🐹 Hamsterdam Part 153: Weekly SEO/GEO News Recap (11/7 to 11/13, 2026)
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
A weekly look-back at SEO/GEO news, tips, and other content shared on social media & beyond.
Opening notes, thoughts, and musings:
- My website is now eligible as a Preferred Source in Google. I’d be grateful if you added me!
- Welcome to another week of Hamsterdam! 🐹 Enjoy the early look. If you’re new here, this is a weekly summary of hand-curated SEO/GEO news and tips shared on social media. Like a newsletter, but different.
- Curious what I’ve been writing lately? Check out my latest blog posts from the past week:
- Exploring “Collaborative Search Meets Large Language Models: An Empirical Study” for SEO/GEO Insights: A Hamsterdam Research Post
- Exploring “CORE: Coarse-to-Fine Search with Context Management for Deep Research” for SEO/GEO Insights: A Hamsterdam Research Post
- How Does Comparison Content Affect AEO Rankings? A Tales from the Query Post
- Let’s Talk About “Processing Fluency” in the Context of SEO/GEO: A Hamsterdam Marketing Lesson
- Does Blog Content Still Influence Consumer Buying Behavior? Revisiting a 2008 Research Article (A Hamsterdam History Lesson)
- I Don’t Know What To Write About? What Should I Do? An SEO/GEOs Guide for Content Strategy
- I appreciate you being here and look forward to sharing the week’s SEO/GEO news below! 🙌
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: “Evoked Set”
An evoked set is the small group of brands or products a consumer actively considers when making a purchase decision. It’s also known as a consideration set, which we’ve covered before.
Traditionally, search engines helped consumers discover brands and build their consideration sets, but AI search has introduced another layer where an AI-generated answer may present a shortlist of recommendations before the consumer ever visits a website. This raises an important question for GEO of whether AI-generated recommendations are influencing which brands enter consumers’ consideration sets?
As SEO/GEO professionals, we should thus think beyond rankings and traffic to consider whether our brands appear among the alternatives consumers actually evaluate. In short, being mentioned in an AI response doesn’t guarantee consideration, but it may create an opportunity to enter the decision-making process.
🤖 AI word of the week: “Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR)”
Maximal Marginal Relevance is a technique for selecting information that balances relevance to a query with diversity among the results, reducing redundancy.
To give an example of how MMR works, imagine an AI assistant researching how brands can improve their visibility in AI-generated search results.
Without MMR, the AI assistant might retrieve five passages that all discuss the importance of creating high-quality, relevant content.
With MMR, the AI could select passages covering:
- Creating original, helpful content.
- Building brand authority through third-party mentions.
- Using structured data to clarify entities and relationships.
- Improving technical accessibility for AI crawlers.
- Measuring brand visibility and citations in AI-generated answers.
All five passages, in either case, may be relevant to the query, but the second group provides a broader range of information, helping the AI assistant generate a more comprehensive answer without relying on repetitive sources.
For SEO/GEO, this means that being relevant isn’t necessarily enough when multiple sources communicate essentially the same information. Rather, the value of a source may also depend on what it adds that other sources don’t.
✌️Introduction to week 153: “Source Material”
I recently started reading Clockers, written by Richard Price.
I came to know about Richard Price because he was a contributor to The Wire (the inspiration behind Hamsterdam). As it turns out, Clockers partly inspired David Simon’s creation of The Wire, and in reading the book, I’m finding so many references that were put into The Wire, it’s been a enjoyable experience so far.
It also made me think about all of the SEOs whose work inspired my own, and how the purpose of Hamsterdam is to highlight SEO/GEO knowledge while attributing it to its original source, or its source material.
In a world of increasingly AI-generated summaries, I think we need to keep in mind that concept of source material and appreciate it. In fact, in one of my recent Hamsterdam Research articles, a study found that students who relied on websites (source material) wrote reports with more “factual richness” than those who relied on AI summaries to interpret information.
All that’s to say, knowledge is great, but appreciating where it came from originally is equally as rewarding.
Thank you for supporting Hamsterdam and the cause of SEO/GEO learning. 🙏
Enjoy the vibes:
Missed last week? Don’t worry, I got you! Read Part 152 to catch up.
🌟 Other great sources of weekly SEO/GEO 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
- Core Updates – Mark Williams-Cook, Candour Agency Ltd.
Time for our weekly review of SEO/GEO 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
Or keep scrolling to see it all. ⏬
📰 SEO/GEO 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/GEO
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/GEO specific.
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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