I don't know when it's gonna actually be posted but and I'm away part of next week. So yeah, I'm going to be crunching too for the next few days.
- [02:56]
Scott Vanack
Good times. But you know what, the one thing about when you have that big crunch to get a deadline met is when you're done, it just feels so good. It sucks getting there, but when you're done, it's like you feel a sense of accomplishment. It's great.
- [03:07]
Ross Dunn
It does. Yeah. It's true. All right, so let's jump into some non SEO news, but it is AI news, so not far off the far off track here. OpenAI shares more details about Chat GPT ads on the OpenAI podcast. OpenAI executive Asad Awan provided some insights into how ChatGPT ads will work. He says, who will see ads? Ads will appear for free and and for free and go tier users plus Pro and enterprise subscribers will not see ads for now. I'm adding the for now. Yeah, I expect it will happen. Enterprise workspaces will remain ad free. Additionally, ads will be visually separate from model answers. Conversations will not be shared with advertisers. Ads will not appear for topics such as health, politics, and other sensitive chats. Users can adjust or turn off personalization I wonder how much of this is going to survive testing. I have. I have some doubt that ads will remain visually separate, at least that separate. They're going to have to to a certain degree, but they'll probably follow the Google path and end up making it very difficult to tell them apart.
- [04:36]
Scott Vanack
If we fast forward normally I'd probably say five years, but these days it could be 20 minutes. I don't know. If we fast forward into the future a little ways, we might look back at these notes and be like, ha, I can't say it. I don't want to swear. But we'll have choice words for what they're saying today. Probably because we've seen it with Google time and time again where they say they're going to do it one way and then you go, you know, a year or so into the future and they've totally changed, fallen back on what they said.
- [05:06]
Ross Dunn
Well, on the advertising angle here, the next bit is that Perplexity has stopped testing advertising. What's this about?
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Scott Vanack
Yeah, so the exact opposite. But Perplexity began testing sponsored placements back in 2024 and according to the Financial Times, they have now phased out their paid ad testings with no plans to bring them back. They believe that sponsored placements, even labeled ones, risk undermining trust. I can't say I disagree with that. I could see that for sure. A Perplexity executive. Sorry, I don't know his name. This was by the paywall at the Financial Times that I didn't want to pay to read the story. So I'm going off of notes from Search Engine Land. A Perplex. Perplexity executive said a user needs to believe this is the best possible answer and that once ads appear, users may second guess responses. Integrity. The response is integrity. So, yeah, I mean, yeah. It's interesting though, to see OpenAI testing ads and moving in that direction while Perplexity is like, nah, we're not going to do ads. We tested it, we're done. So who knows where the space is going?
- [06:18]
Ross Dunn
Well, yeah. And who knows how far Perplexity will get without being pushed in that direction. I'm not sure if they're public, but once there's enough investor pressure, I would imagine that it's going to make a bit of a difference.
- [06:36]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, most likely. I know they did say in the article over at Search Engine Land that what do they have? They have about 100 million users and their revenue is about $200 million a year currently. So I don't know what their expenses are. Probably a lot more than that at this point. But you know, they're growing. So I mean, if they can manage enough paid subscriptions to not need ads, that's great. But I mean, we all know how intense AI is to operate and run and I, I just, I don't know, I'm. I'm hesitant to think that subscriptions alone can pay their bills.
- [07:09]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I mean, I liked Perplexity. I still do, but I did end up just recently canceling my subscription with them. It's not going to be. I mean, I paid for a year, so I'm still getting quite a bit of use out of it, but. Or at least have an account, but I've just. I'm using Claude all the time. I just can't get enough of how much better it is. It seems the results are so much better. I use Open or chatgpt when I want to create any kind of image for seodone.com it just. Man, it knocks it out of the park almost the first. Well, I think the last few times it has been the first draft is being perfect, beautiful. I think they just turn out so, well, yeah, anyway, I can see a lot of people are talking about how much they love Claude and they're dropping other subscriptions. So hopefully perplexity still keeps going. I think diversity in the market is a very good thing. We don't want to see another Google esque moment where it just takes over everything more so than it already has. So.
- [08:20]
Scott Vanack
No, we do not.
