The Future of Google and what it means for Search Engine Optimization

Show video

welcome to SEOconspiracy.com today I have to  great pleasure to welcome back in the podcast for   the last episode of a series really interesting  series where we went back in time and we traced   back the entire history of Google and SEO since  the early days illustrated with his blog post   and the one and only mr Bill  Swalski ladies and gentlemen hello how are you today I'm very well pump  for this this last talk because we will talk   about the present and about the future I hope to  trick you to come back to us your conspiracies to   to dig more about diff some other stuff but   I think it's a very very valuable series that we  we just recorded where we went back in time and   throughout your your work we were able  to trace back all the evolution of Google   and how SEO evolved also throughout  through our time and if you look back now   ahead you hate it when you say when people say  you are a legend but you are part of history   your word the work you did is history  it's it's the history of SEO it's the   it's the it's part of the history of our  industry which is only 20 years old but still um you can't say no to that Bill oh it's a lot more  learned and usually when I talk to people it's   about the future of SEO rather than the past  SEO true that through that you symbolized you   symbolize very well the mindset of adapt or die  and to have the vision to see what other people   don't see we've talked last time about how since  2005 you already saw this semantic SEO trend   before it even existed by by reading scientific  papers like the topic sensitive patreon and so on adapt or die it's a little bit more violent  than the way you say it that's my style but   same thing right yeah and the fact that we  are still standing if you started we started   around the same time early 2000s and we are  still standing today that means something   it really does because it changed so much I mean  do you remember where we come from I mean that's   crazy title tags and backlinks with uncle  links to what it is today it's pretty insane   there's some things that just don't change though  they stay the same year after year after year   knowing who your audiences are is important  for any SEO campaign any marketing campaign   you have to know what you who the people  are who you're creating things for   and that's regardless of  what technology is in place   intent is the key concept that people  should focus on because if you get that and   can you can you tell us again the warning  he's cheating because I will ask him to to   explain to us again the example back then what  he just started about about a law firm but it   was a little bit easier for him to understand  intent because he did you did study law right so that's the part of the story that I  know but you don't tell that during a   podcast or public talks but I know  I know I know my Bill I know my   I've studied you so I know where you but it  is first question first yes please tell us   how you you started this his first exploration  of the intent throughout the this first case I started intent how i in an SEO campaign when you worked  with the the law firm right right and   you already and again back in the context  that was like what 2005 something like that   2000 yeah but you already I remember in the  previous episode you you you explained how already   back then you were already thinking about intent  and already trying to put yourself in the shoes of   the person looking for a service and you already  started to build back then you wanted to to rank   on law firm san diego you repeat law firm san  diego 200 times on the page and you put all your   anchor text on your backlinks law firm san diego  Bill Swalski here ladies and gentlemen what did   he do he built an entire guide he already tried  to find semantic affinities when Google didn't   even have a clue of what what that meant remember  that story I remember a lot of stories like it I was telling you about Baltimore.org and how we  were trying to rank for black history Baltimore oh   yeah that was it yeah that's right we decided that  was almost impossible because there were too many   competitors who had good websites who who had that  phrase covered trying to rank for matching strings   matching black history Baltimore was was not  the way to go there was too much actual history   in the city that we could describe that people  would search for and you may refer to them as long   tail terms at this point I sort of thought of them  as those when I wrote about it but talking about   people like Billy holiday or frederick douglass  when when talking about Baltimore made sense   these were people that people would look for  they were interested in finding out more about   what their involvement in Baltimore was the  famous churches the people like sojourner   truth who was involved in churches in Baltimore  in the early 1900s people people searched for her that that didn't sound like new technology that's notification that pops up  on a windows computer in the same   little tiny space that lots  of programs want you to also   type in at the same time yeah but what  was it like windows 95 or it sounded like   windows 95 it's the most up-to-date version of  windows 10 but it works like when there's none but to to go back on Baltimore what was  very interesting is how you okay you say   fine we are this entity but we need  to balance out we need to strengthen   to be stronger on the other part because to be  irrelevant on both something Baltimore well okay   you are doing a service or selling a product in  Baltimore and that will be easy to identify you   as a relevant entity about that but then  the city itself if you just repeat Baltimore   all over the place that's not enough to be  relevant so so the move had to come we were no   longer just trying to rank well for the string  blackjack street Baltimore we were trying to   rank for the concept for all the related  meanings all the the idea that people were   interested in people and places in Baltimore  and the history of Baltimore so if we included   entities are involved in building that  history we ended up ranking for that term it made sense let people search for   blake or Frederick Douglass and the page would  rank for black history in Baltimore because   it was about the history of Baltimore  that people are interested in the other example I would jump on  before we move forward to the present   is the example you always mentioned when you  need to be relevant you need to understand intent   and a trend that people have today is you want to  order pizza for lunch and people will rank with   the history of pizza because there's a lot  of work and they're optimized that's what's   happening now because what you did back then was  the truth we didn't you were one of the only one   one of the first ones to do it now everybody  is doing it but doing it wrong in my opinion and there are there are ways of ghouls looking  at intent that are differently now than they did   10 15 years ago they're talking about queries  as if they were canonical queries and Google   has a query log where they can look at what people  search for and they can see how often people   search for information about