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Kenichi is a leading SEO blogger in Japan. I put him right on the spot with questions about FAQ and Q&A markup – he sets me straight – Q&A is for user-generated content. For FAQ the debate whether we should have single page for all FAQ or multiple pages. Google is still experimenting, so there is no conclusive answer. Although he makes a great point for putting multiple FAQ on one page. Kenichi goes onto JobPosting, citing Google case studies. Then onto Event markup. And over to which is the #1 search engine in Japan. Clue: not Google. But Google nonetheless. Confused? I was! So much so that I suggest eating hot soup with your finger

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Sitting in Google’s office in Zurich. We discuss the numerous John Mueller’s in Google… and the world. And the problems with the ambiguity inherent in people’s names. John cycles to work, eats in the café, answers emails, meets with Google teams, but doesn’t play much pool. We then discuss beer, street names and Google offices that used to be a brewery. Then I suggest that SEO is changing at an accelerating rate – John doesn’t agree. Then a bit of Javascript SEO and valid HTML. Then the importance of having a system and being consistent – John does agree. He gives a lovely insight into his role at Google, what he is trying to achieve and how he goes about it. A bit about darwinism in search, the increasingly multimedia SERPs, onSERP SEO and GMB. We have a bit of a love-in about Google Maps, and reminisce about how life was different before Google Maps. That leads naturally onto knowledge graphs, relationships, entities and attributes… and review spam. John points out that most of what he says is site-specific, and two thirds of what he is quoted as saying is misquoted or quoted out of context. He is very phlegmatic about that, and says he is moving more towards talking off the record and having one on one conversations.

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We start with a discussion about sunglasses, then quickly move onto InOrbit2019 in Slovenia and some great advice from Ian Anderson Gray and Dennis Wu – create a one minute video. now. Going into people’s houses to do their paperwork in France (sounds creepy to me, but isn’t … and is a ‘thing’, apparently). Administrative Phobia is a thing too, and ZenCafé is going to help people with that problem. Interestingly, InOrbit2019 and ZenCafé is the (strange) combination that pushed Anders into DIY marketing and inspired him to embrace the empowerment age. Anders brilliantly takes DIY Marketing to the next level live on screen (you’ll need to watch the YouTube video). Onto the fear of looking stupid (Anders and I got over that a long time ago :) We get a bit sidetracked with Paul McCartney (and I sing a Beatles song). Anders goes on to sing a Danish love song adapted for LinkedIn (who wouldn’t want to hear THAT ?)Andre Then back on track with a video a day to promote on social media. Anders’ motto – Do It Yourself, I have no clue I will try. Brilliant. I make the worst Bing/Google joke ever. Another great quote from Anders. The more you try yourself, the better you will be at hiring people to do it for you. Anders answers the question “What is perfect?” (wow !). Then he tells me where innovation from. And that rotten food is the way forward in Digital Marketing. Makes sense to me. Go figure ! Finally, your marketing budget can be 150 €. And Money can’t buy you love.

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Brad starts by telling me why Microsoft won’t stop Bing anytime soon even if the they stay on a low market share. He also gives a breakdown of the MAG cloud businesses, and moves onto the voice assistants. Microsoft are a great number 2 player who bide their time and step in when the number 1 makes a mistake. Microsoft were ‘the borg’ and are now a nice, cute puppy. They are the slowly slowly gets the monkey company. Google have messed up on search, apparently with entity based search, specifically in cases where there are multiple entities. Bing are better at entity based search. Brad looks at Google as a verb, and why Google are now OK with it. A quick diversion Facebook being a bigger worry for Google than Amazon. Amazon is not a worldwide competitor, whereas Facebook is. We have a quick chat about the different business models. AWS vs Azure vs Google. And finish up with ‘What ARE Facebook doing?’. Brad figures out a new business model. Mark Zuckerberg, are you listening?

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Quick fun discussion about Scottish accents (he says that he sounds like Mrs Doubtfire on Helium). Then onto Brand, Brand, Brand. Ross loves brand :) A great approach to linkbuilding / PR is to help make their life easier… and to make YOUR life easier, scrape their articles and use NLP to write the perfect pitch to each journalist – Ross calls this programmatic PR (and it is brilliant). We manage to get onto Justin Bieber who doesn’t have two babies (and Ross makes a brilliant groan-worthy joke). We briefly discuss hacking the social media algorithms – trick is to have a video of my daughter playing with a cat. Onto images and then videos (Ross is enthusiastic) and then trite Cornflake Packet philosophy in PR (Ross is sick in his mouth). Interestingly he was down the Old Kent Road when he started his Bootstrap business. He’s not there any more. Quick plug for the Canonical Chronicle – no idea what is in it, but the name is brilliant.

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Why should we respect web standards when Google doesn’t even respect those who DO respect them? There are more invalid sites on the web than valid. I suggest 98% with absolutely no supporting evidence. Simon wants a reward system for well-built sites. I suggest that there maybe an indirect ranking benefit. Simon refutes rather deftly. He then moves on to getting inaccessible US results on Google UK. More and more US sites are blocking EU visitors due to GDPR, money-saving and copycatting. The bugbear goes further to include a rant about US-centric results. Next onto the homepage deindexing issue – 6 days to fix a bug is simply too long. Are Google losing control with the AI stuff they are pushing out? Simon suggests that Google’s AI is all string and sticky tape with Homer Simpson in charge. Then onto a gremlin about structured data. Apparently Screaming Frog have a great validation tool (that I didn’t know about)… and he loves their customer support (and Hover’s). Google is a slow, giant corporate beast with internal politics and infighting. Along the way, he sneaks in some French.

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First question. Very obvious “What are the ranking factors”. He tells me that ranking factors are just a means to an end. Then Nagu tells me that relevancy is Bing’s North Star. There is no point in distinguishing between ranking factors and ranking signals. I ask what the ranking factors are (again) and Nagu politely that he gets leery when answering on the details. Tells me that obsessing on individual ranking factors is a futile excercise since the factors and their weightings are constantly changing. He guides me to the three considerations that a search engine to optimise user satisfaction. Relevancy, Quality and Context. We move onto what is the optimal keyword density. understanding without Deep Learning and Neural Networks (that Bing has been using since 2006). I manage to bully Nagu into agreeing that that everything we do as SEOs should serve Understanding, Deliverability and Credibility. I tell Nagu my theory about how the topic layer might work and he tells me my theory is a great product idea. So I suppose that means my theory is wrong and isn’t going to happen anytime soon :( Then a chat about the weather which sounds boring but isn’t. Does Bing have the same bidding system as Google for rich elements. No clear answer there but Nagu hints that it is a similar system. Bing is getting jiggy with real time information so freshness and recency is really important to Bing and is a driver of rich elements too. Theresa May gets a mention – because when she was 5, “Bing wasn’t a Thing”.