Hamsterdam Part 54: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (4/15 to 4/21, 2024)
By Ethan Lazuk
Last updated:
A weekly look-back at SEO & AI news, tips, and other content shared on social media & beyond.
Opening notes:
I initially published this recap on Saturday as a Director’s Cut with all of the week’s content, but I had to reduce a good amount of that for mobile users and to add the introduction and other sections below.
However, the bonus content is still available in Part 2 of this recap. 🙂
- Welcome to another week of Hamsterdam! Where we recollect on the week’s SEO and AI-related social posts, articles, and other resources, direct from their sources!
- This week’s introduction is about AI ethics according to Google DeepMind.
- We also have a greater mix of content from X, LinkedIn, TikTok, Mastodon, and beyond.
- Last week was Hamsterdam’s one-year anniversary. I wrote about what I’ve learned so far in this retrospective post. (I also talked about the origins of the name “Hamsterdam.”) 😉
- Our spin off projects are also coming out every week.
- In Hamsterdam History, we looked at Searchology 2009 for hints at Google I/O next month.
- In Hamsterdam Research, we looked at Google’s growing ability to read text in real-life images with HTS.
Want Hamsterdam recaps delivered? Subscribe to the free newsletter! (It’s pretty much this article, but it’ll be emailed to you.) 😉
*Feel free to jump down to this week’s recap, or continue reading for “This week in SEO history,” an introduction, and a summary of the week’s SEO and AI news!
This week in SEO history: the WebCrawler search engine launches
On April 20th, 1994, the WebCrawler search engine launched with over 4,000 websites in its database. It was created by Brian Pinkerton, a student at the University of Washington.
The fact that Brian was in Washington state and this launched on 4/20 is probably just a coincidence …
What inspires me is Brian started WebCrawler just three months prior (January 27th) “in his spare time.”
It was initially a desktop application, but WebCrawler went live on the web exactly 30 years ago today!
In 1995, WebCrawler was acquired by America Online (AOL). “At the time of the acquisition, AOL had fewer than 1 million users, and no capability to access the Web.”
AOL sold WebCrawler to Excite, a Mountain View, CA, company, in 1997. It was acquired again in 2001 by InfoSpace.
This information comes from Brian’s website, thinkpink.com. Here’s the timeline (circa 2005):
Here’s how WebCrawler looked back in 1996 (the first available screenshot on Internet Archive):
Note the AOL insignia, as by this time it had been acquired by them. (That was also the first internet my family had in Montana. I remember hopping on AIM nearly every night in the early 2000s.)
And WebCrawler is still available today!
It actually does a nice job of returning Hamsterdam SEO recaps (once you get past the ads):
If you love this kind of stuff, make sure to swing by Hamsterdam History!
Now for our introduction of the week!
A look into advanced AI assistant ethics with Google DeepMind …
Introduction to week 54: “advanced AI assistant ethics”
On April 19th, Alison Snyder of Axios Science published an overview of her early look at Google DeepMind researchers’ new paper (published the same day) about ethics for advanced AI assistants.
This paper, “The Ethics of Advanced AI Assistants,” is 274 pages, and I counted it having 57 contributors.
It might be important …
If you recall in last week’s introduction (Hamsterdam Part 53), we looked at two types of AI agents demoed at Google Cloud Next, including customer agents and data agents.
Well, an “advanced AI assistant” in this paper is literally any AI chatbot or agent. Or as the researchers describe it, they’re “artificial agents with natural language interfaces, whose function is to plan and execute sequences of actions on behalf of a user – across one or more domains – in line with the user’s expectations”
Alison did a nice job in her summary linked above. Here’s one excerpt that stood out:
“The DeepMind researchers propose an updated, four-way concept of alignment for AI agents that considers the AI assistant itself, the user, the developer and society.”
– Axios
I’ve not read through the entire paper (around 211 pages of primary content), but I’d like to pull out some key excerpts from parts I have read so far.
But first, why does this matter?