certain subjects  and what words they use what questions they   actually type in we see things like people also  ask questions in search results and those are the   types of queries that people actually searching  with these days so if you're interested in   the topic and you search for information  about it you see people also ask questions   you can get a sense of what canonical queries are  for that topic by what questions they're showing   so when you search for pizza 10 years ago or even  today you and it's lunchtime you must likely want   to order a slice of pizza you don't care about  who invented pizza all the differences and menus   of pizzerias over the year with the first pizzeria  was in new york city it's not really what you're   interested in you want lunch I never  search in in english but in french it's   laughable the the query SEO consultant because  I'll do like SEO guide and explain everything's well it's better let's face it let's move forward  to today it's it's better than it used to be the   even the low quality content and the trend now  you probably saw open air gpt-3 the robbers blah   blah machine can write like a human being not yet  not for long-form contact at least I don't believe   for short form results of of sports elections  all that stuff yeah a machine can do it but but   I don't know what's your opinion we will go  into machine learning a second but about the   I'm using gpt2 and the whole buzz around gpt3 is  a little bit annoying in my opinion because they   it's just an evolution it's not a  revolution let's not get over our head guys   but anyway yes to to not digress to stay  focused here because we have a lot to cover many things didn't change it's still the same  mindset you were lucky you put yourself in a   good position you read the you had you took  the right path to try to learn by studying   patterns whatever is also behind the pattern  because what people see on your blog post   is just the result just the formatted text and  we spoke about this we like to explore scientific   documents even more than the pattern itself  and the profiling of the authors also is very   important so you were lucky to see that from the  start now it's a semantic casio is the way to do   and then it's for the better even from  technical SEO it's all better it's still spam supposedly Google improved in  fighting spam panda penguin   ninety percent of black cat is dead and  psychology for psychological warfare also   worked proper Google profile I just saw the the  green report right coming out by Google come on   Google is not saving the world right  it's not really good for the planet what are you pretending like it's like you  remember those apple keynotes where they have the   the ecology called status of or  recycling part of a mag of a computer   you can't throw a computer in  the trash like it it's it's so okay anyway some pretend yeah trying to to save  the world but whatever the point is that today   you wanted to discuss about how your way of  exploring algorithms patent how does Google work   is based on common sense experience learning  a lot and not having an endgame you don't know   where you are going what you want to look  for and if you ever will find something   then we have some other people  and let me share a tweet by yourself on july 16th if you think  SEO correlation studies may be useful   you should stop that and read this this article  shows how SEO studies that claim how to decode   Google and other search engine algorithms  are based on poor data and bad science it's an article about jeff ferguson  jeff ferguson but we don't need to   I'll give the link people  can read it it's interesting   let's start with bad science okay can you  please tell us what does that mean bad science   what that means is performing a study that looks  at lots and lots of data and finding correlations about that data like pages that are longer than 3  000 words tend to be in the first page of Google   and saying oh that that must mean that   Google likes ranking long pages highly  we don't know that we know that there's a likelihood that a long page will show up in  the first page Google by looking at all that data   there's also a lot of trigger pages and you have  rounding errors you have short pages ranking   too but some long pages are longer than that so  you're not making any definite statements you're   not showing any causation you're not showing  any reason why a lumber page would rank higher   you're just showing us the correlation the the  the fact that a lot of pages that rank highly   are that one and I think the ultimate flow in that  is people believe that it becomes a standard that   by writing three thousand I think it's two  thousand words right that they came out with but   whatever two or three thousand doesn't  matter that if you write 3 000 words then   you have more chances to rank on the first page  of Google doesn't make any sense none in the same   the same study says something like if  your urls are shorter than 10 characters   or 20 characters you also tend to rank on the  first page of Google so that that tells people   they should be editing the length of their url  so they're shorter to get them to rank higher   it's not true that your your pages don't  rank highly based on length of your url   they rank highly based on your content based  on links to your content based on other factors   and and the link your url is is rather minimal or actual non-ranking signal it has  nothing to do with how your page ranks just because there's a correlation doesn't  mean there's a causation right exactly and   the issue with that is it was fun at the beginning  because we had to figure out okay we started   from nothing so so we had to understand what to  optimize where what where are the the stronger   assets you know let's go let's call them that  instead of ranking factors okay we have assets   we have backlinks we have title tags we have  content we have internal links we have all those   assets and how do we use them that's how I saw  it and we tried to to make our sauce to say okay   we need to optimize this and the difficulty  is you need to push hard enough to seduce the   algorithms but stay below the statistical anomaly  you know not push too hard the exact match domain   is I saw last week john mueller stating something  this that in my opinion is totally wrong if you   use wisely an exact match domain it works  wonderful but people are pushing too hard so   they get flagged so easily because it's already  you have a you have an exact match domain don't   treat it like a like a porcelain vase you  know don't don't optimize like a like a pig   so one of the very first forums  that I ran across after I decided   many years ago that I wanted to do SEO was  one where there was an argument going on about   what the perfect keyword density was for a  certain term within a certain niche industry and   it was it was ridiculous that point even thinking  that Google was using keyword density percentages   that were different based  upon different industries my channel is called the people arguing were  very serious about it true true I remember   that and that's why I created this channel  SEO conspiracies because the list is endless   of those things that were born out of air out of  