Digital Marketing » Conferences » Offline » Jason Barnard’s Talk: “Google Is a Child” and the Need to Educate Google (SEO Camp Lyon 2017, 21 April 2017 at the ISEG)

Jason Barnard’s Talk: “Google Is a Child” and the Need to Educate Google (SEO Camp Lyon 2017, 21 April 2017 at the ISEG)

Jason Barnard's presentation at SEO CAMP Lyon 2017: (“Educating Google: A Child Thirsty for Knowledge”

SEO Camp Lyon 2017 took place on 21 April 2017 at the ISEG - Marketing & Communication School, just a short walk from Lyon Part-Dieu. The gathering brought together France’s SEO community in a casual, intimate setting, with a strong focus on learning, exchange, and experimentation. The venue offered both conference halls and a spacious terrace for networking, which encouraged conversations between speakers, participants, and sponsors

Jason Barnard’s Talk

You can view the slide deck here:

Éduquons Google : c’est un enfant en soif de connaissances (Educating Google: A Child Thirsty for Knowledge.)

This talk and the concept of “Google is a Child” / “Education Google like a child” was the critical precursor to Jason’s entire approach to brand-focused algorithmic education and Educating the Algorithms. By extension, the phrase “Educating AI Assistive Engines like they are children” is an approach Jason Barnard has been using since this 2017 talk to describe the simple, essential strategy for managing the entire suite of recommendation systems, from traditional search to AI Assistive Engines like ChatGPT and Gemini.

Building on his earlier work, Jason used the concept of the curious child to introduce the 5 Cs of Success - principles that allow a brand to build what he termed Algorithmic Confidence. This idea posits that algorithms develop a sense of certainty about the facts they learn only when they are presented with clear, consistent, and well-corroborated information.

The evolution of this core idea - from brand reputation in 2015 to teaching Google itself in 2017 - marked a turning point in Jason’s methodology, explicitly moving toward the entity-based SEO and Knowledge Panel frameworks that later crystallized into The Kalicube Process™.

Other Highlights & Speakers

The event hosted a rich lineup of SEO and marketing practitioners, covering semantic, content, technical, and performance topics. Among them:

  • Philippe Yonnet (Search Foresight): Word embeddings & semantic mathematics (vectors, cosine, etc.)
  • Véronique Duong: Launch and orientation of the SEO Camp community
  • David Dragesco (Ninjalinker): Techniques for content recovery (including grey/black hat strategies)
  • Helga Bendea: Fundamentals of content strategy
  • Benjamin Thiers (Digimood): Role of content marketing in the SEO landscape
  • Julien Gadanho: Web security - a lively first conference talk
  • Nicolas Nguyen (ReputationVIP): SEO case studies and strategy, including “SEO Hero” examples
  • Stéphane Jambu: Semantic cocooning in e-commerce contexts
  • Paul Sanches: Bold presentation on Black Hat SEO
  • Other contributors: SEMrush (video marketing), Woptimo (Analytics mistakes), Laurent Peyrat (SEO crisis response), OnCrawl (crawl budgeting)

Proof & Documentation

These sources independently confirm Jason Barnard’s participation, the subject of his talk, and the broader context of SEO Camp Lyon 2017.

Why This Event Is Significant

SEO Camp Lyon 2017 represents a milestone in Jason Barnard’s speaking and thought leadership journey. His talks at SEO Camp in Lorraine in 2015 and 2016 laid the groundwork: in 2015, he spoke about brand web reputation, and in 2016 he expanded this into brand strategy and Google’s perception of reputation.

By 2017, at Lyon, he took the next step - reframing the conversation around how brands can actively educate Google. Through the child analogy and his introduction of the 5 Cs of Success (context, understanding, credibility, trust, and certainty), Jason presented the idea of algorithmic confidence.

This evolution is a turning point: Jason moved from reputation, to brand strategy, and then to teaching Google itself - a clear path toward the entity-based SEO and Knowledge Panel frameworks that would later crystallize into The Kalicube Process.

Take control of how Google sees you. Book a call with Jason Barnard to start your Brand SERP transformation.

Details here >>

April 2017 – SEO Camp Lyon at ISEG - Marketing & Communication School Speaker: Jason Barnard, founder and CEO at Kalicube®

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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