The Edward Show

E1214: Google Maps rankings are changing dramatically, and proximity to the searcher appears to have become far more important than reviews, backlinks, and business authority. Matt Hammerton returns to the podcast with data from 40-50 local ranking scans showing what he calls the biggest proximity shift he's seen in 20 years of doing SEO. Matt manages more than 100 Google Business Profiles and works with personal injury law firms and home service businesses. He noticed the changes on October 27, 2026, and has been investigating what happened. In one Phoenix personal injury lawyer market, a business went from an average Google Maps ranking of 2.5 to 16.9 across the same geographic grid. It was still the highest-ranking business overall because its competitors experienced similar declines. In another example, businesses that previously ranked from more than a mile away disappeared from the local results, replaced by businesses located just a fraction of a mile from the searcher. We go through Matt's ranking reports, what he's seeing across different industries, and what businesses should do if these changes stick. Topics covered: - The Google Maps proximity changes Matt discovered between October 22 and October 27, 2026. - How he identified the same pattern in roughly 85% of the 40-50 local ranking scans he examined. - Why businesses that previously ranked across three to five miles are suddenly seeing their ranking areas shrink. - A Phoenix personal injury law firm whose average map ranking fell from 2.5 to 16.9 despite remaining the strongest competitor in its market. - Another example in Mesa, Arizona, where average rankings changed from 1.9 to 6.6. - Why Google appears to be giving proximity significantly more weight than reviews, backlinks, and other authority signals. - How businesses with only a handful of reviews can now outrank competitors with hundreds of reviews simply by being closer to the searcher. - Why service area businesses, including plumbers, HVAC companies, and locksmiths, appear particularly vulnerable. - How these changes are affecting actual phone calls and leads, not just ranking reports. - Why businesses with thousands of reviews and established Google Business Profiles may be losing ground while smaller competitors gain visibility. - Whether this is a permanent Google Maps algorithm change, a temporary experiment, or a mistake. - Why opening additional legitimate business locations could become more important for local SEO. - How Matt identifies neighborhoods with little competition before choosing locations for new offices. - How to use Google Maps to examine competitors, review counts, and geographic opportunities. - Why optimizing Google Business Profiles for more services and keywords may become more important when ranking areas shrink. - The relationship between Google Business Profile rankings and the keywords on the linked website's landing page. - Whether branded searches and stronger organic SEO can offset reduced Google Maps visibility. - Why businesses shouldn't immediately make major changes in response to sudden ranking fluctuations. We also discuss black hat versus white hat SEO, why building a real brand is more sustainable than chasing temporary ranking tricks, Google's history of algorithm penalties, and what Matt learned from 20 years of SEO. These proximity findings are based on Matt's own ranking data. Google hasn't confirmed the cause, and we don't yet know whether the changes will remain in place. ⭐️ Matt Hammerton's Agency - https://www.brainspikemarketing.com/  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthammertonaktaktion  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/MattHammerton/  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/aktaktion/  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/OnlyDreamers  ⭐️ Matt Hammerton's Label - https://www.onlydreamersmusic.com/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Matt Returns and Big Finding 00:43 Proximity Pinch Explained 01:56 Rank Reports Reveal the Shift 03:34 Before and After Grid Proof 04:46 Phoenix Case Study Breakdown 08:26 Pizza Shop Effect and SAB Hit 10:08 Verified Across Tools and Dates 13:13 Mesa Example and Dot-Level Evidence 17:54 Bug or New Normal 18:36 Winners Losers and Lead Impact 21:49 Why Few People Noticed 25:11 What to Do Next Locations Strategy 28:30 Shrink Radius Keyword Strategy 30:02 Branded Searches vs Reviews 31:51 Three Month Action Plan 33:39 More Locations Survival 34:52 Finding Low Competition Areas 35:43 Ask Maps 38:16 Who Wins and Loses 40:21 False Wrap Up and Where to Find 47:07 White Hat vs Black Hat 53:41 Google Retaliation Story 01:00:25 Penguin and Big Updates 01:03:24 Final Thoughts and Outro The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  #localseo #seo #searchengineoptimization #localmarketing

