The Edward Show

E1152: Google Analytics is one of the most widely used analytics platforms on the web, but there is a growing category of traffic it was never really designed to help you understand: bots, AI crawlers, and AI agents.
I sit down with analytics consultant Jason Packer, author of Google Analytics Alternatives, to talk about what GA4 is measuring, what it can miss, and how the rise of AI is changing both analytics and SEO.
We get into AI companies crawling the web, the possibility of companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic developing their own web indexes, and what that could mean if AI platforms increasingly rely on their own infrastructure rather than traditional search indexes.
We also discuss a separate issue that matters to anyone using AI for SEO: detecting AI-generated content.
Jason explains current approaches to identifying AI-generated text and images, including watermarking systems such as SynthID, classifiers, and emerging standards around identifying AI-generated material. We also discuss whether Google can detect AI-generated content and why simply asking whether content was written by AI may be the wrong question.
The bigger question is whether the content is useful, accurate, distinctive, and reviewed by a human.
Topics covered:
- What traffic Google Analytics 4 may be missing
- Why GA4 intentionally filters much bot traffic
- Why AI crawlers and AI agents create a new analytics problem
- The difference between human visitors, traditional bots, AI crawlers, and AI agents
- Why identifying AI traffic from user agents is difficult
- What Cloudflare data can tell us about the growth of AI crawling
- Whether OpenAI and Anthropic could build their own web indexes
- How an AI-owned search index could change SEO
- Why ranking for an LLM may work differently from ranking in Google
- Whether early AI search systems could create new opportunities for SEOs
- Hidden GA4 features and reports that many users overlook
- How modeled users can affect what you see inside GA4
- Using device-based reporting identity to better understand your analytics data
- Creating custom GA4 insights and anomaly alerts
- Using Explore and User Explorer in GA4
- Where GA4 is genuinely powerful
- Why GA4 may not be the right default analytics platform for every website
- Google Analytics alternatives including PostHog, Amplitude, Piwik PRO, Plausible, Fathom, and others
- Whether it makes sense to build your own analytics platform with AI coding tools
- How AI-generated text and images can be detected
- Google SynthID and AI watermarking
- Why interoperability between AI detection systems matters
- Whether Google can identify AI-generated SEO content
- The risks of publishing AI content at scale
- Why human review still matters when using AI for SEO
- How AI can be used without sacrificing usefulness, accuracy, or brand voice
The conversation ultimately comes back to a problem SEOs are going to have to understand: the web is no longer being visited only by humans and traditional search-engine crawlers.
AI systems are increasingly crawling, retrieving, processing, and potentially indexing web content. At the same time, publishers are using those same systems to produce more content.
That creates two important questions for SEO:
How do you measure AI traffic that conventional analytics tools may filter or fail to identify?
And how should you use AI to create content when search engines and AI platforms are becoming increasingly capable of identifying how that content was produced?
⭐️ Jason Packer's website, Quantable - https://quantable.com 
⭐️ Jason Packer's book, Google Analytics Alternatives: A Comprehensive Guide - http://gaalternatives.guide 
⭐️ Jason Packer on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhpacker/ 
💎 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 Jason Packer
01:25 GA4 Hidden Insights
02:11 Modeled Users Explained
06:52 Custom Insights Alerts
09:12 Explore Reports Tricks
12:27 Learning GA4 Fast
14:39 Ask Advisor Critique
17:21 GA4 Basics For Beginners
21:40 Attribution And UA Nostalgia
25:19 What Traffic GA4 Misses
28:48 AI Crawlers And Analytics
31:04 Cloudflare Radar Web Crawling
33:05 AI Indexes And SEO Future
38:52 Spam In New Indexes
40:35 GA4 Alternatives Framework
41:20 Best Product Analytics Tools
43:11 Simpler Web Analytics Picks
46:10 Vibe Coding Analytics Risks
48:38 What Analytics They Use
50:19 Detecting AI Text Watermarks
52:42 EU AI Act And Detection APIs
56:09 SynthID Limits And SlopGuard
01:02:40 AI SEO Best Practices
01:07:15 Human Writing With AI Assist
01:11:47 Podcast Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#digitalmarketing #googleanalytics #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1151: Google has started routing search-result links through new google.com/goto redirects, masking the final destination URL for logged-out users.
That sounds like a small technical change. For rank trackers, SERP scrapers, SEO tools, and marketers who depend on Google search data, it creates a much bigger problem.
I'm joined by Jonathan Berthold from Moz to break down what Google changed, why rank tracking is being affected, how SEO platforms are responding, and what marketers should expect next.
