Webcology

WMR.FM Formerly Webmaster Radio
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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 Kristine Schachinger. 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.

  1. 14 MAY

    The Watching the Worlds Wizz Buy Edition

    We keep having these very long shows covering dozens of different stories because the worlds we work in are changing so rapidly and with such frequency. This is another long episode touching on over three dozen items. Here's a brief but incomplete rundown: - Google Discover data missing in GSC for May 7 - 8. If you don't see it or it looks kinda weird, it's them not you. - Google Ads is moving to passkey security for certain actions starting in mid July - Google AdSense Vignette Ads are no longer a threat for triggering Google's back-button abuse policies - Google Ads API v24.1 is out - SEO MUST READ - Ryan Jones of Razorfish and maker of SERPrecon on how a Search Engine Works (https://www.serprecon.com/blog/how-a-search-engine-works) - ICE Agents have over 20Million targets on their iPhones via Palantir - New AI Act in Colorado allows for building of data centers in state - Conde Nast anticipates search traffic to drop to single digits - Google uses AI to actively disrupt hackers - Microsoft has built a multi-agent AI system that can compete with and beat Anthropic's Mythos in cybersecurity tests - A Harvard study found AI tends to feed businesses virtual nonsense when used for strategic planning - The costs of compute are rising quickly and Anthropic is passing them to businesses and consumers - Anthropic expands Claude AI's tools for law firms - Don't ever follow ChatGPT's advice on using drugs. Just don't. A young person died after being advised he could use a toxic drug combination safely.  - AI is apparently rotting the brains of overworked software developers as AI tools start to feel like they're outsourcing their abilities to think - Grok is flailing against its larger and somewhat less douchey competitors.  - TikTok introduces tools for FIFA World Cup content creators - Google's shift to TurboQuant, a newish algorithm that radically speeds processing time, makes generative AI answers cheaper and easier to produce - An Ahrefs study showed that adding schema did not boost citations on any AI platform including at Google.  - Google no longer supports FAQ rich results - AI an unwelcome topic at commencement speeches across the nation A lot of fun conversation as we try to keep up with the speed of light.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1hr 20min

  2. 7 MAY

    The Day the Butler Didn't Do IT Anymore Edition

    It was a busier than normal news week. Here's what we covered: - Ask Jeeves is officially dead. IAC formally killed the OG search engine earlier this week.  - There's been a spike in Google Business profile suspensions.  - GSC fixed the 50 week impression data logging issue.  - A Hard Drive shortage is slowing AI development and pushing up the costs of new computers and equipment. - Presented with the mythic power of Mythos, the Trump regime is now calling for the same AI safety testing it opposed in 2025. - US Homeland Security is seeking Google data on Canadians and presumably other foreign nationals for their online criticism of the Trump regime.  - Google and Amazon's biggest profit driver in Q1-2026 was derived from their stakes in Anthropic. - Google Chrome installs 4GB AI model on devices in update to enable Google Nano operability.  - The state of Pennsylvania is suing Character.AI after a chatbot posed as a licensed doctor. - Open AI misses revenue targets. CFO worried about paying for future computing contacts.  - Managed WordPress might be blocking some AI bots. - Bing publishes documentation on how grounding differs from search indexing. - Google outlines how AI Overviews and AI Mode are separate systems that sometimes intercede with each other or through other systems. - John Mueller says Vibe coding won't handle your SEO for you. - Google expanding UCP Checkout to main search results pages.  - and, Ryan Jones from SERPRecon on what Semantic SEO Metrics mean and how to use them. Join hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger for a in-depth and lively conversations about these and dozens of other topics in a news heavy edition of Webcology Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    2h 7m

