The Edward Show

E1165: Position #1 on Google is dead, at least as a single, static ranking you can check once and trust.
Joy Hawkins returns to break down a study of 8.1 million Google search results that found organic rankings became 48.7% more volatile after the May 2026 Core Update. 97% of the tracking reports analyzed started shuffling, and two people searching the same phrase at the same time now regularly see different rankings.
The volatility didn't disappear after the update ended. It stayed elevated.
We get into what this means for SEO, rank tracking, local search, AI Overviews, Google's new AI local results, content pruning, scaled AI content, reviews, and measuring whether SEO is actually making money.
Topics we cover:
- The 8.1 million-search study that found Google rankings became 48.7% more volatile
- Why 97% of the tracking reports studied started shuffling
- Why saying "we rank #1" or "we rank #3" is becoming increasingly inaccurate
- How two people searching the exact same keyword can see completely different results
- Why city + service keywords such as "Denver plumber" were among the searches hit hardest
- Why checking a keyword once is no longer enough to measure rankings
- How many searches Joy wants before she trusts rank-tracking data
- Why top-three visibility across many searches matters more than one recorded position
- Why SEOs need to connect rankings to traffic, calls, leads, and revenue
- Why Joy trusts Search Console and call tracking more than a single rank-tracker snapshot
- How Google's go-to redirects are making life harder for rank trackers and scrapers
- Why rank trackers could start contaminating Search Console click data
- The theory that increased ranking variation could make CTR manipulation easier for Google to detect
- Why Google's traditional local pack, organic results, and AI local results need to be treated as different algorithms
- SEO tactics that work in the traditional local pack but lose strength in AI local results
- Why keyword-stuffed business names and extended business hours matter less in AI local packs
- The three review signals Joy sees affecting traditional local rankings: rating, review count, and review frequency
- Why the actual language inside customer reviews matters more for AI searches
- How Google uses reviews to answer subjective local searches such as finding a cafe with fast Wi-Fi
- Why your Google Business Profile description does not move rankings
- How changing copy on your website changes what Google says about your business inside AI results
- The risks of self-promotional "best X" listicles
- Why a strong differentiator on your landing page matters more now
- Joy's experiment deleting roughly 1,000 pages receiving zero clicks
- Her experiment comparing Claude-generated content from expert interviews against content written by a human from the same source material
- What happened after pruning more than half the content from sites hit with domain-wide ranking losses
- Why scaled AI content on a real business website has become far riskier
- How businesses can see enormous traffic growth from scaled content before the entire site crashes
- Why AI content itself isn't the problem and where Joy sees legitimate uses for AI-generated content
The biggest change is not that SEO stopped working. Sites still dominate search results. The problem is that a single ranking position no longer tells you enough.
You need enough searches to measure how often you appear near the top, then connect that visibility to traffic, leads, calls, and ultimately revenue.
Joy Hawkins is one of the most experienced local SEO testers in the industry, and this episode gets deep into what she is seeing across millions of searches and active client campaigns.
