🐹 Hamsterdam Part 134: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (1/24 to 1/30, 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: “Market positioning”
Market positioning refers to how a brand or product is understood and remembered in a customer’s mind relative to alternatives. It answers questions like what this brand/product is for, who it’s for, and why should I choose it versus competitors. Important to remember, positioning is NOT what you say about your brand/product but rather what people believe.
For example, you might portray your brand/product as premium, affordable, or innovative, but ultimately the market decides whether those attributes stick or not.
Positioning is like a mental shortcut for buyers. They use it for comparative purposes, and it’s built over time through consistency. It’s also both emotional and functional.
What positioning is not is a slogan or tagline or just branding and visuals. It’s also not what leadership wants it to be; the market decides.
The core dimensions of market positioning include price, quality/performance, audience, use case, and values.
For example, Starbucks is seen as a reliable premium everyday treat, whereas Dunkin’ is seen as fast, affordable, no-frills coffee. Similar products, but totally different positions.
🤖 AI word of the week: “Multimodal learning”
Multimodal learning is an AI approach where a model is trained to understand, combine, and reason across multiple types of data, or modalities, at the same time. Common modalities include text, images, audio, video, and structured data (like tables or metadata). Instead of treating each data type separately, the model learns relationships between them.
Multimodal learning is powerful because it can answer questions like “what does this image mean in the context of this text?” or “does this video match what the audio claims?”
How it works at a high level is that each modality is processed by a specialized encoder, such as a language encoder for text or a vision encoder for images. The representations are then mapped into a shared representation space, where the model can compare text, images, and audio, for example. The model then learns alignment, or which words match which visual features and which sounds correspond to which actions or scenes.
Multimodal learning is a single model learning cross-modal relationships. This is different from a multimodal system that uses multiple models stitched together. As a result, the strengths of multimodal learning are better context understanding, reduced ambiguity, more natural human interaction, and stronger grounding in real-world insights.
😊 Introduction to week 134: “Brand positioning”
I’ve been working a bit more on brand positioning lately, or product-market fit.
I’ve discovered a helpful framework called BRAVO:
- Branding and visuals
- Reason for existing
- Audience
- Voice and personality
- Offering
By running a brand through all of the above steps, you can help figure out its positioning and give yourself angles for messaging.
I hope to share some more examples in future Hamsterdam recaps!
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 133 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!
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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