We also get into the larger fight happening behind the scenes. Google has been making it harder to collect search results at scale, from the removal of the num=100 parameter to these new Goto redirects. One possible explanation discussed in the episode is that Google is making it more difficult and expensive for AI companies and other automated systems to collect its search data.
The problem is that SEO tools rely on some of the same underlying access.
We cover:
- What Google's new google.com/goto redirects actually do
- Why the destination URL is now hidden in Google search results
- Why this creates problems for rank tracking software
- How Moz is handling the change
- Why other SEO platforms have had to adjust their systems
- Whether simply following each redirect solves the problem
- How additional requests could increase the cost and complexity of collecting SERP data
- Why agencies and consultants may see temporary changes in ranking reports
- What SEOs should tell clients if their reporting starts looking different
- How this could affect competitive analysis and other workflows that rely on SERP data
- Why AI workflows that analyze Google results could also be affected
- How this compares with Google's removal of the num=100 search parameter
- Whether Google Search Console could see downstream effects
- Why Jonathan expects SEO tools to adapt rather than rank tracking disappearing
- The possibility that Google extends these redirects beyond logged-out searches
- What this means for the continuing competition between Google, OpenAI, and other AI companies
- Why AI companies have an incentive to develop their own indexes and alternative data sources
- Why rankings are ultimately a directional metric rather than the final measure of SEO success
- Why revenue, leads, and sales from organic search still matter more than individual ranking positions
Jonathan's main advice for SEOs is simple: be adaptable.
Google can change not only its ranking algorithms, but also the infrastructure that SEO tools use to collect and interpret search results. Rank trackers adapted after the num=100 change, and Jonathan expects the industry to find ways to deal with Goto redirects as well.
The immediate question isn't whether SEO is dead. It's how much these changes affect the reliability, complexity, and cost of measuring search performance.
And the longer-term question is bigger: as Google protects access to its search data and AI companies build their own sources of information, what does SEO measurement look like next?
⭐️ Jonathan Berthold on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanberthold/ 
⭐️ Jonathan Berthold on 𝕏: https://x.com/j_bertho 
⭐️ Moz (my affiliate link): https://edwardsturm.com/refer/moz/ 
💎 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 Goto Redirect Panic
00:48 What Changed In SERPs
02:47 Why Google Did It
05:15 Costs And Workarounds
07:37 SEO Tool Fallout
10:10 Beyond Rank Tracking
12:08 Fix Timeline And Pricing
14:33 OpenAI Index And Yelp
16:31 Search Console Volatility
17:26 Adaptability Takeaways
19:33 Does SEO Still Work
21:26 Wrap Up And Thanks
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #digitalmarketing #seoagency

E1150: James Dooley and David Quaid return to debate one of the biggest questions in SEO right now: is GEO a separate discipline, or is it just SEO under a new name?
James says he used to agree that GEO was simply SEO with a different label. Then his own team changed his mind. He now runs a separate GEO/AEO department because people who can rank websites #1 in Google can still struggle to get brands cited in ChatGPT, AI Overviews, AI Mode and other LLM-driven results.
David pushes back. His argument is that most of the work required for GEO still comes back to strong SEO: understanding query fan-out, creating the right pages, earning links, building authority, controlling more of the search results and getting third-party sites to corroborate what a brand says about itself.
The debate eventually lands on a more interesting point: James believes only about 1% of decent SEOs can actually do GEO well because there are additional layers beyond traditional website SEO.
In this episode:
- Why James created a separate GEO/AEO department after initially believing GEO was just SEO
- Why ranking #1 in Google does not automatically mean you will be cited by ChatGPT or appear in AI Overviews
- James's argument that GEO is closer to SEO plus online reputation management
- David's case that GEO tactics are still fundamentally SEO tactics applied across more surfaces
- Why third-party corroboration matters for AI visibility
- How Yelp, TripAdvisor, Clutch, DesignRush, G2, Capterra, Reddit and other sites can influence what AI systems see about a brand
- Why reviews, awards, case studies and brand reputation matter when a buyer asks AI to choose between two companies
- How query fan-out changes the keywords and pages SEOs need to think about
- Why James says GEO involves different competitors, tracking, KPIs and reporting
- How parasite SEO, supplementary websites and exact-match domains can be used to control more of the information around a brand
- The difference between tactics designed to move Google rankings and tactics designed specifically to increase AI citations
- The role of press releases, social distribution and third-party mentions in getting faster AI visibility
- James's fastest approach to AI visibility and what he considers more sustainable long-term work
- Why building a defined entity, reviews, awards, knowledge panels and consistent third-party references matters over time
- Why some GEO agencies may simply be weak SEO agencies using a new label
- How businesses should evaluate a GEO agency before spending serious money
- Why enterprise companies are moving larger parts of SEO, branding and traditional marketing budgets into GEO
- Whether SEOs should start selling GEO even if they believe the underlying work is still SEO
James and David disagree on where SEO ends and GEO begins, but they agree on one important point: a GEO provider who cannot understand and execute SEO is unlikely to be very good at GEO.
