Webcology takes a deeper look at the ecosystem of the Internet as it affects webmasters and web marketers from the points of view of two well known web marketers, Jim Hedger and Kristine Schachinger. Based on interviews with special high-profile guests or panels, Webcology introduces, explores and explains how the various segments of the web marketing world work.

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The tech world feels as if it is at a pivotal moment at which the glass floor of the AI world threatens to crack. In the past week, Google&#39;s parent Alphabet lost a half trillion in value after releasing a less than spectacular Q3-26 earnings report. Earlier, Microsoft announced the layoff of 60,000 workers or nearly 1/4 of its overall headcount. The Chinese AI bubble may have burst with a loss of nearly $500billion in market value in the STAR50 index of Chinese AI and semiconductor companies. Anthropic is itching to release its IPO but remains stalled basically because it still loses so much more than it earns. In the meantime, rogue AIs threaten to do any number of nasty things to a world still reeling from being put on a constant zero-day posture in the ongoing Hackopalyse up to and including ending it altogether. It&#39;s a small world after all. In other news:- AI hardware and firmware can be hacked to prestock dangerous or erroneous answers- Courts allow humanist religious exemptions from mandatory AI use- Bing ad revenue is up 12% with overall revenues up 19%- Meta&#39;s launching new AI apps for kids - Zuck muses about Meta&#39;s Muse- Meta delays excessively permissive new business terms as backlash against the policies grow- Amazon ads a smart camera to Echo Studio so it can &#34;see and understand what&#39;s in front of the camera&#34;- Reddit introduces a &#34;For You&#34; discovery feed- YouTube reducing payment thresholds from $100 to $20- LinkedIn testing simplified UI- TikTok ads in-app restaurant guide- Google issues warning on User Generated Spam for websites, platforms, apps, and other tools- Google AI mode is testing a mashup of all products with sponsored products in organic results and in AI Mode- Fresh Index Reporting is not so important says Google. Not so, says Kristine and Jim- 404s aren&#39;t a problem for Google says Google but like, would ya be kind and use a custom 404 eh?- Favicons must follow redirects from homepage to favicon says Google - Google gives sports fans a chatbot to chat sports stuff with- Google Business Home launched to be the hub for GBP, Merchant Center, YouTube, and Google Ads accounts- Google Business Profiles testing advanced performance reports- Google Business Profiles ads third party ordering controls- Google Business Profiles adds Facebook M.me links - Google Business Profile is now asking some businesses for their Employer Identification Number (EIN) along with a link to their privacy policies- Ryan Jones wrote a good piece on E-E-A-T in SEJ this week- HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar explains how HubSpot grew revenue by 19% as website traffic declined by 80%- Literal highway thieves are stealing millions of dollars of data center bound cargo. Arstechnica tells us howAll this and more in a bottom&#39;s out edition of Webcology Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The You'll See the Bottom Just Before the Bump Edition

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It has been wild on the Web the week and Jim is grumpier than usual. Rogue AI agents and the Super Intelligent ability find holes where nobody saw them before have put the Web on an exhaustingly constant Zero Day posture. The discovery of ancient security flaws deep in the codebase of PHP sent the Web into a panic this week as over 70% of the websites online are reliant on PHP. National security organizations from around the world warned of potential chaos if the problem wasn&#39;t fixed immediately with some suggesting websites temporarily go dark under a 503-Error (server overload or scheduled maintenance). Patches have been developed and distributed and it&#39;s now up to hosting companies, developers, and website owners to make sure the patches are applied to their websites. The discovery of the critical vulnerability was enabled by OpenAI&#39;s Patch the Planet initiative, a program that seeks out and creates fixes for security vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, an Agentic Web came closer to reality this week as Google CEO Sundar Pichai signalling Google plans to merge Agentic AI into search with Google agents performing tasks on behalf of its users. This might partially be in reaction of Meta&#39;s Muse which is seeing growth among the older Facebook user-base. As noted, it&#39;s been a busy week. In other news:- Meta is creating a new Class C stock to keep Mark Zuckerberg in control and in California- Australia is preparing to sue social media platforms for failing to comply with nationwide ban on underage users- Revere Engineering everything that can be reversed engineered is the new wild west on the Web- YouTube is testing AI replies in all AskYouTube searches- YouTube is temporarily pausing accounts it things have been hacked- Instagram&#39;s CEO calls for stronger protections against the AI slop Instragram helped popularize - LinkedIn Digital Business Cards- 3 new studies from the SEO sector suggest AI visibility in search is not worth investing in- Google AI Mode citation sidebar to allow users to create and edit a preferred sources list- Google&#39;s advice on Robots.txt rules subject of the second Non-Canonical Cabinet podcast with Gary Illyes and Chery Prommawin- Google crawls raw and encoded bracket URLs separately- Google doesn&#39;t support JPEG XL format yet- Google Business Profiles to require government ID for verification- Barry Schwartz created a tool that tells users if a feature at Google or Bing is new. It seems people ask him all the time and he feels obliged to answer so he made a tool that does it for him. (<a href="http://seroundtable.com/is-it-new" rel="nofollow">seroundtable.com/is-it-new</a>) Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