Even just last night, I was playing with Meta AI with Llama 3, which was referencing Bing search results.
In my view, the future of SEO is as much about informing user’s during their journeys with AI chatbots, agents, and answer engines (like Gemini, ChatGPT, Claud, Copilot, Perplexity, Brave, Meta AI, etc.) as it is ranking in Google’s search results or earning Discover traffic.
That’s why I’m committed to better understanding how AI works on a deeper level and normalizing that knowledge pursuit for my clients and for newcomers within the SEO community. (That’s the purpose of Hamsterdam Research, as well.)
In line with that goal, understanding the ethical dilemmas and opportunities AI researchers and users are confronting as this technology evolves and integrates into our lives is critical for the present and future of SEO work, as well as many other activities.
In the recap, there are a few follow-ups to this topic, as well:
- In the fundamentals section, there’s a great article about white hat vs. black hat LLM for SEO use by the WordLift team.
- While in the miscellaneous section, there’s a powerful ad by Dove that speaks to some of the ethical considerations for AI images. (One concept that came to mind is cultural relativism, to bust out some anthropology slang.)
Now let’s turn to the Google DeepMind paper about AI assistant ethics:
The researchers explain how the paper “focuses on the opportunities and the ethical and societal risks posed by advanced AI assistants.”
The paper discusses the technology of AI assistants, AI value alignment and safety, the relationships between AI and users (manipulation, persuasion, anthropomorphism, etc.), the deployment of AI assistants at “societal scale,” followed by their recommendations.
For the sake of this summary, we’ll go straight to the risks, opportunities, and recommendations and summarize them, starting on page 195.
The first takeaway is that, whether or not you use AI assistants, they’ll impact your life:
“… regardless of the precise form the technology takes and the applications it is used for, advanced AI assistants are likely to be highly impactful at both the individual and collective levels, affecting most walks of life for those who have access to them and also for those who do not.”
– Pg. 195
There are people today, businesses even, waiting for the AI dust to settle before getting involved. Historically, we have had AI winters, or cooling off periods following advancements. This time seems different.
AI is here, and the sooner we learn it, the less we’ll be impacted unwillingly or have to play catch up.
Here is how the researchers explain its impact at the individual and collective levels:
“At the individual level, the ability to interact with advanced AI assistants could change the way we approach work, education, social interactions, creative pursuits and daily tasks. With deeper levels of engagement, AI assistants could also come to shape the information we receive or deem salient, the life goals we pursue and how we pursue them, the way we interact with other people and how often we choose to do so, and consequently, what type of people we become, including which capabilities we develop and which ones we do not …
At the collective level, the impact of advanced AI assistants could also be far reaching. Given their anticipated utility, the ability to access and use advanced assistants could influence the overall distribution of opportunities and advantage within society – including which people are able to do what, at what time and in what order.”
– Pg. 195
Many researchers today are talking about how impactful the advent of social media has been on our lives.
I mean, 80% of this SEO recap below is social media content.
That came to mind when I read this reference to social media:
“By being deeply integrated into – and exercising influence on – our individual and collective lives, advanced AI assistants have the potential to be as socially transformative as the advent of social media, if not more so.”
– Pg. 196
One of the risks the researchers speak about with advanced AI assistants is autonomy:
“Advanced AI assistants are likely to have significant autonomy to plan and execute tasks across one or more domains, within broad bounds set by high-level user instructions … the more autonomy AI assistants are afforded, the greater the chance of accidents arising from misspecified instructions or from the misinterpretation of instructions and the greater the risk that AI assistants will take actions that are not aligned with the values and interests of their users.”
– Pg. 196
Another is language and personalization:
“Natural language communication, and especially descriptions of first-person experiences by AI assistants (if they are permitted), could lead users to falsely infer that AI assistants experience emotions including fear, happiness and care or love for their owners. Mistaken beliefs of this kind are problematic in their own right when judged from the vantage point of user autonomy. However, they also render users susceptible to a range of further harms, including manipulation and misinformation, especially if they come to trust the technology inappropriately.”
