EDGE of the Web - The Best SEO Podcast for Today's Digital Marketer

Sam Tomlinson joins us to discuss the issues revolving around the antitrust cases of Google & Facebook.  We unpack each company’s challenges and the concepts of fairness.  Isn’t this Big Tech’s platform that they invested in?     [00:05:27]  The argument FOR business acquisition [00:09:13]  The FTC reviews these acquisitions already [00:13:36]  Facebook's weakest argument. [00:14:47]  What are we upset about? [00:16:13]  Google and Antitrust [00:18:16]  Google: The Texas Lawsuit [00:21:00]  No sympathy for the News: It’s Google’s Platform [00:24:13]  Build a better platform [00:29:41]  Please to Government

[00:03:24] New Community Feedback Feature on Yelp for “Health and Safety Measures” Enough people want to know how safe they’ll be from the pandemic if they visit local businesses that Yelp has added a feedback feature for social masking and social distance compliance. [00:10:52]Google Doesn’t Want to Pay Australian News Company Australia wants an industry code requiring tech giants like Google to pay news publishers. Google’s “experiment” of disappearing Australian news from search is a chilling response. [00:19:21]Dedicated Results Pages for Hashtag Searches on YouTube Previous searches by hashtag inevitably included results not carrying the hashtag, but YouTube has an improved hashtag search now that limits results to videos actually carrying the hashtag.

Sam Tomlinson joins us to discuss the issues revolving around the antitrust cases of Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon). We cover the history of antitrust and how the archaic laws from 1872 cannot apply to the complex technological realm we are in. Sam had great input into the perspective of US and EU comparisons. Dive into this very topical discussion. [00:07:59] History of Antitrust Laws in America [00:11:00] The Differences In Big Tech As Opposed To Other Industries [00:17:52] The Competing Factors [00:18:44] What Are We Trying To Solve? Big Tech Being Mean To Big Tech? [00:22:36] The Network Effect And The Utility Concept

[00:04:43] The Why and How of Going Granular: Beyond Traditional Intent User search intent has increasingly taken center stage for shaping content and SEO, but are the traditional user intent categories up to the task of addressing micro-intentions? Probably not. [00:13:06] Subtopic Rankings Launched by Google in Mid-November What Google is aiming at is to diversify the content surfaced on broad queries based on possible subtopics that may be of interest, although it doesn’t seem to have changed the look of SERPs. [00:20:17] Do Google Ads Salespeople Link Ad Spends to Organic Rankings? Google spokespeople have been clear in that past that ad spends do not have a direct impact on SEO (buy more ads, get higher ranking), and yet some salespeople seem to suggest just that.

Welcome to 2021! Here’s what we covered this week: [00:03:44] Legal Action Against TikTok for Underage Data Violations While TikTok has managed to avoid being banned and continues to grow, a new legal challenge is coming in the UK for how it handles personal data for underage users. Will TikTok continue to squeak by? By Andrew Hutchinson [00:10:14] Does Google’s John Mueller Ever Take a Break? John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, was online engaging the webmaster community on both New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. But his holiday engagements have become a tradition. By Barry Schwartz [00:15:36] Is BERT Biased? When Training Data Bakes in Bias Like machine learning algorithms, a language model like BERT has to be trained using training data, and if the data is biased, then the way the model operates may be biased as well, with real consequences. By George Nguyen

Last Week of Digital Marketing News for 2020 (3:48) Request Indexing Tool is Now Back in Google Search Console Google’s Request Indexing Tool was first disabled on October 14, it’s finally back, albeit 69 days later and well past the holiday shopping season when people needed it. Better late than never? (6:33) After a Google Algorithm Update, Why do Some Portions of a Site Fluctuate? According to Google’s John Mueller, the algorithms don’t just look at the big picture of a site, but also look at smaller parts of websites. (12:18) Google’s SERPs Have an Impact on Consumer Perceptions of Brands For example, in the PAA (people also ask) section of results, what’s presented there can have a major influence on the initial impression a consumer gets of a brand, and it’s not always good.

We’re joined on the EDGE by Shay Rowbottom, social media influencer on LinkedIn for a second segment of our interview.  We talked about the need for authentic content and the concepts of social media narcissism.  There’s a perpetuation of false selves in social media and we need to develop the ability to source personal validation away from social media. The super-spreading of social hate is at an all-time high and it is difficult to challenge the tide.  Shay shares her positive thoughts on how we can stop the social shame and live life in a positive place given the toxic social media environment we see now.

This week's News Roundup: Another Google Search Console Feature Disabled: Issue Validation If you use Issue Validation to tell Google you’ve fixed an issue so they can verify it, the Coverage report is a no-go. New validation requests will not happen until the update is complete. Schema.org Will Now House the Google Structured Data Testing Tool When Google said they would ditch their Structured Data Testing Tool in favor of their newer Rich Results Test Tool, the backlash was so strong they had figure out a different approach. Is Google a Monopoly? Ten State Attorneys General Seem to Think SoBesides claiming Google has forced competitors out of the market, the suit also claims they made some kind of sketchy deal with Facebook to help maintain their dominance.

We’re joined again on the EDGE by Shay Rowbottom, social media influencer on LinkedIn. Shay shares with the EDGE listeners key thoughts about the strength of the LinkedIn audience, why there are so different from every other type of social media audience and how to connect with authenticity. We cover a wide range of techniques of engagement but focus singularly on a very important goal in LinkedIn communication: establishing trust. You can’t fake it and you shouldn’t try to. Give a listen to the first of our two part interview with Shay, Queen of Content Marketing.

Mordy Oberstein joins the rag-tag band of EDGE of the Web in our new weekly digital marketing news delivery! Today’s Headlines:  (06:53) Biggest Google Core Update of 2020 (15:36) Should Misinformation on Websites Be Penalized by Google? (26:26) This year has seen a doubling of “available near me” compared to last year