SMX Advanced is back. The show is happening live, for the first time in public since the pandemic, in Boston this week. Hosts Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger recall the traveling circus atmosphere of the early conference circuit. Meanwhile Google is trying to reduce redundant Googlers in the Search and Ad units with a voluntary exit buyout program. This is happening while Google's systems are reporting a number of weird bugs with business profiles disappearing, Discover numbers appearing to flatline in GSC, some search Ads not displaying, and a GSC API that's been broken since early June. We also look at a post-Musk DOGE on reports of data leaks, and secret transmissions of public and White House data. The world at WordPress is changing with a splinter group called FAIR establishing a mirror system to allow all WordPress players access to plugin and platform updates. As FAIR moves forward, Matt Mullenwig's Automattic says it will start contributing to the WordPress ecosystem again after a months long pause.

Over in the world of search, there are several stories on AI development and training including sycophantic AI, Apple's AI accuracy collapse, the need to feed more written work into the training chasm, and the Wikipedia editor's rebellion against AI summarization. We note how different AI Generative Engines seek summaries from different sources, and how the majority of AI search traffic comes from Desktop rather than mobile SERPs. Google confirms AI Mode will increasingly be incorporated into all search results and a former Rockstar notes how everything old in SEO is still relevant today by breaking down the foundations of AI search over the last 15 years.

What do you get when you mix a web that remembers everything with software that can mine the depths of that everything to draw a frighteningly accurate picture of everyone, everywhere, all the time? You get what we're all going to get with the Trump administration using Peter Thiel's Palantir platform to create meta-files on every American citizen and very likely a lot of non-American citizens. This move comes after months of allowing ex-POTUS darling Elon Musk's DOGE pillage federal databases that were once considered sacred for the personal files of American citizens and files relating to government activities. Musk, who recently fell out of favor with Trump over something to do with a fist fight, a lot of drugs, and the deputy chief-of-staff's wife, wrote that, "without me Trump would have lost the election". More to come no doubt.

Meanwhile, Neil Patel's NP Digital is being sued by FTX, the crypto-scheme that made Sam Bankman-Fried infamous. Among a number of other accusations, FTX suggests NP Digital was selling them the same services it sold similar services to other business for 12X less than it charged FTX. Google notes it is seeing more searches using AI, Reddit is suing Anthropic for training on Redditor data, Amazon wants to go robot, X disallows AI models from training on X user content, Google says Gemini 2.5 Pro codes, and we discuss the Great Decoupling of clicks and impressions, and much much more.

Google AI Overviews are expanding test markets in Europe to Turkey, Sweden, and the Netherlands in advance of Google I/O. Google launched a free Generative AI Certification training program with the actual certification exam costing $99US. Google introduced "Discussions" in beta. Discussions is meant to replace Reddit as a primary source of livetime AI training resources by encouraging search users to add comments and conversation about specific topics which can then be used throughout the Google ecosystem. AI training is even more important as Google continues to commit to an AI Everything stance. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's Grok has evolved from plucky truth-teller to insane drunken uncle over night with talk of genocides against white South Africans and questions about the validity of facts about the Holocaust. xAI suggests a rouge programmer is responsible however the chatbot's offensive rewriting of history continues at time of recording. Speaking of Grok, the Technology Transparency Project publicly flagged several X accounts as likely linked to US-sanctioned terrorist organizations. The group suggests terrorist groups are using Grok to write propaganda on their behalf. Furthermore, they suggest terrorist groups are using the X tip-button as a monetization tool. In other news, a Michigan State University researcher has linked belief in fake news stories to an emerging psychological issue called Problematic Social Media Use syndrome. In other news, Bing Search APIs are set to retire on August 11, 2025. The APIs will not be replaced however users are urged to consider Grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents to incorporate realtime web data with generated LLM responses. We also learned that Google has been rethinking their search stack and are considering how fundamental components of search can be reimagined in a LLM environment. AIOverview links are all considered position 1 in Search console while 43% of AI Overview links point back to Google search results. All this and a lot more in a heavily Googlized edition.

