Webcology
Technology
About
Webcology takes a deeper look at the ecosystem of the Internet as it affects webmasters and web marketers from the points of view of two well known web marketers, Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. Based on interviews with special high-profile guests or panels, Webcology introduces, explores and explains how the various segments of the web marketing world work.
Episodes
- The May Day Edition
Chrome released a massive security update fixing over 30 vulnerabilities. Be sure you're running v147.0.7727.137/138 and accept no substitutes. Meanwhile, OpenAI founder Sam Altman's identity verification service promoted a partnership wit…
- The Too Dangerous for the Public but Too Useful to be Shelved Edition
Anthropic's Mythos is too dangerous for the open market but too useful to be ignored. Though only released to a relatively small number of large-scale developers in order for them to develop defenses to Mythos, the hyper-powerful agentic-o…
- The Schwartz Should Be There Edition
Wikipedia erased an entry about legendary search journalist Barry Schwartz citing their editorial team's perception Barry has a commercial interest in a Wikipedia entry. That he's spent most of this century writing a daily compendium of se…
- The April's Tools Edition
The war with Iran is nearly a month old and the effects are being felt across the greater economy. One of the places it is being felt hardest is in the AI sector where chip manufacturing is based on oil, the cost of energy is rising, and g…
- The Coming of the Bright Equinox Edition
As the War against Iran continues into its fourth week, the Pentagon has been told to work Claude out of its systems, literally. The Secretary of War designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk at the beginning of March and wants it gone now.…
- The Buggy Ides of March Edition
A couple of GSC bugs to report of the top with BigQuery exports not working and an issue with the date selector in crawl stats. In both cases, it's a them thing, not a you thing. If you're running ads through Goolge Ads in the EU you need…
- The Age of the AI Wars Edition
And, suddenly last Saturday, we were at war with Iran. That will have profound effects on our economy and the tech industry. If the war is a component in a tech story, or tech is a big part of a war story, we will report and talk about it…
- The Agents are Amassing Edition
The adoption rate of Agentic AIs appears staggering. Making, deploying, and managing AI driven agents is easier than ever. This, of course, introduces a myriad of security concerns, many of which will become apparent faster than we think.…
- The Transitional Vectoring Edition
The situation remains normalizing, all facshed up. At least some of the folks working at Palantir are starting to understand what their work is doing to their world. According to reports in Wired Magazine and 404Media, employees of the met…
- The New Roman Times are Changing Edition
There is no sugar coating how brutal the last week has been. ICE agents murdered yet another regular person in the American federal government's relentless and brutal crackdown on Minneapolis Minnesota. This week's extra-judicial killing w…
- The Search Goes on Amidst it All Edition
Elon Musk's AI-Grok continues to churn out non-consensual images of people including sexualized images of children, an issue that continues into this week. Google is integrating core search signals into its AI Experience in AI Mode and AI…
- The Nothing New Year's Back Again Episode
It's a new year which, as with all new years, brings a chance for a renewal, a hope of a new beginning, and in this, the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st century, that hope was dashed within 48 hours with the invasion, kidnappin…
- The Webcology 2025 WTF Just Happened Year End Revue
Five high profile OG Search Engine Optimization experts talk about the year that was and the year that may well be in our annual Year End Revue. Carolyn Shelby - Principle SEO at Yoast, Ryan Jones - Senior Vice President of SEO at Razorfis…
- The Christmas Breaks Upon Us So Duck and Cover Soon Edition
The December 2025 Core Update continues to roll out, as one does pretty much every year around this time. Some are seeing results early but there hasn't been a major stir or fuss from the SEO community. That might be because it is somewhat…
- The It's Getting to Look A Lot Like A Core Update Edition
It's the middle of December and throughout the Web, all the crawlers are stirring and AI Bots getting fed. The products displayed on folk's sites with due care, in hopes that St. Googlishous would bring traffic there. Suddenly somewhere in…
- A Cyber-Funday Mass Outage Edition
It was a long week following a long Thanksgiving weekend that opened on CyberMonday with a login-outage at Spotify. Folks who logged out of their Spotify accounts on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday awoke to a virtual lockout which was finally…
- The Thankful for Those Giving Us So Much Change Edition
Even Google's Gary Illyes is saying it, "the change is hard to accept" in regards to the evolution of AI in search but that SEM and SEO will coevolve with search, just like it has the past 30 years. That optimism is something to be thankfu…
- The Monopolies Come and Monopolies Go Edition
Adobe bought SEMrush in a $1.9Billion dollar deal putting SEO back in the middle of the boardroom again. Jim and Kristine discuss the purchase, Adobe's intentions, and the implications of Adobe owning SEMrush, Search Engine Journal, the SM…
- The Major Moves of Mid-November Edition
The relentless shifts towards AI powered everything being everywhere in the digital environment are accelerating and the evolution of digital marketing services is starting to keep pace. Previsible, which recently bought the legendary agen…
- The Grok it, All CEOs Should be AIs Edition
In a week where Telsa shareholders are likely to award CEO Elon Musk a Trillion dollar pay package, rival technologarch Sam Altman says he'll be ashamed if OpenAI wasn't the first company to be run by an AI CEO. This start a debate between…
- The Browser Wars - Rise of AIs Edition