- [08:24]
Ross Dunn
All right, so SEO News, we're jumping right in here. AI overviews reduce clicks as much as 58% this is Ryan Law at Ahrefs. He posted this article and it's based on some analysis they did. He said. Back in April 2025, we found that AI overviews reduced clicks to top ranking content by 3.34.5% despite Google's statements to the contrary. As of December 2025, we found that the presence of an AI overview now correlates with a 58% lower average click through rate for the top ranking page. Wow.
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Scott Vanack
It's huge.
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Ross Dunn
It's huge. How I miss the days before this. It was hard enough then, but now this is just crazy. And you know, I, I just got back from a meeting, a meeting with a, a dentist in fact, and she was convinced and I had to correct her that, you know, AI is taking over. So SEO is not as important and. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. AI is a layer on top of SEO. SEO is the foundation. You do not ever want to forget about SEO. It is even Google is saying, don't forget about it. You follow the principles of SEO, you're going to do much better in AI. Yes, there are extra things you can do in AI, but come on, you don't. I wish I could shoot whoever said that SEO is diminishing in value. It's not. It's everything. It's more. Anyway, bit frustrating when I heard that,
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Scott Vanack
you know, the amount of times I ask AI for a little bit of help in something like say it's something simple like generating some markup, some structured markup code or you know, even just creating a meta description or something like that. Sometimes it's amazing and perfect and other times it's like, what even is this? It's so wrong and so bad. Especially with meta descriptions. Because I'll be like, create has to be this many characters and I want this sentiment in here and I want blah, blah, blah, blah. I tell it what I want and sometimes it just, it'll spit me out a paragraph like, what? This is like 500 words. What are you doing? And you're supposed to be smarter than me. And yet you're not. And so I could just see these people that rely solely on AI, that don't talk to anybody that you know is, is living and breathing SEO, they're going to do more harm than good unless, I don't know, unless they have some background and they, and they, they know it's just not going to work. Yeah.
- [11:12]
Ross Dunn
And in fact, I wrote an article just this weekend called AI can handle your SEO basics. Here's what it can't do and it's on SEO done. That's S E-O--U-N-N dot com. I strongly recommend checking it out. Put some effort in making sure this one had some good value, some takeaways. Those elements that it can't do will help you. But I thought about this a while before making this article. I do believe that AI can handle your SEO basics, but even then I've just, it still makes mistakes. Just be so careful. And what we're seeing is people believe that because it's helping them with their basics. That's SEO done. No, no, no, no. It's like the basics of what we do when we start doing SEO. What we actually do to make real needle moving, ranking changes is so much more than that. And that's what we did before. Now people are just getting this false confidence and I mean, I applaud them for being all like gung ho, but oh. Anyway, it's got some good tips in there that'll help you out, especially you're doing this in house. And you know, I believe that as SEOs, our job will become more and more as consultants reviewing clients in house SEO efforts. I don't know how to make that or use the right word there. I think there's going to be some major guffaws and mistakes, but it is what it is. I mean, what we recently, the other day we were talking to a client that unfortunately was departing because I think they're going to be doing something else or bringing something in house. And we've been doing them for five years. And you had mentioned how, you know, as part of what we do, you discovered they were hacked. And if you hadn't discovered that and fixed it, they would have been up s creek, man, they would have been so screwed. And that's just a tiny part of what we do and what we can offer. And that's not happening. AI is not doing that for you at all, guaranteed.
- [13:40]
Scott Vanack
That hack that I found with that client you're talking about was funny because I remember finding it and I was just in Semrush, just checking overall rankings. What was the trend looking like? And in the previous couple days before I had checked, it jumped from. I can't remember what the numbers were, but it was something like 200 rankings, like 20,000 rankings in a matter of a few days. My first reaction was yes, it was like the celebration like. But then instantly like, wait a minute, there's no way this is legit. Something is wrong because if there was a big Google update that affected this, I would have heard about it by now. And so when I started looking it was all rankings for various adult oriented products and, and things like that. And there were thousands of pages created behind the scenes on their site that weren't picked up by Screaming Frog. They weren't picked up by just going to the site because they're all hidden. Right. But so that's how we ended up finding it. And I contacted the client right away and they had it fixed within a day. Like it got fixed very quickly obviously. But yeah, if you don't see that stuff that could go weeks, months, maybe even years if you're not monitoring it because you just see your regular organic traffic going down and your rankings going down. And you wouldn't really see this without using special tools and things.
