🐹 Hamsterdam Part 131: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (1/3 to 1/9, 2026)
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: “Judgment heuristic”
A judgment heuristic is a mental shortcut that people use to make decisions quickly, instead of analyzing all available information carefully. In marketing, it matters because most consumers’ decisions are fast, emotional, and imperfect, rather than fully rational.
People rely on judgment heuristics because they have limited time, limited attention, too many choices, or full analysis feels mentally expensive.
Common judgment heuristics consumers use include:
- Availability heuristic – people judge something as more likely or better if it’s easy to remember (brands that run a lot of ads might be seen as more popular or trustworthy, for example)
- Representativeness heuristics – people judge something based on how closely it matches a stereotype (a sleek, minimalist website might be assumed to be a “premium” brand)
- Anchoring heuristic – people rely heavily on the first piece of information they see (seeing a higher original price might make a sale feel like a better deal)
- Affect heuristic – people make judgments based on how they feel, not on facts (like how positive brand imagery might lead consumers to assume higher quality)
As marketers, we care about judgment heuristics because they can influence brand preference, price sensitivity, perceived quality, trust, and even purchase decisions.
🤖 AI word of the week: “Joint embedding”
Joint embedding is a technique where different types of data are mapped into the same vector space so they can be directly compared or used together.
Join embeddings let AI compare text and images, align speech to text, connect queries to results, or match users to items.
Conceptually how it works is each modality (text, image, etc.) has its own encoder that maps inputs into a shared embedding space. Related inputs end up closer together in that space and unrelated inputs are farther apart — distance equals similarity.
Classic use cases include text-image matching, search and retrieval, recommendation systems, and multimodal AI.
😊 Introduction to week 131: “Pay to play”
Getting third-party mentions on relevant domains has become a bigger component of SEO strategies as a result of how AI assistants return citations.
We’ve been investigating this as an aspect of digital PR — how to get listed on more third-party sites relevant to our brands’ audiences.
It turns out, a lot of those “best [product] for [xyz]” posts are pay to play.
As long as your budget allows, there’s an avenue to getting mentioned (assuming your product is good enough as well).
However, I think it calls into question the validity of a lot of AI citations and brand mentions driven by third-party validation.
Just something to keep in mind, whether you’re running a digital PR strategy or you’re considering making a purchase based on third-party validation.
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 130 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.
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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