E1213: Kyle Roof ranked a page written mostly in Lorem Ipsum gibberish #1 on Google for a rhinoplasty keyword. After the experiment made headlines, Google deindexed it. That same night, Google also deindexed 20 of his other SEO test sites, despite their separate hosting and lack of links between them. Kyle, SEO legend and founder of PageOptimizer Pro, tells me exactly how he pulled it off, why he believes Google changed its spam rules afterward, and why he says his gibberish pages still rank today. We also get into what he's learned from more than 400 SEO experiments and which popular SEO recommendations his tests contradict. In this two-hour epic pod, we cover: - How Kyle used Lorem Ipsum mixed with target keywords, variations, and contextual terms to rank #1 in Google organic search and Maps. - What happened when Google deindexed his original site and 20 seemingly unrelated test sites, and what Kyle suspects Google did to identify them. - Why Kyle says his 2019 Lorem Ipsum pages are still on page one, and how he continues testing Google's algorithm with gibberish content. - The four on-page keyword placements Kyle prioritizes: title tags, H1s, paragraph text, and URLs, plus his findings on H2s, H3s, and anchor text. - Why misspellings, grammar, reading level, and even a 25-second page load failed to hurt rankings in his tests. - What his tests show about click-through rate, and why bounce rate, dwell time, and pogo-sticking are harder to pin down. - Why he thinks agencies waste money obsessing over Core Web Vitals, and why he checks time to first byte and total blocking time. - Why he recommends buying expired domains, what he checks before buying, and how they speed up SEO testing and new businesses. - What his GoDaddy domain tests found about exact-match domains, descriptive extensions like .florist, indexing speed, and shorter URLs. - How hidden text and page-builder templates affect Google's word counts, and what to check before migrating a website. - Why the Yandex algorithm leak reinforced his views about TF-IDF, BM25, and Google's ranking systems. - Why AI-written articles often miss important contextual terms, and how to give AI word-count and keyword benchmarks that match the SERP. - How Kyle builds content silos, links supporting pages to competitive target pages, and uses People Also Ask questions for both Google and AI search. - Why he believes SEO and GEO rely on the same foundations, and why he questions whether ChatGPT visibility is worth chasing for every business. - Why pages that stray too far from a website's main topic can hurt SEO, using HubSpot's organic traffic collapse as an example. - His $1,000, 90-day SEO plan: restore pages on an expired domain, target attainable keywords, and decide whether to spend the remaining budget on Google Ads. - How Kyle and Joy Hawkins found that nofollow backlinks can influence rankings, and his favorite way to earn links by organizing community events. - His prediction that today's large language models will be replaced by a different technology within three years. ⭐️ PageOptimizer Pro - https://pageoptimizer.pro  ⭐️ Kyle Roof on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-roof-seo/  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Meet Kyle Roof 00:58 SEO Barely Changes 02:59 Four Pillars of Search 05:05 Algorithms Are Math 08:29 Testing Myths Busted 12:04 Do User Signals Matter 17:10 AI Content and Context 20:11 Lorem Ipsum Rhinoplasty 27:45 Expired Domains Shortcut 35:17 On Page Signals That Win 38:16 PageOptimizer Pro and AI 41:34 What SEOs Underestimate 43:01 SERP Intent Edge Cases 45:15 Authority vs Pogo Sticking 48:42 User Signals and Metrics 49:44 Core Web Vitals Myth 51:11 Descriptive TLD Experiments 56:37 Short URLs and Subfolders 59:38 SEO Tricks vs Humans 01:00:37 Niches and YMYL Attacks 01:03:54 API Leaks and BM25 01:06:17 CMS Hidden Word Counts 01:11:31 Schema Hype Reality 01:14:31 AI Content Benchmarks 01:17:32 Content Silos for AI 01:22:03 LLMs vs Google Surfaces 01:23:38 AI Indexes and SERP Poisoning 01:26:51 Rank Tracker SERP Glitches 01:28:38 Using GSC for History 01:30:10 Query Fanout Opportunities 01:32:08 GEO vs SEO Debate 01:36:28 PAA Content Mining 01:37:45 AI Search Vanity Metrics 01:41:45 Grind Over Worrying 01:42:56 Topical Focus and HubSpot 01:48:05 90 Day SEO Gameplan 01:55:03 Link Building for Good 01:58:34 LLMs Will Be Replaced 02:02:45 Where to Find Kyle The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1212: What if SEO agencies stopped buying backlinks and started buying the news sites that publish them? David Quaid joins me to break down a business model he calls "news as a service": acquiring established news sites, local publications, and niche blogs, improving their SEO, and using them to build businesses that earn money beyond advertising. David argues that SEO agencies spend huge amounts on link building and PR without controlling the publications they depend on. He recalls one company spending $20,000 per month on PR and getting just one press mention in six months. But would buying a publication actually make more financial sense? I push David on the acquisition costs, operating expenses, revenue, link value, and whether this is just a more expensive private blog network. We work through examples involving an ecommerce