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- [00:01]
Advertiser
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- [00:25]
Talkspace Representative
You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself?
- [00:29]
Ross Dunn
Talking.
- [00:30]
Talkspace Representative
Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences, and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code space80@talkspace.com at verizon, anyone can trade.
- [01:25]
Scott Vanack
In their old phone for a new one on us with unlimited ultimate, which means everyone in your family could get a new phone and stay on your family plan. Close.
- [01:35]
Ross Dunn
Hey mom, you seen my toothbrush?
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SEO Expert
I'm almost done with it.
- [01:41]
Scott Vanack
Oh, maybe too close. Trade in and additional terms apply. See verizon.com for details.
- [02:03]
Ross Dunn
Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM. Episode number 486. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and my co host is my company senior SEO Scott Vanack. Well, we have some. We're going to go right into the SEO news today. We got a fair bit to share, so let's just jump in and we're going to start with what else but another core update? What's this all about?
- [02:28]
SEO Expert
Yeah, so in our last episode, actually, we talked about how Google was promising a core update coming soon within the next few weeks. Well, it's been about two weeks and on November 11th they rolled out a new November 2024 core update. So it's kind of the same as Every other core update, really, it should take about two weeks to roll out. That's what Google's saying. And their words are, this update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on search. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The usual Google's advice, and ours as well, is simply create quality content meant for people.
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Ross Dunn
Unless, of course, you just happen to be hit by an update that destroys you because even though you've written, written great content, their system can't handle it.
- [03:20]
SEO Expert
Yeah. And then you just give up.
- [03:22]
Ross Dunn
Yep. As we'll start a new business, they.
- [03:24]
SEO Expert
Say, yeah, that's pieces of brutal. Well, every business has, you know, I don't know, a hundred billion dollars liquid like Google. Right. So you can just, you can just do whatever you want. Really crazy. So, yeah, no real advice, the typical stuff. But keep an eye. Your rankings hopefully don't hurt in the next couple weeks. So be watching to see what happens with our clients for sure.
- [03:48]
Ross Dunn
All right. Why don't you take the next one too and I'll handle the practices next.
- [03:51]
SEO Expert
Sure, yeah. Google has made an update to their crawl budget documentations to sort of clarify a few things for people that have mobile and desktop versions of their site. So on November 1st, Google updated the practices to say, if your site uses separate HTML for mobile and desktop versions, provide the same set of links on the mobile version as you have on the desktop version. If it's not possible, provide the same set of links on the mobile version. If it's.
- [04:19]
Ross Dunn
Sorry.
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SEO Expert
If it's not possible to provide the same set of links on the mobile version, ensure that they're included in a sitemap file. Google only indexes the mobile version of the page and limits the links shown or sorry. And limits. I'm having a bad day, apparently. And limiting the links shown there can slow down discovery of new pages. So if your site is dynamic, which it probably is these days, just make sure that you don't have links that are specific to the mobile version, to what people are seeing in the mobile version of your site, or, sorry, in the desktop version, make sure everything is in the mobile version. Google will not necessarily find pages if they're only accessible through desktop versions of your site. Most people probably have this, but you're. I've seen sites where the navigation changes, the header navigation changes, and if you've got a core link in your mobile nav that's missing, but it's there on your desktop nav navigation, you're going to have problems.
- [05:17]
Ross Dunn
So, yeah, we still run into it quite commonly where, where clients think desktop first, mobile a distant second. And I mean, I admit I fall into that sometimes too. I mean, even though we do this all the time, I still, I mean, after decades of thinking desktop only, it's not the easiest change. But yeah, mobile is everything now. So make sure you do have all those links in place and it's not dramatically different because they might not find it.