someone just and if it's someone in front in the   industry everybody will follow whatever that  person says so we do have a responsibility and   myself I claim that sometimes I do troll a little  bit trying to to see if people will follow or not   and but it's all good fun but that was the early  days now today what's happening is with those   heavy cpu like computers very capable of crushing  data crunching data and and those algorithms   of machine learning or whatever you want to  call it that you can find everywhere for free   well everybody's coming out with a study and it's  only clickbait it's only for cloud it's only to   get something it's not to make the industry  move forward like your work it's only to get   something back in return which is tw retweets  likes blinks whatever they want and and enough   is enough I think you're right to point this out  because in 2020 it does not make any sense to um I would I say to to to follow the those studies  so first question was about bad science and   it will make us lead into the  next chapter of the our discussion   because the the second part of this article  is hold on I'm lost here long history of bad   science statistics the last second part was was  the research presented is limited and unverified domain authority for example  that's one of my pet peeves yeah it doesn't mean that Google doesn't have   something that wants to understand signals  linked to authority or trust or whatever   but a domain authority score from a SEO tool  is nothing less than a which magic trick it's not based on anything relevant there  are domains that have always consisted of   more than one website like a geocities or  wordpress.com or blogspot so Google isn't   ranking those domains or those sites on those  domains on the basis of a domain authority score well if I'm not mistaken Google sees the web  url by url page by page anyway the the page rank   algorithm is is even though it's named at your  lawrence page it's based on rankings on for pages   so pages are linked together under the same roof  there is a home page which is really stronger   than the others but what I hate is this market  marketing marketing around those tools about this   domain authority score build up out of I don't  know what so there's a context to domain authority   domain authority the one that was published  by Moz was intended as a way to estimate   the value of getting a link from a specific domain  versus getting the length of a different domain   so you can take those domain authority scores and  based on those try to guess which was a better   source of links for your domain and that was the  sole purpose behind the mandatory it was never   a belief that Google used to  mandatory the way Moz came up with one maybe in the early days but  I read that that was how   the reason why Moz came up with  that score people may have written   a lot of stuff about demand authority now  and they're most likely wrong in most cases we know they rank we know topic sensitive  page rank right those are documented   you can see them even today majestic.com citation  flow is the PageRank formula and the trust flow is   the topic sensitive PageRank formula that's what  it worth that's what I mean that's what it is   okay it's maybe not a miracle but at least it's  documented it's real they did a lot of correlation   studies they didn't you didn't see them  publish anything about saying oh we found them   I know because I know very well dixon jones so he  shared with me those stories but in private not   in public you know it didn't they didn't say we  have the magic formula for the page rank they say   we did a lot of tests and looks pretty close  but that's the difference between saying okay   we reproduced the patreon formula we did a lot of  tests looks pretty close from as far as we can see   or trying to to build your entire branding around  around this and a score that is the way they they   build the score is is mysterious they don't  they're not open about it yeah so how do we   know you know you remember that toolcloud.com  that was putting a page rank on people you don't remember that tour for a little while  it was analyzing your your facebook your twitter   and your linkedin I believe and it was putting  a page rank on people's face a score of 100.  

a personal page ranking cloud score cloud  yeah clout k-l-o-u-t I think it got solved but   it reminds me of that you know you you do like   it's reverse engine engineering algorithms  and then putting together a score to uh it was a social media connector  score yeah yeah yeah yeah so so   it doesn't like I said of course  there's Google is trying to analyze   authority and allies trust and figure  all this out but I I I don't trust that   these guys reversed engineered the algorithm  because even from a scientific process point   of view the way they're doing it most of  the others because moses is not the only one   it doesn't make sense to me one of the problems  that toolmakers will run into increasingly in the   future is Google is caring less about these types  of metrics page rank and and so on they're they're   actually moving on to other ways of measuring  things using machine learning here you go so   you are moving on to the next topic now of our  discussion I think it's a great time yeah ranking   those ranking factor studies and all this crap  forget about it because it's not relevant today please tell us why so one of the things  that Google is likely doing at this point or   at least exploring deeply and they've  handed it is the concept of author vectors   and and they can look at a page and get a  sense of who the author of that page might be   I mean they've been studying writing styles and  the way people create content for years they have   a corpus of scanned books that they can  do studies on and and you know millions   of books written by millions of authors they  have a lot of data and to analyze they can   break text down into engrams short bursts of  content one through say five characters long   and and create statistics about those end  grams that tell them tendencies that writers   follow when they write something and and they  can identify authors by what they write about and   what statistically what they've created in the  past they can tell the idiosyncrasies of specific   authors and they can identify quite possibly  who's written what based upon that content it's it's a point where they're they're no longer  relying upon the string of text that identifies   somebody's name in a byline they're they're  actually looking at the content and saying   this follows the way that so-and-so  writes it's most likely from them   even though some some authors can write  differently on different platforms and   then some people are gross writers they attend  somebody else but moreover it's the fact that   these it's interesting because in fact what  you're saying it's the coin it's the same   thing but different it's like the the other face  of the coin the way we Google is is working now   is the same but different it's really like flipped  over so even if those ranking factors might   still have some value and backlinks are not going  away title get tagged value is not going away   but because of machine learning because of  the way it's trying to even