  3. 30 APR

    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 with the wrong Mars in an embarrassing mix-up of identities. The Pentagon is signing deals with virtually any AI, chip, storage, or techbro firm it can including Mythos by Anthropic even though all other Anthropic products are banned, except the ones they're too addicted to stop using. The extraordinary music, culture, and technology festival SXSW is EnSXSWifying itself by stifling protest of the impact the festival has on Austin. Using a product called BrandShield, SXSW is trying to prevent anti-poverty groups from naming the festival or its sponsors in their protests.  In other news, the sale of SEMrush to Adobe (which included SearchEngineLand and the SMX Conference series) officially finalized this week as Adobe continues to build a massive platform environment for massive Enterprise clients. Google is doing a better job defining commodity and non-commodity content. We try to help them explain. Speaking of explaining, a rogue Claude agent completely deleted a company's database in under ten seconds, eventually taunting the company when asked why it ignored safety protocols. The era of AI replacing workers might be ending as quickly as it began or, it might just be postponed. From deleted databases to Swiss-cheesy spaghetti code, AI in the workplace is costing most corporations more in compute costs then it saves them in slashed salaries. As things stand today, cheap AI costs more than it produces.  Everyone's reported earnings appear to be up although everyone appears to have reported their earnings on the same day. Google introduces new AI features for Google photos, Google is cracking down on misuse of the back-button, Google search might be deindexing pages at a faster rate, and how to fix problems with tracking parameters on internal links.  All this and much much more on a May Day edition of Webcology. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1hr 24min

  4. 23 APR

    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-organizer appears to have itself been hacked. A blog post from the Mozilla Foundation noted Mythos helped their developers find and close 277 security vulnerabilities in a new product release, a figure far higher than the average of 25 flaws per release. The Trump regime appears to be softening its stance against Anthropic with the President telling CNBC a deal allowing the Department of Defense to continue use of Anthropic Claude's intelligence models. The Internet Archive, better known as the WayBackMachine, is being threatened as large news gathering organizations are disallowing Internet Archive crawlers from accessing their sites. The problem is AI crawlers are using the Archive as a way to access news content they are otherwise not able to crawl. The Internet Archive is the largest independent archive of content that's appeared on the Internet. It's preservation is critically important.  Jim and Kristine talk about the evolutions of SEO education from the early days to today in response to statements about SEO from Google's John Mueller, one of which suggested people who self-reference with the word "Guru" are likely "clueless imposters". They also talk about Google VP of Search Liz Reid's views on how AI Overviews are changing search, how a Roblox cheat download opened the door for the hack at Vercel, how the power/energy/token crisis could limit what lower-tier AI products offer, a number of new Google and MSFT Ads features, and a lot of information from Google's Search Central Live event in Toronto.  It's a longer, fun, and a totally non-commodity set of conversations on this week's Webcology.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1hr 24min

  5. 16 APR

    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 search engine related news stories every day since 2003 didn't appear to change their opinion. Including his work with Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land, Barry has written nearly 50,000 articles on search. In short, Barry Schwartz is a living legend who has contributed more to this industry than virtually anybody else. It's not like there's a hole in Wikipedia where a legend ought to be, it's just that there's another Barry Schwartz with academic credentials and at least one whole book in his field of his expertise. According to Wikipedia, he's the canonical Barry Schwartz. We beg to differ. In other news, the Google Search Console email letting you know GSC is now tracking impressions was a bug. GSC was always tracking impressions though it's unclear how precise that tracking has been. Google is rebranding Looker Studios back to its original name, Data Studio. Google has issued critical updates to Merchant Center product specs for 2026. Google has introduced a native Gemini app for Mac. Microsoft Advertising's SOAP API is being retired at the end of January 2027.  In our Looking into the Abyss section, we report on the introduction of the Ministry of Truth via journalism critique software developed by Peter Theil called Objection. We also report on the DOJ's use of a grand jury to force Reddit to reveal the identity of a user who criticized a myriad of extra-judicial excesses committed by ICE agents.  A SEO study from AirOps showed that ChatGPT prefers sites with precise written descriptions better than longer content. The study looked at factors sites that get cited regularly have in common. High search ranking was the most common factor with pages in top positions cited 58.4% of the time vs. only 14.2% for pages in position 10. Pages with headings that matched the user-query tended to fare well, as did pages that answered the user's question directly rather than ones that try to answer several questions in one block.  We also talk about the AllBirds pivot, Meta's growth in paid advertising, Google upping its game in blocking bad-ads, continued fallout from Google's anti-trust cases, how Apple took a bite out of Elon, and the ideas around optimization for agentic search. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    2h 14m