- [05:48]
SEO Expert
I think it can be tricky too, because when you're building a website, most people build a site on a desktop computer. I don't know if a lot of people building sites on their phone. So you, you're faced with the desktop version all the time and it's hard to, I don't know, it's hard to visualize. You've got to, you know, open up your emulator or have it open on your phone and be checking. And I could see why people just focus on desktop. And I've seen new client websites, sometimes they'll come to us or whatever and you can't even use it on your phone. It's so bad. It's like, oh, come on, this is a new website. This is ridiculous. And so, yeah, just think mobile first. Always, always, always, always.
- [06:25]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, design for mobile first, desktop second. Now, I've said that countless times to our own designers and I know how they work. They usually design first in desktop because they know how to do both well. So I'm not going to mess with how they do things because the sites always turn out really, really well and they work great in mobile. But the point comes across, right, you got to think about the mobile at all times. All right, this is an article, I believe it was from Roger Monty six SEO practices. You need to stop right now. It's on search engine journal.com First. Redundant SEO practices. These are some here. Buying expired domains, which is still done in order to leverage any traffic that was going to them or to or their authority they once had. Buying paid links, adding meta name index follow. I see that all the time. Yeah, it's like, yeah, Google does that anyway, you don't need to tell them to. In fact, it's going to be hard to get them not to.
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SEO Expert
I want to mention about the expired domains because I had a client recently ask me, we've got these, there was like 20 domains or something. What can we do with them? And like, well, really nothing. But there are cases where you might want to buy expired domains if you're worried about branding situations if you know your, your brand name is in there. It's okay to buy an expired domain for branding purposes or for any purpose and redirect it to your site. But just know you will not get SEO value out of that. It's not going to help you. Other than, you know, trademark stuff and branding and what have you.
- [08:07]
Ross Dunn
There are definitely uses for all of these. Even buying paid links. If you buy a paid link and you're getting benefit from direct traffic, do it. Yeah, why not? Except for the meta name index follow, there's no benefit to that. The other thing about buying paid links too is that it's also a very, very broad explanation. There, there's a lot of different ways that paid links do still work. The problem is the average person doesn't know that and when they buy them, they usually get screwed. So definitely be very careful if you go that route. Scraping Google search features and when he's talking here is about scraping, people also ask which is a great place to get ideas. Just don't simply copy what you find there. Again, I think a lot of this is going to come down to what we said before. We have to. In this, in our role as hosts of a podcast, we, we have to speak in generalities and in this stuff too, you know, people also ask, can sometimes have actually really valuable info that you might copy, but most of the time you won't. It's just stuff you don't scrape. So I think he's speaking generalities as well. In most cases, questionable keyword use essentially don't stuff keywords. Only use them if they fit naturally. 100% agree. That's some. I'd say that's literally 100% of the time. I don't, I can't see a reason you would go around that copying your competitors. Don't just copy your competitors and do it better. Look at competitors for ideas is great. Looking at them is great. But use your own experience and expertise to create content that will satisfy your readers. Now, how many times have we said this? We're blue in the face, right? For your readers. You know, in general, if you create great content, it's like, and I see great content. It's content you as, or your client as a, or one of your professionals, as a professional is going to write it with all the knowledge they have and it's going to be excellent and they're going to ensure that it's not flippant. And yeah, just a waste of time. You know, you got to work on your content and you do, it will pay off. And just don't add more content because Google, that's how he puts it, don't add content to just add content. Yeah, again, a good generality. I think there are instances where we told clients that you've got five pages, you need more content, you are going to add content even though you don't need to just add content.
- [10:54]
SEO Expert
Yeah, yeah, there's definitely like if you've got a 10,000 page site, you probably don't need to add that one more page. But if you've got, like you said, a five page site, you're going to have to add content because Google you just, you're going to have to.