⭐️ Joy's write-up on this - https://www.sterlingsky.ca/the-dynamic-serp-update-may-2026-core-update-changed-seo/ 
⭐️ Joy Hawkin's Agency - Sterling Sky: https://www.sterlingsky.ca/ 
⭐️ Joy Hawkin's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/SterlingSkyInc 
⭐️ Joy Hawkin's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyhawkins/ 
⭐️ Local Search Forum - https://localsearchforum.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 Joy Returns and Setup
00:18 May Update Weirdness
02:42 Eight Million Study Results
05:55 Static Rankings Are Dead
08:38 Measure Leads Not Spots
10:21 How to Trust Rank Data
11:19 Client Reporting and Revenue
14:57 Why Google Changed SERPs
16:17 Go To Redirect Fallout
20:49 AI Packs and Shortcut Tactics
25:01 Not Personalization and Next Steps
33:00 Business First SEO
33:17 Lead Source Tracking
34:58 Local Rankings Reviews
36:22 AI Local Packs
37:42 Review Keywords AI
41:17 Listicles And Risks
46:27 USP For AI Overviews
47:31 Experiments And Tools
51:13 Pruning And Penalties
54:35 Scaled Content Scams
58:58 Accident Page Case Study
01:02:51 Safer Testing Domains
01:03:20 Traffic Spike And Crash
01:03:49 Screen Share SEO Graphs
01:05:06 Scaled Content Publishing
01:05:55 Is Number One Dead
01:06:20 What Still Works Now
01:09:50 Keywords And Local Links
01:12:54 Risky Tactics And Scale
01:22:09 AI Content Nuance
01:23:40 AI Slop Backlash
01:25:53 Hype Versus Proven SEO
01:28:57 Closing Thoughts And Farewell
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #localseo #digitalmarketing

E1164: It cost just $72 in press releases to get Google's AI Overview to call James Dooley the "King of AEO."
I break down how two cheap press releases created enough relevance and third-party confirmation for Google to repeat the claim directly inside an AI Overview.
The first press release cost $66 through an EIN Newswire package. The second cost $6 through AB Newswire. Both placed "King of AEO" in the locations that matter most for relevance: the headline, page title, URL slug, and opening sentence.
Google then cited those releases when answering the query "Who is the king of AEO?"
I break down:
- How $72 in press releases influenced a Google AI Overview
- The exact press releases Google cited
- How the phrase "King of AEO" appeared in the title, H1, URL slug, and first sentence
- How direct, unambiguous language matters when building entity associations
- How one $66 EIN Newswire press release became the first citation in the AI Overview
- How a $6 AB Newswire press release syndicated to USA Today became another supporting source
- Why repeating the same entity association across multiple sources creates consensus
- Why Google's AI Overview confidently repeated a claim about a crowning ceremony that never actually happened
- How the press release image also started appearing in Google Images for "King of AEO"
- What happened after I posted videos about the experiment across Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube Shorts
- How other SEOs then started publishing their own "King of AEO" press releases
- Why the SERP turned into an SEO battleground
- Why James Dooley still remained the dominant entity associated with "King of AEO"
- How relevance and consensus work together when multiple people compete for the same entity association
- Why press releases still matter for both traditional Google Search and AI-generated answers
- What this experiment shows about influencing the information Google uses to construct AI Overview responses
Before the competition started, James had a major advantage: most of the highly relevant pages around "King of AEO" pointed to him.
Once more people entered the SERP with their own press releases, social posts, videos, images, and websites, Google started acknowledging the competing claims while still naming James as the person most widely associated with the title.
This is a clear look at how the sausage gets made inside modern search.
If you understand how relevance, entity associations, third-party mentions, syndication, and consensus work together, a bizarre AI Overview like this becomes much easier to explain.
💎 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 Do Press Releases Still Work
00:59 EIN Newswire Case Study
01:30 Keyword Placement Breakdown
02:55 AB Newswire For Six Bucks
04:13 The Fake Crowning Event
04:44 Google Images Impact
05:05 Blowing Up The SERP
05:38 New Challengers Appear
07:51 Why This Works
10:48 Wrap Up And Goodbye
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1163: Does Google care whether people actually click the links on your page?
I break down a $50,000 internal linking experiment across 15 websites, plus a Google patent that describes assigning different weights to links based on the probability that users will click them.
The findings challenge a lot of standard SEO thinking around internal links, PageRank dilution, link placement, and how authority flows through a site.
