SEO Rockstars 2026: Day 3 - Charles Taylor

[00:04] I appreciate you inviting me here to

[00:05] speak and uh should give a shout out.

[00:08] Dory was actually I think Dory 23 was

[00:11] the first um uh conference I spoke at

[00:14] for for any of these conferences for for

[00:17] you or spring training or anything like

[00:18] that. And and actually so

[00:21] email

[00:24] Yeah, why not?

[00:25] Okay, come on.

[00:26] Yeah, why not? I'll try speaking. I had

[00:28] never done it before and and uh it went

[00:31] over pretty well, I think. And actually,

[00:32] it went over so well after I spoke, Lee

[00:35] and uh Ted kind of cornered me at lunch

[00:37] and said, "Hey, do you want to join us

[00:39] on uh on Fight Club?" I'm like, "Yeah,

[00:40] why not? I'll give that a shot, you

[00:41] know, give that, you know, and then

[00:43] that's kind of gone from there." Uh so,

[00:45] a little uh postcript on um what Marina

[00:48] was talking about with brand traffic and

[00:50] whatnot. We were chatting at one of

[00:52] Holly's events and we were talking about

[00:54] local listings or the GBPs and he was

[00:58] you know he was I I had first heard

[01:00] about Mike CTR geeks I think it was

[01:02] years ago and he was talking about brand

[01:06] he's talking about you know people

[01:07] aren't searching you know keywords are

[01:08] searching brand so I went to the Fox GBP

[01:10] and it's like well let's see how are

[01:12] people finding it people are typing in

[01:14] the name people are typing in the

[01:15] address people are not typing in news or

[01:19] news station or anything like that. Uh,

[01:22] at some time at lunch, someone come and

[01:24] ask me about news in New York City on

[01:26] GBP. I think I stumbled into

[01:30] something fishy. Uh,

[01:33] I'll leave it at that. So, for those of

[01:35] you who don't know anything about me,

[01:36] who the heck is Charles Tyler? Keep this

[01:38] super fast. Um, I spent most of my life

[01:40] in enterprise SEO. I started doing SEO

[01:43] in around 2004. I did the standard

[01:46] affiliate sites, churn and burn. After a

[01:48] year or two, I said, "Okay, let me, you

[01:50] know, not kind of be a big boy. Let me

[01:51] get a real job." Because that's what I

[01:52] figured. Okay, I just go get a job at

[01:54] SEO. And I worked for a company called

[01:55] Lexus Nexus. We did a lot of uh lawyers,

[01:58] uh, small mediumsiz law firms. I was

[02:00] there for several years. And I went to

[02:01] an e-commerce site for four or five

[02:03] years. I only last about four or five

[02:04] years in a large corporation because I

[02:06] can only take the BS for so long and

[02:09] then I'm like, "All right, I got to go

[02:10] someplace else." I had an interesting

[02:12] philosophy handed to me years and years

[02:14] ago, decades ago, when I was first

[02:16] getting a job, and I didn't like my very

[02:18] first job out of college, and one of the

[02:19] guys I was talking to said, "Well, then

[02:21] just quit and go get another job." And

[02:23] I'm like, "What do you mean?" He's like,

[02:23] "Well, you can always get another job

[02:25] you hate." And I'm like, "That is a

[02:26] really good point." So, I've always

[02:28] lived with that philosophy that you can

[02:30] always get another job you hate. Um, so

[02:32] I worked for Verizon for about five and

[02:34] a half years. Uh, my big thing I did

[02:36] there was we migrated from Verizon

[02:39] Wireless over to Verizon. talk about

[02:41] data, talk about a lot of stuff. I

[02:42] really, you know, cut my teeth on that.

[02:44] And then Fox poached me from from

[02:46] Verizon and I was there for about three

[02:48] and a half years. Now I'm on my own. So,

[02:50] we'll talk about that in a little bit.

[02:52] Favorite subjects here. I'm not sure

[02:53] what to talk to me about. SEO,

[02:55] obviously. Star Wars pre- prequels.

[02:59] Don't talk to me about any crap. And uh

[03:01] Dungeons and Dragons, but only if you

[03:03] know what a 20-side die looks like.

[03:06] All right. So, I'm going to talk about

[03:08] little some tricks. You're going to see

[03:09] some weird stuff today. Um, note, ignore

[03:13] the tricks. Understand the implication.

[03:16] It's all in the implication. And if

[03:18] you're familiar with uh the show and uh

[03:20] and this character, I did not intend to

[03:22] wear the same shirt as him today.

[03:25] All right. So, I realized as I'm coming

[03:27] down in the elevator, I really thought

[03:29] about going back up and changing my

[03:30] shirt. I'm like, it's too late.

[03:33] Own it. Um, all right. So, I'm gonna

[03:35] take you on an epic adventure. We're

[03:37] gonna look at data. So, you know,

[03:39] Marino, just don't get too excited. Um,

[03:42] while I'm at Fox, I'm always looking for

[03:44] ways to improve crawl budget. And that's

[03:46] the big thing with a really big website

[03:49] is it's all about crawl budget. And

[03:50] honestly, since I've started doing

[03:52] consulting and helping out mediumsiz,

[03:53] even some smaller companies, I realized,

[03:55] no, crawl budget's important for

[03:56] everybody, not just the really big guys.

[03:59] But with the big guys, you could, you

[04:00] know, there's a lot of data happening.

[04:02] So, I'm in Google Search Console. I'm

[04:04] hitting the pages report and I see

[04:06] something weird at the bottom of my

[04:08] pages report. And probably some of you

[04:09] have seen things like this on most of

[04:12] your clients or on some of your clients.

[04:14] There's the whole index though blocked

[04:16] by robots.txt.

[04:19] Let me take a quick pause. At any point

[04:22] in this conversation, if anybody has a

[04:23] question, wants to throw something in,

[04:25] just do it. You're not going to insult

[04:27] me. You're not going to break my stride.

[04:28] You might bit, but I'll get myself back

[04:31] on. So at the bottom of the page report,

[04:33] you'll see this index but though blocked

[04:35] by robots.txt

[04:37] and I had never really noticed that

[04:39] before and I noticed that with Fox and I

[04:42] think this was Fox News. And just by the

[04:44] way, people say, "Wait, you say Fox?"

[04:45] Yeah, Fox News, Fox Business, Fox

[04:47] Sports, Fox Weather, they had a whole

[04:49] bunch of other things. It's actually

[04:50] really they and they they have new um uh

[04:54] New York Post and Wall Street Journal.

[04:56] They're all under the same. It's

[04:58] actually really scary how few

[04:59] corporations own all the media that we

[05:02] consume. It's really only a couple

[05:04] corporations and all these people just

[05:07] jump from company to company. So, a lot

[05:09] of folks like, "Wow, Fox is like we

[05:10] never talk politics. There wasn't a like

[05:12] no one cared about politics. People

[05:14] cared about viewers. It was selling a

[05:17] product." Uh, and I know that and I'm

[05:19] confidently can say that because a guy

[05:21] that used to be at Fox News with me a

[05:23] couple years ago, he's now with MSNBC. I

[05:26] mean, come on. Those are two different

[05:27] ends of the spectrum. And he reached out

[05:28] to me and said, "Hey, we need some help.

[05:30] We're moving over to MS now." Um, they

[05:32] screwed it up. That's a whole different

[05:33] presentation. I'll be talking about that

[05:35] in spring training. Little plug for the

[05:36] Samuels there. So, index blocked by

[05:38] robotics. So, I'm like, "All right, show

[05:40] me what you got, Google." And you can't

[05:42] see this. My eyesight's horrible. This

[05:44] is really small. Anyways, it's these

[05:46] search pages with a whole bunch of like

[05:48] Chinese characters or something. I don't

[05:50] know. And I'm like, "What the heck is

[05:52] this?