store, a Denver local newspaper, and an SEO agency with multiple clients. In this episode: - Why David believes SEO agencies should consider owning news sites instead of continually paying third parties for backlinks and PR. - How an agency could acquire a local newspaper or niche publication, grow its organic traffic, and build a business around an existing audience. - Why a publication's value goes beyond backlinks to include referral traffic, brand exposure, and relationships with local businesses. - How to evaluate the economics: buying the site, paying journalists, growing readership, and finding revenue that supports the operation. - How a local publisher could expand into separate websites for community news, restaurants, business, and other topics. - Where sponsored articles, advertorials, editorial independence, and rel="sponsored" links fit into the model. - Why David sees a major difference between acquiring a legitimate publication and operating a traditional PBN. - Why the strategy could also work in reverse, with publishers acquiring SEO or PR agencies and selling services to existing advertisers. - How publishers facing fewer clicks from Google AI Overviews could use newsletters, affiliate offers, and other revenue sources. - Why I disagree with the idea that AI Overviews have made it impossible to grow organic traffic, and what I found when investigating Windows Forum's traffic decline. - Whether targeting a keyword with every new article counts as excessive SEO, and how quickly David recommends expanding a smaller site. - How to review a publication's existing content, prune pages that no longer serve a purpose, and improve its technical SEO and internal linking. - Why David questions the assumption that a backlink from a topically relevant website must be more valuable than one from a different industry. - Whether HubSpot could have avoided some of its SEO losses by moving unrelated content onto separate, focused domains. We also discuss the future of publishers as AI changes search, the limitations of buying individual backlinks, and the opportunity to combine SEO, PR, and publishing under one company. This is a live exploration of the idea. David explains why he believes in it, and I challenge the details to see where the numbers and the strategy hold up. ⭐️ David Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/  ⭐️ David Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid  ⭐️ David Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.com/  ⭐️ Nik Hulewsky's episode - https://youtu.be/IyUv47A5m40  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 News as a Service Intro 00:50 Why News Lost Value 01:27 Vertical Integration Lessons 03:55 TikTok Shop and PR SEO 05:06 GEO vs Owning Property 07:59 PR Spend Reality Check 09:51 Agency Moat via News 12:39 Monitors Niche Outlet Example 18:02 PBN vs Traffic Brands 20:45 Acquisition Economics Debate 28:21 Local Newspaper Multi Sites 31:54 Who Buys and Funding 38:42 Disclosure and Sponsored Links 45:38 Forbes Style Linking Tactics 46:41 Sponsored Link Debate 47:39 Costco Chicken Lesson 49:43 Local Newsletter Goldmine 52:18 Publishers Buy Agencies 55:08 AI Overviews And Clicks 01:01:15 Windows Forum AI Fail 01:06:32 News As A Service 01:09:03 Keyword Scaling Limits 01:12:48 Pruning And UX Fixes 01:17:00 Topical Bridges And Links 01:28:38 SEO Myths And Testing 01:31:16 Wrap Up And Goodbye The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1211: Can SEO generate revenue in 3-6 months? Deno Hawari shared 10 SEO tips drawn from work that generated $35 million for clients.  I go through every tip, explain what I agree with, and push back where the advice needs more context. A lot of this comes down to targeting keywords that indicate someone is ready to buy, improving pages you already have, and giving Google and AI clear information about your business. In this episode: - Replace vague claims with specific numbers. "Cut customer acquisition costs by 40%" is more useful than "grow faster," but broad positioning still has a place on your website. - Prioritize comparison and alternative pages over generic informational articles. I discuss a Freshdesk vs. Zendesk comparison page valued at $17,000 per month in organic traffic versus $1,900 for a broad guide, and explain why purchase-intent pages can be easier to write. - Update pages that already rank before publishing more content. Refresh information, improve introductions, and use Google Search Console to identify the queries that deserve additional sections. - Adding large numbers of internal links without negative effects, and explain why link placement matters for passing authority. - Target specific, underserved searches instead of competing only for broad keywords. Look for relevant queries that ranking competitors haven't included in their page titles, URLs, or headings. - Track non-branded search traffic separately from branded traffic. I explain why I trust Google Search Console data and how to save keyword rankings beyond its 16-month history window. - Answer the searcher's question in the