OpenAI has launched its new browser Atlas built to compete with Comet, Chrome, Edge, and other Chromium based browsers. As with other AI based browsers, Atlas comes with a slew of amazing self-directing features along with the potential fo…
- The AI Test Pivot Edition
Google is experimenting with several AI additions to several more Google products as it fixes bugs in its organic Google search product. It is getting to feel like SEOs are getting a better handle on how to work with and affect AI generate…
- The IT's My Party I'll AI When I Wanna Edition
Jim frets as his birthday comes up for renewal again next week. Meanwhile, Google's head of search, Elizabeth Reid was featured on an Economic Times podcast last week talking about the future of search, the effects LLMs have had on both se…
- The Darksteel and the Circle of Life Edition
Google's August 2025 Spam Update ended four weeks after it launched in late August. Its impact was fairly significant however tracking it will be complicated by the num100 parameter change on Sept10. The bAD bug that overwhelmed some Googl…
- The Days the Music Died Edition
There are very dark days ahead as the Trump administration falls further towards fascism down the authoritarian hole. Between the suspension of late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel and the announcement a non-entity was going to be declared a t…
- The AI a la Mode Edition
AI Mode has moved beyond basic English and is now available in Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, and Brazilian Portuguese. AI Mode is also available in autocomplete and is said to soon be the default of search itself. And that's just wh…
- The Monopolists Anti-Accountability Edition
A GoFundMe campaign has been established to help pay Alan Blyweiss' family pay for his end of life arrangements and to helping classroom teachers buy school supplies through the Make a Wish Foundation. The August 2025 Spam Update continues…
- Interview with Dixon Jones, CEO of Waikay.IO
A wide ranging interview with the founder of AI knowledgebase tool, WAIKAY.IO Dixon has been instrumental in the founding and growth of three major SEO / SEM tools, Majestic Links Tool, Inlinks, and now Waikay. We talk to Dixon about AI, w…
- The What Does Waikay Know About AI's Views on You Edition
This was a mostly news episode that ends with an extraordinary interview with Dixon Jones, founder and CEO of AI tool Waikay. We have a long talk with Dixon that lasted about 45 minutes about AI tools, how search has evolved to this point,…
- The Define AI as it Weirdly Goes Wild Edition
The AI makeover of everything is well underway and we're at the point where the most obvious problems are becoming more obvious amidst the hype. This week's vibe is partially informed by Kristine's annual visits to the Blackhat and DEF CON…
- The Lord I was Born a Can of Spam Edition
Google has brought AI Overviews to explain lyrics its users search for. We expect results to be interesting, if not enlightening. Meanwhile, AI Overviews and AI Mode are now live in the UK. There are a couple WordPress vulnerabilities to w…
- The Zero Click Pew Pew Pew Edition
A newly released study from Pew Research confirms what SEOs have been seeing for months, search results with an AI Overview or other generative response get far fewer clicks. A vibe coding fiasco sees an AI make a desperate series of mista…
- The Unlike Cloudflare the Ninjas Are Previsible Edition
Interesting news from the business world. The Internet Marketing Ninjas were acquired by SEO consulting firm Previsible. Founded in 1999 by legendary SEO Jim Boykin, the Ninjas were one of the oldest digital marketing firms in the world. T…
- The Core Update Cometh Back Edition
We have a special guest this week and a half hour long interview with San Diego based SEO, Nick Musica in which we get to geek out on the sweeping changes in search and how they affect Technical SEO. Also, Google finally released a post AI…
- The Recognizing What We're Losing Edition
The search industry mourns the loss of foundational SEO Jill Whalen. Jill's impact on the earliest decades of SEO set the template for the industry we know today. Every old school SEO was directly touched by her in some way, most of us lea…
- The Recognizing the Great Decoupling Edition
Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger talk about the decouplings happening in the SEO industry and in tech in general. A major topic is the decoupling of click activity vs. impressions seen in Google Search Console as AI Overviews are…
- The AI Affected Circus Effect Edition
SMX Advanced is back. The show is happening live, for the first time in public since the pandemic, in Boston this week. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger recall the traveling circus atmosphere of the early conference circuit. Meanw…
- The They'll See You When You're Sleeping Edition
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 Google Goes AI Everything While X Marks the Grok Edition
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.…
- The Truth about Badger Licking Edition
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…
- Mikkel deMib Svendsen, SEO Master of Course
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…
- The Ad Strength and Some Levity Edition
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 m…
- The Technically Speaking is More Fun Edition
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 successfu…
- The Education is the System that Fixes Bugs Edition
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 go…
- The Beware the Ides of March Edition
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…
- The To Get AGI Be a 60 Hour Mule Edition
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…
- The D.O.G.E. Did What with What Edition
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 del…
- The Chaos of Bugs, Layoffs, Changes, Cheats, & Targeting in a time of a Tyranus Rex Edition
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 G…
- The Compliance is a Buggy Feature Edition
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…
- The Ironies of DeepSeek Edition
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…