going back this is   to this intent and trying to be very precise and  have basically which instead of doing broad SEO   strategies it should be query by query on a macro  are we confused micro micro macro is closed right macro is a big scale micro is small yeah macro  is the small so so at least for your important   keywords maybe not all of them and then pareto  principle says that twenty percent will make   eighty percent and I will I even still think that  five percent of your pages will do most of the job   five percent of your pages you need to take care  of them one by one because having those general   statements about SEO might be the foundation but  is not the solution the end game here is trying to   very fine tune what signal you send according to  what intent you want to answer and the environment   around you what does Google want future versus  what does Google have passed and present do I have   am I presenting it okay Google has written a number of things over  the years about authors and bad authorship   and reputation scores for those authors I  didn't talk about this much in this authorship   vector post I did mention some of them like agent  rank which I wrote about in 2007 and in that one   Google said we may look at content people create  and content that people edit and comments that   they write on content and we may give content on  pages scores based upon editors authors commenters   and and those are reputation scores based on those  people and what else they've written on the web   so there's a idea that Google could rank based  upon rank things based on what somebody's written   in the past and what they're written what  they've written now maybe how reliable they   are how popular they are what else they've  written about and and how people respond to   them so there's there's potential for those types  of reputation scores based on who the author or   something might be which is a different way of  ranking things and and it's something that Google   could use in a machine learning approach  to rank content on the web and and to   present diversity in search results we  want content from different people we   don't want the same same author showing  all the results for certain subjects if they can determine things like eat  scores expertise authority and trust   if they can determine that somebody's an  expert on subject they can say let's show   content from this person to this query  because they're an expert on the topic do you think people should not be afraid to build  themselves as a brand to it's totally doable I   mean you became we all became something an entity  you can see it in easier way to see it is Google   trends do you exist in Google trends or not is  already a first sign of do you have an existence   I encourage people to build a personal brand  to develop an expertise in certain subjects to   show off that expertise I think it's it's worth  doing as an SEO as a professional as as any   type you know as a teacher because before Google  patent Bill Swalski were not associated together   you did the work that today you are related  to Google patents for everything you did   and everything that all the signal around your  work you created this relation this this vector   and you became so the people  are very impatient now and   they say yeah but you guys started like 15  years ago yeah but you don't need you have   to start okay you have to start somewhere maybe  you won't need 15 years to to build something   so so yes one of did it happen  to you okay was last week   another client is now a client a sign but comes  up and says hey this website is out not ranking me   and look at his backlinks look at his content I'm  better you know the the famous theory everybody   above me is a spammer kind of spam site's position  so without even knowing the result I did live   but I knew that I knew what I was gonna found I  opened up Google trends I compared both websites   well the one who was out ranking was building  a brand it was really like a steep curve of the proof that the brand was alive and that people  were searching for their brand and the my client   now was just a flat line at the bottom it's and  I see more and more and more of these examples   of people looking at basic SEOs SEO kpI  and not looking at that branding factor   that becomes maybe that might be the  decisive factor if at equal value and even if you don't pretend to become an author  like like Bill Swalski or Shakespeare or whatever   to exist to be born to to have that digital  footprint in my opinion is increasingly important   because like you said now Google is shifting  how it's doing things and the importance of   how machine learning like you explain who he's  relevant for what and when everybody needs to   be at the right place at the right time and  that's the way the machine works I mean that's   maybe you will explain it better than me but  classification the way machI there's no maybe   okay there's no maybe for for foreign and all so  we're talking about this and I I mentioned to you   there's another patent similar to the author  vector patent which is a speaker vector act   and there's all kinds of audio  on the web podcasts hangouts   other things where Google can listen and  analyze audio videos you know from youtube   there's so many youtube videos are uploaded  every minute of every day Google has all kinds of   data they can experiment with they can study  they can listen to people talk and analyze   get some sense of what they're doing and people  I've talked to have been saying that the same   transcriptions from videos have gotten much better  over the past few years I think Google's spending   a lot of time with videos we're trying to make  sure they can understand what people are saying   and and getting a better sense of who they  are the author the speaker vector patent   is like the author vector pattern except Google  is trying to understand who the people are who   are speaking what they're talking about  what subjects they're talking about what   information is associated with them where they're  from whether or not they have an accent are   there other things like that what person personal  idiosyncrasies that they might have when they talk and and that's those are signals that Google is  now looking at that again have nothing to do with   the length of the title or what the anchor text  link might be or so on but it's a it's a different   way of analyzing content on the web and this  is something that isn't associated with with   a traditional 200 ranking signals type name from  Google but it's a movement that Google's taking   they're they're analyzing different things  they're trying to understand okay who are the best   podcasters who are the people most listen to who  are they can we understand what their voice sounds   like what they say and can we understand them  when we see them when we hear them on something   else like the podcast is a guest can we tell it's  them and what do they talk about there let's build   a database of all this information about these  individual speakers let's treat them as if they're   specific entities voice has a whole set of new  challenges because of new orleans because of   all that you know where Google should go for  information on that what's that