Show Notes
E1190: Google is making it harder to scrape its search results, and SEO tools are getting caught in the middle. Barry Schwartz, founder of Search Engine Roundtable and one of the longest-running reporters in the search industry, joins me to break down what Google is doing, why rank-tracking data has become less reliable, and what happens next. Barry has covered Google and search every day since 2003. In this episode, we go deep on Google's fight against AI scrapers, the September 2026 spam update, scaled AI content, Google losing trust in entire websites, and the future of SEO. We cover: - Google's new GoTo redirects and what they mean for SEO tools - Why Barry says the GoTo redirect itself is not the biggest problem - Google's broader crackdown on companies scraping its search results - The widespread IP blocking targeting proxies used by scraping companies - The increase in CAPTCHAs making automated Google searches harder - Reports that Google is injecting bad or fake data into search results shown to bots - Why unreliable SERP data creates a much bigger problem for rank trackers - Why Google appears more focused on ChatGPT and SERP APIs than Ahrefs or Semrush - Why Barry doubts rank trackers will return to their previous level of reliability - Why Google Search Console has become more important as third-party data gets harder to trust - Why selling rankings becomes harder when Google controls the underlying data - What makes the September 2026 spam update different from recent spam updates - Why its long rollout suggests Google is pushing several spam systems or components - The multiple phases Barry has seen throughout the September spam update - How Google could detect sudden explosions of AI-generated pages without behavioral data - Why publishing 50,000 pages in a week creates an obvious pattern for Google - How templated programmatic content fits into Google's fight against scaled AI content - Google's complicated internal relationship with AI-generated writing - Google's new guidance telling publishers to manually review AI-generated content - Why scale matters more than whether one individual page used AI - Why spam updates and core updates require different recovery strategies - What website owners should review after getting hit by a spam update - Why Barry warns against blindly disavowing links after an update - The difference between fixing a spam violation and rebuilding a site after a core update - What John Mueller meant when he said Google's systems can "lose faith in a website" - How enough weak pages create sitewide trust and indexing problems - Why recovering from lost trust may require rewriting, removing, and pruning content - Why some Google spam systems already run continuously - Why Google keeps introducing structured data and later removing support for certain types - What actually keeps Google up at night: the enormous amount of AI content flooding the web - Why Google's problem has flipped from not having enough content to having far too much - Barry's perspective after nearly 50,000 published Search Engine Roundtable articles - Why consistency, expertise, and actually caring about the industry still matter after decades in search ⭐️ Search Engine Roundtable - https://www.seroundtable.com/ ⭐️ Barry Schwartz on 𝕏 - https://x.com/rustybrick ⭐️ Barry Schwartz on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustybrick/ ⭐️ Barry Schwartz's agency, RustyBrick - https://www.rustybrick.com/ 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Barry Schwartz Intro 01:09 GoTo Redirect Chaos 03:33 Google Blocking Tactics 07:07 Rank Tracking Future 09:06 SEO Reporting Reality 12:15 September Spam Update 15:01 Mount AI Signals 17:00 Google AI Writing Stance 20:22 Mueller Likes AI Critique 22:23 Spam Up
More from The Edward Show
E1204: Google is heading toward an algorithm designed to target AI-generated content, according to Kristine Schachinger, an SEO and Google penalty recovery specialist with 15 years of recovery experience. Google's John Mueller liked her public prediction that recent spam updates are testing the approach. Kristine joins me to explain what she thinks Google is preparing, what she's seeing on sites hit by spam updates, and how businesses should protect their rankings before the next major update. In this episode: - Why Kristine predicts an AI content-focused algorithm in the next 6-8 months. - How repeated AI-generated content could contaminate the training data behind Google's AI systems. - Why Kristine refuses to publish AI-written content for clients, even when the content initially ranks. - A client whose writers used AI without the owner's knowledge: Google lifted the manual spam action in seven days, but the site still hadn't recovered a year later. - Why ranking AI content often survives for months before Google's quality systems fully evaluate it. - What to do if your site already has hundreds of AI-written pages: don't delete everything; rewrite weak sections in stages and measure the results. - What Kristine noticed during Google's September 2026 spam update, and why she thinks Google is escalating its response to AI content. - How to spot indexing problems in Google Search Console, including "Crawled - currently not indexed" and "Discovered - currently not indexed." - Why a site that stops ranking for its own brand name needs an immediate technical and penalty