🐹 Hamsterdam Part 111: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (8/9 to 8/15, 2025)
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
A weekly look-back at SEO & AI news, tips, and other content shared on social media & beyond.
Opening notes, thoughts, and musings:
- Welcome to another new week of Hamsterdam! 🐹
- I appreciate you being here, and look forward to sharing the week’s news! 🙌
If you’re in a rush, hop down to the news portion. 📰
Or continue reading for two vocabulary lessons plus an introduction.
And we’re off …
🧑💻 Marketing word of the week: “PR”
PR is short for public relations, which is the strategic management of a brand’s reputation with the public, media, and stakeholders. PR is about crafting a positive brand image, managing earned media (coverage you don’t pay for directly), handling communications during crises, and generating trust and credibility over time.
Some classic PR tools include press releases, media interviews, events, community involvement, and influencer outreach.
Modern PR also influences search and AI chatbot visibility through link building and brand mentions that signal EEAT. PR can also help with content distribution and amplification, reputation management in SERPs, and driving search demand.
Think of PR as getting people talking about you while SEO makes sure they find you (and something worth clicking) when searching.
🤖 AI word of the week: “Positional encoding”
Positional encoding is a method used in transformer models (like GPT, BERT, and other LLMs used in search engines) to give the model a sense of word order in a sequence.
How does it work exactly? Well, each token already has an embedding (a vector representation of meaning), so positional encoding adds (or combines) another vector that represents its position in the sentence. As a result, the model understands not just what words are present but also where they are in relation to one another.
With positional encoding, the model knows if the meaning of words changes based on their order, which is crucial for query understanding, passage ranking, and entity relationships in search engines.
😊 Introduction to week 111: “NotebookLM strikes again”
This week, iPullRank put out a stellar guide to GEO:
However, at 20 chapters long, it can take a while to go through it all, and I wanted to emphasize its key points with my team, so …
I went to NotebookLM and put all 20 chapters as sources.
It took 2 minutes, and now we have an easy way to engage with this terrific guide.
I’d still recommend reading the guide for yourself (I’m currently on Chapter 6), but if you’re in a time crunch, check out NotebookLM.
Thank you for supporting Hamsterdam and the cause of SEO & AI learning. 🙏
Enjoy the vibes:
Missed last week? Don’t worry, I got you! Read Part 110 to catch up.
🌟 Other great sources of weekly SEO news:
- The SEO Weekly – Garret Sussman, iPullRank
- SEOFOMO – Aleyda Solis
- Weekly Video Recaps – Barry Schwartz, SER
- Weekly SEO News YouTube channel – Olga Zarr, Seosly
- Niche Surfer – Yoyao Hsueh
Time for our weekly review of SEO social posts, articles, & more …
Now, let’s step inside the white flags of Hamsterdam …
⏩ Jump to a section:
- News, Google updates, & SERP tests
- SEO tips & tidbits
- Fundamentals & resources
- Articles, videos & case studies
- Local SEO
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
- Local SEO
- Data analysis & reporting
- AI, LLMS, & machine learning
- Miscellaneous & general posts
- Older stuff that’s good!
Or keep scrolling to see it all. ⏬
📰 SEO news, Google updates, SERP tests & notable posts
Notable updates or news related to Google Search or related SEO topics.
🍟 SEO tips & tidbits
Actionable tips, cool tidbits, and other snackable findings and observations that can be teaching moments.
Essential information, concepts, or resources to learn about SEO or AI.
Longer-form content pieces shared on social, in newsletters, and elsewhere.
🧑💻 Technical SEO
Everything from basics to advanced moves (and also tools).
✍️ Content marketing
From what is helpful content to user journeys and beyond.
📍 Local SEO
From Google Business Profiles to reviews and more!
📊 Data analysis & reporting
Showing that what you’re doing is helping.
🤖 AI, machine learning, & LLMs
News related to models, papers, and companies.
🤔 General marketing & miscellaneous
This is for great content that isn’t necessarily SEO or marketing-specific. PPC, PR, dev, design, and social friends, check it out!
💎 Older stuff that’s good!
Not everything I find worth sharing is new as of this week, so these are gems I came across published in the past.
>> Check back next week!
Great job making it to the end. You rock! 🪨
Let’s connect!
Hit me up anytime via text or call at 813-557-9745 or on social or email:
Cheers! ✌️
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