Google is fast approaching the FIND OUT stage of its multiple anti-trust cases with the US Department of Justice and EU regulatory bodies. It is very possible the DOJ could order Google to sever its relationship with its Chrome browser in coming months. That leads to speculation on what other decisions might be coming down and how throwing spanners into the cogs of the machine Alphabet has built might effect Google's operations in the future. Those wags at OpenAI suggested they would be happy to take Chrome off Google's hands if the courts order it. Meanwhile, there's more controversy over OpenAI's restructuring plans, Google was caught forcing Motorola to block Perplexity.AI on certain phones, Meta's oversight board is suddenly worried about Meta's new policies effecting human rights, US search ad revenues grew by nearly 16% in 2024, and according to Gemini "You can't lick a badger twice". We know that last statement to be untrue but won't be answering any questions about it. All this and much much more in this edition of Webcology.

Mikkel deMib Svendsen is a SEO Legend. One of the original SEOs, Mikkel was known around early search conferences as the man in the bright orange suit. His almost adversarial take on Google in the early days set a tone and standard for how SEOs felt about working with the search engines in a friendly game of cat and mouse. Mikkel has continued practicing SEO while pursuing several other life passions, including a highly successful side-career as a potter and pottery instructor on YouTube where he has a popular channel. He has also released a massive and highly comprehensive SEO Master Course. We caught up with Mikkel in late March 2025 and got this interview.

Google introduced its new Ad Strength Best Practices Guide which got hosts Kristine Schachinger and Jim Hedger to pine for the days when the SEO world used cool names like "Ad Strength" to describe stuff. Google has again been declared a monopoly by yet another US court while, just to keep up, a UK based class action over Google's search dominance has been approved. It wasn't a great week for Google legally. It wasn't a great week technically either as a bug continues to exclude the first image in many Product Snippet image carousels. A Financial Times interview with Google head of search Elizabeth Reid suggests Google is getting strong user feedback about AIO results and is looking for new ways to connect originating websites with information in AIO results. We go on to discuss censorship in social media, particularly at Facebook and TwiXter. Bing Answer Snippets is starting to self-reference back to its own search results. Google says structured data does not make your site rank better, again. Google also noted that international search TLDs (ie: Google.ca, Google.co.uk. Google.fr, etc...) will be phased out in 2026 though localization will continue to play a factor in certain result sets. All this and a lot more in a fast paced newsy sort of edition.

A far less political edition than most this year let's Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger spend more time talking about tech news, web marketing, and SEO. We start by marking the movement of Mordy Oberstein as he leaves a highly successful tenure as head of branding at website builder Wix. More than anyone in our memory, Mordy helped Wix overcome what was a difficult reputation which stands as stellar testimony to his powers as a brand marketer. We note how Google Business Profiles is still broken, weeks after reporting the interface was riddled with bugs. Matt Mullenweg's for-profit arm of WordPress, Automattic laid off 16% of its workforce in order to improve profitability and capacity to invest as he moves to restructure Automattic. We also talk about Tinder and flirtbots, the assumption of a right to bend copyright rules by OpenAI, Elon Musk's xAI's $33billion purchase of X (TwiXter) from owner Elon Musk, Bing's expanding Copilot, the gravity effect large brands have at Google, and a lot more fun techie stuff.

The March 2025 Core Update continues to roll out though early indicators are showing in search console. Google Business had a reverficiation bug that caused chaos for a few days that appears to be fixed. The White House announced it was going to order a dramatic downsizing of the department of Education and a French scientist was denied entry to the US after messages critical of Trump were found on his phone, which has terrifying implications for the future of American education and training. The US Court of Appeals rejected copyright protection for AI generated works without a human author while Spain announced it would impose massive fines for not labeling AI generated content as such. The EU has again charged Google with violating EU anti-trust rules, setting the stage for another series of rulings against the search giant. OpenAI released o1-Pro which will be the company's most expensive model yet. Facebook's efforts to supress Shara Wynn-Williams book, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism has created a Streisand effect by creating ten times the publicity the book previously had. In other news: Danny Sullivan talks about Optimizing for Google AIO, links in AIOs don't necessarily lead to the same sites on Google search, Google is testing a radically expanded number of search options beyond AI Mode, Google Assist is replaced by Gemini, and Google is crawling JSON files daily. All this and much more in a long but interesting episode.