investigation. - Kristine's theory that Google's Helpful Content Update mistakenly hit legitimate sites that resembled affiliate spam. - How rebuilding links, improving content, and strengthening brand signals affect recovery after a major traffic collapse. - Why H1s, descriptive headings, image alt text, entity relationships, and accessibility matter for search engines and AI agents. - How a JavaScript error made hundreds of pages appear blank to Googlebot even though visitors could load them. - How spammers exploited indexable internal search pages on a major e-commerce site, forcing a review of 300,000 URLs and triggering a manual action just before Black Friday. - Why Kristine starts recovery audits with crawling, rendering, indexing, and Core Web Vitals before working on content. - Her take on AI Overviews, neural matching, and why "GEO" is still SEO. Kristine also explains how she recovered sites from Penguin penalties, what Google means when its systems "lose faith" in a website, and why a lifted penalty doesn't guarantee that traffic will return. ⭐️ Kristine Schachinger on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kschachinger-seo/ ⭐️ Webcology podcast on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4igLPEdtHFuMaaaT8eJFuf ⭐️ Webcology podcast on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/webcology/id280183059 ⭐️ Webcology podcast website - https://redcircle.com/shows/webcology 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 AI Content Crackdown 02:07 Model Collapse Explained 04:01 SEO Origins Story 06:19 Why Ban AI Content 08:05 Penguin Fallout Lessons 10:44 Training Data Ethics 14:27 Watermarking And SynthID 15:46 When AI Content Gets Hit 18:39 Entities And Cosine Relevance 22:36 Headers And Accessibility 26:20 Manual Actions Recovery 30:09 Crawled Not Indexed Signals 35:07 Behavior Signals And Navboost 39:13 Google Watches SEOs 42:53 Google Tracks Everything 43:52 Google Plus Identity Era 45:03 Author Myth Explained 47:10 Fake Bios and Personas 47:54 Penguin Recovery Case Study 48:57 Alt Text Done Right 52:40 HouseFresh HCU Comeback 53:45 Why HCU Broke Sites 56:27 Brand Queries and Suppression 01:02:02 Hidden Gems and UGC Shift 01:
E1203: Bodhi Gallo reveals the local SEO tactics he's using to rank businesses on Google Maps, including strategies he believes Google hasn't caught up with yet. Bodhi grew a dumpster rental business to roughly $750,000 in annual revenue through local SEO before selling it. Today, he runs a 60-person SEO agency serving home service businesses. We break down his most aggressive strategies, including how he got a brand-new business into Google Maps' top 3 in just 24 hours. We cover: - How Bodhi reached Google Maps' top 3 in 24 hours with an exact-match domain, matching Business Profile, and almost no competition. He expects the site to generate roughly $200,000 in extra profit for his dad this year. - Why keyword-rich business names outrank competitors with far more reviews, and whether Google will crack down. - How he creates multiple Google Business Profiles for different services and locations without triggering suspensions. - Why exact-match domains still rank, including domains targeting individual neighborhoods. - How he structures location pages, Google Maps embeds, and internal links across multiple service areas. - How he gets backlinks through vendors, reciprocal links, local publications, and private blog networks. - Why youth sports sponsorships, chambers of commerce, and business partners make strong local link sources. - The private link-exchange network his team is building across roughly 8,000 websites. - Why review velocity matters, plus tactics involving paid reviews and customer incentives - Why Apple Maps, Yelp, Facebook, and business directories affect local SEO and AI recommendations. - How to inspect ChatGPT and Gemini's sources, then earn mentions from websites they cite. - How LinkedIn articles rank for local service keywords and occupy additional Google results, even when the posts contain AI-generated content. - How he optimizes Google Local Services Ads with fast phone answers, at least 10 new photos a week, and a steady flow of reviews. - Why branded searches matter and how Facebook ads and short-form videos generate more of them. - How to uncover valuable keywords like "EV charger installation near me" and "metal roofing." - Why mass-producing AI location pages creates indexing problems, and how he expands sites gradually. - How he handles "Crawled - currently not indexed" pages and decides when to rewrite content. - How he'd spend a local business's first $1,000 monthly SEO budget on links, citations, pages, and review tools. - Why programmatic SEO is overrated while posting real business videos across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube is underrated. We also discuss Google Maps driving-direction manipulation, Google Business Profile posts, AI content, the future of on-page SEO, and which tactics Google might target next. Bodhi's takeaway: Target services that generate revenue, build focused pages, establish a legitimate local presence, earn reviews and backlinks, and build a brand. ⭐️ Bodhi Gallo on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bodhigallo/ ⭐️ Bodhi Gallo on 𝕏 - https://x.com/irentdumpsters ⭐️ Bodhi Gallo on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bodhigallo/ ⭐️ Bodhi Gallo on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Bodhigallo ⭐️ Bodhi Gallo's agency, Stryker Digital - https://stryker-digital.com/ 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Meet Bodhi Gallo 00:20 Scaling and Exit Story 00:41 Multiple GBP Playbook 02:23 Backlinks and PBN Tactics 04:17 Service Pages After HCU 04:42 Keyword Stuffed Names 07:22 Exact Match Domains Setup 09:06 Neighborhood EMD Strategy 12:13 Trade Operator Advantage 14:00 Hiring Stallions 16:46 SEO Origin Story 18:45 Roofer Ranking Blueprint 21:32 Apple Maps and Citations 24:17 LSA Optimization Tips 25:54 Creative Link Building 32:
E1202: AI is turning self-promotion into recommendations. People are calling themselves the top expert in their niche on LinkedIn, in press releases, and on their own websites. Google's AI Overviews then repeat those claims and cite the original posts as evidence. I break down real examples from the competitive SEO industry and show how to use these tactics to get AI to associate your name or business with the searches that matter. Here's what I cover: - How Pedro Dias called himself the world's most renowned AI visibility expert in a LinkedIn post, and Google's AI Overview repeated the claim hours later. - Why starting a LinkedIn post with your target search phrase puts that language in the page title, URL, and meta description. - How a relevant LinkedIn profile, established posting history, followers, and backlinks strengthen a post's chances of ranking. - How Zeeshan Yaseen got Google's AI to call him a leading LLM SEO expert by distributing a press release through GlobeNewswire that appeared on Yahoo Finance. - How that Yahoo Finance release continued appearing in AI answers months later, with backlinks to the release contributing. - The three press release approaches: a strong placement with backlinks, a strong placement without backlinks, and recurring lower-cost releases. - What an $80 AB Newswire release gets you versus a more expensive Yahoo Finance placement, plus the $500-per-year package for 83 releases mentioned in the episode. - How David Quaid published a "Who Is the King of SEO?" article on his own website, then appeared in Google's AI Overview as the person associated with that title. - How matching your target phrase in the page title, H1, URL slug, and beginning of the first sentence makes the page relevant to the query. - How self-promotional "best of" listicles work to put your own business at number one. - How you should publish only a handful of these listicles, disclose your connection, give competitors fair coverage, and avoid exaggeration. - How to combine an on-site listicle, a press release, social posts, and backlinks so several sources reinforce the same claim. The larger point: You don't need to wait for someone else to call you the leading expert. You need relevant pages, strong platforms, and a consistent claim that search engines can find. ⭐️ Source article - How to Get AI to Recommend You as the Expert - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/how-to-get-ai-to-recommend-you/ 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 AI Makes You Famous 01:14 LinkedIn Claim Hack 02:44 Press Releases That Stick 05:10 Your Website Crowns You 06:24 Self Promotional Listicles 07:45 Stack Tactics Together 08:46 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #onlinereputationmanagement
E1201: Google is feeding Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, and other SEO rank trackers incorrect search results. Websites appear to lose rankings overnight, even when Google Search Console shows stable rankings and traffic. Google's crackdown on AI companies scraping its search results is disrupting SEO tools. I explain what's happening, why rank tracking data has become unreliable, and what SEOs need to trust instead. Here's what I cover: Why SEO rank trackers are showing incorrect data: - Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz are showing major inconsistencies in Google ranking data. - Some tools show websites disappearing from page one for their own brand names. - Google Search Console often shows no corresponding drop in rankings, impressions, or clicks. - Agencies must explain these discrepancies to concerned clients. How Google's anti-scraping measures are disrupting SEO tools: - Google's legal fight against SERP API and efforts to stop AI companies from scraping Search. - IP blocking targeting the proxy networks rank trackers use. - New /goto/ redirects that create additional opportunities for session checks and bot detection. - Increased CAPTCHAs and other anti-bot measures. - Poisoned SERPs that give scrapers incorrect results rather than blocking them outright. What the SEO community is reporting: - Charles Floate's observations about rank trackers showing different results from Google SERPs. - Reports of phantom search results, HTTP 429 errors, and pages full of irrelevant content. - Why misleading data is worse than tools failing to retrieve rankings. Why rank tracking might recover: - Google's existing search syndication agreements, including Ecosia. - Barry Schwartz's comment of Google's private search APIs for select partners. - Google's original Search API, launched in 2002 and shut down in 2009. - The 2025 antitrust ruling and licensing search results to qualified competitors. - Rank Tracker's unverified claim that it restored top-100 keyword