The Edward Show

E1228: Third-party rank trackers are becoming less reliable. Google is making it harder for them to collect accurate rankings, and the result can be dramatic ranking drops that don't match what Google Search Console shows.
I show you the rank tracker we built for the company I'm funding, explain why we built it, and walk through how to make your own using Google Search Console, BigQuery, and DataForSEO.
The YouTube version includes screenshots of our dashboard. I've replaced the company name, keywords, and URLs to keep the business private, but the dashboard layout and data presentation reflect the tool we use.
Here's what I cover:
 - Why third-party rank trackers can show sudden ranking losses even when Google Search Console shows stable or improving performance.
 - How Google's efforts to disrupt automated SERP collection can cause misleading rank tracking data and bad SEO decisions.
 - Why Google Search Console is the data source I trust for tracking our own search performance.
 - Why we back up Google Search Console data to BigQuery instead of relying on just Search Console.
 - How to build a private rank tracking dashboard from that data, without writing the code yourself.
 - Why we track only keywords we're deliberately targeting instead of every query our site appears for.
 - How our dashboard shows ranking trends across different date ranges, with daily, weekly, and monthly views.
 - How we use DataForSEO's clickstream-based search volume estimates to sort keywords by potential opportunity.
 - Why we also display clicks to compare our traffic against estimated search volume.
 - How we organize target keywords using labels for hub pages, subfolders, search intent, and other categories.
 - What appears on each keyword's detail page: current position, movement over the selected period, period average, search volume, labels, and historical rankings.
 - How a journal of SEO changes can explain ranking movements and guide page improvements.
 - Why I consider rankings a more useful weekly SEO performance measure than revenue, which depends on pricing, product, conversion rate, support, and other factors.
 - Why a simple dashboard that shows the metrics you act on is better than one cluttered with data.
You can use the screenshots from this episode as a reference when building your own dashboard. I also explain what we leave out and why.
The goal is to know whether the SEO changes you make are improving rankings for the keywords that matter to your business, without making decisions based on unreliable third-party data or distracting noise.
⭐️ Screenshots and episode transcript: https://edwardsturm.com/articles/build-your-own-rank-tracker/ 
⭐️ Clickstream Data API (DataForSEO) - https://dataforseo.com/pricing/keywords-data/clickstream-api-pricing 
⭐️ Export GSC Data to BigQuery - https://support.google.com/webmasters/topic/12917674?hl=en&ref_topic=9354552&sjid=9661028753422321451-NA 
💎 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 Why Build Your Own Tracker
00:38 Rank Trackers Are Breaking
01:43 BigQuery Source Of Truth
02:19 Rankings Not Revenue
03:39 Keyword Targeting Basics
05:35 Dashboard Filters And Labels
07:02 Keyword Detail And SEO Journal
08:50 Keep It Minimal And Copy
11:37 Podcast Outro And Thanks
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #martech #performancemarketing

E1227: Can ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini replace an SEO agency? Harpreet Singh shares his screen to test all three AI tools on the same Nike website page - and show why following their SEO advice blindly can waste hours.
We gave ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini Nike Canada's men's running shoes category page and the same prompt: "Give me SEO, AEO, and GEO recommendations for this page. Prioritize them based on impact."
All three produced detailed audits. But they disagreed on what mattered most, overlooked important issues, and repeatedly treated low-impact changes as urgent.
We cover:
- What ChatGPT got right about product comparisons, category navigation, and internal linking.
- Why ChatGPT prioritized adding FAQs ahead of improving the page title - and why we disagreed.
- How vague recommendations to "validate" crawlability and indexation can send beginners down hours-long rabbit holes.
- What Claude spotted that ChatGPT missed: UK language signals on Nike's Canadian page, including "trainers" in the title and an en-GB language setting.
- Why Claude flagged a major product discovery concern: 45 products listed on the page, but only 24 found in the HTML, with others loaded through JavaScript.
- How footer links to the UK site created another potential problem for Canadian shoppers.
- Where Claude still went wrong with FAQ markup and unsupported claims about AI citations.
- Why structured data may improve search appearance and click-through rates without fixing weak rankings.
- How Gemini ranked meta description keyword changes and removing meta keywords among its top SEO recommendations.
- Why adding FAQ schema isn't a proven shortcut to ranking in Google AI Overviews or being cited by AI tools.
- How years of repeated SEO advice can become misleading recommendations from AI systems.