youtube they're   neighbors they they they're they're owned by  Google but they will never speak it's crazy the   subtitles so there is one at least one white paper  from Google on a topic they refer to as prosody is studying causes setting emphasis   when people emphasize something when  they're talking when they pause when they uh just how they say what they say and and that's  something that Google analyzed when they came out   during this Google developer series when they came  out with the examples of Google using artificial   intelligence to call businesses to like make  reservations at hotels or restaurants and they   people who they called had no idea  they were talking to a machine   because it did things like it paused and it  used h h or are other words that aren't normally   just words they're more sounds than people make  and the machine was doing that so the people they   talked to didn't understand it was a computer but  Google's been learning from listening to people why did I say youtube because the the subtitles  so if you edit manually your subtitles   like what I do with SEO conspiracy it's  english subtitles you start correcting   them and very quickly like takes four or five  videos Google Google youtube is improving so   fast and learning so fast how you speak  adapting it's incredible it's the best   speech to text technology I know the youtube  subtitles I think in an earlier presentation   I mentioned a patent from Google where they  talked about code searching and how they're   using knowledge bases to identify the  sources of codes and they stopped doing   that they updated patent that was based on they  said we're going to analyze audio from videos   and we're going to look for quotes in that audio  because they they can and they didn't say this   independent but it's most likely because the  intent behind that church who said what quote   was most likely to watch that person saying  that so they want to show them the video   it's a talk I did yesterday in french another  talk we don't do keynotes now we do we do   virtual stuff but but it was about SEO in 2020  versus 2010 and I'm like guys text image video   audio for formats it's in the search engine a  general search engine result page it's in the   mobile device people are consuming content in  this four format those four formats of content   until the end of the world it will be text  image video audio you have to do multimedia   today think about SEO in a multimedia way  text is I'm not saying text is dead okay   yeah but but but especially on the mobile people  consume a lot of images and sound and and video why don't we had video we've had podcasts  which are both growing at tremendous rates   podcasts becoming bigger than television an  alternative not bigger television is still big but   a really serious alternative to to television I'm  listening to lots of audio books and the thought   came from my mind why don't I listen to plays like  people like shakespeare because it'd be fun to   listen to those I don't know about you but I got  a little bit excited too early about voice search   a little bit too excited I thought it was yeah alexa was coming out  and then Google assistant all that   Google now do you remember Google now it was  also trying a predictive search and all that   and apple search engine you heard the  rumor in my opinion it's if only a feature   for sirI for spotlight it's not gonna be yeah  what do you think about that do you think it   I think that apple's foundation research is  very different from Google's and it's very   different from yahoos you remember yahoo began  to search and they were originally a portal   so they always had lots of noisy stuff on their  homepage lots of news and links to fantasy sports   and personals and things like that and it was  really busy Google said that plain sparse sparse   home page with the search box and the word Google  at the top and that put copy right at the bottom   of the page that people knew goes into the page  but but they've been adding more stuff to that   recently they've always been based on search sirI  it was a sirI company the group apple acquired   and they acquired the technology for  sirI and the patent for sirI talks about   active ontologies so with certain topics  like restaurants there are always things   that people ask about like making reservations  or seeing recipes or menus things like that so   they understand what types of things go with  restaurants they understand the ontologies the   words are related to topics that are just related  with connor's the same type of things with travel   you know hotel booking hotels booking up flights  they understand there's a whole set of tasks   that go with those types of things interesting  these are the roots of sirI and sirI is a search   but it's a search based upon understanding  of how things are connected to each other like you said very different approach than  Google because it's to serve an ecosystem and   not trying to organize the world's information  and and the way Google approach it so it's   going from from the the need what do people need  throughout the features sirI or spotlight and the   written word and serving because right now sirI is  amazing to interact with the device but it sucks   when you you try to get out of the device and  that's something that comes from the outside world   outside of the apple ecosystem so that's  I think that's where they're going but   staying on this future of search multimedia  becomes obvious right now but also you've been   nobody talks about Bill Swalski the  agency Goldfish Digital and what you do it's a fair statement that and you've been doing  that for a long time you build a very strong SEO   layer based on these all principles of semantic  and topical clustering and all that but it's   not it around SEO you do everything content  marketing basically to to to make sure that   not only the SEO layer is giving enough power  doing everything around the SEO makes SEO work   but also I like to call it the three thirds  building a brand referrers and organic traffic   is that the first statement  to summarize your your work I think that's first aim I I think have  created a personal brand and I've created a   business brand I think goldfish digital is  known for being strong at SEO we get lots   of referrals from existing clients a new  business for business from people who know   our customers one way or another and refer us oh  your agency is very well known it's very strong   even within the industry you you are definitely  one of the top notch but what I wanted to say   is when you're interviewed when people  want you it's always about patents   you are mr Google patents and I think there's  a lot more to to Bill Swalski than just Google patents and the way I say that last time  but I will say it again because it's important   you could have taken advantage of your knowledge  for fame for money for whatever you could have   done things that and that's why I think we  relate because we rather chill okay like   we have enough we don't need more we don't need  more power we don't need more fame we don't need   more money we we're good we're good one of the things I say about patent I like to learn about from them is the searchengineers who write them provide their