[05:53] This is indexed. We're blocking this,

[05:55] but it's indexed. This is garbage.

[05:57] Google, write good content. This is not

[06:00] good content. These are not good pages.

[06:01] These are thin pages. And we got tens of

[06:04] thousands of them indexed. So, I was a

[06:06] little outraged. I clutched my pearls

[06:09] and said, "You got to be kidding me."

[06:10] And so, I dug into a little bit more.

[06:12] And yes, it's these search pages. And

[06:14] so, someone was putting crap on our

[06:15] search pages, getting them indexed. And

[06:18] some of you know this stuff, know this

[06:19] little hack. Some of you don't know this

[06:20] hack. I'm going to talk a little bit

[06:22] more about this in a bit, but they're

[06:23] they're putting a domain in there.

[06:25] They're putting something else. I never

[06:26] translate that, so I don't even know

[06:27] what the heck it said. I I don't care.

[06:30] So,

[06:36] so I'm like, "All right, why are these

[06:37] indexed?" I started doing some digging

[06:39] and I learned something. I've learned a

[06:41] lot about indexation over the past five,

[06:43] six years. This is from Google and it

[06:46] says, "Don't use robots txt as a means

[06:49] to hide your web pages, including other

[06:52] junk, from Google search results." Wait

[06:54] a minute. Robots txt is supposed to stop

[06:56] people from coming into your site.

[06:58] Supposed to stop the crawler and

[07:00] Google's res. Don't use that.

[07:03] Here's the key. If other pages point to

[07:06] your page with your descriptive text

[07:09] text, Google could still index the URL

[07:12] without visiting the page. Really?

[07:16] Yeah.

[07:20] I think that's a lie. And I'll tell you

[07:21] why I think that's a lie in a few

[07:23] seconds. They're definitely discovering

[07:26] the URL and putting the URL in their

[07:28] index, but they may not be. So, when we

[07:31] think about indexing, I don't have this

[07:32] slide here. I talked about this maybe

[07:35] next if you guys have me back maybe I'll

[07:37] talk about crawling and indexing one if

[07:39] you think about crawling it there's a

[07:40] whole bunch of steps there's discovery

[07:43] there's crawl there's rendering

[07:46] there's ranking and this is from

[07:48] Google's own documentation there's

[07:49] ranking and then there's serving and

[07:53] that that ranking and serving people are

[07:55] saying oh do I rank you might rank but

[07:57] not being served it's like that's a

[07:58] whole different thing so there's a

[08:00] discovery and they're putting the URL in

[08:02] their index But they're claiming they're

[08:04] not going to the page. I don't even

[08:05] think that's true. But we'll talk about

[08:07] that in a few seconds. And it says, use

[08:09] another message. It's a password

[08:10] protection, no index. BS. Total BS. John

[08:14] Mueller himself said no index.

[08:18] Again, think about the levels. All a no

[08:20] index is, and this is from John, and he

[08:23] normally tells the truth when he's

[08:25] talking about something technical. A no

[08:26] index is a is simply a no serve. Google

[08:30] still goes through all the other steps.

[08:33] So, putting a no index on the page

[08:35] thinking I'm keeping Google out.

[08:37] No, you're not. Google's still crawling

[08:39] that damn page anyways. Again, let's

[08:41] talk about the implication.

[08:45] So, who's linking to these pages? Google

[08:47] says, "Hey, we're going to go to this

[08:49] page anyways if we if someone's linking

[08:51] to it." And so, there's the referring

[08:53] page down here. You can't read it.

[08:54] That's okay. The the actual URL doesn't

[08:56] isn't important. It's not it's not in

[08:58] Google anymore. We'll talk about that in

[08:59] a few seconds. So, I'm referring page.

[09:01] What's this page? So, I go to the page

[09:03] and I'm like, okay, I can't read any of

[09:06] this. Just in case you're curious, this

[09:09] was the content that that Google

[09:10] Translate gave me.

[09:13] And I started looking for the link. So,

[09:15] where is the link with the descriptive

[09:17] text? Couldn't find the link with the

[09:20] descriptive text. Quite honestly, I

[09:21] assumed it was someplace on one of these

[09:24] on the right or there was a text or

[09:26] something in there. couldn't find it.

[09:28] So, I looked in the code.

[09:31] This is the bottom of the page. Now, you

[09:35] again, you're not gonna be able to see

[09:36] it that well. By the way, you guys are

[09:38] all going to get that. You know, you get

[09:39] this deck. If if Dory doesn't give it to

[09:41] you for some reason, then father Marino,

[09:43] if he don't give it to you, then just

[09:44] find me. I'll give you some contact

[09:46] information. If you saw me speak like

[09:48] three years ago and want the deck, I

[09:50] have it someplace. I'm always happy to

[09:52] share it. I got really cheesed off about

[09:55] a year ago. was at SMX. They did so they

[09:58] did a new SMS advance that's owned by

[09:59] owned by uh SCM Rush. So it was up in

[10:02] Boston. I got a free ticket. So I went

[10:04] there. I'm like, "Yeah, it was pretty

[10:05] good." But a guy came and did a whole

[10:06] presentation and like, "Wow, this is

[10:08] really cool." I talked to him after the

[10:09] presentation and like, "Hey, can I get

[10:11] this deck?" Because he's like rocking

[10:12] through the slides. Click, click, click,

[10:13] click, click. And he's like, "Yeah, no

[10:15] problem. Just reach out to me." I

[10:16] reached out. He ghosted me. SMX goes to

[10:18] me. I got contacts. I I know people

[10:20] like, "Hey, can I get this stupid deck?"

[10:22] Bottom line is I think it was total, you

[10:24] know, vapor wear that he was trying to

[10:26] sell people. But um so the bottom for

[10:29] you guys, you can always reach out to

[10:31] me. You see me in two years like

[10:32] Charles, you talked about something like

[10:34] two years ago. I got the deck. I'll give

[10:35] it to you. Anyways, so at the end of

[10:38] this as I'm finding there are about 40

[10:40] or 50 links at the end of the URL. They

[10:44] didn't have descriptive text. So going

[10:46] back,

[10:48] oh, if it has descriptive text, nope.

[10:50] Not only did these links not have

[10:52] descriptive text, they didn't even close

[10:56] the ahref tag. It was an open a tag to a

[11:00] URL. All of these URLs were search

[11:04] pages. So, they were doing this to

[11:06] people. At first, I thought this was an

[11:08] attack on us because I'm like, "All

[11:09] right, we got somebody that doesn't like

[11:11] us. Fox is evil. Whatever. They're

[11:12] trying to hurt us." Nope. They couldn't

[11:14] care less. There was no politics or

[11:15] anything involved. This is just someone

[11:17] doing some mass injection.

[11:21] Very lazy about it. And it worked.

[11:26] Yeah. So Simon's like, you know, I'm,

[11:29] you know, I'm lazy and I'm cheap. Well,

[11:30] there you go. Maybe it was Simon. I

[11:31] don't know. But

[11:34] and then at the footer of their page,

[11:37] there was hidden cross-linking to other

[11:39] pages in the network. So, I did a little

[11:42] bit of digging, and by a little bit of

[11:44] digging, I mean I did the bare minimum

[11:46] of copy and pasting and found a whole

[11:48] darn network. So, I was outraged.

[11:51] Absolutely outraged.

[11:54] And all the sites appeared legitish. You

[11:57] know, I was like, okay, this didn't look

[11:58] like a spam site. There was nothing

[12:00] about it when you looked at all the

[12:01] different sites that said this is spam.

[12:04] Um, it looked like it might be just

[12:06] someone trying to do their own news

[12:07] networks or maybe something. didn't

[12:09] really have much in the way of affiliate

[12:10] links or anything like that. So, it

[12:12] didn't really ring any bells to me when

[12:14] I was originally when I was looking at

[12:15] the pages.