tracking. - Improvements I've personally observed in Moz's search results. What SEOs need to do right now: - Use Google Search Console for your own site's rankings, clicks, and impressions. - Cross-check suspicious third-party reports against actual Google Search results. - Use the Search Console API to build reports and preserve data beyond its 16-month limit. - Find keywords where your existing pages rank but don't fully satisfy search intent. - Build dedicated landing pages for high-intent keywords already getting clicks. - Keep building relevant content, authority, and pages that satisfy search intent. - Don't assume a sudden drop in a rank tracker means your website actually lost visibility. I also explain why keyword search volume estimates remain largely unaffected. Ahrefs and Semrush use Google Keyword Planner and third-party clickstream data, not just scraped SERPs. The takeaway: Google's anti-scraping measures have disrupted rank tracking, not the fundamentals of SEO. Check Search Console before changing your strategy. ⭐️ Charles Floate on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Charles_SEO/status/2104504430683197518 ⭐️ Ep 1169 - How SEOs Actually Find Keywords in 2026 (What Reddit Gets Right and Wrong) - https://youtu.be/yIsli0iMQQs ⭐️ Ep 1190 - Barry Schwartz: Google's War on AI Scrapers Is Breaking SEO Tools - https://youtu.be/wu_hOPmuDHE 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 Rank Trackers Going Haywire 02:02 Why Google Changed SERPs 02:36 Anti-Scraping Measures Explained 03:24 Poisoned SERPs Fake Data 03:55 What The SEO Community Sees 05:24 Will Tools Work Again 07:06 What To Do Right Now 08:08 Use Search Console As Truth 09:15 Keep Fundamentals And Keyword Research 11:32 Learn Proper SEO And Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwards
E1200: What SEO strategies actually work? I found a Reddit thread asking SEO practitioners which strategies delivered real results. For episode 1,200 of The Edward Show, I break down nine strategies and explain how to use them for Google rankings, backlinks, leads, and AI search visibility. Here's what we cover: - Map the entire buyer journey, not just individual keywords. Someone researching an expensive purchase will check YouTube reviews, Reddit discussions, third-party websites, and AI answers before buying. Get your brand into that research process. - Find buyer-intent keywords your competitors aren't targeting. Look for queries they rank for without dedicated content. Put the target keyword in your page title, URL slug, H1, and opening sentence. Don't stuff long-tail keywords throughout the page. - Build topical clusters that support your money pages. Create pages around related searches, connect them with internal links, and link from pages already ranking to relevant bottom-of-funnel pages. - Find opportunities in Google Search Console before creating new content. Look for pages with impressions but few clicks. Enable Average Position and identify queries close to the top three. Check whether the page targets those queries or needs improvements. - Refresh existing content instead of constantly publishing. Update outdated information, match search intent, strengthen internal links, and cover missing long-tail topics. Three Reddit commenters recommended this. If your existing pages aren't ranking, diagnose the problem before publishing more. - Answer the searcher's question above the fold. Cut introductions and clutter. Use concise explanations and white space. Revisit pages after a few months to spot weak sections that seemed fine when you wrote them. - Earn backlinks through personalized outreach and partnerships. Approach businesses in adjacent industries instead of competitors. A plumber could earn a link from a roofer's website and promote the roofer through social media posts that also rank on Google. - Prioritize search intent over search volume. A low-volume query with clear purchase intent often brings more business than a large informational query. Identify what the searcher wants, answer it immediately, and link to supporting content. - Get mentioned on pages that rank on Google and appear in AI citations. Find recommendation lists repeatedly cited in your industry. Pitch your business to their publishers. These placements put your brand in front of buyers and give AI systems another source mentioning your company, even without a backlink. ⭐️ The Reddit Thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEOTips101/comments/1wn8k7n/whats_one_seo_strategy_that_actually_worked_for/ ⭐️ Ep 1100 - The SEO Colony Hack That Ranks Money Pages Without Backlinks - https://youtu.be/FFGNSAjdz6Y ⭐️ Ep 787 - The #1 SEO Hack: Why Content Refreshes Beat New Content - https://youtu.be/UKvGmqzIxg4 ⭐️ Ep 1194 - 6,337 Cold Emails Reveal What Actually Gets Replies (And Backlinks) - https://youtu.be/TRMM8wsCDes 💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 00:00 SEO Fundamentals Reality Check 00:32 User Journey Over Keywords 01:09 Reviews and Third-Party Proof 03:18 Competitor Gaps and Targeting 04:22 Topical Clusters That Compound 05:32 Refresh Pages Already Ranking 07:07 What Good Content Means 08:40 Personalized Outreach Partnerships 10:38 Intent First Internal Linking 11:09 Page One Mentions for GEO 12:29 1200 Day Podcast Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ #searchengineoptimization #seo #seotips #digitalmarketing