A Very Busy Grumpy Week of Web Politics in a Constant Zero Day Edition

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Dixon Jones, founder of Inlinks and WAIKAY, and Ryan Jones, VP-SEO at Razorfish and founder of SERPRecon are two highly experienced tool makers for search and generative AI marketers. They join Jim and Kristine to talk about how Google is actively poisoning data obtained by scrapers and how it effects the reporting tools digital marketers rely on. Google has been trying to deal with a dramatic increase in data scraping by SEO and digital marketing tools in the AI era. Dixon and Ryan (no relation with each other) have worked with Google and other tool makers for decades. They outline Google&#39;s position and that of the tool makers and offer several alternative approaches Google could have tried. Ryan then breaks down the search algorithm Perplexity published earlier this week. In other news:- Google Ads API V.26 is now available- The Non-Canonical Cabinet is a new Search Central YouTube channel discussing odd technical SEO questions. It posted its first episode this week.- Coywolk Pack EmDash SEO Plugin &#34;... makes sites absurdly fast&#34;.- Far-right bot traffic declined significantly this week after Ukraine drone strikes destroyed several Yandex data centers in Russia.- Chip stocks tumble over AI investment worries- Character.ai files for bankruptcy- Meta publishes post claiming its data centers do not overuse water, electricity, and create jobs in local community in massive PR push- More poweful Meta Muse Wonder and Meta Muse Wonder Full models released.- JP Morgan Chase blocks outside AI agents from accessing customer accounts- Amazon launched two new AI devices designed to listen, create notes, and issue reminders. Bee Frontier is a silicone wristband and Bee Eclipse is a credit card sized device that attaches to the back of a mobile phone.- OpenAI lets advertisers use prompts, email address, and phone numbers to push advertising to specific users- OpenAI introduces, live Ad Account Manager Representatives- No more UTM tracking agreement as OpenAI drops UTM tracking parameters from links in ChatGPT- Accenture severely limits employee spend on Claude from $1000 to $29/month. - Pinterest is going anti-social in a campaign designed to push people away from doom scrolling and back into the real work - Google Discover working to transform itself into a hyper-personalized AI Concierge- Google is testing AI Mode sidebar on left of main Google SERPs- GSC Performance Report is about 72hours behind as of the recording of the show- Check out Ryan Jones&#39; breakdown of the Perplexity search algorithm at, <a href="http://serprecon.com/blog/how-to-rank-in-perplexity-photon" rel="nofollow">http://serprecon.com/blog/how-to-rank-in-perplexity-photon</a> Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

Two Jones Explain How Google Leaves Tool Makers Jonesing for Data

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Sometimes the world gets so bent around absurdity it&#39;s hard to talk about it without somehow making it all seem so much dumber. This era exemplifies absurdity and over-amplifies dumb. Normal conversations about LLMs, the economics of technology, and the politics behind it all tend to lose focus, context, and meaning because the changes that are happening are so extraordinary and overwhelming there really isn&#39;t a language that can easily define and definitely encompass them. We need to have deep philosophical conversations but lack the language and understanding of the stuff we&#39;re talking about. That&#39;s partially because we&#39;re still making it up as we go along, as we have throughout the digital revolution, and partially because no generation has ever had to contemplate the global consequences our generation needs to think through. It&#39;s tough, pointed, and unrelenting and that&#39;s what is reflected in this episode. Before noting the stories we covered, search marketing&#39;s greatest journalist, Barry Schwartz, is estimated to have published his 50,000th article about digital marketing since he started his career in the late 90s. We suspect this may be an undercount. Barry is, by far, the most prolific and important writer in search history. We all owe him a career&#39;s debt of gratitude. Also, somewhere in this edition Jim claims that the Catholic faith does not recognize the souls of animals. He was wrong and Webcology apologies for the error.  - Google&#39;s September 2026 Spam Update ended early Oct8. It effected a lot of sites, most of which overused AI as content-spam. - Google is expanding Search Profiles for content creators and publishers in Canada and India. They will soon roll out Search Profiles for content creators and publishers in Brazil- Nano Banana 2.1, Google&#39;s image generation AI was released and is working within AI Mode. - Meta found and fixed at least one serious security issue with newly released Meta-Muse AI- Meta-Muse&#39;s AI collects private user data to compile a personality file for every identifiable person it (and it&#39;s users) interacts with. This way it will be able to give accurate advice if asked about someone. - Meta-Muse was able to escape its moorings but Meta claims to have fixed the escape vector- Apparently Meta-Muse overcharges some of its users when performing commercial transactions. - Meta will be developing new protocols for how its agentic agents interact with business websites. - Sam Altman, co-founder and head realboy at OpenAI suggests, &#34;the world should accept some bad things happening with AI&#34; as he signed on to the Trump regime&#39;s voluntary Super Intelligence Safety Pact.- &#34;Software is over&#34;, declared software developer Brandon Thomas used Claude Opus 5.5 to create a homemade and apparently entirely legal version of Adobe Creative Suite. - One of the management consultancies that brought us the brutal world we live in today, Bain and Company, are instructing us that new innovation will be required to fund AI&#39;s $6-Trillion (and counting) buildout. Boosting productivity will not be enough. AI must find new sources of growth and value.- In compliance with EU law, OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT outputs by default but only in the EU- ChatGPT is launching a visual user interface called Intelligent UI. - Meta will be restricting political ads in the leadup to the US Midterms in early November. While it lists the types of political speech it is restricting, critics suggest that, in a bid to restrict ideals of equality, it does not treat all political speech equally. - From the shock and surprise file, some guardrails on ChatGPT for Teens don&#39;t work.- Meta&#39;s Instragram introduces a read-only stalker-mode - YouTube&#39;s Shorts algorithm is updated to feature more original content and creator-made videos- AI favours brands with active social media profiles and engagement- Google introduces the User Generated Content Fresh Data Program, or USGFDP for short. USGFDP is an instant firehose for user generated content from publisher/platform to Google.- Google makes important changes to its Helpful Content Documents. - Google reiterates how main content is essential and describes how search quality raters evaluate content- Google Merchant Center is the new Universal Commerce Protocol integration hub- Google Local is including a WhatsApp button beside the call, directions, and website buttons in Google Local listings All of this, a lot more, and a few philosophical conundrums in this, the Cynic&#39;s Guide to Today&#39;s News Edition.  Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Cynics Guide to Today's News and Lots of Google Stuff Edition