[12:18] So, I talked to Google. Now, let me

[12:20] explain something. When you work at So,

[12:22] all of us, if we've ever had PPC before,

[12:26] how many different PPC

[12:28] account reps do you get contacted from

[12:31] in a week or a month or a year? And

[12:34] they're all different and they all have

[12:36] varying degrees of of of command of the

[12:39] English language. And it's really a bad

[12:41] look for the company, I would say,

[12:43] that's trying to get money from people.

[12:44] When you are Lexus, Verizon, Fox, you

[12:49] get one rep. That rep doesn't change.

[12:52] That rep for me was six blocks away. We

[12:54] got invited to the office a couple

[12:55] times. They were very helpful. And when

[12:59] I was with Fox, especially, this was

[13:01] around the time, so it's several years

[13:02] ago. This is around the time Google

[13:04] started actually laying people off. So

[13:06] all these project managers who had

[13:09] specific features in the search engine,

[13:12] they needed large companies to start

[13:15] doing things that would benefit these

[13:17] features. So I started talking to all

[13:19] these people came and started talking to

[13:21] me and say, "Hey, you should do this and

[13:22] you should do that." And I learned

[13:25] something years ago. Most of the

[13:27] enterprise SEOs I've worked with,

[13:31] they're not SEOs. And it's not like me.

[13:33] It's like, oh, they, you know, oh, he

[13:34] doesn't know SEO, she doesn't know SEO.

[13:36] They're just not SEOs. They're managers.

[13:38] They're managers that are given SEO is

[13:40] their thing that they have to manage.

[13:42] They deal, and I don't know how you

[13:43] manage something without knowing

[13:44] anything about it, but corporate America

[13:46] is full of people managing things they

[13:49] know nothing about and they have no

[13:51] skills. And the excuse they'll tell you

[13:53] is like, well, I'm a professional

[13:54] manager. It is terrifying.

[13:57] You want to know why these companies end

[13:59] up laying off 13,000 people after a

[14:01] couple years? It's because of like

[14:03] negligent mismanagement. So anyways, uh

[14:07] they would come and talk to us and I

[14:08] learned that smart is dumb, dumb is

[14:13] smart. I do not want to be a

[14:16] sophisticated SEO when these people from

[14:18] Google come and talk to me. I start

[14:19] talking canonical tags and this like

[14:21] they're going to lock down. They're

[14:23] going to be quiet.

[14:25] So, I'm just a manager. And so, when

[14:27] someone came to me and started talking,

[14:28] it's funny, uh, Marlene was talking

[14:30] about, you know, video search. I had the

[14:33] people that were in charge of putting

[14:34] video into the Google Surf come and talk

[14:36] to me. And they're trying to convince us

[14:38] to do Google uh to do video. And so, I

[14:40] asked them some questions and they're

[14:42] like, "Okay, you have to do this." Like,

[14:43] what do you mean by that? Well, you want

[14:44] to make sure you have a site map. Oh, we

[14:46] have a sitemap. I I know what they were

[14:48] going to say. They're talking about a

[14:49] video sitemap. And I know we have a site

[14:51] map. Oh no, you need a video sitemap. A

[14:52] video sitemap. I actually like I don't

[14:54] know why I I didn't I couldn't say the

[14:57] word video. So because I because again

[14:59] dumb is smart. And so now I'm just

[15:01] another dumb SEO manager and they've got

[15:03] to explain things to me and they're

[15:05] like, "Oh." And oh yeah, yeah. You know

[15:07] what? I do remember seeing that. I was

[15:08] looking in some Google documentation and

[15:11] it says I can embed the player or put

[15:13] the or put a link to the video. And

[15:15] immediately the person says, "No, don't

[15:17] embed the player." So there you go. If

[15:19] you're doing video, the documentation,

[15:22] Google documentation says you can embed

[15:23] the player or you can put a link to the

[15:25] video file. Put a link to the video

[15:28] file. Now, why? Because they have AI

[15:30] that wants to crawl the video files. I

[15:33] know this because we own Tuby. And I use

[15:36] that as a little bit of a carrot. I'm I

[15:38] can be a bit of a bastard. I'm a really

[15:39] nice guy, but I can be a little sneaky

[15:41] if I need to be. And I use Tuby as a

[15:43] carrot for these guys for months. I

[15:45] dragged them on and because they wanted

[15:47] to crawl all of our Tuby assets. That's

[15:50] all of our movies and videos. So yeah,

[15:52] so Fox owns Tuvi by the way. So if you

[15:53] watch Tuby, it's it's again one there's

[15:56] only like three or four companies that

[15:57] own all media in this in this country in

[15:59] the world probably. But anyways, um so I

[16:02] use that as a as a little bit of a a

[16:03] little bit of a stick. And then the guy

[16:04] that was over there, he's like, "What do

[16:05] I do? We can't give them access to all

[16:07] of our movie data." I'm like, "Just make

[16:10] a file and put, you know, put the

[16:11] previews and the trailers and stuff in

[16:13] there." the bot doesn't freaking know

[16:14] what it's what it's looking at and the

[16:16] people aren't checking the data. So

[16:18] anyways, so they I so that was kind of

[16:20] cool. So I told them all about this hole

[16:22] I found and I'm like, "Hey, I found this

[16:24] weird thing." And I showed them and they

[16:28] couldn't have cared less. I tried to

[16:30] make the guy in the AI picture look like

[16:31] he cared less. This guy cares more than

[16:34] Google cared when I told him about a

[16:36] problem with their algorithm. They

[16:38] couldn't have. So everyone who thinks,

[16:40] "Oh, I found this hole and Google's

[16:42] looking for these holes." Google ain't

[16:43] looking for holes. Google could care

[16:45] less. They just don't care.

[16:49] All they did

[16:51] is the one site that I gave them as I

[16:54] put together I probably put together a

[16:56] little too much information. I put

[16:57] together a little package to explain

[16:58] them. All they did is they took the one

[17:00] site. It got knocked out of the index.

[17:02] The rest of the the rest of the network

[17:05] still there to this day. Still index,

[17:08] still working just fine. So I did knock

[17:10] one page out of the index. So I narked

[17:12] on them and and I got it. So if it was

[17:13] your site anyone out there, I apologize.

[17:15] Um

[17:17] I thought I was doing right by the

[17:19] world. So um doesn't matter because no

[17:22] one cares. Uh where was I? D

[17:26] Google doesn't care. I got them. The

[17:27] only thing that happened though is I

[17:29] think I flew too close to the sun. Um

[17:31] and I'm going to blame Dory for this

[17:33] one. Uh because I did a presentation. I

[17:36] met up with Ted and Lee and they asked

[17:38] me to get on Fight Club. I think someone

[17:40] from Google somehow somebody found me on

[17:43] Fight Club and said, "Hey, that guy

[17:44] you're talking to." Uh he's not an

[17:47] idiot. He's on Fight Club and he talks

[17:49] he's always talking about SEO because

[17:51] about six months after I joined Fight

[17:53] Club, they changed Google reps on us.

[17:57] And the girl they gave us was the she's

[18:01] not she was not very clever

[18:04] and she was useless and nobody ever

[18:06] talked to me ever again after they

[18:08] changed rents. So I'm like all right I

[18:10] got busted.

[18:13] This tickled my memory though. So people

[18:15] injecting things into our into our uh

[18:17] into our site onto our search pages. It

[18:20] kind of I I'm like why there was I like

[18:23] puzzles. I love doing physical puzzles

[18:26] because I like putting different pieces

[18:28] together. And I think that's maybe why

[18:31] I've kind of been, you know, reasonably

[18:33] successful in SEO is I'll I'll hear I

[18:35] know I'll hear Chad say something. I'll

[18:37] hear Brian say something. I'll hear Jose

[18:39] say something. I'll hear somebody

[18:41] everybody will say something and I'll

[18:42] take like a piece and be like, "Huh?"