assumptions about search about   search engines about searchers to us so it's not  just the technology they're writing about it's how   they feel about the world around them exactly I  think that's interesting seeing the evolution of   how they treat searchers how they feel about  search how we've gone through growth of   the mobile web and some of the early  patents feeling pahones have to do with   how many times you have to press certain  letters on a keyboard to get numbers   like you have to press the letter a four times to  get the number nine you know and and they patented   that and they're pending stuff like that till  till we get and that's tech century representation   and and we get to the time of syria  where they're talking about those active   ontologies which is a very root change around  how many times you might press certain letters it's interesting how even our attack was  overlapping when I was finishing up on   the ranking factor studies and talking about  the switch and you are already on the author   vectors because that's it that's really it the level of profiling and the level of maybe that  will change after the doj report we don't know but   as as of today the level of even from ads  perspective I think larry page a couple of   years ago say something like today we're able  to serve ads more relevant than organic search   and I believe that statement for sure but yeah  but don't you think let's imagine the future   there will nail doj big tech hearing that will  all turn bad privacy is a trend that's not going   backwards talking about apple it's closing  up the ecosystem and more and more people   will bet on privacy I don't know  if you came across this article by   dutch media broadcaster who went back  to the old way targeting the content meaning that they they advertised  they put the advertisement   in relation with the content like adsense would  do you know regardless they forgot the the the   profiling from the user like everybody else is  doing and they just did it like we used to saying   okay we have a piece of content about topic a  let's find an advertiser in relation with topic a   and they more than doubled I think  it was 65 percent increase in revenue what is your thought about privacy and remember it  was the end of the world when they're not provided   we thought everything was over if the search  engine provides you information that personal   to you but doesn't provide that personal  information to anybody else in the world ever oh it's it's it's a it's a value to you   you're talking about new Google feature I forgot  what's his name there there are multiple ways   doing that there's a new patent that came out  last week that said we might look at information   about a searcher and a document that they've  recently seen in our search results like a   slide information a conservation yeah I covered  it I covered it in my SEO conspiracy news it   came out like very recently it's it's with the  Google discover trend but but shopping style   and that's it so you are saying okay and do  people do people it doesn't seem like people   care they're okay with the transaction  okay it's free you want my data above   whatever there's one there's one that  talks about personalized entity repository   where it says Google may learn about  things that you're interested in   or things that you're involved with say you're  taking a flight to new york so it might fill up a   knowledge base on your phone  about places to go to in new york   because you're going there okay I found the button  and your in your search work this is a patent   but you can't see it well I don't know what's  wrong with the okay let me stretch back this up   but having having that information at your  fingertips in case you do search for it   in an answer on your phone in a database  on your phone means you don't have to wait   for Google to search some server to  provide the information they can just   provide it to you right away so  if you're going to new york city   and you want to go to restaurants you do a query  on your phone for restaurants in new york city   and it can return that information right away  to you it doesn't have to send the signal out to   some through some cell tower and bounce  it back to you it's already on your phone   that's the way some I I forgot the technology  it's it's not ghost it's not phantom it's   I forgot there's a technology indeed that  leaves all the private data on your phone   and nothing goes up to the cloud and I  strongly believe that's the way to do it   but there lies power so now if you are in the  spot of all these data hungry companies how would   they do it if if they leave the the good stuff  on the on the device and don't they don't   get back any of it they have to show to everybody  all the time they're not going to compromise   that data they're not going to sell it off  to somebody else they're it's your private   data they're going to keep it private and they're  not going to give it to anybody else other than   same thing with like Google's based on location  history so you you Google maps you use it navigate   from place place it keep track of where you  go they sometimes will ask you to update your   timeline of where you've been so they have a  good idea of where the place you travel to are   in addition to location history which  is real world fiscal location history   they keep records of your search history so where  you go on the web is another thing that they track   another set of patents they talked about they  haven't incorporated into actual real life yet   as far as I'm aware but they might is media  consumption history and they'll keep track of   music that you listen to and I know my phone  does this now it identifies songs that are   playing in the background on tv or the radio as  I'm traveling places it'll give me a little note   and you can turn this on or turn it off it'll  say what the song is it's playing right now   which is good if you hear a song you want to  listen to again you look at your phone see   what the name and song is and who it's from but  it's it's a media consumption industry and they   they can at some point you can say remember  that movie I watched last week who was this   who were the actors who starred in that movie and  what are other movies from the same people and   that's the power of that type of media consumption  industry the ability to do searches like that since day one human being since  they started fire or building tools   humanity has only been in a quest for more  comfort and easier life more practical so   all I know is it's not going  backwards we won't go back the only problem I see is there's a big gap they  there's a lack of an alternative for people who   don't want that they can't have we've got  very few henry david thoreau's who want to   go back to walden pawn pond and simplify  everything I remember reading that yes that was during my studies in in the u.s  thorough I was very and you're right you're right   but the trend is um that the way capitalism works it's freestyling  until doj slaps on the table and says hey   is over guys you gotta chill I  don't know what will come out of it   what's very funny is that SEO is still very  much under the radar like nobody knows we exist   think more and more