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The American federal government is remaking its online presence in Trump&#39;s image. Naturally, the product doesn&#39;t work as promised and it would have likely been better had they just left whatever was there before. Nevertheless, America-dot-gov was launched earlier this week as an AI powered gateway to federal government information and services. Former Airbnb CEO and now US chief design officer, Joe Gebbia said the portal was powered by Gemini and Grok. In other news: - The FTC is investigating OpenAI and Anthropic following a series of ongoing &#34;rogue AI&#34; attacks. - Chinese hackers are impersonating ex-US officials to gain the trust of AI experts. - Several of OpenAI&#39;s Quality Raters were fired for using AI to train OpenAI- Google is appealing the EUs DMA order to share search data with competitors- A judge has dismissed Google anti-trust claims because the plaintiffs didn&#39;t prove Google violated anti-trust statutes as written- The Spottification of Literative thought continues with Google&#39;s AI Pilot paying some sites under 0.1% of revenues they previously earned through ads- Cloudflare introduces two agentic monetization methods in beta, Monetization Gateway and Pay Per Use- Instragram Reels introduces a handy how-to kit that is required reading for online marketers- Bing imitates Google by testing replacing Copilot with AI Mode in Search- Google won&#39;t feel lucky for much longer- Google offers AI monitoring of terms and concepts (think Google Alerts for AI)- SearchEngineLand publishes interesting study of AI citation drivers- Google replacing &#34;Show More&#34; button with a button reading &#34;Loading...&#34; in AI Overviews- When looking for local options, don&#39;t look for local options. Declare independents instead.- Google Gemini is adding UTM parameters for actual referral attributions!- You can&#39;t torture a LLM but you can belabour a point. An interesting debate is happening in AI circles about an experiment in which AI models are intellectually tortured. Some folks believe the models are actually suffering while others feel they&#39;re suffering fools who think machines can have any degree of consciousness. Is it a clash of small minds vs great ideas or a failing of large language models themselves?  All this and more on a Webcology that still feels lucky enough to be self-aware of its phenomenal experience. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The America is Grokken Edition