- [11:04]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, well. And oftentimes there's all the really other good reasons too, like a good FAQ maybe and things that people are genuinely looking for when they go to the site. And sometimes you'll find that in your. If you have a search box on your site, you can look at some of the search history. I don't think enough people do that. And you'll get some really interesting insights into what they're looking for when they're on your site. And if they're looking, asking questions and they're not finding an answer, that's something you need to add to your faq. Basing decisions on the research of millions of Google search results, he suggests not to make decisions based on SEO, quote research studies. He says that isolating one factor in a study of millions of results ignores the reality that pages are ranked due to many signals and systems working together. These correlation studies offer over often overlook search features such as featured snippets, videos, images, shopping results, etc. Correlation is not. Causation is again another standard in our industry. You really got to keep that in mind. Now I would disagree that you can't make any decisions based on SEO research studies. Some of them are good enough that it can lead you in a different direction. So I'm not sure that's a disagreement. That's more like interesting. That's insights. You know, you see something that gives you an insight, then you can do your own research and dig deeper. One of the things I thought I liked about what I'm not sure where she posted this. It might have been in LinkedIn. Joanne Hawkins mentioned that something along these lines, which is don't just try to keep up with everyone in this competitive marketplace by following what they're doing. Do your own research. Keep on the cutting edge by working on it yourself. A lot of agencies are Going under the wall, under, underwater, and it's because they're not keeping on the cutting edge. I think it's got a lot harder and I totally agree it is a lot harder these days and especially in the local space, finding that much more difficult. And that's what she's fully in. So I can see why she's saying that. Anyways, look, studies and stuff and research is not easy. It's something that we always fight hard to fit into our time. But it is, it's part of our job and we have to get it done. All right, what's next?
- [13:35]
SEO Expert
Yeah, so this is just a, an interesting little take. There was a study by Dragon Metrics that found there is contradictory information for similar searches based on, you know, essentially the same fundamental question, but being asked two different ways. And I, I, I've never really noticed this, but it's probably because I don't search multiple ways for the same thing. But there are a couple examples that they give and one was for the search phrase no link between coffee and hypertension. And the response says caffeine doesn't have long term effects on blood pressure. But if you search for a link between coffee and hypertension, the response is caffeine may cause a short but dramatic increase in blood pressure. So the answers themselves in this case may actually be correct. In both cases, you know, one is talking about short versus long term. But if you're not really, you know, really digesting what Google is showing you, you may misinterpret this. And it's essentially the same question, like what's the link between coffee and hypertension? There's another example they use and it was political and I won't go into the political world because nobody wants us to talk about that. But the questions were essentially, you know, is this candidate good versus searching for is this candidate bad? Essentially it's the same question, but the fundamental, or, sorry, the, the results were dramatically different in search results. So is, are they bad? And then it spits out a whole bunch of reasons why they're bad. If are they good, it spits out a bunch of reasons why they're good. But it's not really saying are they good or are they bad? So it's just kind of interesting that you have to be careful with your search phrasing because you could get a completely wrong answer just based on how you're asking.
- [15:19]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I remember I was seeing some of those and they're really good examples of some messed up answers there. But one of them too was what do you think of this candidate and it would say all this information and sometimes it was really negative. And then what would you say about this candidate? Oh, this person's great. And yeah, it was like, whoa, it was so black and white. It's like, maybe I shouldn't be asking you. You know, this is just a little bit too. It's like they admit a decision themselves, so you got to take it with a grain of salt.
- [15:48]
SEO Expert
Something else that there was recently and not saying good or bad about either candidate, because I'm not going there. But there was a search, there was a bug of sorts at Google and people, if they searched for where to vote for Kamala Harris, they were getting locations of actual polling stations and people searched where to vote for Donald Trump. They were not getting it. And so a lot of people were kind of upset about this because it's, you know, if people are searching for where do I vote for Donald Trump? They're hiding it. And then, you know, you can imagine what people were saying about that. But in that instance, the reasons, the reason for the Harris based searches showing polling stations was that there are, there's Harris county and there Harris is a location, it's a place. So they were serving different results. As far as I know, there's no Trump county or cities or towns named Trump. Maybe there are, I don't know. But people don't necessarily look at that so often. You know, you really need to look at your search term and wonder, you know, just make sure it's what you're getting, it's what you're asking. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say there, but no, it's just interesting. The phrasing makes a big difference in what you see.