If you work in SEO, run an agency, manage a brand, or are trying to understand how ChatGPT and AI search are changing search visibility, this episode lays out both sides of the argument with specific examples and tactics.
⭐️ James Dooley's website - https://jamesdooley.com/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on 𝕏 - https://x.com/james_dooley 
⭐️ James Dooley on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameszdooley/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jameszdooley/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/james.dooley1/ 
⭐️ James Dooley on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@JamesDooley 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on 𝕏 - https://x.com/DavidGQuaid 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidquaid/ 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@DavidQuaid 
⭐️ David "The King" Quaid's agency - https://primaryposition.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 GEO vs SEO Debate Setup
00:45 Why AI Visibility Differs
02:25 GEO as SEO Plus ORM
05:17 Market Confusion and SEO Is Dead Claims
07:15 Budgets Branding and Off Page Proof
11:55 Can You Do GEO Without SEO
13:27 Yelp Reviews and Local Listings
22:05 Tools KPIs and Claim Frame Prove
26:15 SERP APIs and Query Fan Out Shifts
28:20 Creativity Outranking Listicles
32:54 Black Hat SEO vs LLM Poisoning
39:04 GEO Hype Emotional Marketing
43:17 Big Budgets and Boardroom Criteria
47:37 AEO Off Page Signals
49:12 Vetting GEO Agencies
51:18 Independent Advisor Panels
53:19 Budgets Shift To GEO
55:28 Fast AI Visibility Plays
59:36 Pop Under Traffic Boosts
01:00:50 Sustainable Entity Building
01:01:50 Query Fanout Hacks
01:07:14 Experimentation Mindset
01:10:36 King Of SEO Case Study
01:14:18 Temporal Semantics Explained
01:21:46 Common Crawl Training Test
01:30:58 Final AI Visibility Takeaways
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization #seo

E1149: Jason Barnard breaks down how to get a Google Knowledge Panel for yourself or your business in as little as three months.
We cover why clarity and consistency are the foundation of entity SEO and how Google decides whether it understands who you are.
Jason explains what an "Entity Home" is, why your About page matters, and how to structure it for both humans and search engines.
We go through the platforms new brands should consider, including LinkedIn, Crunchbase, The Org, social profiles, and review sites.
Jason also explains why linking between your website and these profiles creates an "infinite loop of self-corroboration" that can strengthen Google's confidence in your entity.
We discuss SameAs schema, common schema mistakes, website architecture, pillar pages, navigation, and why your homepage should usually focus on your brand rather than targeting a keyword.
Jason shares how to write entity descriptions that are easier for Google and AI systems to understand, including the importance of semantic triples, related entities, and removing ambiguity.
We also get into why third-party mentions, podcasts, press coverage, and other external sources can make a Knowledge Panel more stable and authoritative.
Jason explains why Knowledge Panels matter beyond Google Search as people increasingly use ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI systems to research brands and individuals.
Finally, he walks through the Kalicube tools and practical steps you can use to build, track, and strengthen your presence in Google's Knowledge Graph.
Jason Barnard coined Brand SERP in 2012, the search results for your own name, your online business card. He coined Entity Home in 2015, the single page where a person or company officially lives online and where Google goes to resolve who you actually are. He coined Answer Engine Optimization in 2017, before the answer engines had arrived. Entity SEO didn't catch up to him; he was there first, and the terminology proves it.
Jason's universal three-step process for earning a Knowledge Panel on your Brand SERP:
1. Be clear on the Entity Home.
2. Keep the facts consistent across every profile you control.
3. Link out to the corroboration that proves them.
Do those three in that order, and the Knowledge Panel is the machine agreeing with you.