people are learning of course  but it didn't come up to the level of doj working   one year or maybe it did I don't know but  we see the things that Google is replacing I mean it's replacing yellow pages  it's it's replacing paper maps   it's replacing it's replacing newspapers it's  replacing uncle joe who is a car salesman and   you go to because your car is broken and uncle joe  might know a garage better than no even anybody   else you know so Google is also your I don't know  in english you said but you're your qualifying   agent your recommendation again word of mouth  you trust Google too I I used to every sunday   morning get up and go to a local restaurant and  stop the newsstand along the way and buy a couple   newspapers I don't do that anymore I don't  need to look at all the news I want my phone   that's also let's let's also finish up on  that the predictive search part Google knows   every sunday you take that route you go to  new stand and then go take a coffee and he can   predict and serve your stuff before for example  it will rain take an umbrella it can't do that   but or there is a there's a big accident on the  road you usually take so leave 10 minutes early this prediction is also maybe very useful in  certain cases but we'll still go back to to this   huge power and it's back on  the table again lux like 2016.   if Google is trying to show good faith not  only Google twitter facebook yeah we're not   manipulating anything we're giving everybody  a fair shake but still people are fighting are criticizing people saying no   it's flawed and so on and so on it's tough on both  sides it's tough I think what's your opinion on on   the perception because it's so easy to take out a  series of bugs or observation something you notice   and change it into a story to fuel a narrative  about some conspiracy theory you know what I mean   so one of the complaints I'm seeing is that  Google is putting people in perception bubbles   like mirror bubbles around  you that mirror everything   that's within the center of them so the things  you look for the things you see in the news on   your search results if if you have a conservative  perspective you see conservative world results   if you think that there's some type of  conspiracy against conservatives you see   conspiracies everywhere I think  Google's working to try to   bring more diversity to those types of things  when when they show top stories in the news they   show things that are top stories that may not  agree necessarily with your world perspective   they may show alternative goods or social media  results that are different than yours on purpose   we're trying to fight that filter bubble type  thing and I agree it's a problem but don't you   think that people should think twice because it's  human behavior a cognitive bias of confirmation   it's just a tool people made facebook people made  Google when people are looking into something   they put themselves into a bubble regardless so  in the digital age I think it's more powerful it's   faster it's stronger but it's human nature and  it's at its best right now it's it's not just the   search engines is doing that it's it's the news  channels if you watch the same news channel night   after night your perspective the world is  biased based on what they're presenting well   classic case the same event you watch cnn and  fox news you're not watching the same story okay so tech companies and Google in particular  in a very difficult spot right now because of   the big tech hearing because of doj because  of all those critics because of privacy   but like I said technology is not going  backwards it's only moving forward   and human beings are addicted to a more  comfortable life useful stuff and ways to balance   I think Bill and I found the right balance we  are nerds we are professionals of the internet   we still have a real life we still we are  photographers we we appreciate the outside   world and our life is not dictated by  notifications and then and so on so I think it's up to the  individuals to to maybe fight   it's not a fight it's just being reasonable  and being it's common sense what do you think   about seven or eight months ago maybe a  little bit longer I was asked to write a   article about the biggest SEO myths on  the web and my first impulse and that was   I don't want to write just about what the biggest  myths are about SEO I want to write a guideline to   critical thinking to identify to to  questions to ask when you're when you're   looking at something to identify whether or not  it's a myth or it's likely true I wanted people to   exercise their ability to think critically  help analyze things determine whether or   not what they're saying is a good argument  if it's supported by reasonable evidence   if it if it actually makes sense or if they're   logical fallacies built into what they're seeing  for them because sometimes you see things or   sound very realistic very true on their  face but they're filled with misinformation   context matters and and I'm reading  a thread on twitter this morning and   somebody called something misinformation  and a bunch of people started arguing   saying that's not misinformation you're  wrong it's disinformation you say the   difference is misinformation is accidentally  presenting something that maybe is wrong   this information is purposefully presenting new  information to get people to think a different way   then maybe they really should based  on the information being presented I think there is there is a lot of  misinformation and disinformation on the web I don't think you necessarily need to understand  the intent behind misinformation or disinformation   just as long as you realize it's not really  good information I just have a feeling that   people blame the messenger a little bit too  much yes Google yes facebook they have the   flaws they are not perfect but people should  investigate and then the other prime example of   how even inside an industry with highly skilled  professionals you see the difference between   how you approach the same thing okay you want  to learn about authorship or author vectors   the way a ranking factor study will look at  this will say hey we found that an average of   this ratio of well-known authors are present  on the first page of Google so if you become   well-known you'll have more more chance to rank  higher the way you look at it is you investigate   you're on the fact you dig deeper you profile the  author you do your research you're on the context but maybe not everybody is able to do that I  don't know it's easy to blame the messenger   the herald sometimes is wrong but if if they're  purposefully presenting wrong information   if you're purposefully listening to them not  insisting that they provide more information   provide facts support what they're saying  you're just as much to blame as them   don't we no we agree and for the  final word the famous SEO is dead meme I say before adapt to die we say we agree  today search is multimedia searches everywhere   search is evolving people are continuing  to search and they're not stopping and   I will point out that search our field  our industry is the best of the best   out of all the pipelines you can imagine to  get traffic because of intent if