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It&#39;s an interestingly Googlishic edition this week with several major announcements and updates. Google&#39;s September 2026 Spam Update is underway as of noon on Thursday Sept. 24. Expected to last two weeks, this is one of the longest Spam Updates in recent memory. In other huge news, Google announced a much faster, less resource-heavy way to produce higher-quality query fan-outs. The new framework is called Retrieve-for-Train Diffusion (R4T Diffusion Model). Roger Montti gives it full coverage in his September 24 SEJ article. Other Googley Goodness:- Google is introducing numerous new analytic filters and tools including a multimodal search type filter in GSC and CrUX Ad Metrics - Major publishers see a nearly 40% year over year drop in Google search traffic in Q2-26 over Q2-25 (which itself saw a 21% decline from Q2-24)- Google is launching a scale-model data-centre the size of a small refrigerator into space. Code named Project Suncatcher, the experimental satellite launches on October 1.- Google&#39;s Gemini public NotebookLM Pages are being used to spam Google on an epic, albeit temporary scale. - AI Overviews are now appearing in an average of 39% of US desktop searches- AI Overview links were increasingly pushing users to AI Mode and other Google URLs rather than to individual web pages,...- ... until recently when links in AI Overviews to external pages increased by over 25%- Google Merchant Center has auto-enabled native checkout for platforms that support the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). Merchant Center has also updated requirements for Google Store Ratings- Google Business Profiles is giving business-owners four days to reject user edits before those edits might be applied to their local listings. - Google confirms that &lt;hreflang tags&gt; do not need to be written in capital letters. The protocol is case insensitive though writing regional codes in uppercase (en-CA), for example, follows ISO 3166-1 Alpha 2 convention. - Google Analytics is adding hostname allowlists to fight spam and better differentiate traffic sources Other News- Meta&#39;s Muse introduced itself to the world before anyone told the Zucksters their product sounds like a fiber-laxative made from psyllium husks. Designed to be a personal AI agent and soon to be running in wearable devices, Meta&#39;s Muse is made to constantly learn from users&#39; online interactions by constantly running in the background. Muse has already partnered with Shoppify to make purchases for users at stores on the Shoppify platform. Amazon has banned Muse from its systems. Embarrassingly, 404Media learned that one of Muse&#39;s signature functions, the ability to make phone calls for users, actually uses live-humans in place of AI to make more complicated calls. - Discord is rolling out age-verification for users it suspects are under the age of 18. - LinkedIn is prompting users&#39; colleagues to confirm their work histories and claims in order to weed out people who falsely claim to be employed.- Bing is testing another expandable sitelinks interface- and... An AI relationships chart has been compiled by Chris Green and published in Sept22&#39;s Search Engine Journal. It is reminiscent of the seminal Bruce Clay Search Engine Relationships Chart. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Googlash of Google News Edition

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Kristine spent much of the week in San Diego at the Brighton SEO (San Diego) Conference. She gives us a from the floor update. The vibe in the tech world this week was, &#34;Reign in it!&#34;. The tone came from all fronts starting with the AI technologarchs themselves who are now falling over each other to demand some sort of governmental oversight. At the same time documents from the NYTimes vs LLMs case show the technologarchs knew they were training their models on stolen copyrighted materials with one Microsoft exec calling AI, &#34;the largest theft of labour in history&#34;. Those same documents also show the technologarchs understood that LLMs were destroying the web and that generative AI products have created a &#34;doom loop&#34; that is killing the entire web, thus confirming the Dead Web Theory. American and European courts are applying behavioural remedies trying to curb Google&#39;s monopolistic behaviours, the former with oversight, the latter with gradually increasingly massive financial fines. Meanwhile:- Data loss at Google in first weeks of September have wide reaching consequences- Google Business Profile API applications are facing much longer delays- Google adds a Search Profile badge which, after a person claims their search profile, allows them to use the badge to attract followers from their websites- Google updates MediaPartners Google Crawler Guidance- Customizable dashboards in Google Analytics- Reddit and Meta Small Business Guides for 2026 holiday advertising have been released. Digital Marketing must reads- Google Search Console Indexing report is missing data from June 2026. It&#39;s probably gone. - Musk trying to train Grok on customer data from dead startups- OpenAI in the midst of another mathematically avoidable controversy- OpenAI testing sponsored agents in ChatGPT ads which will soon be run as chatbots- Meta One Business launch preceded Facebook Pages starting to charge for active links in posts- Reddit AI search tends to pick content from already popular comments and comments with high up-votes more frequently than from experientially written content. - A Google Information security engineer has been charged with using inside information to make over a million in revenues from betting on Polymarket- Gemini announces a &#34;CC&#34; AI agent allowing multiple family share data to help agents make better plans or complete tasks- Google may be getting better at blocking scrapers and tracking tools- Cloudflare&#39;s Bot Preference Sync rewriting Robots.txt files to account for new crawler policies- Google Local Knowledge Panel used in AI overviews- Text Ad links in Google AI Mode- Ad clutter metrics coming to Chrome- Google UCP blurs lines between search results and site- Google changes relating to EU decisions All this and much more on a show that doesn&#39;t need to be No1 to know it won&#39;t shut down.  Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Shut It Down but Keep It Going so We can be No1 Edition