In this episode:
- A $50,000 internal linking experiment conducted across 15 websites
- How increasing internal links produced higher rankings and higher ad RPMs
- What happened when pages went from 3 - 4 internal links to 20+
- Why the tester found no ranking decline from adding more internal links
- How stronger internal linking eliminated "Crawled - currently not indexed" problems across his sites
- How he found five internal links pointing to a page was an important threshold for indexing
- Why internal links appearing earlier than other internal links on the page produced stronger ranking results
- The click-tracking data showing a clear correlation between internal link clicks and ranking improvements
- How internal linking based on topical similarity performed better than restricting links by categories or tags
- How opening internal links in the same tab versus a new tab made no ranking difference in his tests
- Dan Petrovic's PageRank Split Experiment involving a page with 4,225 followed outbound links
- How a test site jumped from position 79 to position 3 despite receiving a link from a page with thousands of outgoing links
- Google's patent "Ranking Documents Based on User Behavior and/or Feature Data"
- Google's patent language describing link weights based on the probability that a particular link will be selected
- How Google's patent describes collecting information about which links users selected
- How browsers or browser assistants are described as sources of user-behavior data
- Google's patent's example of recording actual clicks from one page to multiple linked pages
- How click instances are used to train a model predicting which links users are likely to select
- How links on the same page do not necessarily deserve the same weight
- How this connects with what we already know about Google using click data through NavBoost
- Why the most important internal links on your site should be links people actually want to click
The big takeaway: internal linking is not just about adding links and distributing PageRank.
Placement matters. Relevance matters. User behavior matters. And the links people click carry more weight.
⭐️ Black Hat World: I've Spent Over $50K on Internal Linking Experiments - https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/ama-guide-ive-spent-over-50k-on-internal-linking-experiments-and-tests-this-year-here-is-everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-it.1628963/#post-18067348 
⭐️ PageRank Split Experiment - https://dejanmarketing.com/pagerank-split-experiment/ 
⭐️ Google Patent: Ranking Documents Based on User Behavior and/or Feature Data - https://patents.google.com/patent/US9305099 
💎 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 $50K Link Click Question
00:31 BlackHat World Tests
01:49 More Links More RPM
02:41 PageRank Dilution Myth
03:38 Indexing And Link Placement
04:17 Clicks And Similarity Rules
06:10 Google Patent On Clicks
07:21 Model Weights By Probability
08:57 What This Means For SEO
10:16 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #webdevelopment

E1162: In 2016, Google gave an internal presentation called Q4 Search All Hands.
Years later, slides from that presentation surfaced during discovery in Google's antitrust trial, and one of them contains an unusually direct admission:
"We do not understand documents. We fake it."
Google explained that its ability to understand documents directly was minimal. Instead, it watched how people reacted to search results and learned from those responses.
I break down what Google said, why this presentation still matters for SEO, and what you can actually do with this information.
We cover:
- The 2016 Google presentation that surfaced during the antitrust trial
- Google's statement that it did not actually "understand" documents
- Why Google said it watched how users reacted to documents instead
- How positive and negative user reactions contribute to Google Search
- Google's description of sustaining the "illusion" that it understands
- Why user signals are so important for SEO
- Why I rank user signals above relevance and authority
- How a highly relevant page can outrank a much more authoritative website
- The story of how I outranked The New York Times within five minutes with a one-year-old site
- Why satisfying search intent matters more than trying to guess what Google wants
- How adding a TLDR to a page improves the user experience and improves conversions
- A case where adding TLDR sections increased conversions by 33%
- Why giving searchers the answer above the fold reduces confusion
- How to structure page titles around the exact keyword someone searched
- Why repeating the searcher's language makes your result immediately feel relevant
- How adding the searcher's primary goal or benefit to a title increases clicks
- The three questions you should answer before creating SEO content
- Why blindly asking AI to write SEO content misses what the searcher wants
- How to use AI as an assistant without outsourcing the important thinking
- Why matching the type of page to the search intent matters
- When to use an SEO landing page versus a blog post
- Why giving someone informational content when they are trying to buy something creates a bad search experience
The biggest takeaway is simple:
Stop obsessing over what you think Google wants.
Think about the person who searched the keyword. Who are they? What do they want? What are they trying to achieve?
Then create the page that gives them exactly that.