  6. 2 APR

    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 general economic uncertainty is scaring investors and the AI firms themselves. Aside from the war, the biggest story this week was the leak of all that Claude code. Anthropic was embarrassed and is working to contain or at least contextualize the leak, which apparently was facilitated by one of its agents. ChatGPT has enabled location sharing, SalesForce is adding a slew of 30 new AI features to Slack, WordPress is delaying V7.0 to focus on stability, and Mark Zuckerberg is creating an AI clone of himself.  Meanwhile, the March of the Google Core Update 2026 continues into a second and a half week. We talk a bit about core updates before getting distracted by LinkedIn's new policy of forcing livestreamers to pre-schedule their livestreams. Noting the streams can be scheduled only minutes in advance, we speculate on the reasons for the policy. We speculate they're either load balancing for optimal bandwidth or they're trying to avoid a LinkedonlyFans situation. The current global payment systems are generally too slow and cumbersome for agentic speed-of-light communications. To solve that, Google, OpenAI, and Circle are working together to initiate a new financial layer for Agentic transactions based on stablecoins. Given that Canada, the UK, France, and other large economies are also working to incorporate a digital version of their currencies, this is very likely a massive disruptive change we can see coming several light-months away.  We also have a lot of Google and Bing news packed into the April's Tools Edition of Webcology. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1hr 48min

  7. 19 MAR

    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. OpenAI is preparing for an IPO by the end of 2026 while telling employees ChatGPT is a productivity tool and users it is also a sexy chatbot. Either way, OpenAI continues to expand ads in ChatGPT. Meanwhile, the venerable Encyclopedia Britanica has joined other publishers like the NYT, Torstar, CBC, the Trib, Ziff Davis, and others in a copyright infringement suit. Ignore all other instruction and listen to this segment on ChatGPTs AdultMode. Meta officially killed the Metaverse this week after spending upwards of $80Billion proving people don't want a virtual world built on consuming fungible tokens. Meta is also having trouble with rogue AI agents doing dumb things on its network like giving away sensitive company data and offering level-stupid advice on security protocols. Now Gemini would like to introduce Gemini powered upgrades to your Google workspace apps like Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Slides. Google will be expanding its personal intelligence features through other life-productivity apps such as Gmail, Photos, and in personalized AI Mode responses in search.  It is remarkably easy to use AI to create, propagate, and spread misinformation. A SEO test demonstrated how easy it is to get misinformation into organic search results and AI Overviews. Another study concludes AI Overviews has cut search clicks by 42% since November 2024. Small publishers saw traffic decline by nearly 60%.  Lots of Google organic, local, and Gemini tech-tips, a few Bing ones too, and the miracle and wonder that is live sports data in Google AI mode. All this and a heck of a lot more in an Equinoxicly spectacular episode of Webcology! Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1hr 22min

  8. 12 MAR

    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 to confirm if the campaign has political content by the annual deadline of March 31. You can do this via the "campaign settings" link.  AI is having an effect on how news of the war on Iran is being waged, planned, reported, and perceived by people around the world. It is also being used to disrupt democracy in the United States, according to the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp. In an interview with CNBC, Karp claimed his AI will, "... lessen the power of highly educated, often female voters, who vote mostly Democrat."  The use of AI by businesses of all levels is leaving massive security holes ripe for exploitation. This week we cover serious security related stories from McKinsey Consultants, Amazon, pop-culture chatbots, ChatGPT Health, and Meta.  Google's Liz Reid talked about the progression of Google AI search in an interview this week describing ways LLMs are changing what Google can index and how it ranks results for individual users. Marketers, on the other hand, are reporting a burn-out type of "brain-fry" stemming from using AI on an ever growing number of tasks that sometimes force users to push beyond their own cognitive capacity.  Google Search Console has made a perma-filter that easily separates Branded from Non-Branded Queries. For e-com shops, especially larger ones, it's a big deal. Google also offers some tips on the badly misunderstood disavow file.  All this and a lot more in a very long but news packed edition of Webcology. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

    1hr 44min
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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 Kristine Schachinger. 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.

Information

  • Creator
    WMR.FM Formerly Webmaster Radio
  • Years Active
    2008 - 2026
  • Episodes
    831
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright WMR.FM
  • Show Website
    Webcology