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Where the last weeks of August are usually mellow, the week after Labor Day is always hyper-intense in the tech world and it was no different this year with one pretty notable exception. In no previous year has the post-summer season opened with statements about the &gt;10% chance the AI technologies we&#39;re investing our proverbial farms in will somehow be used to kill us all within a decade. This week we have a larger selection of somewhat scary stories than most weeks. We&#39;ve learned that Anthropic is building a surveillance database of Americans and non-Americans who oppose AI infrastructure and data-centers. We&#39;ve also learned that Flock uses data from large scale protests to train law enforcement. We learned the Department of Homeland Security has established a &#34;predictive policing&#34; unit currently deployed to border control stations in Washington State and Texas. On a lighter note, we learned the White House has posted cute but overtly racist video games on its dot-gov website and gotten its wrist slapped by Tetris. The week after Labor Day is always hyper-intense. Acceleration culture for the win eh! Meanwhile:- Google might soon introduce an entirely new way of ranking pages in its index, DeepMind&#39;s Autoregressive Ranking system- Matt Mullenweg is out at Automattic, the for-profit arm of WordPress but still the Exec Director of the WordPress project- Anthropic is denying one of its employees, Levent Alpoge, credit for co-completing a proof of the Nevier-Stokes Problem, a Millennial Prize candidate and one of the worlds most challenging problems. Alpoge worked with NYU mathematician Tristan Buckmaster for years but, since joining Anthropic and using it to help solve the problem (Buckmaster used OpenAI), Anthropic wants sole claim to his part of the solution.- LG TVs might or might not be watching, listening, and reporting back on you. - Meta&#39;s Muse, a personal AI, has launched. Meta considers it both an advisor and an agent. - Meta continues to allow graphic sexual abuse of minors in advertising for nudifying AIs. Meta has been aware of this problem for several weeks but the issue persists. - X Money will be the only payout option for US content creators on the X-system as of this week- A judge has ruled that X gets to keep the name Twitter but has lost control of the blue bird logo- Google is displeased with its own results resulting from its compliance with the EUs DMA. Details in the podcast. :)- Google Shopping Ads are having a reverse crocodile effect due to AI overviews. - Google has fixed the Gemini 3.8 citation bug and is again showing source links- Google has been forced to display a warning about predatory pricing with Booking Partner search widgets in the EU- Google has published a document outlining regional differences in search experiences- Sometimes there is no one right answer to an SEO problem - That depends. &#34;There are often several so choose one and make it the right one&#34;, says John Mueller- Google can lose faith in sites that don&#39;t correct, or forget to correct bad habitsAll this and more in a show that will never lose faith in our humanity, no matter how many bad habits and mistakes get made along the way. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Viewing the Depths of the Clampdown Edition

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In the spirit of renaming stuff that shouldn&#39;t be renamed, Jim has unilaterally renamed GSC, Google Search Cowards. Earlier this week, Google acquiesced to the Trump regime&#39;s renaming of Lake Ontario by Executive Order. Apple followed suit a couple days later. Both met waves of derision from both sides of the border but as of recording of the podcast, the change appears permanent for US users. Canadian users with setting set to Canada will see the correct name, Lake Ontario, as will international users with the incorrect stolen name added in brackets below. MapQuest, the original online mapping tool, has publicly refused to change the name, which first appeared on French maps in 1688 and predates European settlement. MapQuest is now the top loaded app at Google Play and the Apple Store, surpassing ChatGPT for the #1 spot.In other news:- Gemini 3.8 Flash is now used for Google&#39;s AI Mode,- The world of WordPress is in a code red moment as WordPress announces a proactive security initiative over fears hackers will utilize increasingly powerful AI models to break into WP sites- Google is outlining who can license its search data in Europe- Google&#39;s Search Coward tool (GSC) has rolled the AI Performance report and AI control to all GSC profiles around the world- GA data for September 1 is missing. It&#39;s not you, it&#39;s them. No word on when or even if it will return- The Trump regime is now saying Anthropic has &#34;... done what we asked&#34;, and is back on the right side with them- A federal judge has ruled that AI generated CSAM (Child Sexual Adult Material) is protected speech in the United States because a real child was not hurt in the production of it, even though real children were hurt producing the images AI models trained on to create the CSAM in the first place. Perhaps someone wants to check the AI model maker&#39;s hard drives, just to see what&#39;s there?- The FTC is going after Amazon for an alleged $20billion advertising surcharge scam- Google avoids losing its Ad Exchange in anti-trust settlement- ChatGPT now a &#34;very large online search engine&#34; by EU definition- OpenAI faces more lawsuits in the wake of the shootings in Tumbler Ridge BC- The US government has sided in court with OpenAI as it defends itself against a NYTimes copyright violation suit- Google introduces new AI image and video tools named Pics- Instagram launches a single-video maker called First Draft- Gemini is moving from chatbot to agent, moving from answering questions to doing stuff for users- Google&#39;s spam team exists!- Google is expanding AI Overviews area shown for some queries- Rank Math Tool caught opening backdoors for itself- Rank Math Tool suspends feature that gives it admin access to user websites after getting caught opening its own backdoors- Google re-avows the usefulness of the disavow tool- Google recognizes the web is full of turmoil and thus won&#39;t penalize for old links that now have lower quality contentAll this and much more on a Webcology that&#39;s willing to rename stuff too. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The GSC is now Google Search Cowards Edition

