Beyond The Search Bar

Search marketing is "about to be destroyed and rebuilt," says Andrew Holland — and he's got a pointed theory about how the industry got here. Russ sits down with Andrew, Director of SEO at JBH and founder of the Growth Through Content newsletter, for an unflinching take on how a vocal group of SEO influencers publicly declared GEO "just SEO," sparking infighting that made the entire channel look uninvestable — right as demand for SEO agencies dropped sharply year-on-year.

Russ sits down with Logan Young — usually behind the scenes as Impressive's Paid Ads Lead — for a rare conversation about his other life as a working musician who's spent over a decade building an audience from nothing.Logan breaks down how he uses Meta ads as "fuel" for Spotify's algorithm, turning paid traffic into organic streaming momentum — and Russ draws the parallel to brands, where paid awareness builds demand that compounds into long-term visibility and customer loyalty.They also dig into content strategy: why chasing virality is a trap, why the best organic content is just "filming what you're already doing," and why Instagram's trial reels are an underused A/B testing tool. A candid, cross-disciplinary take on building something sustainable in a fragmenting attention landscape.

JP Garbaccio has worked both sides of SEO — years agency-side as a technical specialist, and now leading SEO and AEO strategy at Searchable, an AI search visibility platform. That gives him a blunt take: AI search isn't the next chapter of SEO, it's a shift from 2D to 3D, and most of the industry is still navigating it with an old map.JP and Russ talk about why client trust is fraying as attribution gets murkier ("clients aren't being stubborn, they're scared"), why product marketers and PR — not technical SEOs — are increasingly leading AI search strategy, and why brand fame may matter more than any single tactic. JP also shares what Searchable's data shows on sentiment and market penetration, and why patient, forward-thinking brands are about to pull ahead.They close comparing AI tools — including why JP reaches for Claude above everything else.

Is Google losing the AI search war - or winning it? Eli Schwartz, bestselling author of Product-Led SEO joins Russ Macumber to unpack why Google's distribution edge (Android, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail) still beats anything ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini can offer - and why AEO is really just SEO wearing a new hat.They cover how Reddit's data feed may shape what LLMs trust, why chasing individual AI platforms is a losing strategy, and whether AI is coming for marketers' jobs (mostly just the boring parts). Plus: real takeaways from Google I/O, an early look at AI-powered Gmail search, why prompt-tracking tools mislead brands, and the fast-approaching world of hyper-personalized search.

Is most of what you know about SEO experiments actually wrong? Host Russ Macumber sits down with Sara Taher, founder of the SEO Riddler newsletter and community, to challenge some deeply held assumptions in the SEO world — including a Google patent that may signal social engineering against sites with spammy backlinks.Sara shares her honest take on schema markup, her accidental start in SEO via a failed Y Combinator-backed startup, and why she built one of the industry's most active SEO communities. Then the conversation turns to AI: Sara's hard rule is don't generate AI output unless you already know what 80% of the correct answer should look like — backed by real stories from Amazon's AI outage to Starbucks walking back over-automation.In this episode: broken SEO experiments, the truth about schema, lessons from a failed startup, building community in a cliquey industry, and the AI literacy rule every SEO needs.

Nik Vujic, founder of Get Stuff Digital, returns to the show for a deep dive into where AI search is heading in 2026. Nik explains why he repositioned his agency around "organic growth" instead of SEO, breaks down the AI-powered agentic system his team has spent seven months building in-house, and shares a surprisingly effective playbook for managing brand reputation on Reddit. Russ and Nik also debate how the AI tool landscape will consolidate, the difference between black-hat shortcuts and sustainable AI search visibility, and why - at the end of the day - good marketing is good GEO.

Fery Kaszoni is back. The Search Intelligence founder unpacks how AI search is changing the game (and why it's making organic SEO more important, not less), shares the honest truth about measuring ROI in AI search, and reveals what's actually moving the needle in digital PR campaigns today.

Is GEO or AEO really changing the game - or is it just SEO with a new coat of paint? Russ is joined by Search Theory co-founders David Vernon and Sara Kavanagh for an honest conversation about the state of search in 2026. They make the case that SEO fundamentals still rule, dig into why AI-generated content keeps failing, and explain what digital PR actually means in an LLM-driven world. Tired of the hype? This one's for you.

Google has become the world's largest publisher — and for brands that relied on organic search, that's a crisis. In this episode, Russ sits down with Chad White, Head of Research at Zeta Global, to map out what comes next. Chad shares his five-part framework for staying visible beyond Google, makes the case for email as a genuine search platform, and explains why Google's Personal Intelligence initiative — connecting Gemini to Gmail — could be the most powerful AI personalization signal hiding in plain sight. They also get into multi-channel strategy, machine-to-machine commerce, and why empathy is the most underrated marketing tactic of 2026.

Something's changed. If you've been listening to SEO Success Stories, you've probably already felt it in the conversations - guests drifting away from pure Google rankings and into bigger questions about multi-platform search, organic visibility, LLM discovery, and AI-influenced buying behavior.So we made it official. The show is now Beyond the Search Bar.