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