Hamsterdam Part 50: SEO News Recap from 3/18 to 3/24, 2024
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
A weekly look-back at SEO news, tips, and other content shared on social media & beyond.
Opening notes:
> I’ve added a more dedicated AI news, tips, and articles section. I think there may be more AI research papers than SEO articles in this one!
> This week’s Hamsterdam History article was about how Google Search personalized its results in 2007 versus today. The project will evolve, and you can help shape it!
*Feel free to jump down to this week’s recap, or continue for a historical anecdote, introduction, and summary of the week’s news!
This week in SEO history
On March 20th, 2008, Ann Smarty published an article for Search Engine Journal called, “Natural SEO : Reciprocal Linking and Interlinking.”
It was the second in a series of natural SEO posts by Ann to help foster an “FUD-free approach” to SEO.
Admittedly, I didn’t know what FUD was.
After some Googling, I found out it means “fear, uncertainty, and doubt,” which is a deliberate strategy to disseminate false information to appeal to fear.
FUD appears in several SEO publications I found from years back, like this one from Page One Power or this one from Search Engine Watch, both from 2014.
In an SEO context, FUD is largely implied as a spam-fighting tactic by Google to make spammers fear retribution for tactics the search engine can’t manage algorithmically.
I’ve heard people suggesting this FUD concept recently, as well. It was speculated by some about the March manual actions for pure spam as well as the pre-announced site reputation abuse spam policy, which’ll be unleashed in May.
Getting back to Ann’s 2008 article, she first talks about reciprocal links — I link to you, so you link to me — saying to frame them less about how search engines will evaluate them and more “as a powerful social tool (that helps you to build connections) and another traffic source.”
On the next topic of interlinking multiple sites you control, she speaks about avoiding this if you’re doing gray tactics.
[Aside: I’ve heard it hypothesized that interlinking was the reason multiple sites within the same GSC accounts got manual actions this March, and not because they were in the same GSC, necessarily.]
Ann then suggests the differences between natural interlinking and manipulative interlinking, referencing a quote from a Matt Cutts’ video about “more than 2000 sites owned by one person may look unnatural.”
On the whole, the article speaks to a similar theme of user-first vs. SEO-first tactics that we hear spoken of today.
I chose the post because it also had the most user comments on SEJ for that day. It seems links are always a hot topic of discussion.
Personally, I just approach all links how I think it makes sense for a user. Generally, that works out pretty well for everything else.
After all, the less we have to worry about upsetting a search engine’s systems, the less FUD we’ll have. Did I say that right? 😉
Introduction to week 50: “Google me”
Do you follow rap beefs?
Yeah, me too!
You know how using AI to write content is kind of controversial in certain SEO circles — I’m generally not a fan, personally — well, so is using ghostwriters in certain rap circles.
Drake is said to have used a ghostwriter named Quentin Miller.
Two modern legends who write their own lyrics are Kendrick Lamar and J Cole.
In case you missed the news or don’t have TikTok to break it down, these three are part of a bigger stirrup happening.
If you like rap, here’s the song of the week: Like That (Kendrick’s part is at 1:53) ), and here’s a lyrical breakdown on TikTok. (Viewer discretion.)
Two other rappers who are in my top 10 artists are Lil Wayne and Eminem.
They’re also part of this week’s introduction.
But first, let me take it back to ’79. (Well, actually … Thursday).
On Thursday night, I was finishing up the first installment of Hamsterdam History, which covers personalized search results on Google circa 2007.
One section talks about how personalized results can make your own website pages appear like they’re ranking better than the real average, because you tend to visit them more often.
This got me thinking about the idea of “Googling yourself” in general.
It’s kind of a weird concept, right? Like staring at yourself in the mirror.
But it actually has logic to it.
Until about 9 months ago, I never really searched for myself online.
That all changed, though, when I started investing time in my website.
I use my website partly as an “SEO playground,” and Googling myself (as a query) now comes with the territory.
It’s also a great way to share discoveries of SERP tests or performance insights publicly, because when it’s your site in the example, there’s no need to ask for permission.
But what’s that got to do with Eminem and Lil Wayne?
Well, I just remembered a video when they were talking about how they search for their own lyrics on Google when writing new raps because they’ve both written so much that they don’t remember it all.
So, there’s no shame in Googling yourself. In fact, it comes in handy sometimes.
If you’re new to SEO, it’s one of the best ways to experiment with your own website and other online profiles.
Just note that what you see isn’t necessarily what everyone else sees. 😉
Buckle up for a full week’s recap, and enjoy the vibes (circa 1996):
Summary of the week’s SEO news and content
- Liz Reid is now head of Search at Google; FWIW she authored the first SGE blog post on The Keyword in May 2023
- Speaking of which, generative AI overviews are now being tested in normal search results
- Google’s March 2024 core update is still charging, but the spam update concluded
- The helpful content system is no longer “just” site-wide; we knew this per Google’s FAQs on March 5th, but Danny Sullivan explained it clearly on X; it jives with more page-level changes I’ve observed this month; *update (4/2): I originally implied the HCS is only page-level, but John Mueller clarified on X it’s both.
- There were also a ton of articles published this week
- And much more!
Missed last week? Don’t worry, I got you! Read Part 49 to catch up.
Thank you for supporting Hamsterdam and helping make SEO accessible to all!
Ok, time for (home)work.
Jump to a section of this week’s recap
- Top posts
- News, Google updates, & SERP tests
- SEO tips & tidbits
- Fundamentals & resources
- Articles, videos & case studies
- Local SEO
- Technical SEO
- Content marketing
- SEO tools & reporting
- AI, LLMS, & machine learning
- Humor section
- Miscellaneous & general posts
Or keep scrolling to see it all.
Also, feel free to support content you find valuable with a like, follow, or friendly comment.
Now, let’s step inside the white flags …
Top posts
These are highlights of news items, tips, or other content for the week. Great for when you just want a quick recap!
We’ve heard how schema doesn’t impact rankings (at least directly), but schema abuse (like what Jarno highlights here) is something I observed in some HCU and March core update impacted sites; maybe like how author bylines don’t impact rankings, it signals (mis)alignment with ranking signals overall.
AI, LLMs & machine learning
A section dedicated to artificial intelligence news, tips, and articles.
How to Store Embeddings in Vector Search and Implement RAG – Janakiram MSV, The New Stack
ScreenAI: A visual language model for UI and visually-situated language understanding – Google Research
This has really interesting graphics and examples. My first thought was imagining how this could be used to assess the page experience of a webpage for SEO.
Google AI Introduces Cappy: A Small Pre-Trained Scorer Machine Learning Model that Enhances and Surpasses the Performance of Large Multi-Task Language Models – Pragati Jhunjhunwala, MarkTechPost
Cappy’s architecture is based on RoBERTa, an extension of BERT trained with dynamic masking — where tokens to be predicted are chosen randomly for a wider variety of learning examples — as opposed to pre-defined masked tokens.
An Easy Introduction to Multimodal Retrieval Augmented Generation – NVIDIA Developer Blog
Model Excellence Scores: A Framework for Enhancing the Quality of Machine Learning Systems at Scale – Uber Blog, Engineering
This paper was mentioned by Mike King and included in last week’s Hamsterdam recap; this article does a nice summary.
5 ways every small business can get started with generative AI – Google Workspace
I included this for a specific reason: the comments. While in the realm of SEO and digital marketing, we’re embracing AI with both arms (generally), in other fields, it’s quite controversial. I think this user comment really summarizes it well:
Plan, organize, communicate, and browse smarter with Microsoft Edge. – Microsoft Edge (Watch on TikTok)
I’m always interested in how Google and Microsoft (Bing) market their products to Gen Z audiences. Here, we have uses for Edge and Copilot. Like with Google, Microsoft emphasizes the shopping aspects, and it shows an ad in Copilot. Pretty interesting! This is an ad itself, but also a peek into a broader strategy.
These examples look to me like a deliberate search result vs. what titles would appear in the wild for these pages, but not sure. Equally funny, though, is how commonly “optimized” follows SEO in writing.
The Social Media Mob – Nigel Barber, Ph.D., Psychology Today
Jonathan Haidt thinks we want to quit TikTok – Hard Fork Podcast (Watch on TikTok)
Loss Aversion Saves Careers but… Ruins Brands – Camille Moore (Watch on TikTok)
This advice came from a board member and mentor of a very successful tech company – Erin R Wellness (Watch on TikTok)
Support small businesses like The Village Bakery in Hayden, Idaho. – TikTok (Watch on TikTok)
We know the TikTok legislation being discussed. Interesting to see how the company is responding in their ad campaigns, focusing on main street America (in select cities).
Great job making it to the end. You rock!
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