In episode #16 of the vlog series at the Search Engine Roundtable I interviewed Dr. Pete Meyers (aka Dr. Pete) (@dr_pete) of Moz. Dr. Pete and I share a similar passion - the passion is a weird one - we love to track how Google changes its search results. This includes not just algorithmic updates and ranking changes but also user interface changes to the search results. So chatting with Dr. Pete, on this vlog, was super fun - even though we are both pretty low energy personalities with a monotone talking style (yes, I called it a style). So hold on to your seats - this chat will get pretty wild!

Dr. Pete, as he is known in the industry from his work at Moz, first starting at the company as a consultant about nine years ago and then was hired full-time about five years ago. We talked about his work at Moz, including Mozcast, which is designed to track Google algorithm updates. He explained where the "doctor" part of his name came from, which was him earning his doctorate in psychology and how the name was good for branding.

In 1997 after grad school he worked for a start up and they built web sites and folks were asking how to rank in search engines. In about 1998, he got into the SEO field and he described how it wad a bit gamey, to say the least, back then. Then in 2006 he went to SES Chicago and he saw how SEO has changed to be something more professional and um, legit.

Mozcast launched in 2012 at the Mozcon event seven years ago and it was the first company to track in an automated way these Google algorithm changes. He then added the ability to track features, Mozcast features and how it helped him track what has changed better. Dr. Pete explained why it is important to track changes in Google rankings and algorithms. The big question it answers is "was it me or was it Google?"

Here is the interview:

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