The Edward Show

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

E1160: You do not need to pay for backlinks to build authority in 2026.
I break down a viral SEO Reddit thread about how people are getting legitimate, high-quality backlinks without buying links, spamming irrelevant directories, or wasting time on tactics Google is increasingly good at ignoring.
The best part: several of the people in the thread shared specific examples, including the exact assets they created, where the links came from, and the results.
We cover:
- How one SEO used original research about hospitals to earn coverage from a major newspaper and multiple industry publications
- How to turn public data from sources like the Census into linkable studies without collecting your own data
- A home insulation campaign that used pest and population data to create a state-by-state infestation ranking and earned roughly a dozen free links
- How one person scraped thousands of businesses in different industries, published the findings, and created statistics journalists and AI systems could cite
- Why your research does not need to be complicated to become a useful link asset
- Why transparent methodology makes data studies more credible
- The difference between random directory links and legitimate foundational backlinks
- Why relevant business directories can still make sense
- How AI makes it much easier to build interactive linkable assets
- How to get backlinks from partners, vendors, customers, awards, badges, and existing business relationships
- How goodwill link building can earn links from organizations and local news publications
- Why digital PR does not necessarily require paying an agency
- How expert quote platforms can get you cited by journalists
- Why you should not automatically assume you need more backlinks just because competitors have higher authority
- Why relevance and user signals matters more than simply accumulating links
- An SEO who ranks in positions 1-5 for 200+ keywords despite never buying backlinks
- Why low-quality paid links can create problems beyond traditional Google rankings, including how AI systems evaluate suspicious or spammy mentions
Start with legitimate foundational links.
Then create things that real people, publications, businesses, and journalists genuinely have a reason to reference.
That could be:
- Original research
- Public-data studies
- Industry statistics
- Free tools
- Calculators
- Quizzes
- Awards
- Expert quotes
- Community projects
- Partnerships
- Goodwill campaigns
- Digital PR
You do not need thousands of backlinks.
You need relevant pages targeting the right searches, strong user signals, and enough legitimate authority to compete for the keywords you actually want.
⭐️ The Reddit thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1vgxe6u/how_are_you_guys_building_backlinks_after_google/ 
⭐️ Ep 1037 - How One Simple Website Got 384,000 Backlinks (Linkable Assets Explained) - https://youtu.be/-1Q5HHatvoc 
⭐️ Ep 1155 - He Donated a Free Roof and Got Links You Can't Buy - https://youtu.be/0aZi6sdOD-M 
💎 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 Viral Backlink Dilemma
01:09 Thread Highlights Setup
01:32 Research Gets Links
02:36 Foundational Links First
03:32 Scraped Stats as Assets
05:02 Directories and Linkable Tools
06:31 Start Close to Home
07:47 Stop Overbuying Backlinks
09:52 Authority vs User Signals
11:12 Digital PR and Link Risks
14:01 Final Thanks and Goodbye
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#linkbuilding #backlinks #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1159: Google's August 2026 Spam Update hit some sites extremely hard.
I break down four case studies from Glenn Gabe showing exactly what Google's August spam update targeted, including scaled AI content, programmatic SEO with little added value, thin affiliate pages, poor user experience, and sites operating in risky niches.
One of the sites lost rankings for more than 200,000 queries.
Another had more than 1.5 million URLs indexed, many of which were lost.
These weren't simply examples of "AI content is bad" or "programmatic SEO is bad." The common thread was scale combined with very little unique value for the searcher.
In this episode:
- A YMYL site that lost rankings for more than 200,000 queries after scaling programmatic pages across countries
- Why the combination of programmatic content and AI-generated copy can become especially risky in YMYL niches
- A massive Amazon affiliate site built largely from Amazon product data
- Why simply recreating merchant information and adding affiliate links can fall under Google's Thin Affiliation policies
- What Google says good affiliate sites need to add beyond information already available from the merchant
- A site with more than 1.5 million indexed URLs that was hit across multiple sections
- Why adding some legitimate-looking UGC doesn't necessarily save a site where most pages still provide very little additional value
- How a spam update can affect an entire domain rather than only the specific pages using questionable tactics
- A fourth site with more than 250,000 URLs in a risky niche that redirected users to even riskier external sites
- How that site lost rankings for roughly 25,000 queries
- Why the August update appears to have gone after several different forms of scaled content abuse rather than one specific tactic
- Why programmatic SEO itself is not the problem
- The difference between useful programmatic pages and creating hundreds of thousands of pages that mostly repeat information available elsewhere
- What recovery from a spam update can look like
- Lily Ray's example of a site hit by the December 2025 spam update that began recovering about five months after making major fixes
- Why spam update recovery can happen outside a core update
- Why removing the spam and changing what you publish going forward matters more than waiting for another Google update
The important distinction is value.
You can build programmatic pages. You can use AI. You can build affiliate pages. But if you're scaling hundreds of thousands or millions of URLs without giving searchers something meaningfully better, different, or more useful, you're putting the site in a very different risk category.
Glenn Gabe's case studies make that extremely clear.
⭐️ Glenn Gabe's article - Google's August 2026 Spam Update - Scaled Content Abuse, AI Content, Programmatic Content, Thin Affiliates, And More [Case Studies] - https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/august-2026-google-spam-update-case-studies/ 
⭐️ Ep 1141 - Can You Launch 100,000 Pages and Survive Google? - https://youtu.be/wNtiygMsRfg 
⭐️ Lily Ray recovery post - https://x.com/lilyraynyc/status/2069739309075161234 
💎 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 August Spam Update Recap
00:26 How Spam Updates Work
01:00 Case 1 YMYL AI Scaling
02:04 Case 2 Thin Affiliate Pages
03:50 Case 3 Scaled Content Abuse
04:59 Case 4 Risky Redirect Scheme
05:59 Recovery Takes Months
07:05 Wrap Up
08:21 Podcast Sign Off
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #growthhacking