- [16:54]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, you always want these results to be impartial and things like that. That, that's just not cool. All right, let's take a quick break and we come back. We're going to talk some local SEO news.
- [17:05]
Scott Vanack
SEO101 will be back right after.
- [17:11]
Ross Dunn
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. All right, what sets a winner apart in local search results? I mentioned just a few moments ago that local is getting more difficult. And we did a bunch of research and again, correlation is not causation. I get it, you know, but we looked at some sites that were doing really, really well, our locations and businesses, and I didn't like this result because I'm not a big fan of social media. But the fact is this is actually 0.5 but you know, in my list here, but I just can't help but say it, they had great social media presences. I mean they had a ton of personality, they were having fun in the office, they were doing silly things and then they had great professional shots. I mean it was a great feel. You really felt like this is in this case, I believe it was a dental practice. This is a practice you really want to go to and experience. Of course the other way is the site has to be great their website.
- [18:20]
Cookunity Representative
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- [19:20]
Talkspace Representative
This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself, talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need. With Talkspace, you can go online, answer a few questions about your preferences and be matched with a therapist. And because you'll meet your therapist online, you don't have to take time off work or arrange childcare. You'll meet on your schedule wherever you feel most at ease. If you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or if you want some counseling for you and your partner or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus Talkspace works with most major insurers and most insured members have a zero dollar copay. No insurance, no problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com save $80 with code space80@talkspace.com what is DAX Are you.
- [20:23]
Advertiser
Tracking all our cars on Carvana Value Tracker on all our devices? Yes, Kristen, yes I am.
- [20:29]
Talkspace Representative
Well, I've been looking for my phone.
- [20:30]
SEO Expert
For in Dax's domain we see all.
- [20:33]
Advertiser
So we always know what our cars are worth.
- [20:35]
Ross Dunn
All of them? All of them.
- [20:37]
Advertiser
Value surge trucks up 3.9%.
- [20:40]
Talkspace Representative
That's a great offer.
- [20:42]
SEO Expert
I know.
- [20:43]
Talkspace Representative
Sell sell.
- [20:45]
SEO Expert
Track your car's value with Carvana Value tracker today.
- [20:50]
Ross Dunn
There's a lot to that. You have to think about personality, positivity. You know, photos with smiles have some levity in there, etc. Of course that has to match your profile and who you are. You don't want to put that out there. And when people come there, you're all serious and blah blah. There's nothing fun about the place that'll completely seem disingenuous and you'll lose business. But you know, if you can create a website that really reflects a positive, the positive environment you have, that's fantastic. Next, a proper Google business profile. You have to have one and you have to maintain it really, really well. Add photos to them regularly, create posts, just keep it active. You can have staff help you with that. You can have people going to it on a regular basis or I should say anyone who's leaving reviews on a regular basis or anything like that. Any kind of reviews. You should go in there and you should be thanking them. Review responses We've seen enough examples of people doing better because they're doing that. That I'm grateful for that by the way, that it seems to be helping with results. Now a reason I'm grateful is the reviews. You should be thanking people. It's a very simple thing to do. It's very quick and it shows them that you care and that you've taking the time to see the see them and see their thanks. And I think that's a really good move.
- [22:16]
SEO Expert
Lately I've been really pushing for my Google account. I've been reviewing like crazy, especially when we've been traveling and I don't know, it's weird, this sense of happiness you almost get when the business does reply. And even if they just say thank you so much for your review, we really appreciate it. I mean that I don't know, like it makes a difference for some reason to me and. But I get nervous when I leave a bad review. They respond Then I feel bad. I feel guilty when they give me a nice response to my bad reviews, like, oh, should I have left that bad review? And then I'm sometimes tempted to delete it. I never do. But. So maybe being positive to bad reviews might get some deleted.