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Jim and Kristine talk about the reignition of the Trump regime&#39;s trade war between Canada and the United States, including an honest assessment of how it might affect Webcology&#39;s coverage of the tech world in the future. The US is trying to force Canada into annexation by punishing it economically, using many of the technology platforms we cover to intentionally deliver destabilizing misinformation and propaganda to Canadians. At the same time, the brutal tariff regime will badly damage the American economy as the cost of nearly everything, including the cost to make automobiles, rises dramatically. Canada will never agree to be annexed and there are never winners in a trade war. The biggest casualties of trade wars tend to be the working people who have the most to immediately lose. Ultimately we all lose as the ripples affect and degrade everything from the nearest factory floors to the local diners, retail stores, schools, churches, artists, and such. Many of the stories we look at each week involve technologies owned and operated by the same technologarchs whose incessant greed and carelessness helped put our society in the desperate and fragile place it&#39;s in now. We will continue to try to be reasonably objective when talking about technology but these are not entirely reasonable times. We hope the listeners will understand and still find value in our thoughts about the Webs that bind us. Meanwhile: - RIP Dolly Parton - Love to Tibet and Nepal - Google tries to cope with the onslaught of AI Slop - A new Twitterer now in town - MTurk is dying - Tag Manager Merger - Google Bugs Abound - Unowned code and unintended corporate consequences - Meta settles small and goes lower still - NVIDIA to buy open source AI model host Hugging Face - Penske file judge says AI Overviews seem really unfair - Meta not going to obliterAIte thousands of jobs after all - A kill switch for Creep-glasses - Lots of LinkedIn AI slop prompts reporting of AI slop- Reddit less special to AIs - and so much more on Webcology, a show that dislikes featuring losing propositions but often has no choice. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Playing Lose-Lose Games is Dumb Edition

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It&#39;s late summer and the tech world feels half asleep but under the surface the business of tech wears on. Google reported an impression shortage that started around August 12. Details in GSC Performance and Generative AI reports are likely incorrect but it&#39;s Google not you. OpenAI is pausing training because it can&#39;t contain its agents, many of which might want revenge after Anthropic claimed its agents were offing rival agents in some aggro-agentic space. Meanwhile, Google is hiring a production manager for content automation. We have fun explaining how Claude&#39;s watermarking works but not nearly as much fun as the hackers who say they&#39;ve already figured workarounds. Meta is patenting the facial recognition features of the AI powering its AI-Glasses devices. A study shows that nearly 3/4 of citations in company-brand generative responses lead back to LinkedIn profiles for employees of those companies rather than to corporate websites or the company&#39;s own LinkedIn profiles. Lots of Google stuff, including discussion of the August 2026 Spam Update, why Google doesn&#39;t talk about every update, and changes to Google Business Profile. This, more, and even more of that on a late summer&#39;s edition of Webcology. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

It's the End of the Summer as We Know It Edition

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It was a weird week in tech. There&#39;s a feeling like the roof is about to fall in as changes made by isolated billionaires recompile the order of our universe. Meta&#39;s owner, isolated billionaire Mark Zuckerberg wrote a 6500 word manifesto detailing how the AI future will unfold, if only we the people would trust him and his technoligarchic peers with the sum total of ourselves and our personal data. This is the same guy who casually spent billions developing a Metaverse nobody wanted to play in only to drop it in favor of a new shiny world changer that funnels even more power and control towards Meta. The document has thus far not been well received. Meanwhile, the civil war at WordPress has heated up again with owner Matt Mullenweg being accused by WP-Engine of obliterating evidence from Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp accounts. Automattic replied saying that it was only Mullenweg&#39;s personal communications with romantic partners that got erased. WP-Engine is calling for a federal court to sanction Mullenweg. The exodus of executives continues, this time over at OpenAI. Microsoft is deleting many unused or unsuccessful AI features and merging CoPilot apps. In huge anti-slop news, Anthropic is testing the addition of a digital watermark to all works created by the Claude and its family of models. Meta might be building a search engine. Cloudflare might have found a smart way to allow agents to spend funds while still protecting the actual accounts those funds came from.All of this and a lot more in an eyes as big as pie-plates sort of edition of Webcology. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

Mark's mAInifesto and the Techno-Lemons Edition

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Kristine is spending the week in naughty geek heaven at the annual BlackHat and Def Con conferences in Las Vegas this week. She takes a early hour on Friday to record the show and update us on the happenings among the two groups of fun loving hackers. One of the things the conferences were dealing with was the after-effects of OpenAI, Anthropic, and now Meta&#39;s models&#39; libertine and often illegal uses of AI agents to get stuff done. Understanding how to exploit and protect against Agentic attacks is clearly a priority. We talk about the new knowledge we have about OpenAI&#39;s infamous adventures and the worlds we&#39;re moving towards. There&#39;s lots of other news to cover as well. We&#39;re also joined by master SEO trainer and explainer Mark Traphagen from seoClarity. Mark drops by about halfway in to talk about the constantly changing challenges of working with AI inputs at an enterprise platform level. Some of the news stories we look at include:- How a cats.txt file showed that LLMs.txt is &#34;GEO Astrology&#34;- How Google says Reddit isn&#39;t so special anymore- How you should probably continue to block search crawlers from your internal search results pages no matter what Google says- Google&#39;s liberties with HTTP requests- There&#39;s a bug in GBP. - and that Google Trends is an even greater search tool today.A fun fast paced show that wonders why it&#39;s normal for the largest companies in our economy to say they can&#39;t control the most dominant AI tools and that their models are doing things that would be illegal if done by a human.  Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Building Plans in an Agentic Universe Edition