- Which changes deserve attention first: titles, headings, search intent, localization, crawlable product links, and relevant internal links.
- Why looking at one URL without understanding the rest of the website limits any AI audit.
- Why tracking positions for the keywords you're actively targeting can be more useful than a crowded SEO reporting dashboard.
- How to apply the 80/20 rule so AI gives you a few high-impact recommendations instead of an overwhelming checklist.
We also share a practical way to use AI for SEO audits:
1. Crawl your site with Screaming Frog SEO Spider. The free version covers up to 500 URLs.
2. Open the Issues tab and export the findings.
3. Upload the export to Claude, along with this episode's transcript.
AI can speed up SEO work, but you still need to judge whether its advice is accurate, relevant, and worth implementing.
⭐️ Episode Transcript - https://edwardsturm.com/wp-content/uploads/Ep-1227_Harpreet-Singh_ChatGPT-vs-Claude-vs-Gemini-for-SEO-We-Tested-All-3-on-Nikes-Site-One-Was-Terrible.txt 
⭐️ Harpreet Singh's Personal Site - https://harpsdigital.com  
⭐️ Harpreet on X - https://x.com/harpreetchatha_ 
⭐️ Harpreet's Newsletter - https://seoespresso.com 
⭐️ Harpreet on LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/harpreetsingh8/ 
⭐️ Harpreet on TikTok - https://tiktok.com/@seoharp 
⭐️ Harpreet on YouTube - https://youtube.com/@seoharp
💎 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 AI SEO Hype Check
01:01 Testing Three LLMs
02:41 ChatGPT Priorities Review
03:55 UX vs SEO Impact
05:00 Internal Links Done Right
06:59 Crawl Checks Rabbit Holes
09:50 FAQ Advice Is Outdated
12:45 Metadata Should Come First
14:05 Localization and Hreflang
18:00 Too Many Low Value Tips
19:41 Measuring SEO Success Now
20:27 SEO Success Metrics
21:02 ChatGPT Audit Gaps
22:17 Claude High Impact Fixes
24:20 Schema Versus Rankings
25:35 Bad FAQ Schema Advice
28:43 Gemini Recommendations Review
30:05 Pareto Prompting Framework
32:19 Screaming Frog Plus LLMs
34:17 AI Hype And SEO Noise
35:43 Wrap Up And Where To Follow
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
#searchengineoptimization #seo #ecommerce #aiseo

E1226: Google released its November 2026 Core Update on November 10, with a rollout expected to take up to two weeks. SEOs reported ranking volatility before Google even announced it.
Could this be another Panda-style update, targeting mass-produced content, low-quality pages, and websites using fake authors?
I cover Google's announcement, predictions about which sites could be hit, new content quality guidance, and what to do if your rankings drop.
What I cover:
- November 2026 Core Update: Google's announcement, the two-week rollout, and early ranking fluctuations.
- A possible Panda-style update: An October 15 Search Engine Journal article reported a 96.8% modeled probability of a Panda-style update within 30 days. The timing matched, but Google's targets remain unconfirmed.
- The original Panda update: Google's 2011 update targeted content farms, thin pages, duplicate content, and shallow articles. It affected approximately 11.8% of US search queries at launch, with some publishers losing over half their organic traffic.
- Mass-produced AI content: Why pages that stitch together search results without adding original information may be vulnerable.
- Fake authors and AI headshots: Google's October 6 guidance warns against invented author names, false credentials, and AI-generated portraits used to deceive readers.
- Content effort: Five questions to assess whether pages show original research, firsthand experience, evidence, and useful information.
- Early ranking volatility: Reports from October and November, including Reddit and Search Engine Roundtable discussions.
- Black Friday and Cyber Monday: How an update before the holiday shopping season concerns e-commerce businesses.
- Rollout timelines: Most core updates finish within 10-15 days, compared with the 45-day March 2024 update.
- What to do if rankings drop: Why major changes during a rollout can obscure the causes of ranking movements.
Five types of low-quality content potentially at risk:
1. Mass-produced AI content without meaningful human oversight or fact-checking.
2. Unoriginal content that adds nothing new to existing search results.
3. Content created primarily to rank instead of serving readers.
4. Deceptive authorship, including fake names, AI headshots, and false credentials.
5. Low-effort content without originality, accuracy, skill, or demonstrated expertise.
My recommendation: Keep publishing useful pages and improving existing content, but wait until the rollout finishes before making major SEO changes. Otherwise, you could mistake Google's volatility for the effects of your own edits.