- [22:52]
Ross Dunn
I don't know, maybe. Well, and the other thing, the one thing you gotta be careful of. Oh, this really. This sours a response immediately to me. If they respond to me or if I see one of our clients doing this. It drives me insane. Is when they respond boilerplate every single time. And you'll look at the reviews and you'll see they're answering the same thing every time. There is no personal touch there. They don't care. That's what that's saying. And you might as well do nothing because that just looks awful. It makes me actually angrier. It's like, don't even bother. I know I'm easy to anger, but hey, there you go.
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SEO Expert
Yeah, I walk on eggshells all the time. I get it.
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Ross Dunn
Okay, how FTC's. The FTC's new review policy could impact your local SEO. Look at that. A perfect little.
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SEO Expert
It just moves right into segue, right into it.
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Ross Dunn
Okay, so what's this?
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SEO Expert
Yeah, so there have been some new review regulations introduced by the ftc. There are rules that ban fake reviews and this took effect at the end of October on the 21st. Potentially, each review violation could see a penalty of $50,120 each. So. Well, first, before I put in what's actually banned, that does make me think I immediately go to negative SEO and let's buy a bunch of fake reviews for our competitor and see if they get penalized. So I'm curious how Google's going to address. Or not Google, the FTC will address that. How? I don't know if that. I guarantee that's going to come into play at some point. Somebody's going to do that. But anyways, so what's banned? What are you not allowed to do? So fake reviews, obviously that includes AI generated reviews and testimonials, largely from users who haven't experienced the product or service. It's fairly straightforward purchase reviews. So both positive and negative reviews that were bought or incentivized. So such as, hey, I'll give you 10% off a future purchase for a positive review. You can't do that. Insider reviews. So these are reviews from employees, their families, or affiliated companies. I never review client websites, although I'm always tempted to review all of my client websites. But I know Better not to do that. There are a few where I've actually purchased things from. And like a company we have that does H Vac, I bought a heat pump from them so naturally I gave them a good review. So it's totally legit. But you know, really don't have your employees leaving reviews. Don't just don't really. Review suppression. So using threats or intimidation to remove negative reviews. I actually had an experience through my sister with this one. She had a company that she was working with and they were absolutely horrendous, bad, bad, bad. And she left them a scathing review, all factual, all true. And the woman replied to the review, called her out by real name, put personal information in her reply, including her phone number, her home address, all kinds of personal information, threatened to sue her if she didn't remove her review of the company. And it was just, it went on and on. I can't remember the whole thing but it was suddenly super ugly and nasty. And I told my sister, I'm like you need to do something about like report it, maybe even call the RCMP because it was it to that level. She decided it wasn't worth the stress and she just deleted the review and caved to the pressure.
- [26:10]
Ross Dunn
No.
- [26:11]
SEO Expert
And, and certainly the company, the, the woman at this company was, that's what she was going for. I'm just going to go extreme and they'll remove this review. And that's exactly what happened. And I, I don't know what I would have done. Is it worth it? Fighting it? Maybe. Like I definitely would have tried reporting it to Google. I don't know if I would have called cmp, but maybe I would have like because it's a threat basically. Anyways, FTC doesn't want you doing that. Clear. Clearly you shouldn't anyways, but that's one of the rules. Company controlled review sites. I've never actually seen this in practice, but if you know essentially creating a website for reviews for your other business website that you control and claiming it as an independent site. So yeah, I don't think I've seen examples of that, but me neither. Yeah, don't do it. I found that interesting. And then false social proof. So buying followers or views to create an artificial social media influence. So yeah, all those you do that, you could be paying over $50,000 per incident.
- [27:10]
Ross Dunn
Good luck Proving false social proof though. That's gotta be near impossible.
