The Edward Show

E1163: Does Google care whether people actually click the links on your page?

I break down a $50,000 internal linking experiment across 15 websites, plus a Google patent that describes assigning different weights to links based on the probability that users will click them.

The findings challenge a lot of standard SEO thinking around internal links, PageRank dilution, link placement, and how authority flows through a site.

In this episode: - A $50,000 internal linking experiment conducted across 15 websites - How increasing internal links produced higher rankings and higher ad RPMs - What happened when pages...

E1162: In 2016, Google gave an internal presentation called Q4 Search All Hands.

Years later, slides from that presentation surfaced during discovery in Google's antitrust trial, and one of them contains an unusually direct admission:

"We do not understand documents. We fake it."

Google explained that its ability to understand documents directly was minimal. Instead, it watched how people reacted to search results and learned from those responses.

I break down what Google said, why this presentation still matters for SEO, and what you can actually do with this information.

...

E1161: I break down why I still consider LinkedIn a blue ocean for organic reach, Google rankings, AI visibility, and content distribution.

A listener named Marc recently started posting again after years of inactivity. Within one week, one of his posts reached 45,000+ views.

That came from an account that had been dead for years.

And the opportunity goes far beyond LinkedIn's feed.

LinkedIn pages rank extremely well in Google. LinkedIn ranks for almost 120 million keywords and gets close to 500 million clicks per month from Google.

When you put your...

E1160: You do not need to pay for backlinks to build authority in 2026.

I break down a viral SEO Reddit thread about how people are getting legitimate, high-quality backlinks without buying links, spamming irrelevant directories, or wasting time on tactics Google is increasingly good at ignoring.

The best part: several of the people in the thread shared specific examples, including the exact assets they created, where the links came from, and the results.

We cover: - How one SEO used original research about hospitals to earn coverage from a major newspaper and multiple...

E1159: Google's August 2026 Spam Update hit some sites extremely hard.

I break down four case studies from Glenn Gabe showing exactly what Google's August spam update targeted, including scaled AI content, programmatic SEO with little added value, thin affiliate pages, poor user experience, and sites operating in risky niches.

One of the sites lost rankings for more than 200,000 queries.

Another had more than 1.5 million URLs indexed, many of which were lost.

These weren't simply examples of "AI content is bad" or "programmatic SEO is bad." The common thread was scale combined...

E1158: Google published an article called "Good SEO Is Good GEO," arguing that the best strategy for showing up in Google's AI search experiences is still foundational SEO.

I agree with a lot of it.

But some of Google's advice leaves out important parts of how SEO and GEO work today.

I go through Google's article point by point and react to it in real time.

Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews are built on top of the same core ranking and quality systems used by traditional Search. It also...

E1157: Google is expanding some AI Overviews automatically, removing the need to click "Show More" and pushing traditional organic results much farther down the page.

Predictably, a lot of SEOs are freaking out.

I break down what Google actually changed and why I don't think businesses and publishers should panic about SEO.

Google confirmed that AI Overviews can now dynamically expand when its systems believe a fuller AI answer would be useful. On those searches, users can get a much larger AI response plus the "Ask Anything" box before they ever reach the...

E1156: Google Preferred Sources was originally introduced around news publishers, and that is still causing a lot of SEOs to dismiss it. That is a mistake.

I go directly through Google's own documentation and explain why Preferred Sources now appears relevant far beyond traditional news sites.

Google says any website that publishes fresh content is eligible. The feature is available globally in Top Stories and can also influence what users see in AI Mode and AI Overviews. Google Discover documentation also specifically references creator and source preferences.

I also tested SaaS websites, local...

E1155: A roofer in South Florida donated a free roof through Habitat for Humanity.

The charity wrote about it and linked to his business.

Then a local news station picked up the story, his Facebook post was shared more than 200 times, and one act of goodwill produced the kind of links and attention that are extremely difficult to buy.

That is goodwill link building.

I break down how businesses can do genuinely useful things for people, nonprofits, organizations, and other companies, then turn that work into backlinks, partnerships, mentions, and press.<...

E1153: Breaking down the debate around AI-written SEO content, Google's ability to identify machine-generated text, and whether AI detection could eventually become a meaningful part of Google's search and training systems.

Google's John Mueller recently liked a LinkedIn post arguing that Google may be moving toward an algorithm designed to target all AI content. That comes after the August spam update, which many site owners reported hit AI-heavy websites particularly hard.

But detecting AI content and penalizing AI content are two very different things.

I also look at an argument from SEO, Dan...