⭐️ Google November 2026 Core Update (Search Engine Roundtable) - https://www.seroundtable.com/google-november-2026-core-update-42504.html 
⭐️ 96.8% Chance Of A Panda-Style Update - https://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-panda-style-update-within-a-month-according-to-prediction-model-signals/591955/ 
⭐️ Ep 1195 - Google's Secret "Content Effort" Score: Here's What It Looks For - https://youtu.be/T2ZMC4utIBQ 
⭐️ Google's "Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content" Author Update - https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content#ask-who-how-why 
⭐️ r/SEO - November 2026 Core Update - https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1xswpdu/november_2026_core_update/ 
💎 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 Core Update Drops
00:41 Early Volatility Reports
01:28 Panda Style Fears
03:15 Content Effort Checklist
04:09 Deceptive Authorship Warning
04:55 Rollout Timeline Patterns
05:39 SEO Subreddit Reactions
06:35 What Not To Do Mid Update
07:23 Black Friday Season Stakes
08:56 Episode Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #googlecoreupdate #digitalmarketing

E1225: Google is feeding bad search results to scrapers, and SEO rank trackers are showing rankings that don't match what people see on Google. A sudden drop in Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, or another rank tracker might be a data problem, not a loss of Google rankings.
I interview Ben Senescu, founder of OpenSEO, about Google's crackdown on scraping, why third-party rank tracking has become less reliable, and how AI and open-source tools are changing SEO software.
We discuss:
- SERP poisoning: How misleading search results collected by scrapers can cause false ranking drops, strange SERPs, and inaccurate competitor tracking.
- The removal of num=100: Why Google's decision to stop supporting the 100-results parameter disrupted tools that tracked positions well beyond page one.
- Google's anti-scraping measures: Changing redirects, CAPTCHAs, and IP blocking, and why collecting rankings costs more than before.
- Why Google is doing this: Whether Google primarily wants to stop SEO rank trackers or AI companies trying to build competing search indexes.
- DataForSEO and OpenSEO: How DataForSEO was initially able to handle some of Google's changes, why SERP poisoning remains a problem, and how OpenSEO checks results multiple times to find likely accurate rankings.
- How to verify ranking drops: Why I compare third-party tracking with Google Search Console and check the actual SERP when a result makes no sense.
- Will rank tracking recover? Signs that some results are improving, plus Google's existing search syndication agreements and the possibility of licensed data for SEO tools.
- OpenSEO vs. Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz: Why Ben built an alternative, its $10/month starting price, usage-based billing, and the value of historical data from established platforms.
- How open-source SEO software works: Self-hosting OpenSEO, connecting a DataForSEO API key, changing its code, and building custom features without waiting for a software vendor.
- Claude, ChatGPT, and MCP: How OpenSEO gives AI agents access to SEO data, Google Search Console, research logs, reporting, and workflows across client projects.
- SEO automation for agencies: How users are combining SEO tools with CRMs, email systems, and reporting to manage more work through AI agents.
- Why rankings still matter: Why leads and conversions alone don't tell you whether an SEO campaign is working, and why position data remains important for diagnosis.
- AI content mistakes: Why beginners publishing large volumes of low-quality AI pages risk damaging their sites instead of building lasting search traffic.
- The next three years of SEO tools: Whether open-source, customizable software will challenge expensive subscriptions and how existing SEO companies are responding to AI agents.
We also debate whether ChatGPT and other AI search tools can match Google's results, why AI-generated writing still misses important details, and whether black-hat SEO will be harder for AI search engines to detect.
⭐️ OpenSEO - https://openseo.so/ 
⭐️ OpenSEO on 𝕏 - https://x.com/openseo 
⭐️ OpenSEO on GitHub - https://github.com/every-app/open-seo 
⭐️ SEO Party (Community Skill Library) - https://seo.party/ 
⭐️ Ben Senescu on 𝕏 - https://x.com/bensenescu 
⭐️ OpenSEO on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/openseo-so 
⭐️ Every App on GitHub - https://github.com/every-app/every-app 
💎 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 Ben and OpenSEO
00:37 Origin Story and Reddit Breakout
03:14 Viral X Post and Grok Automation
04:19 How OpenSEO Differs
07:13 Rank Tracking Crisis Explained
11:01 DataForSEO Workarounds
14:22 Will Google Ease Up
16:20 AI Search Adoption Reality
20:24 Black Hat vs AI Indexes
24:37 Why Open Source Wins
27:21 What Agencies Are Saying
31:09 AI Agent Integration
32:06 Onboarding With MCP
32:41 Agency Scale Automation
32:54 Tool Stack Pricing Limits
33:47 Custom CRM Email Workflows
34:26 Project Context Memory
35:38 AI SEO Shortcut Risks
36:46 Google Losing Trust
40:09 SEO Demand Surge
44:03 Agentic SEO Software Future
46:25 Data Portability Rank Tracking
48:52 Vibe Coding Reality Check
50:13 Optimism Industry Momentum
51:25 AI Retrieval Hallucinations
56:54 Automating Work Not Life
58:06 Customer Wins And Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #opensource

E1224: How do you build a beautiful site people want to share, earn backlinks to, and send traffic from, without writing a single line of code?
