🐹 Hamsterdam Part 96: Weekly SEO & AI News Recap (4/26 to 5/2, 2025)
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: “Earned media”
Earned media is when people talk about your brand without being paid to do so. This can happen through word-of-mouth, social media shares, online reviews, blog mentions, or news stories.
Unlike paid media (such as ads) or owned media (like your website or social channels), earned media is something you have to earn by building trust, creating good content, or offering great products or services. It’s often seen as more credible because it comes from real people rather than the brand itself.
Earned media can help improve your website’s organic search rankings because when others mention your brand and link to your site, those mentions and backlinks signal to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy.
🤖 AI word of the week: “Embeddings”
Embeddings are a way to turn words, images, or other data into numbers so that a computer can understand and compare them.
Instead of just looking at exact matches (think keywords), embeddings help AI find meaning and relationships between different things. For example, the words “cat” and “kitten” would be close together in this number-based space because they are related.
Embeddings are important in semantic search, where the goal is to find results based on meaning rather than exact keywords. Embeddings let search engines return helpful answers even when the words in the query or prompt and the results or answer are not the same.
😄 Introduction to week 96: “External validation”
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Hamsterdam SEO recaps are ranking on page 1 of Google’s desktop results for “weekly SEO news.”
That said, when I checked in ChatGPT for a similar query/prompt, we were nowhere to be found.
One of the reasons? External validation.
As a reasoning model, you can see the rationales behind why ChatGPT makes some of the selections that it does, and in many cases, a brand having third-party insights is a key contributing factor.
What does this mean for your brand? It means you need to get people talking about it other than yourself, if you’re looking for LLM visibility.
Get that conversation churning, whether it’s through reviews, UGC, or other means.
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 95 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.
Great job making it to the end. You rock! 🪨
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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