- [27:15]
SEO Expert
I feel a lot of it would be really hard to prove review suppression. I think you could probably, you could prove the threats in that Pretty easily. So some of the stuff you could, a lot of it would be hard to prove. One, there are a couple examples that. Where was this at? Search Engine Land? I think they gave a couple examples. Real world examples. There was a site, Fashion nova was fined $4.2 million for blocking negative reviews on its own website and allowing only four and five star reviews. That's pretty significant. There's also a rental listing platform, Roomster was penalized for thousands of fake positive reviews. That case is still pending. So who knows what's going to happen there. But so they are taking action in the big cases. You know, if you've got one review that's fake, I wouldn't stress. I'd get rid of it if you could, but I wouldn't stress about it. I don't think they're really focusing on targeting these small operations. I think they're going after the big stuff. Amazon terrible there. Oh, I'm curious to see what happens in the next few months. Amazon's going to have to purge their reviews. It's just fake review after fake review. But there you go. Keep your reviews legit. It's a lesson there.
- [28:26]
Ross Dunn
They're going to be overwhelmed very quickly unless they've got a massive department. They're going to have years and years of work submitted to them in terms of complaints within a month. Not even. Oh dear. I mean there's just so many. I mean just locksmiths alone could give them work forever. A bit.
- [28:43]
SEO Expert
Well, I even like I started thinking about more than just businesses. I wonder how this might roll out to things like movie reviews and things. Because there was a movie on Netflix I thought I might want to watch and I might still, I don't know, can't remember what it was called. But I, I Google searched it and the reviews on Google for the movie, the first four or five reviews were the exact same review but slightly tweaked. And they use language that, you know, it's all either AI generated or spam. Like they're not legit. Real 5 star reviews in Google it gets, I think it was almost four stars out of five but if you look at Rotten Tomatoes it got like a 6% positivity rating IMDb. So they're loading up the Google review for this movie with fake reviews and I don't know who they are, if they're related to the producers of the movie or if it's Netflix doing it, I have no idea. But it's just the record.
- [29:33]
Ross Dunn
I on a total side note there about reviews, it was Remembrance Day two days ago here in Canada, November 11th. And I like to watch at least one poignant war show, something that's not fluff, that's well done. And I abandoned the ones I've usually done. And I watched Passchendaele, which is one created by Canadian. Really. I thought it was great. I mean, I, I look back on some of the dialogue and it was a little weak, but it was really well done, in my opinion. Rotten Tomatoes get like 13% or something and other ones were like really low. And then the user score, I think it was somewhere else, was four out of five. It doesn't make any sense. So you just kind of take these things with a grain of salt. But I highly recommend it. It was, it was a drama, very intense, obviously. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Highly recommend it. Total sidebar there. But anyway, you just never know. You can't trust these things anymore.
- [30:46]
SEO Expert
I'll add it to my list. Better be good.
- [30:49]
Ross Dunn
It's one you should watch with. Watch with your wife. It's a good one. Yeah, you know, grizzly. But it's got a love story and, you know, but it's, it's good. All right, next up here, Chat GPT Search makes Bing an SEO priority. This has been on our radar for a little bit here, but figure it's time to. To share. Essentially Chat GPT Search, which is currently out but limited to users. It's all kind of fuzzy at this point. I assume at some point it'll be open to the public, but I don't know just how intense or how open it will be. Either way, it's going to be used more and a lot more. And the search engine they use, the index, is Bing's, not Google's. So it's going to be very important from 2025 and beyond that you ensure your website is in Bing's index. That doesn't mean you have to rank on Bing, although that isn't a bad idea. It still has a portion of searches out there. It's always a decent idea. Don't focus on it too much, but it's a decent idea. However, definitely want to make sure you're in the index. So what that means is ensuring that you have access to Bing Webmaster tools for your website. It's a pretty simple process to do. And once you have that, you'll see just how well your website is indexed and any other issues. It's just like Google search console. It's got its own quirks and such and it's. I would say it's not. Well, maybe it is as advanced. It's actually had some extra things that Google didn't have at one point. I haven't looked at it in so long. What do you think, Scott?