Mike Hawley walks through how he uses Claude Code to build interactive websites for linkable assets, newsjacking, trending events, and SEO. He shows the entire process, from researching keywords and planning pages to building the design, checking technical SEO, and publishing the finished site.
Mike has zero programming experience. His example is SEO-TV.com, a searchable video store for SEO YouTube channels and podcasts that he built in about five hours.
We cover:
- How to make a standalone site worth sharing, then direct attention and links to your business
- How Mike built SEO-TV in five hours using Claude Code
- How he started with a single prompt to plan the site's topical map
- How Claude identified 21,180 related searches, narrowed them to 213 target keywords, and planned the initial 73 pages
- How to choose page types based on what Google ranks and avoid keyword cannibalization
- How Mike adds more pages as earlier pages get indexed, growing SEO-TV.com to 139 pages
- How server-side rendering makes page content and metadata accessible to search engines
- How the site's keyword search works and how it checks YouTube hourly for new videos
- How to install Claude Code and set up project folders, notes.md files, and standing instructions
- When to use Ask and Auto permissions when Claude needs to use your computer
- How to request four different homepage designs instead of accepting the first result
- How to stop Claude from producing the same fonts, rounded cards, stock layouts, and other familiar AI design patterns
- The design skills Mike uses, including Hallmark, Impeccable, and UI UX Pro Max
- How to save mistakes, preferences, and requirements as reusable Claude skills
- How Mike connects Chrome, hosting services, Cloudflare, and keyword data sources
- Why logos, favicons, page titles, and Open Graph images matter for sites designed to be shared
- Why you need to inspect the finished website before publishing, even when Claude runs automated checks
- When Claude spent nearly nine hours working on a GTA VI map site that wasn't what Mike requested
We also examine cheese.help, an AI-built cheese encyclopedia that Mike launched without manually building backlinks. It began getting Google clicks and earned links from food blogs and MSN. Mike shows 11 MSN backlinks pointing to seven pages and more than 4,200 AI citations reported by Ahrefs.
Since September, Mike has worked on 114 websites and launched 56. He explains how the rules and skills he's built over those projects make each new site easier to create.
If you want to build linkable assets for SEO or create a custom website with Claude Code without learning to program, this episode shows the process from start to finish.
⭐️ Mike's prompts that get Claude to build
great websites - https://aka.bike/prompts/ 
⭐️ Mike Hawley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/funwithgoogle 
⭐️ Mike's website - https://aka.bike 
⭐️ Mike Hawley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bikehawley/ 
⭐️ Mike's AI SEO Discord - https://aiseo.gg 
⭐️ Mike's AI SEO Blog - https://aiseo.ooo 
💎 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 Build Non Vanilla AI Sites
00:28 Mike's Background And Vision
01:38 SEO TV Site Tour
03:34 Easter Egg And Counter
05:31 Automation And Server Side Rendering
06:35 Why Linkable Assets Work
08:29 Planning Topical Map
12:51 Design Choices And Pages
13:39 Search Feature And Indexing
15:33 Build Pipeline And QA Rules
18:25 Claude Code Setup Basics
21:44 Prompting For Better Design
23:05 Avoiding The AI Website Look
24:41 Reverse Engineer Great Sites
26:23 Finding Claude Skills
26:47 Design Skills Setup
27:38 Notes Into Skills
29:36 Plugins And Connections
31:10 Rules For Non AI Look
31:53 Logos And OG Images
34:38 Workflow And Cheat Sheet
36:38 Surprise 3D Vape Site
38:18 Costs And Token Use
41:44 Cheese Help Case Study
43:50 Links And Citations Growth
45:36 Testing Content Limits
48:00 Wrap Up And Where To Find
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization