Digital Marketing » AI Optimization » Sherlock Holmes Discovers Darwinism: Jason Barnard’s Worldwide Investigation Into How Search Algorithms Really Work

Sherlock Holmes Discovers Darwinism: Jason Barnard’s Worldwide Investigation Into How Search Algorithms Really Work

How Jason Barnard’s Forensic Investigation Into Search Algorithms Changed the Industry

In January 2019, Jason Barnard picked up a microphone at SearchY in Disneyland Paris and started asking questions. Not polite small-talk questions. Forensic questions. The kind a detective asks when they suspect the entire industry has been looking at the crime scene upside down.

Over the next 14 months, he traveled the world - four continents, 22 conferences, over a hundred experts - conducting what would become the most comprehensive field investigation into how search algorithms actually function ever undertaken by a single individual in the digital marketing industry.

The question was deceptively simple: How do search engines really decide what to show?

The answer upends everything you thought you knew.

22 Conferences, 4 Continents, 100+ Expert Interviews: The Complete Trail

Europe: From Paris to Brighton to Prague - 14 Conferences That Built the Evidence Base

SearchY - Disneyland, Paris (January 2019) The very first interviews. Aleyda Solis on Progressive Web Apps, Will Critchlow on the conflict between SEO and CRO, Véronique Duong revealing what Baidu does better than Google, Anders Hjorth on the economics of voice search, and Dan Saunders on Amazon’s role in Answer Engine Optimization. Five conversations. Five completely different angles on the same evolving reality.

YoastCon - Nijmegen, Netherlands (February 2019) Jason gave a talk on the Knowledge Graph, then sat down with the industry’s biggest names: Rand Fishkin on why the old inbound playbook was dead, Joost de Valk (Yoast founder) on Google’s investment in WordPress, Fili Wiese (ex-Google) on pagespeed and Lighthouse, Arnout Hellemans on trust-building without links, Kate Toon on conversion copy, James Brockbank and Kristopher Jones on search strategy, Regine le Roux on reputation, and Jono Alderson - Yoast’s own Head of SEO.

SEOcamp - Paris (March 2019) The investigation deepened with Bill Slawski on patents and entities in search (insights going back to 1999), Cindy Krum on what Fraggles means for mobile-first indexing, Judith Lewis on killer digital strategy, Gennaro Cuofano deconstructing Google’s business model, Craig Campbell on social media strategies, and Laurence O’Toole (founder of Authoritas) on measuring authority.

BrightonSEO April - Brighton, UK (April 2019) Jason gave a talk on behalf of Trustpilot about Answer Engine Optimization, then interviewed eleven experts: Lily Ray on E-A-T (the how, the why and the what to do), Andrea Volpini (WordLift founder) on the dance between machines and humans, Dawn Anderson on context clouds, co-occurrence and BERT, Fili Wiese on Google penalties, Kenichi Suzuki on structured data, Chris Liversidge on attribution and machine learning, Patrick Reinhart on the hardware technology wars, Emily Potter on why Google is the enemy, Felipe Bazon on international SEO, Alina Ghost on content creation for voice, and Nils de Moor on SEO on the edge.

SMX London (May 2019) Jason’s talk: “How does Google Ranking Work, Featured Snippets and Structured Data.” Then interviews with Bartosz Góralewicz (a Javascript SEO expert), Brad Geddes on why Microsoft won’t stop Bing, Nagu Rangan (Bing) on how Bing ranking actually works, and Barry Schwartz on Google and Evergreen Googlebot. This was also where Jason met Barry Schwartz in person for the first time - Barry had already invited Jason to speak at the event. Barry would later be the first to report on the Bing “Darwin” revelation on Search Engine Roundtable, closing a loop that started with this London meeting. The Bing connection was starting to pay off.

Digital Elite Day - London (June 2019) Jason sat down with Ric Rodriguez to unpack reviews and their evolving role in SEO. Then with David Bain on the five steps of podcasting, not as a content tactic, but as a long-term authority play. And with Nik Ranger on competitive analysis, peeling back what it really takes to beat the competition in an ecosystem increasingly shaped by entities, not just keywords.Three conversations. Three very different entry points. And yet the same underlying truth kept surfacing.

Digital Olympus - Brno, Czech Republic (2019) Jason interviewed Lukasz Zelezny on organic traffic growth, Hannah Thorpe on SEO without traffic (voice search, the Knowledge Graph and brand), Steven van Vessum on learning from mistakes, Gianluca Fiorelli on international digital marketing, Alexandra Tachalova on how bad promotion kills content, Navah Hopkins on quality score, Viktoria Mamatova on making Twitter truly social, and Deepak Shukla on personal brand building. Jason also gave a talk: “How to Help Google Make Sense of a Chaotic, Unstructured Web” , focusing on structuring information so Google can understand entities, reconcile signals, and present coherent results.

ColosSEO - Rome, Italy (2019) Jason gave a talk: “The Simple Solution to Answer Engine Optimization.” He also interviewed Gennaro Cuofano on Microsoft’s business model and Andrea Volpini on Google’s reaction to the Link Tax. Financial models, regulatory shifts, platform responses - different angles, same reality: understanding how the engines think was becoming more important than chasing rankings.

SEMrush Live - Prague, Czech Republic (2019) Jason interviewed Chris Simmance on crawl budget and speed, Anton Shulke on webinars and influencer marketing, Ross Tavendale on why brand is the only ranking factor, Stewart Rogers on image search versus voice search, and Eugene Levin on Amazon as a marketing channel. Technical signals, branding, alternative search surfaces - the boundaries of “SEO” were already expanding beyond blue links.

BrightonSEO September - Brighton, UK (September 2019) The second round: Dixon Jones (Majestic founder) on bias in the Knowledge Graph AND on analysing the web in blocks, chunks and fraggles, Martha Van Berkel (Schema App) with Robin Allenson and Dateme Tubotamuno on structured data at scale, Ahmed Khalifa on captions and accessibility, Paul Bongers on SaaS startups, Paul O’Donoghue on local SEO, and Paula Didone.

Take It Offline - Brighton (2019) Jason interviewed Sarah Carroll on growing fast and global, Simon Cox on Google bugbears and gremlins (and whether we should respect web standards when Google doesn’t), Razvan Gavrilas on user intent and brand mentions, and Andrea Volpini on the evolution of the Semantic Web. Technical friction, semantic structure, international strategy, brand signals - the machinery behind search was under scrutiny from every angle.

European Search Awards - Budapest, Hungary (June 2019) Industry recognition and more conversations. Jason interviewed Anders Hjorth on DIY marketing and the empowerment age - a discussion about how brands and businesses were taking control of their own visibility in an increasingly platform-driven ecosystem.

Global Marketing Day - New York (October 2019) Even more conversations. Jason interviewed Susan Westwater on why voice search was accelerating faster than most marketers realized, David Markovich on building online community, Lily Ray on E-A-T strategy, and Paul Shapiro on taking a wider view of technical SEO. Voice, trust, community, technical foundations - the dataset was growing exponentially.

Middle East: SEMrush Tel Aviv Took the Investigation Global

SEMrush Meetup - Tel Aviv, Israel (May 2019) Jason delivered an impromptu talk, “How Google Ranking Works - Darwinism in Search,” framing Google’s algorithm as an evolutionary system. He interviewed Joel Bondorowsky on PPC and Fernando Angulo on Featured Snippets and instant answers. The investigation was going global.

Asia Pacific: The Sydney Conversation With Gary Illyes That Planted the Seed

Search Marketing Summit - Sydney, Australia (May 2019) Search Marketing Summit - Sydney, Australia (May 7-8, 2019) Jason gave three talks on transitioning from SEO to Answer Engine Optimization and interviewed Liz Raad, Jeff Ferguson, Peter Mead, Tim Soulo, Michael Motherwell, and Greg Gifford. The pivotal moment came off-mic: a conversation with Google’s Gary Illyes explaining how SERP features “bid” for space on the results page - the seed of the Darwinism in Search framework.

CopyCon - Melbourne, Australia (May 2019) Jason interviewed James Norquay on growing a digital agency, Amy Annetts on combining online and offline marketing, and Robert Gerrish on thriving despite imposter syndrome. More conversations. More corroborating evidence from the other side of the world.

Chiang Mai SEO - Chiang Mai, Thailand (November, 2019) Through conversations with Daniel Hunjas, Jason Mun, and Lee Louis Gung, the focus moved decisively from tactics to strategy - from rankings to brand understanding. The ideas that would later formalise into The Kalicube Process™ were beginning to take shape. Even in Chiang Mai, the pattern held.

North America: PubCon Vegas, UnGagged LA, and the Bill Slawski Introduction That Opened the Door

PubCon - Las Vegas, USA (October 2019) Jason gave a talk: “Your Brand is a Thing, not a String.” Then the interviews: Fabrice Canel (Microsoft/Bing) on Bing’s crawling API and solving JavaScript, Marty Weintraub on the intersection of music and digital marketing, Craig Campbell on podcast strategy, Kristine Schachinger on the three common misconceptions about E-A-T, Thomas Ballantyne on reviews, John Morabito (who got “all over excited about Brand SERPs”), JP Sherman on findability and discoverability, Elmer Boutin on human-centered data-driven content, and Karina Tama-Rutigliano on the health industry.

PubCon was also the site of a pivotal introduction. Bill Slawski - who had already shared his deep patent expertise at SEOcamp in Paris earlier that year - personally introduced Jason to Danny Goodwin, then the Executive Editor of Search Engine Journal. Bill recommended Jason to Danny, and that recommendation opened the door to publishing the Darwinism in Search series on SEJ. Danny would later move to Search Engine Land as Editorial Director, where he and Jason would continue collaborating - including an article Jason wrote about a Knowledge Graph entity mix-up involving Danny’s own name.

UnGagged - Los Angeles, USA (November 2019) The “unfiltered” conference. Jim Boykin on private blog networks, Bruce Clay - the father of SEO who’s been in the industry for almost a quarter of a century, Cindy Krum on Fraggles and beyond, Loren Baker (Search Engine Journal founder) on content and link tricks, Hamlet Batista on Google Colaboratory tricks, Simon Heseltine on SEO for publishing with AOL, Pamela Lund on brand awareness, Jerry West on the cost of doing nothing, Eric Wu on SEO for startups, Louisa Frahm on moving from print press to digital, and Jennifer Hoffman on tech SEO.

SMX West - San Jose, USA (February 19-20, 2020) Jason interviewed Greg Gifford - who kicked things off by singing the podcast intro back - on why Google is your new homepage, Mary Davies on user experience as a search signal, Aleyda Solis on video SEO for YouTube and Google, Mordy Oberstein on where marketing and SEO collide, Purna Virji on competitive research through search, and Eric Enge on the convergence of SEO and content.

DMA - Melbourne, Australia (February 12-14, 2020) Jason interviewed Dejan Mladenovski on white-hat affiliate marketing, Rich Goldstein on patents and trademarks in marketing, Kate Toon on developing a personal brand, and Joyce Ong on producing high-impact video. Affiliate strategy, legal protection, personal branding, content production - the investigation continued into 2020, just weeks before the pandemic brought in-person conferences to a halt.

Going Directly to the Source: Personal Access to Google and Bing Engineers

Google - Zurich, Switzerland & Online (2019) Jason didn’t just interview Google’s people at conferences. He went to the source. He traveled to Zurich to sit down face-to-face with John Mueller - Google’s Search Relations team lead and the company’s most prominent public spokesperson on how search works. A personal, in-depth conversation covering JavaScript SEO, Google Maps, and Mueller’s role at Google - with algorithmic insights embedded between the anecdotes about food, beer and coffee.