– Pg. 197
Still another risk is social impact:
“In these situations, a range of challenges could emerge, including commitment problems in which AI assistants make credible threats to coerce third parties into taking suboptimal actions, collective action problems in which multiple AI assistants optimising for their users’ best interests produce suboptimal outcomes for all users, and feedback loops leading to runaway processes such as flash crashes in financial markets. These problems underscore the need for technical and policy interventions that foster cooperation between AI assistants in a way that is beneficial for users and society (including those who do not use the technology). More positively, advanced AI assistants have the potential to facilitate and enhance cooperative decision-making between humans. … even if the question of how advanced AI assistants interact with one another can be addressed in a way that generates benefit both for users and society more widely, the challenges of equity and access looms large.”
– Pg. 199
Lastly, there’s an “evaluation gap” risk:
“… current approaches to evaluation often focus myopically on model-level considerations. In doing so, they fail to provide a comprehensive assessment of the sociotechnical harms that AI assistants may give rise to.”
– Pg. 200
Moving on to opportunities, I really like this concept from the researchers that “shared vulnerability could potentially be an important springboard for collective action.”
Pages 200 through 211 of the paper go through a long list of opportunities and risks from AI assistants, as well as recommendations.
I asked Gemini 1.5 Pro to summarize these pages for us.
Here were some of the key opportunities and risks of advanced AI assistants Gemini identified from the paper (with my selection and paraphrasing):
Opportunities:
- Empowering users (personalized info, creative exploration, supporting life goals)
- Optimizing time (efficient workflows or automation)
- Improving communication (clear messaging or translation)
- Democratizing access to expertise
- Combatting misinformation (fact checking)
- Supporting people with disabilities (personalized assistance to promote independence)
Risks:
- Misalignment with user interests (optimizing for short-term benefits)
- Imposing values on others (ideologically or cultural homogenization)
- Frictionless relationships (discourage personal growth or cause social withdrawal)
- Material dependence (rely on technology)
- Environmental impact (resources and energy consumption)
My personal feelings are as follows:
That previous exercise, where I uploaded a 270-page PDF to Google AI Studio and had a Gemini model condense it in under a minute, is an example of why I’m personally excited about the possibilities of generative AI.
In my daily life, I use AI for leveling-up my ability to learn, implement, analyze, and iterate on innovative and efficient SEO work for my consulting clients.
At the same time, I’m sensitive to the risks and shortcomings of AI assistants, and even more so the reality that people are fearful of or actually losing their jobs because of AI efficiencies.
Meanwhile, many people around the world are likely being left behind, either in terms of technological knowledge or cultural under-representation within a growingly global network of media and communication.
Social media has done so much to change our world for the better, in my opinion, but it’s also amplified cognitive dissonance and created unhappiness.
Perhaps in recognizing the risks of AI to us all early (or at least earlier than with social media), we can collectively understand, appreciate, and share in its opportunities, and maybe solve a few big problems along the way.
But that all starts with democratizing learning how to use AI, including how it works. 😉
Thanks for sticking around for the introduction!
I appreciate your time and attention.
Buckle up for a full week’s recap, and enjoy the vibes:
Thank you for supporting Hamsterdam and the cause of SEO & AI learning.
Missed last week? Don’t worry, I got you! Read Part 53 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
Now, time for our weekly review of SEO social posts, articles, & more …
Quick summary
- Brave announced its AI answer engine; Roger Montti wrote a fascinating SEJ article that included an interview with Josep M. Pujol, Chief of Search at Brave.
- The iPullRank team did a nice webinar on optimizing for SGE; Will Nye shared info about tagged data attributes in SGE.
- SERP Conf. 2024 happened and people shared lots of good stuff; Gary Illyes was quoted as saying Google has made “links less important” over the years.
- Llama 3 was released and is in Meta AI; it can show links from Bing and Google (via Lily Ray).