first 100 words. For bottom-of-funnel pages, make it immediately clear what your company offers and give visitors a way to take action. - Be careful with self-promotional "best X" listicles. A mention on an independent website can be more useful for AI recommendations than ranking your own product first on your own list. - Create pages for distinct buyer situations: industries, budgets, problems, and use cases. These specific searches may have lower volume, but the people searching often know what they need. - Publish consistently across your website and other channels. I explain how to make multiple short videos around an important keyword that's also targeted with your website, distribute the videos across platforms, and build recognition without publishing endless blog posts. I also share the People Also Ask method for finding easy questions, building FAQ pages, improving them with Search Console data, and linking those pages to content that generates sales. ⭐️ Deno Hawari on 𝕏 ($35M SEO lessons thread) - https://x.com/denohawari/status/2098491264849293442  ⭐️ Ep 902 - The 5-Minute SEO Hack: Turn 'People Also Ask' Into Instant Topical Authority - https://youtu.be/cHFrWBzg9c4  ⭐️ Ep 1163 - The $50,000 Internal Linking Experiment: Links That Get Clicked Carry More Weight - https://youtu.be/biy8lLxTzqc  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 SEO Results 00:15 Tip 1 Use Exact Details 01:05 Tip 2 Comparison Pages 02:53 Tip 3 Refresh Old Pages 03:10 People Also Ask Hack 05:42 Tip 4 Internal Linking 06:38 Tip 5 Long Tail Questions 08:41 Tip 6 Track Non Branded 09:48 Tip 7 Answer Up Front 10:23 Tip 8 Tools Listicles 11:15 Tip 9 Buyer Situations 12:11 Tip 10 Post Consistently 13:43 Wrap 14:51 Closing Thanks The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #searchengineoptimization #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #seo

E1209: Google's John Mueller explained how Google interprets searches, expands keywords with synonyms, and connects related topics. At Search Central Live in Barcelona, Google also showed how AI search breaks one question into multiple searches before generating an answer. I break down a widely circulated recap of the event and explain what these findings mean for your SEO strategy. Here's what I cover: - How Google identifies a query's language, removes unnecessary words, and recognizes names and entities. - Why Google keeps words like "the" and "of" when they're part of a name, such as "The Lord of the Rings." - How synonym expansion connects different searches to the same pages. Google might interpret "fried chicken place" alongside "fried chicken restaurant." - Why context matters: "GM" means General Motors in a car search and genetically modified in a search about barley. - How Google treats competing brands such as Canon and Nikon as related entities, but not synonyms. - How AI search creates query fan-outs, using multiple related searches to gather information for one answer. - Why Google's AI-generated fan-out queries don't appear in Google Search Console. - How to study search fan-outs in Perplexity and other AI tools to identify the questions and terms they repeatedly research. - Why you don't need to repeat every variation of a keyword on a landing page. - How to work secondary terms naturally into a page, using "room planner app," "room planner online," and "kitchen planner app" as examples. - Why brand mentions, backlinks, and descriptions on third-party websites matter for the searches Google associates with a company. - How a PDF-editing website built over many years reached $106 million in annual revenue and 2.7 million monthly Google clicks. - Which pages to build around your brand, competitors, pricing, reviews, comparisons, and alternatives. A particularly useful takeaway: look at the follow-up searches an AI tool performs. If it repeatedly searches for "[brand] price" and "[brand] reviews," those are searches you want your own website to answer. The same applies to comparisons between your product and competing products. I also explain why Google's understanding of synonyms doesn't eliminate the need for keyword research. You still want to choose a primary search term, identify secondary terms that matter, and cover the topic with natural language. ⭐️ The article: Google Search Central Live Deep Dive, Barcelona - Day 3 Recap - https://weareroast.com/news/google-search-central-live-deep-dive-barcelona-day-3-recap/  ⭐️ Ep 1171 - Query Augmentation: How One Page Ranks for Thousands of Keywords | James Dooley - https://youtu.be/rHRlAMH99Y8  💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  00:00 Barcelona Event Overview 00:30 How Google Understands Queries 01:20 Synonyms Context Siblings 02:44 AI Search Fanout Queries 03:58 Key Takeaways Summary 04:30 Backlinks Query Augmentation 06:17 On Page Keyword Variations 07:10 Using Fanouts For Content 08:42 Find Fanouts In Search Console 08:59 Wrap Up The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/   #generativeengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo #answerengineoptimization