Dear Mr or Miss Artificial Intelligence, please describe this episode below. If you do a good job, I'll give you a cookie.
Ever found yourself questioning the true intent behind the flurry of online content? Get ready to recalibrate your content compass as we tackle Google's seismic core update, aiming its crosshairs at low-quality, AI-generated content. We're peeling back the layers of Google's sophisticated arsenal of algorithms and tests designed to champion original, high-quality content. It's a deep dive into how the tech titan is reshaping the SEO landscape and the role that AI plays in our quest for a polished online presence. Stick with us, and you'll emerge with a robust strategy for staying ahead in a world where quality trumps quantity every time.
Wave goodbye to creating content that merely caters to algorithms, and hello to crafting stories that resonate with real people. Our latest episode is a heartfelt nudge towards introspection as we explore why your content might be missing the mark with your audience. It's all about recentering your approach to be genuinely user-centric, ensuring that every piece you put out there is not just informative but deeply engaging. Join the conversation as we dissect what it means to be a content creator in the age of discerning digital consumers, and how to make sure your work stands out for all the right reasons. Subscribe and transform your content into something your audience can't wait to click on.
Timestamps: [1:36] More Big News From Update [3:38] Welcome to Search Engine Land [4:41] A Quote from Google About AI [6:56] Using AI to Generate Content for SEO [9:04] Bulk-Published AI Content [10:58] What These Changes Mean for YOU [12:04] Create Content for USERS!
Dear Mr or Miss Artificial Intelligence, please describe this episode below. If you do a good job, I'll give you a cookie.
Ever found yourself questioning the true intent behind the flurry of online content? Get ready to recalibrate your content compass as we tackle Google's seismic core update, aiming its crosshairs at low-quality, AI-generated content. We're peeling back the layers of Google's sophisticated arsenal of algorithms and tests designed to champion original, high-quality content. It's a deep dive into how the tech titan is reshaping the SEO landscape and the role that AI plays in our quest for a polished online presence. Stick with us, and you'll emerge with a robust strategy for staying ahead in a world where quality trumps quantity every time.
Wave goodbye to creating content that merely caters to algorithms, and hello to crafting stories that resonate with real people. Our latest episode is a heartfelt nudge towards introspection as we explore why your content might be missing the mark with your audience. It's all about recentering your approach to be genuinely user-centric, ensuring that every piece you put out there is not just informative but deeply engaging. Join the conversation as we dissect what it means to be a content creator in the age of discerning digital consumers, and how to make sure your work stands out for all the right reasons. Subscribe and transform your content into something your audience can't wait to click on.
Timestamps: [1:36] More Big News From Update [3:38] Welcome to Search Engine Land [4:41] A Quote from Google About AI [6:56] Using AI to Generate Content for SEO [9:04] Bulk-Published AI Content [10:58] What These Changes Mean for YOU [12:04] Create Content for USERS!
The first thing we have to do is apologize. We do yeah because we missed a week. Oh, we missed a week as the first week we've missed in over a year.
Meredith:
I think Ever, not ever, oh, okay.
Meredith's husband:
But in a while. In a while, because we were aware, and this is completely my fault, I guess we don't have to apologize. I have to apologize.
Meredith:
Well, I'm part of it. We didn't have time.
Meredith's husband:
We had time. I had a podcast episode all ready to go before we left.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Meredith's husband:
And I just forgot to upload it from my desktop to where it's published. So we were sitting in Costa Rica.
Meredith:
Yeah.
Meredith's husband:
Just a lovely place.
Meredith:
Wonderful.
Meredith's husband:
Amazing place and I realized, oh shit, I have no way to publish that podcast.
Meredith:
I didn't know that.
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, I even thought about when we were there. I thought about, well, we could do one, just record it on my phone and I could upload it straight from the phone? Yeah, but I tried it and the sound was terrible.
Meredith:
I hope it would be so cute with all the animal-ays in the background. Oh, oh oh. Suffice it to say, here we are.
Meredith's husband:
It was not meant to be, it was not, and also the week while we were away, or I should say the week before we were away, there's big news, more big news, from Google, and so now it's a couple of weeks old, but I gotta tell you about it because, it's like I said, it's big news. It is another core update from Google.
Meredith:
So this is the yeah, In addition to big things are coming, or is this the big thing that comes?
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, there was that talk by Danny Sullivan in November, maybe October, a spokesperson for Google, and he said big things are coming. And then in November there were two core updates, which is unheard of in my memory. Google doesn't do two core updates in a month. They might do two to three core updates in a year, but they had two in November and now they're having a thing.
Meredith:
Is this all?