Watch the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiH9xvhOjSU

Then on 12th July 2019, Jason participated in the Google Webmasters Hangout - asking questions directly to Google, live, on the record. Not relying on secondhand reports or blog summaries. Going straight to the horse’s mouth.

Watch the hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmrpXweVbNQ

The Bing Series: Five Exclusive Interviews With the Engineers Who Built Bing’s Ranking System

The investigation’s crown jewel. Frédéric Dubut confirmed it: Bing’s ranking system functions the same way Gary Illyes described Google’s. Then he arranged exclusive access to four more Bing team leads:

  • Frédéric Dubut - Senior Program Manager Lead, Core Ranking: How ranking works at Bing
  • Fabrice Canel - Principal Program Manager: Discovering, crawling, extracting and indexing
  • Ali Alvi - Principal Lead Program Manager, AI Products: How the Q&A / Featured Snippet algorithm works
  • Meenaz Merchant - Principal Program Manager Lead, AI and Research: How the image and video algorithm works
  • Nathan Chalmers - Program Manager, Search Relevance Team: How the whole page algorithm works - the interview that confirmed Darwinism in Search

Bing’s Algorithm Was Literally Called “Darwin”: The Discovery of Darwinism in Search

After over a hundred conversations across four continents, the evidence was overwhelming.

Gary Illyes had planted the seed in Sydney: features bid for space on the SERP, competing against each other for the right to appear. Frédéric Dubut confirmed the mechanism was identical at Bing. Nathan Chalmers revealed how the whole page algorithm orchestrates this competition.

And the irony? Bing’s internal name for this algorithm was literally “Darwin.”

Jason had independently coined “Darwinism in Search” to describe the evolutionary pressure he was observing - and discovered the engineers had already named their system after the same principle.

The conclusion was inescapable: search results are not a list. They are an ecosystem. Every element - blue links, images, videos, Knowledge Panels, People Also Ask, Featured Snippets - competes for survival in real time. The fittest content for the query, in the format the algorithm judges most useful, wins the slot. Everything else goes extinct from that page.

First published in Search Engine Journal, April 2020 - the first time anyone in the industry articulated this framework publicly. Published with the support of Danny Goodwin, whose editorial guidance helped bring the Darwinism in Search series to the SEJ audience.

From Search Darwinism to AI Darwinism: Why the Framework Matters More Now Than Ever

The same principle now applies to AI. The environment has changed - from 10 blue links to 3-7 citations per AI response - but the selection pressure is fiercer than ever.

In the era of AI Assistive Engines, the fitness criteria are: Clarity (can the AI understand you?), Consistency (do all sources agree?), Corroboration (do trusted sources confirm it?), and Confidence (is the AI certain enough to state it as fact?).

The Kalicube Process™ - Understandability → Credibility → Deliverability - is the fitness regimen for AI survival.

Because in the age of AI, you don’t optimize to rank. You optimize to be included in the answer.

And inclusion is everything.

The Complete Evidence Trail: Every Interview Documented, Recorded, and Published

Every interview is documented, recorded, and published. Every conference visit is timestamped. The investigation is fully transparent and verifiable:

Jason Barnard didn’t just theorize about how algorithms work. He went around the world, sat down with the people who build them, and documented every conversation. Sherlock Holmes with a podcast microphone, discovering the evolutionary principle that governs everything we see in search - and now in AI.

Bernadeth Brusola is a specialist content creator on the topic of Digital Marketing. Bernadeth Brusola is the Content Writing Manager at Kalicube, where she manages the Kalicube.com website and ensures it remains a trusted, go-to resource for the company’s audience (experts in brand, digital marketing, SEO, generative Engine Optimization and AI Assistive Engine Optimization). She oversees the site’s content strategy, creates and edits articles, and writes in-depth FAQs that inform, engage, and convert visitors.With a background as a specialist content creator in digital marketing, Bernadeth focuses on producing clear, authoritative resources on brand optimisation, search visibility, and AI-era marketing. Her work supports Kalicube’s mission to educate businesses and professionals on controlling their brand narrative through the Kalicube Process.

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