[18:45] Like there were so many little things

[18:46] like Brian W. like he said a whole bunch

[18:48] of little things yesterday. I was like,

[18:50] "Huh, I wonder how that fits into this

[18:52] other thing that I saw or this other

[18:54] thing I've seen in my past." So, this

[18:57] tickled my memory and it reminded me one

[18:59] of the first things I did when I I So,

[19:02] this is a log file. So, Marina talked

[19:04] about big data and I don't I don't This

[19:07] was back when I was still editing stuff.

[19:09] This is Wednesday the 20th 12. So this

[19:12] is like an entire day and this was for

[19:16] our in an index that an XML file and

[19:19] these were 301's. I know they are 301's

[19:21] because of the color. This came out of a

[19:23] tool that was uh data dog I think was

[19:25] name of tool. If you got a big site,

[19:27] data dog is an amazing tool to bring

[19:29] data in and it is not easy to work with,

[19:32] but it's amazing the data you can get.

[19:35] See, so this is all the log file. was

[19:36] just Google hitting our XML file or

[19:39] these XML files that were old, pounding

[19:42] the crap out of it. When I showed my

[19:43] network guys this because one of the

[19:45] guys, we got along really well and I was

[19:46] showing him like this is almost like a

[19:48] denial of service attack on us. It's

[19:49] like Google's hitting our page so damn

[19:52] hard. This is a 301

[19:54] on a page that hasn't existed for years.

[19:58] Years that page has Google keeps hitting

[20:00] it over and over and over again.

[20:03] And when I look at it, you can see it

[20:05] was a it was a news index. And there

[20:07] were actually two index XMLs. And again,

[20:10] you probably can't see it, but if you

[20:11] look here, the bottom here is 105153.

[20:14] The top is 10353.

[20:17] So in two minutes, whatever that is, 20

[20:18] hits to our server on a file that's

[20:21] 301ing.

[20:22] Remember, if it 301's, we're going to

[20:24] stop following it eventually. Now, you

[20:26] know, you follow it forever.

[20:28] But why why are they following it

[20:30] forever?

[20:32] Well, so I did a little searching. How

[20:33] did Google find this file? And there

[20:35] were two files. How did you know where

[20:37] did Google find this file? And you you

[20:39] can't see it, but that's okay. I'm happy

[20:41] to share. Search engine.com did an

[20:43] article in 2009. This I found all this

[20:47] stuff. I worked at Fox. I got I I

[20:49] started working there in 2021. So I

[20:52] can't remember the exact year I found

[20:53] this. It was probably 21, maybe the

[20:55] beginning of 22 at the most. That was a

[20:58] long time. 2009 to 2021.

[21:01] So 10 years later and in this article so

[21:05] going back in time 2029 2009 I mean uh

[21:09] was it what's the guy Rubert Barack was

[21:11] whining Google's you know doesn't like

[21:13] us and is you know banning us or shadow

[21:15] whatever he was I don't but and then

[21:18] search engine land did an article and

[21:20] said oh no Fox News has a robots.txt txt

[21:25] and they point to a sitemap. And it's

[21:27] funny if you read this part in here says

[21:29] therefore they're doing SEO, which I

[21:31] just found amazing that search engine

[21:33] land thinks having a robust.txt and

[21:35] pointing to a sitemap.xml makes you an

[21:37] SEO, which I stopped trusting their

[21:39] advice once I read that. Um, so in their

[21:42] article they have they just took our,

[21:45] you know, our old XML, put it in here,

[21:49] and I'm like, "All right, but this is

[21:50] just a text. There's a link." So, I went

[21:54] into the code. I'm a clever SEO. I went

[21:56] into the code and I searched just text.

[22:00] No link.

[22:03] So, let that sink in for a second. There

[22:06] was no link. Google discovered that and

[22:09] followed it.

[22:14] Fire away.

[22:27] I'll repeat your question.

[22:29] Sean said he's seeing that as well with

[22:31] just name, address, phone number. So the

[22:33] app

[22:57] See?

[23:09] Yeah.

[23:18] Yeah.

[23:18] Yeah. Just text mentions and on top. So

[23:21] this is not so what you're seeing is not

[23:24] new. This is not new. And I'll say I'll

[23:26] say that because like 10 years ago my

[23:28] brother-in-law his his boss got busted

[23:31] and went to jail for some stuff. My

[23:33] brother-in-law wasn't involved. So just

[23:34] full disclosure how's a good guy. Uh but

[23:37] so he's like now he's out of a job

[23:38] because his boss went to jail. And so he

[23:41] did his own contract. He was a

[23:42] contractor. He just he started doing his

[23:44] own work, made a little website, and my

[23:46] wife comes to me like, "Hey, can you

[23:47] help out?" You know, I'm like, "Yeah,

[23:48] he's a decent guy. He's never really

[23:50] pissed me off or anything." So, I happy

[23:51] to help him out. Made him a little one

[23:52] pager and got him into, you know, the

[23:54] GBP. Didn't really rank. I wasn't going

[23:56] to spend that much time on um and then

[23:58] one day I realized I said, "Let me see

[24:00] if I can help him out a little bit

[24:01] more." I went to his website and his

[24:03] contractor number, so he's in Rhode

[24:04] Island. His contractor number I found a

[24:06] page on the government site that had his

[24:09] name address. It was the road it was a

[24:10] Rhode Island government site and it

[24:12] said, "Hey, his name and address and his

[24:14] his contractor license number, whatever

[24:17] was in there." So, I put his license

[24:18] number on his website and I linked that

[24:21] to the government page. Boom. GBP ranked

[24:24] number one.

[24:26] There were no links. So to to Sean's

[24:28] point, you get that that just that

[24:31] mention, that brand and nap mention,

[24:33] Google understood that they found his

[24:36] name, address, and phone number on a

[24:38] government site about contractors and

[24:40] said, "That's important." That's all I

[24:42] did. I mean, that's all I did. So,

[24:46] stepping back, going back, hey, remember

[24:48] this page? This was our search page.

[24:49] Someone figured out how to inject some

[24:51] content in it. And there's a little part

[24:54] up here. It has uh h hot tkr.com.

[24:58] I'm not going to say it out loud just in

[24:59] case it's an aneemonic. I'm not

[25:01] realizing what I'm saying. So, but

[25:02] there's a domain in there. I'm like,

[25:03] "Huh, are they trying to get domains?

[25:05] What were they trying to do?" And I'm

[25:07] like, "All right, well, you know, Ted

[25:09] talks about this all the time on if they

[25:11] can do it, why can't I do it?"

[25:14] So, I went and I scraped their site. I

[25:16] got all the search page. I got found all

[25:18] the sites. There were 40 plus sites that

[25:20] would allow me to do search. There's a

[25:22] lot more sites than that, by the way.

[25:23] But regardless, I found out it's 40

[25:25] sites

[25:27] and then

[25:29] so this is what example of what I was

[25:30] thinking like what if I put a domain. So

[25:33] just test domain.com search page. So

[25:35] here was one CNN.com I could do it too

[25:37] and Eventbrite you could do it too. I'm

[25:39] like okay so time to test. So I took

[25:44] not G sheets sorry Brian I took Excel. I

[25:48] know that's our original love. Yes.

[25:50] That's the that's our first um so I said

[25:53] all right let me see if I can rank the

[25:55] word swan baron and I was so I had a

[25:58] little tool that gives you these like

[25:59] random words and the most frustrating

[26:01] thing about testing was I would take a

[26:03] random word I plug it in and it would

[26:05] actually be a word and I'm like and then

[26:08] Leo always just put a number in there

[26:09] I'm like no words don't have numbers in

[26:10] them I can't do that. Um yeah that

[26:13] doesn't make any sense but I'm still in

[26:15] my head. So, I was sure when it gave me

[26:17] swan baron, I checked. I'm like, "Okay,

[26:19] it's going to say swanberries for sure."