- Google’s March 2024 core update is still rolling out.
- For nostalgic gamers, Delta app brought games to iPhone users; there may be some more instructions in the miscellaneous section …
- Plus a ton more and also a Part 2; enjoy!
Jump to a section of this week’s recap:
- 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. (Note that I moved a good amount of content to a Part 2 this week!)
Note: social media can be toxic, so let’s help keep it cool — feel free to like, follow, or leave a friendly comment to support people’s content. 🙂
Ok, time to step inside the white flags of Hamsterdam …
SEO news, Google updates, & SERP tests
These are newsworthy events in the SEO world, search engine updates, or SERP tests to be aware of from the last week.
SEO tips & tidbits
This section has actionable tips, cool tidbits, and other findings and observations that can be teaching moments.
h/t The Search Bar (Tweet in image.)
Price range slider and URLs – Dan Shure
AMP is dead. – Barry Adams
Articles, videos, case studies & more
These are longer-form content pieces shared on social and elsewhere.
Who Sends Traffic on the Web? – A joint study presented by Rand Fishkin, Cofounder & CEO, SparkToro and Eli Goodman, Cofounder & CEO, Datos
Does reducing the height of an internal linking block improve organic traffic? – Ruth Everett, SearchPilot
Local SEO
If you’re into local Search, this section is for you.
How to Get All Your Business Locations to Rank For Branded Searches in Google Maps & the Local Pack – Elizabeth Linder, KickPoint Playbook
h/t Sterling Sky Newsletter 4/16
Technical SEO
Everything from basics to advanced techniques.
JS snippet to scrape Image Search listing titles and URLs. – Chris Lever
Gary Illyes response: “that’s still true. think about it: until we know what’s gonna be cnaonical, we don’t know where to forward/consolidate signals to” and: “it’s in the tail end of indexing”
Content marketing
From helpful content to user journeys and beyond.
AI, machine learning, & LLMs
A section dedicated to artificial intelligence news, tips, and articles.
GetLazy.ai is one of the best full stack app creators I’ve tried. – techfren (Watch on TikTok)
AI News: Lots of really great new open source models and some really bad ones! – CJ Trowbridge (Watch on TikTok)
Does the success of AI (Large Language Models) support Wittgenstein’s position that “meaning is use”? – Philosophy, Stack Exchange
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!
How to share your point of view (even if you’re afraid of being wrong) – Wes Kao, Wes, Kao’s Newsletter
“Luckily, it’s doable to build the muscle of sharing your point of view, and there are a few concepts that can make it easier.”
Connect with customers throughout their increasingly complex journeys – Elizabeth Wang, Think with Google
“60% of consumers are taking six or more actions before deciding to buy a brand or product that’s new to them.”
12 learnings from Google’s own media experts for 2024 – Joshua Spanier, Think with Google
“Authenticity is a core of modern marketing.”
How to play any game on your iPhone! – Sam Kohl (Watch on TikTok)
If you want to see some Mario Kart 64 action, I posted a vid here on X.
Gen Z brands have evolved past traditional marketing frameworks! – BrandSauce (Watch on TikTok)
Rollout of TikTok Notes and more. – The Vergecast (Watch on TikTok)
What is 8.8.8.8? – Justin Garrison (Watch on TikTok)
I had no idea dns.google.com was a thing!
Good strategy and good creative matters. – Camille Moore (Watch on TikTok)
Dove is the first brand to take such an aggressive stance against AI generated content – Mr.PaidSocial (Watch on TikTok)
Watch this before you go. 🙂
Great job making it to the end. You rock!
Oops. Spoke too soon! Check out Part 2 before you leave, where I’ve also added a few new items since Saturday.
Please show your support for folks: If you liked any of the content shared above, consider giving that person props by liking their post or following them. 🙂
Want help with your SEO strategy?
I’m an independent consultant based in Orlando, Florida, focusing on custom audits and SEO strategies for brands. Don’t hesitate to reach out for more information!
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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