E1154: Google's new goto redirects have a lot of SEOs worried that rank tracking is about to become less accurate, more expensive, or much harder to do.

David Quaid joins me to break down what is actually happening, what it means for tools like Semrush and Ahrefs, and why the answer may be for SEOs to start building more of their own tools.

Google's goto redirects add another step between the search result and the destination URL. That creates problems for companies that scrape Google at scale because they may now need to follow redirects...

E1152: Google Analytics is one of the most widely used analytics platforms on the web, but there is a growing category of traffic it was never really designed to help you understand: bots, AI crawlers, and AI agents.

I sit down with analytics consultant Jason Packer, author of Google Analytics Alternatives, to talk about what GA4 is measuring, what it can miss, and how the rise of AI is changing both analytics and SEO.

We get into AI companies crawling the web, the possibility of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic developing their own web...

E1151: Google has started routing search-result links through new google.com/goto redirects, masking the final destination URL for logged-out users.

That sounds like a small technical change. For rank trackers, SERP scrapers, SEO tools, and marketers who depend on Google search data, it creates a much bigger problem.

I'm joined by Jonathan Berthold from Moz to break down what Google changed, why rank tracking is being affected, how SEO platforms are responding, and what marketers should expect next.

We also get into the larger fight happening behind the scenes. Google has been...

E1150: James Dooley and David Quaid return to debate one of the biggest questions in SEO right now: is GEO a separate discipline, or is it just SEO under a new name?

James says he used to agree that GEO was simply SEO with a different label. Then his own team changed his mind. He now runs a separate GEO/AEO department because people who can rank websites #1 in Google can still struggle to get brands cited in ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode and other LLM-driven results.

David pushes back. His argument is that most...

E1149: Jason Barnard breaks down how to get a Google Knowledge Panel for yourself or your business in as little as three months.

We cover why clarity and consistency are the foundation of entity SEO and how Google decides whether it understands who you are.

Jason explains what an "Entity Home" is, why your About page matters, and how to structure it for both humans and search engines.

We go through the platforms new brands should consider, including LinkedIn, Crunchbase, The Org, social profiles, and review sites.

Jason also explains why...

E1147: Your organic traffic is declining. Your rankings are getting more volatile. Pages that have been stable for months or years are suddenly moving down.

Before blaming a Google update, backlinks, AI Overviews, or some mysterious algorithm change, look at the simplest explanation: Your pages might not be satisfying search intent well enough.

I break down the most common reasons SEO traffic decline and what to do.

First, not every traffic decline matters.

SEO is volatile. Rankings go up and down. What matters is the overall trend and, more importantly, which...

E1148: Everyone is talking about GEO, AEO, fan-out queries, schema, Reddit, digital PR, Wikipedia mentions, and dozens of other ways to get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI systems.

Devesh Khanal of Grow and Convert thinks most companies are skipping the obvious place to start: bottom-of-funnel SEO.

Devesh shares what Grow and Convert is seeing across clients after years of publishing detailed, product-focused content. Their approach is straightforward: identify the searches closest to a buying decision, create dedicated pages that genuinely answer those searches, explain the product in enough detail for both people and LLMs...

E1146: Get free niche backlinks by interviewing small bloggers, business owners, and other people in your industry.

This is a link-building method we're testing. Instead of cold emailing website owners and asking them for backlinks, start by giving them a reason to know you.

Interview them on a podcast.

Small bloggers and business owners are often much easier to book than established journalists or large creators. Many have never been interviewed before. Give them a good podcast experience, build an actual relationship, stay in touch, and you will have a natural opportunity to...

E1145: Google just gave SEOs a new feature that could change how publishers build visibility across Search, Discover, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.

I break down Google Preferred Sources, how it works, why it matters, and why publishers should pay attention before everyone starts using it.

Google Preferred Sources allows users to choose publishers they want to see more often in Google Search experiences. These selections become a user-controlled signal that works alongside Google's ranking systems.

I cover:
- What Google Preferred Sources is and why Google launched it
- Why...

E1144: Google's August 2026 spam update has officially finished rolling out, and we're seeing clear patterns in who got hit, who recovered, and who is winning.

The update launched August 18 and completed just three days later on August 21. But the volatility started well before Google officially announced it. Throughout August, sites were reporting major ranking swings, sudden traffic losses, and unexpected recoveries.

One of the biggest patterns: scaled content sites are getting crushed.

I break down what happened during the August spam update using real sites, Google Search Console screenshots, Reddit posts, Ahrefs & Semrush...