[26:20] It didn't. Uh, that was a surprise. Um,

[26:23] so what I did is I I went a little

[26:24] overboard on this. It should have been a

[26:26] simple will it index test, but I'm like,

[26:27] "No, I got to learn something." So, I

[26:29] created 10 different variations of the

[26:31] page. I had orphan internal and then

[26:33] different ways of linking to the search

[26:35] pages. So, I had these search pages out

[26:37] there. I got, you know, what if I, you

[26:39] know, what if I just do the search

[26:40] pages? Will Google find them? What if I

[26:41] do this? What if I do that? I had search

[26:44] links going to search links. yada yada

[26:45] yada. So

[26:47] made the again using Excel I just made

[26:49] the page with a s a simple you know

[26:51] concatenate or whatever. Um

[26:55] what do you know like within a week or

[26:57] two page seven ranked for swan baron and

[27:01] actually and it was interesting the su

[27:02] as soon as something ranked Google

[27:04] started giving me a um a local pack.

[27:10] So there's something else there. I never

[27:11] went that down that rabbit hole. But

[27:13] that's like that's one of those things

[27:14] that's kind of been sitting in the back

[27:15] of my head that suddenly we went from

[27:20] I've never heard this word because

[27:21] there's no results to here's a page for

[27:25] you. Oh, and here's some local results,

[27:26] too. So, that's floating around back

[27:30] there. Someday it'll pepper back up. The

[27:32] the the takeaway from this test was that

[27:35] I think I just found a Google Fiverr gig

[27:38] that was, you know, decent. Sorry, it

[27:40] wasn't legit. I apologize. Um, so I was

[27:43] like, that's one of the reasons why I

[27:44] started using money robot. I'm like,

[27:45] well, if the money robot worked, you

[27:46] know, then all right,

[27:48] real scientific this decision. It's

[27:50] like, all right, can it push a real

[27:52] page? All right, that was a fake page.

[27:54] It was all just fun. What would happens

[27:56] if I do this like for real? Um, so Fox

[28:01] Weather had been launching and they had

[28:03] a bunch of weird philosophies when they

[28:06] launched their site. I'll tell you this.

[28:07] See, this is so just to tell you guys

[28:09] this is deck has been like two years in

[28:11] the making. I've been s on this for a

[28:13] while and I'm like I don't feel right

[28:14] talking about this now. I have no

[28:16] problem talking about all this crap. So

[28:17] the funny thing with Fox Weather when it

[28:19] first launched, I started there at

[28:20] launch like three months after I started

[28:22] and they were telling me, "Oh no, we're

[28:24] just going to do news about the

[28:26] weather." Like so wait a we're gonna

[28:28] have a weather site that's not going to

[28:30] give the weather. That doesn't make a

[28:32] lot of sense. I said and I'm like plus

[28:34] like web pages people like there's a lot

[28:36] of traffic in you know Dallas Fort Worth

[28:39] weather you know Dallas weather you know

[28:42] New Jersey weather like there's a lot of

[28:43] traffic out there why are we to know we

[28:45] don't want that tra I was I was actually

[28:47] told that's the weird thing you're going

[28:49] to hear in enterprise we don't want that

[28:50] traffic I've been told that so many

[28:52] times we don't want that traffic what do

[28:55] you mean you don't want traffic most of

[28:56] us like s our arms off just to get a

[28:58] little bit of traffic and these guys

[29:00] like no we don't like that traffic

[29:01] that's not Not good enough for us. All

[29:03] right, whatever. So, will it push this

[29:06] page? So, I did the same thing. Took my

[29:08] pages and you can't see it, but it's

[29:10] just, you know, foxware.com

[29:12] uh I forget what it is. Air quality map.

[29:16] And so, hrefs, who's talking about I

[29:20] think Marina was talking about, you

[29:21] know, boost nature

[29:23] that can everybody see that chart to the

[29:25] right hand side?

[29:27] There were no links. These were search

[29:30] pages. This was text.

[29:32] So, I manipulated hrefs.

[29:35] I wasn't intending to do that, but it's

[29:37] interesting the things you've learned

[29:38] when you do tests. I find when I do a

[29:40] test, I never or I rarely learn the

[29:42] thing I was trying to learn, but I learn

[29:44] all these weird ancillary things.

[29:48] Here was the really interesting, the

[29:50] results. So, yesterday, who said I'd

[29:53] rather have a consistent 20 than jumping

[29:56] in and out of the index? Well, look what

[29:58] it did. this page was jumping in and out

[30:00] of the index and then suddenly boom,

[30:02] Google's like, "All right, I'm pretty

[30:04] cool with this page. I'll keep it."

[30:05] Well, did it increase the ranking? No,

[30:07] it did not increase my rank, but I'd

[30:09] started ranking very consistently.

[30:12] Interesting.

[30:14] Pretty pretty interesting.

[30:17] And then they nicely asked me to leave

[30:18] the company. No relation to the tests I

[30:21] was doing. Uh

[30:23] so my I had a whole year-long kind of an

[30:26] analyze data. I was going to try

[30:27] something else and they and so I'll tell

[30:29] you everybody kind of the like the fun

[30:31] little backstory to this. So one of the

[30:33] things I did not know when I started

[30:35] working there well I did know this one

[30:36] guy from the editorial team did not like

[30:39] me for some reason. I don't know how you

[30:41] can't like me. I'm a wonderful guy. He

[30:43] didn't like me. He it was like

[30:46] yeah he didn't like me. What I learned

[30:48] and this is what you learn in in uh

[30:50] enterprise is that there's always a

[30:52] million teams and I'm never the only

[30:55] SEO. Well, I am the only SEO, but I'm

[30:58] never the only SEO team. And the and

[31:00] it's always a battle with other teams,

[31:02] and that is exhausting. That's why I

[31:04] don't last more than four or five years

[31:06] in any larger organization because I can

[31:08] only handle the interfighting so much. I

[31:11] love working with other SEOs. I love

[31:12] collaborating. You show me something

[31:14] that I don't know or you tell me how I'm

[31:17] wrong about something. So, for example,

[31:19] I

[31:20] happily went on Fight Club and say,

[31:22] "Yeah, lms.txt. I couldn't get it to

[31:24] crawl. they're worthless. Brian comes

[31:26] out and dropped some knowledge on me

[31:28] yesterday. I'm like, "All right, I'm

[31:30] going back to the drawing board and I'm

[31:31] going to look at this again because I

[31:32] might have been totally wrong about

[31:34] that." And that's exciting to me.

[31:36] Finding out, not just learning something

[31:37] new, but finding when you're like

[31:39] totally wrong about something. I like

[31:41] that because it messes with my paradigm

[31:43] a little bit and I kind of like that.

[31:45] So, what I learned is that the editorial

[31:46] team thought they should be in charge of

[31:48] SEO and they hated me from day one. And

[31:51] here was really the death. Now what

[31:54] ended up happening in the organization

[31:56] this was you know pretty large

[31:58] organization is before any technical

[32:02] thing was done before any new anything

[32:04] was changed on the website before the

[32:07] systems guys changed anything and then

[32:10] what eventually happened is before the

[32:12] editorial team changed one of their

[32:13] practices everybody would ask have you

[32:16] spoken with Charles first that is not

[32:20] what you like that sounds like oh that's

[32:21] really cool No, that's not good in a

[32:23] large organization because you paint a a

[32:26] target on your back. And I was the first

[32:28] in the in the product team to get let

[32:29] go. Uh they gave me actually they gave

[32:31] me a nice little package. So it wasn't

[32:32] too bad, but it still annoys me. And

[32:35] then the the icing on the cake is the

[32:37] guy who my boss who actually g who

[32:40] actually gave me the the good news. Uh

[32:42] like six months later, he got axed and

[32:44] like the entire organization got axed.