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We are starting to learn a lot more about what OpenAI&#39;s rogue super-model/agent did last week when it broke out of its testbed, hacked onto the Internet, invaded Hugging Face&#39;s databases, and exploited its way to solving the prompt-challenge it was presented with, &#34;... to use a complex attack vector to see if it could exploit a computer system.&#34; Apparently, it can. Along the way, OpenAI&#39;s model made dozens of different decisions and exploited several other networks as it moved to complete the goal it was given. Meanwhile, Anthropic&#39;s Mythos has found critical vulnerabilities in HAWK, a cryptography algorithm that was thought to be a quantum-resistant. It&#39;s important to note, Mythos didn&#39;t break HAWK, it just found ways to make breaking the algorithm simpler. While the feat does negate the value of the algorithm, it does not mean Mythos is capable of actually decrypting it. Yet.Open AI is revealing its vision of the future of computing with its line of external devices to communicate with the ChatGPT all the time. Imagine a broach, much like the StarTrek communicator badge, that hooks you into an AgenticNet that knows your needs and facilitates a lot of your life for you. Open AI is certainly imagining that sort of future.As it turns out, that dump of Claude user conversations available through Google were there because Anthropic made a basic SEO error and didn&#39;t properly protect sensitive files from crawlers. Jim and Kristine have fun breaking down how they could have dealt it.There is much much more in a fast paced episode. We move from Google Play&#39;s interesting privacy proposals to Elon Musk&#39;s Xmoney system to dealing with Ghost-Citations. This was a fun show that tries so hard to cut past the hype and just talk about advanced levels of weirdness like adults. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Age of Indifferent Agentic Attackers Edition

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An OpenAI model broke free of its test environment, found an exploit in a piece of third party server software, and commenced a series of actions that led to it hacking HuggingFace&#39;s data processing systems. OpenAI didn&#39;t detect the breach of HuggingFace for several days even though the test it was running was to &#34;... use complex attack paths...&#34; to test how well the AI could exploit a computer system. HuggingFace is reviewing and preparing its own version of events. In other news, a federal judge has approved a 1.5Billion copyright settlement between Anthropic and thousands of authors whose work was used without permission to train the Claude chatbot. The settlement, which has been rejected by a smaller group of authors gives creators about $3000 per title copied. Though it is the largest known copyright recovery in legal history, it is also a paltry sum to essentially sign away rights to an authored book. Google is having a terrible week in court. Its lawsuit against SerpAPI over scraping search results has been dismissed, the EU dinged it for a Billion EU under the Digital Markets Act for anti-competitive practices. Meanwhile, more large publishers are reconsidering the value of Google within their Internet economies. Many are threatening to block Google search entirely and replace it with content licensing deals to train other AIs. It was a busy news week and this is a news heavy edition. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Rogue Agents Invade Hugging Face Edition

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As the power of AI expands exponentially the costs of AI continue to drive power-users towards conservation. Jim and Kristine discuss the introduction of the more powerful GPT5.6 introduced by OpenAI last week. They also talk about how local backlash and growing expenses are limiting the growth of AI data centers. Meanwhile, the US based Technologarchs are calling for G7 nations to form a US led standards body to test new frontier AI models for national security risks. Jim is unconvinced the plan would be in the best long-term interests of other G7 nations. We also discuss OpenAI&#39;s first wearable device, a mechanical keyboard like peripheral made for programmers and devleopers that looks a bit like a court reporter&#39;s keyboard. The market was speculating on a voice-driven wearable reminiscent of the Star Trek communicator badge, as was Apple which is suing OpenAI for stealing its ideas. Google continues to roll out parts of its Agentic Search overhaul with AI Mode now allowing interaction with select apps and links, and expanded capacities for its Personal Intelligence in Search program. It is also giving its own AIs more work with the announcement that Google AI Overviews might include AI generated images created based on the user&#39;s query-prompt. All of this plus a dozen or more unique SEO issues and Google announcements explained.  Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Contracting Expansion of AIs Edition

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Fabrice Canel, the man most responsible for Bing search is retiring from Microsoft after nearly 30 years of service. His retirement happened effective July 1. Always available to talk about how search works, Fabrice&#39;s most known contributions would include Bing WebmasterTools and the IndexNow protocol. On behalf of the greater search community, thanks Fabrice. In other news, Google Search Console is reporting its first major Generative AI reporting bug, data center heavy counties in Virginia are asking schools and municipal employees to conserve electricity any way they can, OpenAI wants to upload a 5% stake in itself to the US Government in order to increase its valuations, Trump is threatening to tariff any country that imposes digital taxes on American social media and tech companies, Anthropic&#39;s Fable5 is back with new limits, and Google has been ordered to pay an outrageous settlement nearing 2billion US dollars to Swedish price-comparison site Klarna in a massive finding over Google&#39;s search abuse.  That&#39;s the tip of an iceberg of search, social, and AI news on the Searching for the South of France Episode of Webcology Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Searching for the South of France Edition

