🐹 Hamsterdam Part 129: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (12/20 to 12/26, 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: “Halo Effect”
The halo effect is a cognitive bias where positive feelings about one aspect of a brand influence how people perceive everything else about it.
In SEO, brand trust can result in higher CTRs. The Halo Effect can result from a recognizable brand name, a clean title tag and meta description or snippet, or a familiar tone or promise. For example, a well-known brand ranking in position 3 may get more clicks than an unknown site in position 2. (Navboost to the rescue.)
This is why quality matters in everything you do for your brand. If users land on one strong piece of content, they may subconsciously assume other pages are reliable and the brand knows what it’s talking about.
Signals users may look for, that can initiate a Halo Effect, could include author bios, about pages, press mentions, or a consistent brand voice.
UX is also important to the Halo Effect. If a site has a clean design that loads fast, users may assume the content is higher quality.
In short, commit to doing a quality job on every aspect of your brand, as it can compound in influence and rise all boats.
🤖 AI word of the week: “Hallucination”
In AI, a hallucination is when a model generates information that sounds confident but is factually incorrect or entirely made up.
Hallucinations can happen because AI models predict language based on patterns, not truth, for example when training data is incomplete, the prompt is vague, or the model is pushed beyond verified language.
Examples of hallucinations might be inventing statistics, studies, or URLs, misattributing quotes, or confidently explaining something that doesn’t exist.
😊 Introduction to week 129: “Brand reputation”
I’m working with a brand that has an unfortunate result from a third-party website showing up for its branded queries. This result undoubtedly deters users from clicking on the brand’s website or buying its products. It also influences AI assistant responses, like in ChatGPT.
The brand owners have gone through extensive digital PR initiatives to try and push down the undesirable result in the SERPs, to no avail.
As a result, we’ve decided to do a rebrand.
This is just a reminder that you’re not always in control of your brand narrative; what others says about you is important, especially in the world of AI-generated responses.
My advice is to invest heavily in efforts that generate positive sentiment about your brand externally. You’ll thank yourself later.
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 128 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.
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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