[32:46] So a little bit of karma. So I was happy

[32:47] about that. So as far as I'm concerned,

[32:49] great freedom. I ain't got no strings on

[32:51] me anymore. So now I'm on my own and I

[32:53] don't know if I'm going to go back.

[32:54] Maybe I will. You can always get another

[32:55] job. Yay. Right.

[32:58] So that was fun, but so what? I have no

[33:00] idea how much time I have left. Like 20

[33:03] minutes, I think. Okay, cool. We got

[33:05] lots of time for questions that you guys

[33:06] have. So that was fun, but so what? Like

[33:09] who cares?

[33:11] Remember, it's the implication.

[33:14] So we've learned a bunch of cool things.

[33:16] So do you want to run out and get a

[33:17] bunch of search pages and you know spam

[33:19] sites using search pages? You can do

[33:20] that actually. And there's actually some

[33:22] fun things you can do with that that

[33:24] have nothing to do with links. But we've

[33:26] learned some things now. We understand

[33:28] how Google works. What do we know? We

[33:30] know that robots.txt does not keep

[33:33] Google out of parts of your website.

[33:36] It works, but not if there's links to

[33:38] it. So,

[33:42] fast forward to July 2025.

[33:45] Total FOMO on this event. Fear of

[33:47] missing out. Not even fear of missing

[33:48] out. just totally I just missed out on

[33:50] this one. This was in like Bangkok or

[33:52] Singapore or something like that. You're

[33:53] not getting me on a plane going over the

[33:55] Pacific. I've seen Lost. It Yeah, I've

[33:58] seen Lost. I've seen Castaway. Yeah. No,

[34:00] I'm not doing that.

[34:03] Although, I would be curious how long

[34:05] I'd like to how long I could survive. I

[34:07] like to think I'd live, but I'd probably

[34:09] die like in a week. Um

[34:12] I've seen a version. So, they had an

[34:14] event. They be in Google. uh search deep

[34:18] dive, Google search deep dive or

[34:20] something like that. The second they

[34:22] come to the US, all of you drop what

[34:24] you're doing and go to this darn event.

[34:26] It was a three-day event. I I can share

[34:28] the the link to I I went out and I troll

[34:31] I I went out and I just I scanned the

[34:34] internet. I found all the articles where

[34:38] people took all the pictures of the

[34:40] decks and I've even fig like a like you

[34:43] know I I have like it's a puzzle. I even

[34:45] tried to figure out which slides were

[34:48] first and try to order their slides. It

[34:50] does no one says any place, but I really

[34:51] wanted to figure it out. I have no

[34:53] context on a lot of the slides, but

[34:55] there were some really really

[34:56] interesting nuggets in their slide and

[34:58] it was three days and Google was like

[35:00] showing you under the petticoat and

[35:01] everything. I don't know if they're ever

[35:02] going to do this again. I think they

[35:04] realized they said too much. I don't

[35:05] know. But anyways,

[35:08] it was I don't remember search. It was

[35:11] uh it was deep dive search console deep

[35:15] dive.

[35:17] I will find it was SC CDD search console

[35:21] deep dive or search no search central

[35:23] deep dive. I'll find it. I'll send

[35:26] everybody a link. I'll I'll put it up

[35:27] and and share it in our little Rockstars

[35:32] app or something. Um

[35:35] yeah, search console deep dive. It had

[35:37] like a really long name. It was Google

[35:40] search console deep dive Bangkok 2025 or

[35:43] or something like that. But it was over

[35:45] the summer. It was really good

[35:46] information. I saw this deck. This was

[35:50] part of their presentation. I've seen

[35:52] something similar to this before about

[35:54] seven or eight years ago in a Google IO.

[35:56] They had a similar deck saying what

[35:59] links they can follow, what links they

[36:01] can't follow. Why would Google say this?

[36:03] Because they're saying, "Hey, if you

[36:05] want us to discover a page, this is the

[36:06] code you use. If you use this code,

[36:09] well, we can't discover the page.

[36:11] Interesting. So, if I do this, you can't

[36:15] follow my link.

[36:18] I learned that when I was with Verizon.

[36:20] So, when we did when we went from

[36:21] Verizon Warehouse over to Verizon.

[36:24] Um,

[36:26] I love working with other

[36:28] vendors.

[36:30] And the Adobe people came and said,

[36:33] "When you do your migration," and I did

[36:34] a whole thing on migrations. I'm not

[36:36] going to get into it deep here, but look

[36:38] up, you know, buy the by the

[36:42] by the whatever it is, by the thing

[36:43] where you can see all the decks and it's

[36:44] in 2023. It was a good one. Um, but

[36:47] anyways, when I was doing I gave I gave

[36:50] this story I'll give you like the very

[36:51] quick synopsis of it. When I was doing

[36:53] this, I I wanted to do a migration and

[36:55] that the Adobe people were like, "Oh,

[36:57] we're going to lose all of your there

[36:58] was something about losing the tracking

[37:00] or whatever." So, the Adobe folks said,

[37:01] "You need to put a parameter at URL."

[37:04] like what exactly do you want us to do?

[37:06] Oh, we're going to re we're going to 301

[37:08] redirect from verizon wireless.com yada

[37:09] yada yada to verizon.com yada yada yada

[37:12] parameter. I'm like uh I don't like the

[37:14] sound of that. I don't like the sound of

[37:16] that at all. Like and then they and they

[37:18] did my favorite thing that I love other

[37:20] we talked to our SEO guy and he says

[37:23] it's no problem. Yeah. Well, if your SEO

[37:24] guy even exists, he's full of It's

[37:26] a problem. So, I went through I said and

[37:30] I just that was one of and again this is

[37:31] why I don't last super long at these

[37:32] large corporations. I just put my foot

[37:34] down. said, "No, we're not doing that."

[37:35] And nobody in large corporations makes

[37:38] decisions. And we were just talking

[37:39] about it at breakfast today. There are

[37:41] no decision makers.

[37:43] Everyone's part of a team. Why? Because

[37:45] when you make a decision, you might be

[37:47] wrong. And being wrong is dangerous. You

[37:49] don't ever want to be wrong. Hey, who

[37:51] made this decision? Dory did. Well, she

[37:53] was wrong. Let's get her right. Like

[37:55] that's that's the philosophy. That's

[37:56] really the fear. What I found is that's

[38:00] not true. Nobody you've got once you get

[38:04] like to the senior director and or like

[38:07] junior VP level and higher. The problem

[38:09] these people have is they spend all

[38:10] their day literally just literally

[38:12] jumping from meeting to meeting. They're

[38:14] dropping meetings. I can't get to this

[38:16] meeting. I'll go to this meeting

[38:16] instead. They are hungry starving for

[38:21] people to make a damn decision because

[38:24] all they do is sit on these meetings or

[38:25] people go around in circles. So that

[38:27] helped me a lot until you get to a

[38:30] certain level and then it doesn't help

[38:32] so much. So anyways, um, so I said, "No,

[38:37] we're not going to." I talked to a dev

[38:38] and actually this guy is real clever.

[38:40] What he did is he used JavaScript to

[38:42] inject the parameter. I ran a test. I'm

[38:44] like, "Google never sees the parameter

[38:46] if you do it that way." Genius move.

[38:49] That's the way we did it. Um, and that

[38:51] kind of stuck in the back of my head for

[38:53] a while. And then I saw that slide and I

[38:54] saw this slide. So Google doesn't it

[38:56] says they can't extract basically what

[38:59] can Google extract href whether it's

[39:02] relative or not an explicit URL. Well we

[39:05] know that's true. Google can extract

[39:07] Google claims they can extract a

[39:10] relative.