E1143: He Did 2,000 Podcasts in a Year Just for SEO Rankings

James Dooley has published 2,000 unique podcast episodes this year and is on track to hit 3,000 by the end of the year.

But he's not doing it to build a traditional podcast audience.

He's doing it for SEO.

James breaks down the system he uses to turn short, keyword-focused podcast episodes into Google rankings, video rankings, backlinks, leads, and mentions across AI platforms.

His episodes are typically only 5-15 minutes long. Instead of making broad, entertainment-focused shows, he treats...

E1142: Reddit citations in ChatGPT just totally collapsed.

Promptwatch data shows Reddit's share of ChatGPT citations dropping dramatically in August, falling to below 0.5% after previously sitting around 3-4%.

This is the third major Reddit citation drop we've seen, and it raises a bigger question for SEOs: what happens when an AI search strategy built around one platform can disappear overnight?

Klaas Foppen, co-founder of Promptwatch, joins me to break down what changed, what may have caused it, and what SEOs should do next.

We cover: - Why Reddit citations suddenly fell...

E1141: Can you launch a brand-new website with 100,000 pages and survive Google?

That's the question at the center of today's episode with David G. Quaid.

A listener sent me a problem he and his friends keep running into: they launch programmatic SEO sites with 10,000 - 100,000 URLs, organic traffic shoots up, and then the sites collapse back to zero.

So David and I dug into whether large-scale programmatic SEO is still possible in 2026, where Google may draw the line between a legitimate database and scaled content abuse, and what separates sites that survive from...

E1140: Claude is now watermarking everything it writes, and the SEO community is worried about what this means for AI content and Google rankings.

But there's an important detail: Google likely doesn't have the key needed to verify Claude's watermark.

I break down what Anthropic's new watermarking system does, why it's being implemented, what it can and can't prove, and whether any of this should change how SEOs use AI-generated content.

Anthropic is adding machine-readable marks to Claude's output as part of its compliance with the EU AI Act. The watermark can remain...

E1139: Image backlinks work surprisingly well for SEO, and one old experiment found they could even outperform exact-match anchor text links.

I break down an SEO experiment from Dan Petrovic that tested four different types of backlinks to see which had the greatest effect on rankings.

The test compared: - An exact-match anchor text backlink - A naked URL placed after the target keyword - An image backlink using the target keyword as the image alt text - A "click here" backlink with the target keyword placed near the link

The result that...

E1138: How does James Dooley start a brand-new SEO site with 650 industries worth of SEO experience?

James walks through how he evaluates a new SEO opportunity from the beginning, including when he'll use a fresh exact-match domain, when he'll buy an aged domain, how he evaluates the backlink profile before buying, and how he turns simple lead generation sites into larger brands.

We also get into the economics behind local lead generation, why James thinks SEOs put too much weight on DR, and what "good content" actually means when the goal is to rank and...

E1137: Local SEO is changing as Google Maps becomes more AI-driven.

I'm joined by Darren Shaw, founder of Whitespark and one of the most respected people in local SEO, to break down Google's Ask Maps AI and what businesses need to do to get recommended.

Ask Maps combines Gemini with Google's location data, Google Business Profiles, reviews, Maps activity, and other signals to answer detailed local questions and recommend specific businesses.

Darren believes this is where local search is heading, and that traditional Google Maps rankings may eventually become increasingly AI-driven.

...

E1136: Charles Floate has been doing SEO for years, across everything from brand-new sites to companies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on backlinks.

In this episode, Charles lays out how he approaches SEO from A to Z: starting a site, building authority, finding keywords, structuring pages, getting links, becoming a topical authority, scaling what works, and changing the strategy as a site gets bigger.

We get into: - Charles' "zero to 100" strategy for launching a brand-new site - How he uses entity stacking, citations, directories, social profiles, and reference sites to establish...

E1135: Matt Hammerton joins me to break down the local SEO system he uses across personal injury law and home services. Matt has been doing SEO since 2009, manages more than 100 Google Business Profiles, owns stakes in multiple home service companies, and currently works with OneLaw, a law group that did $100 million in the first six months of this year.

We get into the work behind those numbers: Google Business Profiles, reviews, locations, links, press releases, keyword research, AI search, and the systems Matt has built to manage it all at scale.

We cover: - Why...

E1133: Most brands don't want to call themselves "cheap."

That's exactly why the word can be such a powerful SEO modifier.

I break down an SEO tactic James Dooley shared during our recent three-hour podcast: targeting words like "cheap," "cheapest," "affordable," "low cost," "budget," "inexpensive," and even "free" to stand out in Google and attract searchers who actually care about price.