E1158: Google published an article called "Good SEO Is Good GEO," arguing that the best strategy for showing up in Google's AI search experiences is still foundational SEO.
I agree with a lot of it.
But some of Google's advice leaves out important parts of how SEO and GEO work today.
I go through Google's article point by point and react to it in real time.
Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews are built on top of the same core ranking and quality systems used by traditional Search. It also says these AI experiences retrieve information from Google's existing search index.
That means traditional SEO fundamentals still matter enormously for GEO, AEO, AI SEO, or whatever you want to call it.
But that does not mean every piece of Google's advice should be taken at face value.
In this episode:
- Why Google says "good SEO is good GEO"
- Why foundational SEO remains the starting point for getting visibility in AI Mode and AI Overviews
- How Google's query fan-out works and why one AI prompt can trigger multiple searches
- Why search intent still matters as much as ever
- Why your page title, H1, URL slug, and keyword targeting still matter
- Where I disagree with Google's advice to simply "optimize for people"
- Why you cannot publish website content without understanding what people are actually searching for and expect Google to figure everything out
- Why unique, first-hand, non-commodity content is valuable, but still needs distribution or keyword targeting if you want people to find it
- Google's claim that marketers should stop chasing inauthentic mentions
- Why that claim does not match what I see happening in actual search results and LLM recommendations
- How brands are getting inserted into articles already receiving citations from large language models
- Why inauthentic mentions can work even though I would not recommend building a strategy around them
- Why Google is right about LLMs.txt
- Why I still see no compelling evidence that LLMs.txt meaningfully improves your visibility in Google or AI search
- Why user experience, trustworthy design, useful images, videos, reviews, and strong copy affect both SEO and GEO
- Why Merchant Center and Google Business Profile remain important for ecommerce and local businesses appearing in generative search experiences
- The problem with Google telling marketers to focus on business metrics while Search Console still gives limited visibility into AI search performance
- Why leads, sales, signups, and revenue ultimately matter more than new GEO metrics invented by third-party tools
The biggest takeaway is simple:
You do not need to throw away SEO and start over because AI search exists.
The same fundamentals that make a page useful, discoverable, relevant, trustworthy, and capable of ranking in traditional Google Search also give it a strong foundation for Google's generative search experiences.
But "good SEO" still means understanding keywords, understanding intent, creating content people actually want, and making sure that content can be discovered.
⭐️ Good SEO is good GEO - https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/next/v2/article/search-and-video/ai-search-era-brand-authority-strategy/ 
⭐️ Pareto SEO: The 20% of SEO That Matters - https://edwardsturm.com/articles/pareto-seo/ 
⭐️ Ep 1081 - Google Merchant Center Mistakes Killing Your Ecommerce Revenue - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilyAv_Li1qA 
💎 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 SEO Meets GEO
01:11 Foundational SEO Still Wins
02:07 What Helpful Really Means
02:59 Ignore New SEO Labels
03:31 Query Fan Out Explained
04:21 Pareto SEO Basics
04:33 Optimize For People Not Bots
05:06 Keyword Targeting Reality Check
05:57 Inauthentic Mentions Debate
07:54 LLMs txt Not Needed
08:28 Unique Perspective Content
09:45 Non Commodity Content Needs Keywords
10:28 Website UX Still Matters
11:42 Noisy Metrics And GSC
12:59 Merchant Center Reporting
13:38 Key Takeaways And Critiques
14:22 Wrap Up
15:12 Daily Podcast Streak Outro
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
#generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #searchengineoptimization #seo