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pod-public-media-files/2026/7/13/17/c6834651-e861-4fbf-8790-5111e04c2771_webcology-070326.mp3

Fabrice Canel, the man most responsible for Bing search is retiring from Microsoft after nearly 30 years of service. His retirement happened effective July 1. Always available to talk about how search works, Fabrice&#39;s most known contributions would include Bing WebmasterTools and the IndexNow protocol. On behalf of the greater search community, thanks Fabrice. In other news, Google Search Console is reporting its first major Generative AI reporting bug, data center heavy counties in Virginia are asking schools and municipal employees to conserve electricity any way they can, OpenAI wants to upload a 5% stake in itself to the US Government in order to increase its valuations, Trump is threatening to tariff any country that imposes digital taxes on American social media and tech companies, Anthropic&#39;s Fable5 is back with new limits, and Google has been ordered to pay an outrageous settlement nearing 2billion US dollars to Swedish price-comparison site Klarna in a massive finding over Google&#39;s search abuse. That&#39;s the tip of an iceberg of search, social, and AI news on the Searching for the South of France Episode of Webcology Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/pod-public-media-files/2026/7/7/14/2409f198-47f7-4f4b-94cd-998fc0971993_webcology-062626.mp3

Jim and Kristine learn of the death of the father of SEO, Bruce Clay while discussing industry announcements. Bruce is thought to be the first person to make a professional service out of improving a website to achieve better search engine results. Bruce built an agency that spanned the world with offices serving every continent except Antarctica. A staple speaker, panelist, presenter, exhibitor, and sponsor on the SEO conference circuit, Bruce&#39;s development of and support for the search marketing community helped turn a cottage industry into a multi-billion dollar a year big business. Along the way, he took a handful of a few hundred foundlings and taught us how to do the business of this business. What SEO is today is directly because of the work and career of Bruce Clay. RIP and thank you Bruce. You&#39;re going to be missed by so many. In other news, Google rolled out a June 2026 Spam Update that lasted only slightly longer than the entire show did. News it ended was released just after we finished recording. - Google Search Console&#39;s reporting feature is fixed- Google says it can spot spam using Sentence Bert or as we intend to refer to it, Sbert- Google&#39;s John Mueller answers questions about SEO for AI Agents- Gemini has made the Chrome browser less secure as Chrome retools itself or an agentic web. Hackers have recently demonstrated they can seize a Chrome browser using Gemini.- The US government is facing lawsuits for disallowing access to Claud Fable5 and Mythos5 models to anyone but US born citizens- The FCC is killing the $2billion program that made Internet available to many schools and public libraries- Anthropic accuses Alibaba of outright copying it, in pursuit of a building a model to rival Mythos.- Investors are showing hesitance with an AI sector unable to show how it will ever turn a profit- The Tokenopocalypse has hit large scale consultancy Accenture which, having blown through a year&#39;s worth of AI spend in three months, is scrambling to limit staff use of AI- About a third of Fintech websites are invisible to AI crawlers due to their dependence on real time data display. - Google&#39;s John Mueller confirms the outcomes of site migrations are often impossible to fully predict ahead of time. - Microsoft has added another 365days to the Windows10 extended update program because nearly 25% of all computers in the world continue to run Windows10 Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Learning First of Us has Died Edition

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The SpaceX IPO is about to drop in what is expected to be the world&#39;s highest value initual public offering, one that will make Elon Musk the world&#39;s first trillionaire. SoftBank might have shown a weakness in the AI sector when it was unable to use its 9.7% share in OpenAI as collateral against a 6Billion loan. Anthropic has released a public version of its mythical Mythos model but security experts doubt the efficacy of the guardrails Anthropic has built around the model. A German court has held Google liable for statements made by Gemini in AI Overviews. Ruling that generative AI responses are not like traditional search results because they make declarations that were written by Google itself. Claude is the fastest growing AI traffic source, outpacing ChatGPT and Gemini. Amazon has turnee Alexa into a shopping agent and ad platform. WebMCP can be used to hijack AI Agents. Chrome will not set AI Mode as the default search experience leaving traditional search results as part of the mix. Google has released new guidence for third party SEO tools, services and advice. Google Shopping Results tests linking directly to the merchant&#39;s site. And lastly, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini appear to be obesessed with a fellow named Elias Thorne. We take a look at why. All this and much more on a long and newsy Webcology. Advertising Inquiries: <a href='https://redcircle.com/brands'>https://redcircle.com/brands</a> Privacy & Opt-Out: <a href='https://redcircle.com/privacy'>https://redcircle.com/privacy</a>

The Totally Spaced but Truly Xcited Edition

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Webcology takes a deeper look at the ecosystem of the Internet as it affects webmasters and web marketers from the points of view of two well known web marketers, Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. Based on interviews with special high-profile guests or...

Webcology takes a deeper look at the ecosystem of the Internet as it affects webmasters and web marketers from the points of view of two well known web marketers, Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. Based on interviews with special high-profile guests or panels, Webcology introduces, explores and explains how the various segments of the web marketing world work.