The opportunity exists because there's a disconnect between how brands want to describe themselves and what customers want.

Brands want to be "premium."

Searchers want something they can...

E1134: Are traditional CMS platforms like WordPress about to become unnecessary for SEO?

TJ Robertson and David Quaid join me to talk about a very different way of building and managing websites: CMS-less sites where bots and AI agents handle publishing, technical fixes, internal links, site updates, analytics, and eventually even parts of optimization themselves.

TJ has already been building websites with Claude Code and believes that for many companies, moving away from WordPress will make sense within the next 6-12 months.

We get into what these websites look like, what they can...

E1132: Somebody asked on Reddit: "What are some of the craziest, most interesting SEO stories and tactics you've come across?"

The answers were incredible.

I go through the best stories from the SEO Growth subreddit, including a Danish telco that outranked Apple for the keyword "iPhone" within an hour of a keynote.

We also look at: - How an article about a random PS5 rumor reached #1 in Google and won the featured snippet - Why answering controversial or highly debated questions directly can create SEO opportunities - How to find strange rumors and...

E1131: James Dooley and David G Quaid join me for a three-hour discussion about the SEO "best practices" they ignore, the advice they think gets repeated without enough testing, and what they really look at when trying to rank websites.

We start with a simple question: which accepted SEO practices do you not follow?

That turns into a much broader discussion about how Google works, why SEO checklists often fail, and why tactics that work on a large authority site can be useless on a new domain.

James and David agree on a...

E1130: Micro-influencer SEO is one of the most overlooked ways to get your brand mentioned across Google, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and AI search tools.

I break down a simple strategy: instead of paying for generic press releases or chasing influencers with huge audiences, work with tiny creators whose videos are already being indexed and ranked by search engines.

A micro-influencer with only a few hundred or a few thousand followers can still publish content that appears in Google for months or even years.

And in many cases, the cost can be as...

E1129: The further a source is from your company's control, the more likely AI systems may be to trust it.

Kaleigh Moore explains her "Source Signal Stack," a four-level framework for understanding how brands earn visibility in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and other AI search tools.

A company can control its website, blog, and social accounts. It has less control over what employees, independent creators, customers, journalists, and online communities say.

According to Kaleigh, those independent sources can carry more weight because they are harder for a brand to manufacture.

Kaleigh...

E1128: Local SEO is changing as Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI systems influence how people find and evaluate local businesses.

I'm joined by Joy Hawkins and Caleb Ulku for a detailed discussion about what is working in local SEO now, which common tactics are becoming less effective, and how businesses should prepare for AI-powered local search.

Joy and Caleb compare what they are seeing across client accounts, ranking tests, Google Business Profiles, local packs, AI-generated recommendations, website content, reviews, links, and conversion rates.

Topics covered: - How large language models evaluate...

E1127: Google's biggest SEO leak gave marketers more information about how search works than almost any event in the industry's history.

But according to Mike King, most SEO strategies, tools, and reporting systems barely changed after the leak.

Mike explains what the leaked Google API documentation confirmed, what it revealed about links and ranking systems, and why the SEO industry has failed to act on some of its most important findings.

We break down Google's different index tiers, why a backlink's value may depend on where the linking page sits in the index...

E1126: Breaking down one of the most misunderstood parts of SEO: Google Search Console.

David Quaid returns to the podcast, sharing his screen, showing what is really going on.

Many SEOs judge performance by looking at clicks, impressions, click-through rate, and average position. But those numbers, by themselves, rarely tell you why a page is succeeding or failing.

Instead, we explain how to use Google Search Console to understand what Google is actually testing, which queries matter, when pages are competing against each other, and how experienced SEOs diagnose ranking problems.

...

E1125: A page can target an easy keyword, match the search intent, and still fail to stay indexed or rank.

I explain why republishing that page under a new URL may give Google a reason to evaluate it again using the topical authority your website has built since the page was first published.

I experienced this with a page I originally published in March 2023. The keyword was easy, the page was properly optimized, and few competing websites were directly targeting the query. However, my website did not have enough topical authority when the page was...

E1124: YouTube's AI detection system classified videos from Kurzgesagt as AI-generated spam, even though the videos are made with love by ducks and people.

That mistake sharply reduced distribution for one of the largest science channels on YouTube. The affected video performed well on the usual quality signals: - People clicked at an above-average rate - Viewers watched for longer than usual - Audience feedback was positive

But the video still became the channel's worst-performing upload since 2013.

YouTube later confirmed that its automated systems had incorrectly identified the channel's content as AI-generated material.<...