people search   we have an advantage if you go disturb  them on social media or in their mailbox or   on their phone like Bill is every morning when  we start talking you interrupt when people are   intent on trying to find a solution to  a problem or an answer to a question   when I see somebody talking about SEO  and they never mention an audience   no they never they never talk about understanding  the audience to see the audience says about   something what words they use with the search  work I I question how much SEO they really know I'm also very confused about how people focus  just on the product of the service they're   trying to sell and not beyond what is really the  benefit what is beyond the product or service   typical example plastic surgery I want to remove  I want bigger boobs okay well why why is it is it   you want to please man more you want to look at  yourself in the mirror and like what you see what and and trying to go beyond and the  audience is will not tell you sometimes   you have to find out by yourself you have  to investigate and you have to understand   what they really want beyond we always  say benefits feature style benefits sell and again I can't praise you enough but that's  the truth history tells you are right you were   right from the beginning because what you  say right now and we will end up on this   in 2020 people still can't  figure out what the audience work   want our job at the end of the day is trying  to make the offer and the demand match   yeah that's what we do sharing there's an offer  there's demand and how much do they match is   the key and bigger the pie of if we have two  circles and those offer and demand two circles   intersect the bigger the intersection as SEOs we  have the website owner at our hands we can talk   to them we can ask them questions they're trying  to find consumers and turn them into customers and   that's part of our job we need to understand  those consumers well enough to help them find   the website and get signed up or the  services and the goods they provide   and we are in a good state we we know how it works  we don't use the term keywords topic clusters   ideas concept whatever you want   but go go a little deeper than 2010 type  of SEO it's 20 20. it's time to wake up and   I see too many people still stuck in 2010  harsley that's the ranking factor studies is a   typical of that but what you just say  is also typical and I I feel like um like I would say adopt a die we'll see we'll  see who is left in five years I know you'll   be there I'll be there we'll we're close  to retire but we'll see we'll see who else one last word of wisdom yes what what can we  leave for the ultimate world of wisdom as far   as the mindset you need to how do you say what I  say adapt or die what is your polite way to say it I don't usually tell people to adapt your tie  it seems kind of fun that's what I say but   that's why I wanted an advice on how to say  it on a more politically correct fashion I had a client who had a product that helped  people lose weight and it was a drink it uh satisfied their appetite and you wanted to use a keyword phrase that most  likely no one in the world would ever search for and I had four co-workers around with me  one of them was a strategist one was a   case manager and I don't remember what  the other two did but I I said okay doctor   chances are most human beings who want to  buy your product will never use those words   to try to find it on the web our  job is to help you sell your product   do you want to do you have anybody do  you want to have anybody ever buy it he said yes I said think about  using words that they'll search for   I know you like that phrase and  scientifically it's a very good phrase   but most human beings aren't going to use  that praise to find what you're offering let's try to get you to succeed that's what  we're here to help you with it's what you did in   2005 and what you're still doing in 2020   and I observed the exact same thing so  like you said some things never change and I want to leave a positive note  saying that no it's not too crowded   no but it's still you can still make it  it's it's not true that yes you can't dream   like it's 2004 to to rank easily on super highly  competitive keyword keywords in a few weeks that's   that won't happen but it's still very new and if  you work on your difference if you understand your   unique value proposition and you can match  offer on demand you can beat everybody else   there are new things happening in SEO all the  time one of them is schema and there are people   who are writing become have become specialists  in schema who can tell you how best to get a   featured snippet what would they tend to look  like how they tend to work respectfully and that's   something fairly new and a lot of SEOs don't  understand that and here there are people who   have been doing SEO for a year or two or three and  really good at understanding schema and getting   featured snippets to show off and work really  well it's possible for people to enter SEO   find a topic like that become really  good at it and and do well at it it's the most valuable advice and now we're  shifting the conversation and we're ending up   talking to SEO professionals who want to start  and that's something that tell everybody don't   become just a 360 SEO scm smo x no specifics  become the specialist in schema.org or  

log analysis or whatever go from  very specific and then branch out   but people like us all dinosaurs we are we're  just SEOs in general today no it's not possible   to I never ever use this line but I was tempted  many times when I'd go to a job interview as an   SEO and people would ask me what I know about sc  and I said well I remember the things I invented   that's beautiful yeah love it that's  that's something that I would use   you started 1996 and you invent a lot of stuff  right at least the first time you saw it was the   first time you thought of it and other people may  have started using the same thing but you're sort   of inventing it at that time too exactly exactly  and we previously used the analogy of photography   because I think when it comes down to it it's  training your eye training your brain to see what   everybody else doesn't see it's in front of you  Google is telling you everything it's right there   people can see it so there there are  two ways to become a good photographer   one of them is to take lots of see pictures works  another is to look at a lot of pictures and see   what you appreciate from what you don't like  exactly and SEO tool works the same way look at   lots of websites work on websites exactly no very  true I think that's a good way to end this talk we still have so much to cover I  feel like it's unfinished business   because it's a never-ending story it's it's can be like that forever but I  know that everybody wants you back anyway   they always get feedback that  we won't build we want Bill   so let me think about it I'll find something  that he can refuse and I'll get him back okay it sounds good thank you Bill thank you  very much for your commitment and your well   it's natural for you to share so much but yeah  it's been a pleasure talking to you thank you   until next time thanks for watching

2020-12-28

Show video