- [32:36]
SEO Expert
Yeah, I haven't really been using much either. Although that's about to change in a big way. So.
- [32:42]
Ross Dunn
Yeah, we're gonna know a lot more about it soon.
- [32:44]
SEO Expert
Yeah. In a future episode I think we'll go over a lot of that stuff, but I don't have a lot to say. We were using it and you know, as beings market share drops and you know, clients often they just don't care.
- [32:55]
Ross Dunn
No.
- [32:56]
SEO Expert
And you know, even if you tell them to care and they don't, you gotta go with what the clients want. Right. And now we're gonna be focusing not heavily on Bing, but more on Bing than we have in the past, so.
- [33:07]
Ross Dunn
Right. And the reason I said you don't have to rank on Bing to have some benefit is that Chat GBT uses its own algorithm. They're just using the index that Bing has. So essentially their library and then it's interpreting what to what to show. But if you're not in there, if you're not in that library, you're out of luck. So at least make sure you're in there. They may switch away from Bing someday, who knows, but it's not expected to be in the near future. All right, next up, Google AI overviewed. The overview displayed within People also ask. Fill us in.
- [33:42]
SEO Expert
Yeah, so this is, I think we have a little bit of AI overviews news every single week. We got a bit of stuff from them coming up all the time. Yeah, Derek Perkins, Barry Schwartz talked about this on SE Roundtable. Derek Perkins posted to X saying we've started seeing and parsing AI overview results showing up as the answers to People also asks. So in his example he had done a search for which is the best car for a family of five. And in the people also ask, it was AI overviews nested within there for the answer to the question, not data pulled from, you know, whatever website like you commonly see in like a featured snippet or what have you. When Barry checked for himself, he only saw the featured snippet version. When I checked, I saw neither. So there we go. But I found it interesting that the, the standard featured snippet version had completely different vehicles listed than the AI overview version. Obviously they pulling from different, different sources. But it's interesting to see AI overviews in there now and I don't know how I feel about it. I feel like in the people also ask box, I want to see real Q and A stuff from actual websites. I don't want an AI overview in there, but I. Maybe that'll change. Maybe I do. I don't know what I want there.
- [35:02]
Ross Dunn
But I'm not going to trust it. I want to see variety. Yeah, I think that's going to be something they run into and hopefully figure out because the best thing about search is variety. I don't trust them to make a decision for us.
- [35:17]
SEO Expert
I think there, there would be examples to that where I maybe prefer AI. So in this example, which car is the best? Well, AI overuse doesn't really know. I want real tested review results from people. Right. That's what I would want in any sort of review type situation or something. But if I want to know, you know, what day is daylight savings this year?
- [35:38]
Ross Dunn
Yes.
- [35:38]
SEO Expert
Well, I don't need somebody's blog post about the history of daylight savings. I just need to know that it was on November, whatever it was sixth or something, fourth, second, I don't know, whatever day it was this year. So sometimes you just want the data. So it does make sense for some.
- [35:53]
Ross Dunn
Questions, but absolutely simple answers. Go for it. Stuff that there is no doubt about. Is the world flat?
- [36:02]
SEO Expert
Yes, obviously.
- [36:05]
Ross Dunn
You gotta hope they get that one right.
- [36:07]
SEO Expert
Yeah, if I put a ball on the floor, it doesn't roll away.
- [36:09]
Ross Dunn
So no. Oh dear. Some people contest that and that would be pretty funny. But anyways, on that silly note, we're done. Wow. Time flies. On behalf of myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Van Eck, thank you for joining us today. 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 to future episodes which air every week on wmr.
- [36:46]
SEO Expert
Great. Thank you for listening everybody.
- [37:18]
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- [37:52]
Ross Dunn
Hey mom, you seen my toothbrush? Ah, I'm almost done. With it.
- [37:58]
Scott Vanack
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- [38:10]
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