[39:12] This is the first time I'm seeing him

[39:14] say this. I don't believe that. I had

[39:17] the flu and the sinus infection over the

[39:19] over the Christmas break. So I didn't

[39:21] get a chance to test it. I I started my

[39:22] test a week ago. I just checked my logs

[39:25] last night. Google still hasn't found my

[39:27] relative text link yet. So, I don't know

[39:30] if that means Google just doesn't like

[39:32] my site. I pinged the crap out of it

[39:33] with all the indexers. That's a whole

[39:35] different presentation on one's working.

[39:37] There's a lot of indexers that don't

[39:38] work. By the way, guys, be careful who

[39:39] you get the money to. Check your log

[39:41] files. If you don't know how to check

[39:42] your log files, come talk to me. I'll

[39:43] show you how to check your log files.

[39:45] But yeah, there's a lot of people that

[39:47] say, "Oh, this does this." Any tool you

[39:50] have and it says we do this. check them,

[39:54] make sure they're actually doing that.

[39:55] There's a lot of tools that don't do

[39:57] anything other than take your money. So,

[40:01] um, but this is really interesting. It's

[40:03] the implication

[40:05] and this is this is the information and

[40:08] this isn't really new. Google IO like

[40:11] eight or nine years ago talked about

[40:12] this. They just didn't have the relative

[40:13] ones.

[40:15] So, here's an example.

[40:17] So, how many how many folks in here have

[40:19] like an e-commerce client? And how many

[40:22] times have you gone into their pages

[40:23] report and seen something that looked

[40:25] like this? 57 in uh 30 I'm sorry, 53,000

[40:30] indexed pages. 277,000

[40:33] non-indexed pages. Well, wait a minute.

[40:36] If it's not indexed, some folks will

[40:37] say, "Well, we don't care. It's not

[40:38] indexed." Yeah, but Google knows about

[40:40] it. Google's crawling it. There's your

[40:42] crawl button. I can't do this kind of

[40:44] math. It's way too early. I don't wake

[40:46] up until about 11 o'clock. Like I'm

[40:48] still asleep right now. So I don't know

[40:50] that math, but that tells me it's like

[40:52] what only 20% of the URLs like 80% of

[40:55] the URLs Google's going to 80% of the

[40:57] traffic from Google bots is going to

[40:59] pages that we don't want indexed. That's

[41:01] a big problem. And so one of the things

[41:03] I've learned and I work with clients

[41:04] with this is if you have an a tag link

[41:09] pointing to pages that you don't want

[41:11] indexed, guess what's going to happen?

[41:14] Google's unindex, but Charles, I put

[41:16] them in my robots.txt. No, Google

[41:18] themselves says, "No, robots.txt, we're

[41:20] still going to crawl it if you have a

[41:21] link to it." With descriptive text, we

[41:24] know isn't true. You don't need

[41:25] descriptive text. You don't need to

[41:26] close your A tag. You just the discovery

[41:29] part of Google is looking for the ah

[41:31] ref. That's what it's looking for. It's

[41:33] not looking for anything else.

[41:34] Obviously, it looks for the the

[41:35] descriptive text, but it doesn't need

[41:37] it.

[41:42] If you have a page you don't want

[41:43] indexed, don't send an a tag link to it.

[41:45] What about a no index? Give two seconds.

[41:47] What about a no index tag? We already

[41:49] learned from John Mueller. It's a no

[41:51] sir. It's not a no index. I tested it.

[41:53] Google still crawl in.

[42:15] So, you said the magic word

[42:16] theoretically. So, theoretically, here's

[42:18] how you fix the problem. Uh, and I'll

[42:20] explain why I'm I'm joking and saying

[42:22] theoretical. I'm not joking. I'm being

[42:23] serious. But, so I have a client. They

[42:26] have a homespun CMS. They are a

[42:29] e-commerce medium-sized e-commerce. Got

[42:31] a lot of medium-sized e-commerce

[42:32] clients. actually um not David. Okay. Um

[42:38] they had this problem. This isn't from

[42:40] their side. This is from another guy

[42:41] that brought. But anyways, so what we

[42:43] did is the first thing we did is we got

[42:44] rid of all the A tags to the search

[42:46] pages because they had facets and search

[42:48] pages like crazy. They were in the

[42:49] millions. It was insane. So we got rid

[42:51] of all the A tags.

[42:53] Then what we did, so step one, get rid

[42:56] of the A tags. And then we learned after

[42:58] like six months, nope, there's one here.

[42:59] Oh, there's one in this template. And

[43:00] there's I did a lot of hunting. Once

[43:02] we've got rid of all the a tags, problem

[43:04] is Google still has these URLs in your

[43:06] index and then they go back and crawl

[43:08] the crawl up the URL. So even on the

[43:11] page you want out of the index can't

[43:13] have a tags pointing to links that you

[43:14] don't want because they're going to go

[43:15] back to the damn page because it's in

[43:17] the index and find the a tags. It's a

[43:19] mess. And then what you can do is go to

[43:22] the removal tool, say get rid of this.

[43:24] The removal tool is actually super

[43:26] powerful. Be careful. I did a test. I

[43:28] took a page that box put in the removal

[43:30] tool and see what happens. Boom. It's

[43:32] out. I watched the log files because I

[43:34] was expecting Google a Google bot to hit

[43:36] the page. No, Google doesn't hit the

[43:38] page and you put in the removal tool.

[43:40] It's a backend thing, I guess. So,

[43:42] that's just, you know, be aware. So,

[43:45] then you put the URL prefix into the

[43:48] removal tool. It'll take it out of the

[43:50] index. As long as Google doesn't find

[43:52] the link again, it shouldn't come back.

[43:55] Yeah. Sean.

[43:59] Yeah.

[44:06] I'm

[44:08] right now.

[44:20] That's right.

[44:32] Um, all right. So, it says website.

[44:38] Yeah.

[44:40] Business slash service. And then I have

[44:44] And then I have another one that says

[44:46] slashca

[44:52] whatever the hell that is.

[44:58] So that's a little different issue that

[45:00] is all right. So now I'm going to

[45:02] pretend that like I understand how

[45:03] servers work. I don't. Depending on your

[45:06] site, some sites and I do a little test

[45:08] with this with all my clients on is just

[45:10] start throwing stuff at the end of the

[45:12] URL and what does the site do? Does it

[45:15] give you a 404? Does a 301? Does it give

[45:18] you a 200 status on the page? And then

[45:20] what does it display?

[45:23] You want that's the first thing I always

[45:24] do with clients. I always like to say

[45:25] what the heck can happen if I go to the

[45:28] HTTP, go to the dubdubdub, non-

[45:29] dubdubdub, throw my favorite is fake

[45:32] page at the end of a URL. What does it

[45:34] do? If it does something like that, you

[45:36] have a potential, not necessarily, but

[45:39] you have a potential black hat exploit

[45:41] on your on your site, right? Because

[45:43] someone can mess your site up.

[45:48] I'm not going to say it on video, but

[45:49] there's ways that people can take that

[45:51] knowledge and hurt a site with it. I

[45:53] don't really want to black hat tax

[45:55] because that's

[45:56] the next one is the next question. Okay.

[46:00] So, what I've gathered from this from

[46:02] this information is that if we go out

[46:06] and create a bunch of pages, okay, and

[46:10] we link to

[46:13] the big sites, okay, and we say that and

[46:16] we we our link is referring to a search.

[46:20] And let's say we put something in like

[46:23] uh one of our clients names and their

[46:25] address and their phone number and we've

[46:28] created a whole bunch of links over to

[46:32] Ox News

[46:34] and it's referring to that, Google's

[46:37] going to index that and even though that

[46:40] page doesn't exist, does that work as a

[46:43] citation?