⭐️ Google 2016 Q4 Search All Hands - https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-11/417516.pdf 
⭐️ David Quaid post on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid/status/2095861936927691185 
⭐️ My explanation on 𝕏 - https://x.com/edwardeachday/status/2095115036691767658 
⭐️ Reddit: How Adding a TLDR Boosted My Conversions by 33% - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1h3qstq/how_adding_tldr_boosted_my_conversions_by_33/ 
💎 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 Google Trial Slide Leak
01:02 We Do Not Understand Documents
01:44 SEO Implication User Reactions
02:51 When Fake Understanding Fails
03:39 User Signals Still Rule
04:07 Poll Backlinks vs Behavior
05:27 TLDR Above the Fold
06:54 Page Title Benefit Formula
07:50 Three Questions for Intent
08:55 Match Content to Intent
10:37 Wrap Up Key Takeaway
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #growthhacking #digitalmarketing

E1161: I break down why I still consider LinkedIn a blue ocean for organic reach, Google rankings, AI visibility, and content distribution.
A listener named Marc recently started posting again after years of inactivity. Within one week, one of his posts reached 45,000+ views.
That came from an account that had been dead for years.
And the opportunity goes far beyond LinkedIn's feed.
LinkedIn pages rank extremely well in Google. LinkedIn ranks for almost 120 million keywords and gets close to 500 million clicks per month from Google.
When you put your target keyword at the beginning of a LinkedIn post, LinkedIn places that keyword in several key SEO locations:
- The URL slug
- The page title
- The meta description
If your account posts consistently and gets engagement, LinkedIn posts also get indexed quickly.
I break down an example from former Google employee Pedro Dias where a LinkedIn post was cited by Google's AI Overview shortly after it was published.
I also explain a test where we:
- Chose a competitive keyword
- Put it at the beginning of a LinkedIn post
- Got the post indexed with Indexceptional
- Watched it rank #1 for the target keyword within roughly 30 minutes
LinkedIn doesn't just have value for traditional Google SEO either.
LinkedIn has millions of pages being cited across LLMs including:
- ChatGPT
- Google AI Overviews
- Google AI Mode
That makes LinkedIn useful for both search rankings and influencing what large language models find and cite.
I also cover how I use LinkedIn as part of a much larger content distribution system.
The same post can be repurposed across:
- LinkedIn
- X
- Threads
- Facebook
- Instagram Reels
- TikTok
- YouTube Shorts
- Facebook Reels
You can take one idea, publish it as text, turn it into video, and distribute it across multiple high-authority platforms.
I explain one of my favorite ways to find short-form video ideas: look for written posts that dramatically outperform the size of the account that published them.
If an account has 30,000 followers and a post gets 100,000 views, that is evidence people care about the subject.
You take that post, record yourself reading it in short-form video, and distribute that video everywhere.
In this episode:
- Why LinkedIn is still a blue ocean
- How a dead account got 45,000+ views in one week
- Why daily posting compounds
- How LinkedIn parasite SEO works
- Where to place keywords inside LinkedIn posts
- How LinkedIn posts rank in Google
- How LinkedIn content gets cited by AI systems
- A LinkedIn post that influenced an AI Overview
- How I got a LinkedIn post ranking #1 quickly
- Why I don't recommend constantly using indexers
- How to repurpose one LinkedIn post across multiple platforms
- How to turn viral written posts into short-form videos
- Why the same content can occupy multiple positions across search and social
I personally get around 100,000 to 200,000 LinkedIn impressions per week while uploading the same short-form content I already publish elsewhere.
If you're creating content anyway, LinkedIn gives you another distribution channel, another SEO asset, and another place where your content is discovered by search engines and AI systems.
💎 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 LinkedIn Blue Ocean
00:21 Proof It Still Works
01:02 LinkedIn SEO Power
01:58 Indexing And LLM Influence
03:47 Video And Repurposing
04:51 Viral Post To Video
06:08 Daily Posting Playbook
07:30 Episode Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #growthhacking