⭐️ Jason's Entity Home - https://jasonbarnard.com 
Kalicube Pro tools from the episode:
⭐️ Knowledge Graph Explorer - https://kalicube.pro/tools/knowledge-graph-explorer 
⭐️ Copywriting Sandbox - https://kalicube.pro/tools/google-copywriting-analyzer 
⭐️ Trusted Sources Tool - https://kalicube.pro/tools/trusted-sources 
⭐️ Person Schema Generator - https://kalicube.pro/tools/schema-markup-generator-person 
⭐️ Organization Schema Generator - https://kalicube.pro/tools/schema-markup-generator-organization
⭐️ Free Tools Hub - https://kalicube.pro/tools/free-resources 
💎 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 Knowledge Panel Basics
00:15 Entity Home Clarity
02:08 What Is An Entity
04:32 Search Volume Myths
06:15 Common Setup Mistakes
08:20 Corroboration Links
09:48 Platforms To Register
11:22 Future Of Knowledge Panels
14:15 About Home Media Kit
16:18 Pillar Pages Navigation
19:04 Site Architecture Rules
22:04 SameAs Schema Tips
23:28 Transparency And Trust
25:37 Brand Naming Strategy
28:59 Disambiguation Challenges
30:43 CTR Not A Factor
31:05 Notability Relevancy Confidence
32:27 Modular Platform Descriptions
35:19 Do the Reasoning for AI
37:22 Write a Clear Executive Summary
40:03 Avoid Ambiguity and Capitalization
43:52 Third Party Proof Matters
48:25 Why Knowledge Panels Win
53:11 When Panels Don't Show
56:57 Kalicube Steps and Wrap
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#searchengineoptimization #entityseo #seo #searchmarketing

E1147: Your organic traffic is declining. Your rankings are getting more volatile. Pages that have been stable for months or years are suddenly moving down.
Before blaming a Google update, backlinks, AI Overviews, or some mysterious algorithm change, look at the simplest explanation: Your pages might not be satisfying search intent well enough.
I break down the most common reasons SEO traffic decline and what to do.
First, not every traffic decline matters.
SEO is volatile. Rankings go up and down. What matters is the overall trend and, more importantly, which pages are losing traffic. Losing low-value top-of-funnel informational clicks is very different from losing rankings on pages that generate leads, sales, signups, or discovery calls.
I cover:
- How to tell normal SEO volatility from a decline you should worry about
- Why you should separate top-of-funnel traffic losses from bottom-of-funnel losses
- Why search intent is one of the first things I check when rankings decline
- How too much fluff above the fold can hurt a page
- Why targeting keywords with conflicting intent on the same page creates problems
- A real example where fixing search intent stabilized a company's declining search visibility
- Why sites that look obviously AI-generated may create a new user-trust problem
- How competitors entering your SERPs can cause previously stable rankings to move
- Why competitors aggressively building backlinks can shake up rankings
- How tracking individual keywords makes diagnosing declines easier
- Why you should check whether losses are isolated to a specific subfolder or happening sitewide
- Why I prefer organizing SEO sites into logical subfolders instead of using completely flat architecture
- How unrelated content can confuse what Google understands your site to be about
- When pruning or noindexing unrelated content can make sense
- Why outdated content may be the entire problem
- How keyword cannibalization can cause multiple pages on your site to compete with each other
- Technical mistakes that can suddenly destroy visibility
- Accidental robots.txt blocks and noindex tags
- Staging sites accidentally getting indexed
- Plugins generating huge numbers of meaningless pages
- Programmatic SEO projects that can damage an entire site
- Why you should still check Google Search Console for manual actions
I also talk about something I think SEOs will have to pay much more attention to: AI-looking websites.
Even if the information is good, users may increasingly distrust a site that immediately looks like it was generated by Claude or another AI tool. If searchers have repeatedly encountered generic, fluffy, or hallucinated AI content, the appearance of your site itself could affect whether they stick around long enough to see that your content is actually useful.
The biggest takeaway from this episode is simple:
Before looking for a complicated explanation for declining SEO traffic, look at your pages as a searcher.
- Are you answering what they searched for?
- Are you answering it quickly?
- Is the answer obvious above the fold?
- Are you targeting one clear intent?
- Would you be satisfied if Google sent you to this page?
Sometimes you already know the answer. You just don't want to admit it.
⭐️ Ep 1141 - Can You Launch 100,000 Pages and Survive Google? - https://youtu.be/wNtiygMsRfg 
⭐️ Ep 1030 - Keyword Cannibalization: Why Your SEO Pages Compete (And How to Fix It) - https://youtu.be/n3jrXrau6kE 
⭐️ Darren Shaw's LinkedIn Post - https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7495990440530272256/ 
⭐️ My 𝕏 post - https://x.com/edwardeachday/status/2091817392372400392 
💎 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 Traffic Drops Explained
00:39 Assess What Matters
01:26 Top of Funnel Reality Check
02:14 When To Take Action
02:46 Search Intent Fixes
05:21 AI Slop Trust Issues
08:25 SERP Shifts And Links
09:52 Site Structure Diagnostics
11:56 Cannibalization And Tech
12:52 Do Stable SEO
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/ 
#seo #searchengineoptimization #digitalmarketing #seopodcast