- [14:48]
Ross Dunn
So it's funny I didn't add this to our talking list today, but another thing happened the other week. You were busy so I took over a consultation gig and this client had a website that wasn't showing up in search. I thought, oh, this will be fun, you know, because usually it's obviously it's going to be something technical and I love that stuff. So I dug in and actually used AI this time and it did assist me quite a bit because it was able to do some of the hard crunching in the background to do some server testing and things that I just couldn't be bothered with. But when I dug in it, what had happened was back in 2022, that's a long time ago, they were,
- [15:33]
Scott Vanack
I
- [15:34]
Ross Dunn
believe they were being bought, attacked. They were being attacked by bots. They were in a bot network attack or something. So they used this code, well, they used this plugin that injected into their HD access file a huge list. I think it was 1500 bot names as well as some wild card matching which was the real kiss of death that would block any bot with this particular word in it, which happened to block Google.
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Scott Vanack
Did it use the word bot?
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Ross Dunn
Yeah, I think it was, it was partly like that. It was that crazy. And later on the person who had created this plugin that had done this, whatever. They, you know, it had become known that this was very damaging and I guess there were changes, but these people didn't know about it. And from 2022 to now they've had zero Google presence because of this.
- [16:34]
Scott Vanack
Wow.
- [16:35]
Ross Dunn
And they have terrifying 1500 pages of content. Like this guy's worked really hard for this content and it was good stuff. Some of it was just news, but it was still very good and very relevant. So, yeah, I think they're pretty happy with us because I removed that and fixed everything and boom, they're in Google Search Console. They're being found, they're being indexed. It's going to take forever though for that site to get the exposure it had before.
- [17:04]
Scott Vanack
Their rankings should skyrocket in the short term for various long tails, lower level searches, I would think. And then the tough ones, that's going to be a grind.
- [17:15]
Ross Dunn
But that's just another example of, I mean there isn't even on our worst day. We wouldn't miss that. Why is Google Search like, we couldn't, I couldn't even access Google Search Console. I couldn't even register them on Google Search Console because Google's like, well, no, I don't see anything because I couldn't see it. I couldn't get on there. It was being blocked.
- [17:37]
Scott Vanack
Yikes.
- [17:39]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, that was the first. I've never seen that before, but I imagine there's many people out there probably have the same issue and there's no way to test like do a search and find them and help them. I'd love to be able to do that, but there isn't. Wild. But that's just a tiny taste of what we come across, guys, listeners, it's pretty amazing and I hope this continues. I don't know what's happening with SEO in the future. I know that we're much, we're still very much needed and I don't see that changing for at least a couple more years. But I just love this industry and I hope, hope it continues and we can continue to enjoy a good career doing this because it's, it's pretty awesome helping people out and, and making their businesses great. It's a lot of fun.
- [18:27]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, I agree.
- [18:30]
Ross Dunn
All right. Discover Core Update. That was a huge tangent anyway.
- [18:34]
Scott Vanack
That's okay. I think people like it.
- [18:35]
Ross Dunn
Hopefully it was fun. The Discover Core Update. What's this all about?
- [18:41]
Scott Vanack
So I probably wouldn't normally post updates like this, but for this Core update we actually have some intel on what it means. So that's great. Which we never get. So Google released this February 2026 Discover Core Update. Again. We actually have some intel about it. So this update is largely focused on improving user experience. Google says it will show users more locally relevant content from websites within their own country. They will reduce sensational content and clickbait. That's great. I love that. And there'll be an increased focus on in depth, original and timely content that demonstrates expertise. We've used that word a lot in a given area. So currently this update is rolling out to English language users in the us Expansion to all countries and languages is expected in the next few months. The current update will be done probably by around the end of February, so. So that's cool. Oh, I had one more quote here that Google. During testing, Google found that people find the Discover experience useful and worthwhile with this update.
- [19:48]
Ross Dunn
More useful.
- [19:49]
Scott Vanack
There we go. More useful. Yes.
- [19:52]
Ross Dunn
So I just started using Discover again. I forgot it was there. I kind of. I find it a little more enjoyable than doom scrolling on Facebook because I'm actually reading news and there's some fascinating stuff that's happened in it. I'm very happy to hear that they're going to be producing sensational content and clickbait because that's the bane of my existence. I hate that stuff so much.
- [20:16]
Scott Vanack
Yes.
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Ross Dunn
I just hate it. And it's rampant. I mean, I would say it's the bulk of news now. So yeah, we'll see just how good a job they do. Hopefully it works out well. You should probably take this next one too. I don't know.
- [20:32]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, I will.
- [20:33]
Ross Dunn
But I did, I did hear a lot of good things about this. I'm pretty excited. Hopefully it pushes Google in the right direction anyway. Bing Webmaster Tools. That's Bing, guys. Bing, not Google officially adds an AI performance report.
- [20:47]
Scott Vanack
Woohoo. This is so great. And the headline is even better than the content because it's very. It's very primitive at the time for the time being, but that's what's to be expected. But I'll tell you what it can do and we'll see what happens here. So on February 10, Microsoft announced the AI performance reports in Big Webmaster Tools. Google, are you paying attention? Please pay attention. So the tool, which is currently in beta, shows how your content is cited within Copilot as well as Select Partner integrations. I don't know exactly what that means, but there we go. At this time the data is quite limited, but it is a really good start when you log into Big Webmaster Tools, you can select a predetermined or custom date range. There you can see total citations over that time period, along with the average number of cited pages per day. You can also see which queries you were cited for as well as which URLs have appeared. However, you cannot see which queries served which URLs, only the number of appearances. And of course it is important to know that this report only shows citation frequency. There is no indication of ranking position or prominence at least yet, and data is backfilled as far back as November 1, 2025. So a great start. We've got a little bit of data in there you go check it out and see generally how you're trending in Copilot and the Select Partner integrations. But it's a start. It's something so hopefully they grow with it.
- [22:18]
Ross Dunn
Nice. That's great. And some other good news. Google says that links will be more visible in AI overviews. This is something they've needed. Google's Robby Stein posted to Google that updates to how citations will be displayed. He says quote, in AI overviews and AI mode, groups of links will automatically appear in a pop up as you hover over them on desktop. So you can jump right into a website to learn more. And we'll show more descriptive and prominent link icons within the response across both desktop and mobile. Our testing shows this new UI is more engaging, making it easier to get a great content across the web, unquote. Now will this increase click through rate? We can only hope so. You know the fact that the pop up will appear on desktop is great and I, I use desktop a lot. I know a lot of people do, but the majority of people use mobile. So will those permanent link prominent link icons really drive any more clicks and mobile? I don't know. I know there's no way to know yet, but we all just hope it'll
- [23:32]
Scott Vanack
be interesting if Ahrefs does another study like the one we just talked about while ago today. I bet they will in, in say in July and see what, what difference this has, what impact this has.
- [23:43]
Ross Dunn
Well, it's exactly the kind of thing that helps with visibility these days is having these kind of reports, these tests, all these things. So I'm sure they'll continue doing it. It's, it's good for them, that's for sure. All right, let's take a quick break. And we come back, we're going to talk about removing search results. Welcome back to SEO 101 on WMR FM hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanack. Remove search results about yourself using personal information Fill me in here.
- [24:31]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, so. So there's a new feature. I don't know if you'd call it a feature. Over at Google they announced a few updates to help you remove personal information from search that you don't want there. The catch is though, to remove this personal information, you have to provide Google with the personal information. So to explain that you provide Google by providing Google with your driver's license number, passport, Social Security number, that sort of thing. Google track and notify you when there's a match and then you can request removal of that content. So setup is done through the results about you how you know what?
- [25:04]
Wix Advertiser
I realized the hardest part about building a website isn't making it look good, it's getting what's in my head onto the page. But I've been playing with the new WIX Harmony editor and I'm impressed. You can literally just tell it what you want or if you're picky like me, jump in and move things around yourself. The nice part is you can hop between AI and hands on editing so you end up with a site that actually looks the way you pictured it. Try it out for free@wix.com Harmony from
- [25:35]
Narrator/Advertiser
MIT Solve comes the Solve Effect, a podcast about the people rewriting the rules of what's possible.
- [25:42]
Wix Advertiser
It was another way of practicing medicine, being able to serve thousands every hour.
- [25:46]
Narrator/Advertiser
We have heard enough about what's not working with the world. This is a podcast about what is. The question that I must answer is how do we get there fast enough? New episodes drop the first Wednesday of every month. The Solve Effect the future told by those shaping it.
- [26:04]
Mackenzie
My name is Mackenzie and I started a GoFundMe for the adoptive mother of a nonverbal autistic child. The mother had lost her job because she wasn't able to find adequate care for this autistic child. So she really needed some help with living expenses, paying some back bills. So I launched a GoFundMe to help support them during this crisis and we raised about $10,000 within just a couple of months. I think that the surprising thing was by telling a clear story and just like really being very clear about what we needed, we had some really generous donations from people who were really moved by the situation that this family was struggling with.
- [26:51]
Narrator/Advertiser
GoFundMe is the world's number one fundraising platform, trusted by over 200 million people. Start your GoFundMe today. @gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this podcast is supported by GoFundMe.
- [27:05]
Scott Vanack
I. I don't know if the results about you hub is new. I feel like I've never heard of it before. But it's there. It's at. The link will be in the show notes, but it's myactivity.google.com results-about-u of course it is important to note results removed with this tool will only be within Google search results, not removal from the web or their originating source. I think that's obvious, but it may not be. Google did also update a new method for removing explicit images of yourself from search. So if you. If you've got images like that out there and you need them gone, you can click on the vertical ellipsis and there are options to follow there to put in a removal request. So it's nicer. They're taking personal information a bit serious. I don't know if I'd want to put my Social Security number in Google. I don't know if I'd want to give them that. But new if it's necessary to remove it, I. I guess it makes sense. I don't know. We'll see.
- [28:07]
Ross Dunn
I just set it up just now, not adding any of that information and so far I haven't needed it. But okay. Info will monitor for it says and I put in my full legal name and then I put in my shortened name and my contact info. Stuff that I wouldn't necessarily share publicly. But if it finds it, that's good to know and it'll email me if it finds results about me. Interesting. I can also get alerts through the Google app if they find results about me. So I'll click that on and save and see what happening. It says monitoring is on and I didn't have to do anything.
- [28:44]
Scott Vanack
So you don't necessarily. I guess it's just a way to ensure you get additional.
- [28:49]
Ross Dunn
I think what it is is when you find information that you need removed, then you probably have to go through the process of much more rigorous confirmation and identification. Now it's monitoring me. The weird thing is, how does it know? I could try to set it up for someone else. Yeah, didn't know it was me.
- [29:13]
Scott Vanack
I'm going to monitor you as well.
- [29:16]
Ross Dunn
There you go.
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Scott Vanack
What's your driver's license number? Do you want to just quickly. I'll bleep it out, I promise.
- [29:22]
Ross Dunn
Of course, of course. Yeah, yeah. I'll give you My credit card. Next.
- [29:26]
Scott Vanack
Perfect.
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Ross Dunn
Yeah.
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Scott Vanack
45102 no.
- [29:30]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. All right. So some changes in Search Console weekly and monthly views are now available. Stuff I know, pretty dry. But it's important and good to know Google has updated the Google Search Console to allow for these weekly monthly data views. When looking at your performance metrics. This was actually announced on December 10. They stated at the time that it was available to all accounts. But really I think, Scott, you see, you only started seeing it appear on the middle of February. Yes. Probably used a Canadian thing. Who knows?
- [30:01]
Scott Vanack
It isn't and you'll know why in a second.
- [30:04]
Ross Dunn
There you go. Perfect. Other Search console features that were announced that you're unable to see at this point included the brand query filters, social channels in search AI powered configuration tool. Barry Schwartz also recently posted about this and noted that he does not have access to these new features. So it's likely not. There we go. Likely not. A Canada versus US and also I guess it doesn't matter because we have the majority of our clients in the US and we look at their Google search console, we'd be able to see that. Right. So makes sense some sometimes. Oh really? Okay. So in regards to the AI powered Configuration tool, one comment at Scroundtable from Helmut says quote, the AI powered configuration tool is not worth the hype. It guesses regex which half of the time don't do what you want them to. You are not missing much, Barry. Okay, well good. We'll hold our judgment until we give it a try, but it's pretty much on par with what we would expect. Something that's being offered free.
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Scott Vanack
Yeah, absolutely.
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Ross Dunn
Right now for some local SEO news, this is really important, but I'm not sure how many people will understand. But if you have a local business and you've done a search, say dentist nearby or whatever your business is nearby, and you see the local pack appear in your search results, that's where you see the map and then you see any business listed. Well, what you might notice is there's something missing and that is the call button in Google's great greed. And there's no question it's great. Their level of greed. They've removed the call button unless you are sponsoring an ad. So no longer can people simply click and call you right from local results. I just have no words. When I saw this, I was so cheesed off. This is not creating the search experience that Google always promised. It's just greedy.
- [32:30]
Scott Vanack
Terrible.
- [32:31]
Ross Dunn
It is. So you see a sponsored result above. It's got the nice Call button, really easy to click on. So now you have to pay to play. And I checked Victoria when I saw this to see whether or not it was something that extended itself to where we are. And indeed it had.
- [32:49]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, I checked a bunch of random searches today and almost every single one was like that. I could see sponsored listings with the call button and then the non sponsored did not have the call button. So when I checked, like restaurants in New York for instance, is something I searched for. So it's widespread for sure.
- [33:07]
Ross Dunn
And Google has once again broken its, its. The ceiling again on their profits this year. Every year they're just soaring in profits and they have now got all that shareholder pressure to continue to do that. At some point they can't without destroying their own brand, at which point God knows what they're going to do. But ethically, it's just that nothing matters anymore. It's just, let's just go for it and make more money because they can't continue doing this. There's no way they can forever keep increasing their value. It's just not possible. However, they seem to keep doing it and these are the different ways they do it.
- [33:56]
Scott Vanack
You know, one takeaway here is that, you know, for your own individual SEO, user experience is really important to help get those organic rankings. Unless you're Google, in which case profit is important. So if you're, if you're Google, just do whatever makes the most money. If you're anyone else, don't do what Google does.
- [34:13]
Ross Dunn
And unfortunately, we have to play the market. So I've had to tell my clients that if you're not doing paid ads right now, you're going to get hurt. Now you have to pay to play. And because of this monopoly that is Google, we have no choice. Infuriates me, but again, we have to respond in a way that supports our clients, not how much we dislike Google. And the fact is it has to be done. So if you're not doing local ads and you have a local business deeply, you know, consider doing it and do not, please, please, please, please, please do not use Google's suggested ad experience where they, and they're going to push it hard. In fact, we have many clients we do ads for and we are inundated with phone calls. I have now set up a call center to screen them. In fact, I told the call center to tell them to screw off. I'm so fed up with them. And they're calling saying, hey, we know we can improve the campaign you're doing for this client. No, you Can't. No. All you're going to do is increase how much money they're spending so you can make more money. And this is what's, I swear, this is what's increased Google's bottom line, a big chunk of it by doing this. And they have these companies in India that do this. And I think it's every six months they switch out the company. So it's not the same person that's calling you all of a sudden. They're reinvigorated and they're contacting you again as though they've never contacted you before. And their goal is to get you on performance max on these crazy campaigns where you spend a ton and go, you let Google control it. And I, it's. We've. I, to be perfectly transparent, we've lost clients to this. Clients thinking, well, I can just do it myself, I'll just use the system. No, you're going to get absolutely torn across the coals. You're going to lose so much money. Yes, you will get conversions because it is, you know, they don't want to lose you, but you'll be able to save a ton more money if you use someone who's actually working for you and not just working to spend your money. So keep that in mind, please, for your own sake. And if you're using and you're listening to them right now, reconsider it. You know, someone like us, we can do full campaign management for as little as $400 per month. That's crazy cheap. And you're getting a 20. I think Nathan's been doing it 20 years.
- [36:53]
Scott Vanack
Doing what we do, something like that. It's been a long time.
- [36:56]
Ross Dunn
Yeah. And so there's a lot of options out there. Yes, it can go up from there, can go up higher, depending how much is has to be done. But in most cases, small businesses are spending the minimum and they're real to bits, so keep that in mind. All right, Mueller files. What have we got here?
- [37:18]
Scott Vanack
Yeah, so this is kind of a unique one. John Mueller posted to Bluesky this odd issue about HTTP pages screwing up listings in Google. A website's name and favon icon were both incorrect in search results. They didn't match the actual website. And what it turned out to be was that Google was connecting the fave icon and website name from an old leftover insecure version of their homepage that was still live and accessible. So that was like an HTTP colon versus HTTPs, both existed. So site users that visited the site were automatically served up the secure version. So As a user, you'd have no idea that other page was there. It just never loaded. However, Google can see it and Google could see both of them and it was pulling the favicon from the old depreciated site that should have been deleted a long time ago. So John wrote to Bluesky, he said, I know. Crazy, huh? A hidden homepage causing site name and fave icon problems in search. This is a weird one. The site used HTTPs. However, there was a server default HTTP homepage remaining. Chrome automatically upgrades the insecure to the secure so you don't see the insecure page. However, googlebot sees and uses it to influence the site name and fave icon selection. So I don't always include these things from John Mueller, but this one I thought was good because this is something that could happen to anybody. If you see in search results something is wrong, like your name is wrong or maybe any information is just wrong. The incorrect favicon. Whatever, it is possible. This is your issue. The good thing about this, there's two, two ways to fix this. One is find out where that page is and delete it. But also just putting in a proper 301 redirect will also fix it and prevent it. And everybody should have this anyways. If your insecure version of your homepage is not being 301 redirected to the secure version, you need to do that no matter what. So do that, check and do it. And if you're having problems, this could be why so easy. Easy fix, but not necessarily easy thing to find if it's broken.
- [39:28]
Ross Dunn
So that's cool. I love stuff like that. Thanks big time to John for sharing that. That's, that's. That's a first for me too. I've never heard of anything like it.
- [39:38]
Scott Vanack
You know, it's kind of like the, the consult you just did last week that you're talking about where the site was blocked in a weird way, it's just like a regular site owner wouldn't know to even. I don't know what I have known to check. I do now, but I don't know if I would have even thought about that. I would have run screaming frog and it would have looked good and I would have been confused. I don't know, maybe I would have checked. I probably would have eventually. I think I would have got there, but not initially. It would have been some head scratching I think to start.
- [40:05]
Ross Dunn
But now it'll be easy. Oh yeah, now we know it would end up probably be the client going, why am I seeing this? Weird favicon. Yeah, because they're usually the ones that are checking their own listings all the time. And then we would have gone, what the.
- [40:19]
Scott Vanack
What the heck? So, yeah, there we go.
- [40:22]
Ross Dunn
That would be a hard one to dig out. Interesting. Well, we're done. Hard to believe there's a lot of show. Yeah. Yeah. Well, on behalf of Myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanack, thank you for joining us today. We do have a Show Notes newsletter, but we're behind. I had my executive assistant moved on, so I've been kind of behind on it. So I do apologize to anyone who hasn't received their Show Notes newsletter. I am currently training up someone else to be doing that, so we should be back on track within a week or two. Anyway, if you have any questions you'd like to share with us, please feel free to post them on our Facebook group. Easily found by searching SEO101podcast on Facebook. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes, which air every week on WMR fm.
- [41:12]
Scott Vanack
Thank you for listening, everybody.
- [41:31]
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- [41:38]
Ross Dunn
work to keep everything on track.
- [41:40]
Trust and Will Advertiser
That's how work gets handled.
- [41:42]
Scott Vanack
Visit us@asana.com I saw you.
- [41:46]
Ross Dunn
Running a business means checking a lot of boxes.
- [41:49]
Mackenzie
Let's see, payroll check inventory check insurance.
- [41:54]
Ross Dunn
Good thing Simply Business makes getting small business insurance fast and easy. Check insurance off your list at simplybusiness. Com.