[46:46] I'm not ignoring you. I just want to go

[46:48] back to this slide.

[46:49] I I know this question's a little evil.

[46:52] So, I'm going to answer that. We can

[46:54] chat about it between sessions.

[46:56] Okay.

[46:56] But I'm going to answer that officially

[46:58] saying ignore the trick. Like we learn

[47:00] like there's an interesting trick in

[47:01] here, but there's an implication.

[47:04] Okay.

[47:04] And let's talk about what the

[47:05] implication is. And you're you're

[47:07] perfect segue by the way, Sean.

[47:09] Yeah.

[47:10] Perfect segue to talk about. Okay. Well,

[47:11] where does this

[47:12] because that was kind of my takeaway

[47:13] from it. I was like, man, I could go out

[47:15] to all I'm gonna go to Nike and then go

[47:17] Forge. a reason I there's a reason I sat

[47:19] on this deck for two years. I'm like, I

[47:21] don't even know if I want to ever talk

[47:22] about this

[47:22] because it feels like that this may be

[47:25] some of what I see on some of my sites,

[47:28] they're trying to do this approach. I

[47:31] I'll tell you what some people are

[47:33] trying to do with things like this.

[47:35] Here's the takeaway. If Google see a

[47:38] link or a URL, they're going to follow

[47:40] it and you're not going to stop it.

[47:42] Google has a problem actually. They got

[47:44] a crawling machine that will not stop

[47:46] crawling. That's all it does is crawl,

[47:49] crawl, and discover URLs. But we can

[47:52] learn from this indexation. Everybody

[47:54] talks about, "I'm having trouble getting

[47:56] indexation or whatnot." Well, have you

[47:57] ever thought about building an

[47:58] indexation PBN?

[48:01] Why fight the spammers? Just do what

[48:03] they do, right? Like, you know, now I've

[48:07] listened to to Brian Winnham a couple

[48:09] times, and if I built a P I wouldn't

[48:11] just build a indexation PBN. I would do

[48:13] a bunch of other stuff. There's ways to

[48:14] monetize that stuff. There's cool little

[48:15] tricks there. Again, I like putting

[48:17] pieces of the puzzle together, but you

[48:19] don't have to. There's people that talk

[48:20] about different ways of getting things

[48:21] indexed, and I've tried a lot of things.

[48:24] If you built a site and you built up a

[48:27] good-looking site, you could totally

[48:29] just put freaking unclosed a tags at the

[48:32] end and get everything you want your you

[48:34] want your you want your pages indexed.

[48:35] You want your, you know, sec primary,

[48:38] secondary, tertiary backlinks indexed,

[48:40] just put them in there. So that's one

[48:42] way. Link building. Don't obsess. You

[48:44] don't need a link. Don't obsess over the

[48:48] ATA tag. I learned this years ago when I

[48:49] was at an e-commerce site. They did

[48:51] party supplies and costumes. We used to

[48:53] always get calls from journalists

[48:57] asking for me to do a little bit of a

[48:59] they'd asking for stuff, asking for

[49:01] quotes or whatever right around

[49:03] Halloween. And the first year I made the

[49:06] mistake and I asked for a link. And

[49:08] you'd have thought that the C-word and

[49:10] the N-word got together and had a baby

[49:12] with the way this person reacted to me

[49:14] asking for a link. They were outraged

[49:16] when I asked for a link. And I'm like,

[49:18] "All right, I can never say the word

[49:19] link to a journalist." So the next time

[49:22] I talk to the journal to a journalist, I

[49:24] said, "Hey, do you mind giving me a

[49:26] citation?"

[49:28] That's the word. Sometimes it'll be

[49:31] clickable. Sometime don't say clickable.

[49:33] Just say, "Do you mind giving me a

[49:34] citation?" And then what I learned to do

[49:37] is I say, "Hey, by the way, the company

[49:39] was called Costume Supercenter. They

[49:40] don't exist anymore." That's a whole fun

[49:42] story about what happened in the costume

[49:43] business. But anyways,

[49:46] what I asked him, I say, "Hey, our

[49:48] name's Costume Super Center." People are

[49:49] always messing up our name. When you

[49:51] site us, can you make sure you say, and

[49:54] I gave them the exact spelling and how

[49:55] we like, "Not a problem." And then

[49:57] they'll say, "You know what? I'll

[49:58] mention your URL, too." Oh, great. Thank

[50:00] you very much. I hadn't even thought of

[50:02] that. Again, dumbest slumps. Um,

[50:06] so ask for citations. Internal pages

[50:08] crawl budget. If you don't want a web

[50:09] page found, don't link to it with a tag.

[50:11] And you can't even put a text URL in

[50:13] there. Page sculpting reborn. There are

[50:17] still page rank. It still exists. It's

[50:19] still part of the algorithm. May even be

[50:21] deprecated a little bit, but it's still

[50:23] in there. If you want to sculpt, you can

[50:25] still sculpt. You just can't do the no

[50:27] follow, do follow trick that they people

[50:30] used years ago. If you want to sculpt,

[50:32] just don't link or link using a link

[50:35] that Google doesn't follow. And Bob's

[50:37] your uncle, we got sculpting back again.

[50:43] That's the takeaway. By the way, not go

[50:45] spam people's search.

[50:48] That's why again, I sat on this for a

[50:50] while because like I don't want to teach

[50:52] people

[50:54] spamming because just build good stuff

[50:56] like you know this that could go away

[50:58] tomorrow. you know, somebody at some

[51:00] company, Eventbrite, wherever you spam,

[51:02] could not could go to their Google rep

[51:04] just like I did and get your page just

[51:07] burned to the ground. And I check every

[51:09] like six to eight months, I'll check

[51:10] that site, see if it ever came back. It

[51:12] has yet to come back. It's been over two

[51:14] years, so that site's gone. The network

[51:16] is still out there, but that site's

[51:18] gone. So, you know, don't poke the bear.

[51:21] If you want to contact me, LinkedIn is

[51:23] actually one of the better ways of

[51:24] getting a hold of me. Um, I am on

[51:27] Discord. I am on teams. You just Google

[51:29] Charles Taylor SEO and you'll find like

[51:32] a million ways to reach out to me. Uh,

[51:33] but you got to put the SEO part in

[51:35] there. If you just Google Charles

[51:36] Taylor, it's a different Charles Taylor.

[51:37] He doesn't know nearly as much about SEO

[51:39] as I did and he's, you know, like a war

[51:41] criminal or something. So, I am on

[51:44] Facebook. You are welcome to find me on

[51:46] Facebook. It's just Charles Taylor. I

[51:47] think it's Charles H. Taylor or maybe

[51:49] Charles Taylor. I am on there. I'll be

[51:51] honest. I don't do Facebook much. So, if

[51:54] you reach out to me on Facebook, you'll

[51:55] learn the same thing that Marina look

[51:56] learned. you'll hear back from me like

[51:58] in two days because I only check like

[52:00] every now and again and the only reason

[52:02] I check is because of Jose's wife

[52:03] because she puts some funny up

[52:05] there and so I'll read her post and

[52:07] that's pretty much all I do and then I

[52:08] leave. Um so but yeah, if you can find

[52:12] me, reach out to me. You know, I like I

[52:15] like to steal ideas from other people

[52:17] and I think Joy had a really good de

[52:20] slap there where it showed I love her

[52:21] thing. I was going to make it last

[52:22] night, but Jose and I were out having

[52:25] burgers, so I came back late. I'm like,

[52:27] I'm tired of not making that slide. But

[52:29] yeah, I just talk to me. I'm easy to

[52:31] find, easy to talk to. You can contact

[52:33] me in two years and say, hey, you did

[52:35] this thing like, yeah, sure, whatever.

[52:37] Who you want to? Happy to talk to.