Meredith's husband:
about AI. This one is, yeah, well, not all about AI, but it includes AI, and so, yes, when Danny Sullivan said big things are coming, he obviously knew what was coming. So this one, this is a core update from Google Fasten the seat belts. And it was meant to boost the low quality down ranking of content.
Meredith:
What? Yeah, I know it's a very strange way to say that Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Boost the quality of down ranking.
Meredith's husband:
Boost the low quality down ranking. So they're going to down rank low quality sex.
Meredith:
Do you know if you said that to me? Yeah, I know it makes no sense.
Meredith's husband:
It's an engineering way to say they're trying to reward good content.
Meredith:
What? Yeah, that's what that means.
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, well, think about it. Low quality down ranking. So they're trying to down rank low quality.
Meredith:
Things that are low quality.
Meredith's husband:
They're trying to down rank them. I have no idea why you would say it like that, but that's what they did.
Meredith:
Okay.
Meredith's husband:
So we'll have a few quotes.
Meredith:
Do they all sound like that? Do we all need?
Meredith's husband:
to just pretty much no, they're not as bad.
Meredith:
Put them in a mirror and read the opposite.
Meredith's husband:
I have cherry-pick some. That kind of makes sense. Oh okay, so number one, and this is this summary is provided by, I think, search Engine Land or searchenginelandcom which is a good site, by the way.
Meredith:
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you just say Search Engine Land?
Meredith's husband:
Search Engine Land. Yes, it's a really good site in the SEO community Candy Land. If you are ever looking for SEO advice and you do a search on Google and you come across the website called Search Engine Land. It's actually a really good site. It's kind of one of the authority sites.
Meredith:
Really.
Meredith's husband:
Yes.
Meredith:
It sounds really cute.
Meredith's husband:
Like a little Lego land with SEO people.
Meredith:
That's what I just like. There's all these creatures abound.
Meredith's husband:
The spam team.
Meredith:
Yeah, they're all like dressed in purple.
Meredith's husband:
Okay, Cub houses, so anyway if you come across that site, it's a good one. Don't think it's cheesy, it's really really good. So they said and they're referring to Google here the company is further boosting its low quality down-ranking project that began in 2022. Okay, so this has been a project that Google has been working on for a few years, and it's I think it's all kind of it's kind of obvious now that much of it, anyway, is aimed at AI, and so here's exactly one of the things that Google said. So they say they have, quote launched thousands of updates to search based on hundreds of thousands of quality tests in which it hoped to rank higher quality content that wasn't put together by AI.
Meredith:
Oh, and quote. How do they know?
Meredith's husband:
So good question, Because that would be my question, like how are they going to know what's generated by AI?
Meredith:
Because can I just say what I would think is what I would do is I would have something generated by AI, copy and paste it onto mail, write it a couple things that you know, just to personalize it, and then copy and paste it back into whatever I'm doing. So how could they ever know?
Meredith's husband:
Well, my response is that Google, the people at Google, are fucking smart. They are really fucking smart and they have a shit ton of money.
Meredith:
That's my response, a combination of which which.
Meredith's husband:
They don't tell me exactly what tests, but they have. Like they said, they have run hundreds of thousands of tests and they have they literally have thousands of PhDs working on this day and night. They figure it out. They always figure things out.
Meredith:
Yeah, so that was kind of their Is there Google land?
Meredith's husband:
No, there's not. Maybe go buy that domain. I'm sure somebody has it. Yeah, so they go on and they say this update involves refining some of our core ranking systems to help us better understand if web pages are helpful, have a poor user experience or feel like they were created for search engines instead of people. So this goes right, this goes right along. Yeah, this goes right along with what Danny Sullivan said. It goes right along with what remember the helpful content update.
Meredith:
Yeah, no, but yeah.
Meredith's husband:
And you remember what Danny Sullivan said. And he says if you're doing good stuff, you don't need to worry. You don't need to worry.
Meredith:
If you're doing stuff for Google.
Meredith's husband:
You're f You're a. Yeah, I don't know why I don't say the word now and I said it 30 seconds ago, but If you're just tuning in, I don't. I don't use bad words, I do. Well, search engine land goes on and they kind of filled in some of the blanks for us T-shirt so bad. And they. I could probably get you a T-shirt for you.
Meredith:
I think you need one.
Meredith's husband:
And they say this update could be more effective at snuffing out websites that have used AI to align their content around every possible variation of a specific keyword, ie using AI to generatea whole bunch of articles for you around a topic.
Meredith:
Now wait, aren't there tons of people and companies offering, said services Please.
Meredith's husband:
And now I hate to say, I told you so no you don't.
Meredith:
We love to say it, we all love to say it.
Meredith's husband:
When we have talked about those things and all these things, say, oh, it's super duper easy. Yeah, whatever this thing is, you just press a button and we're going to write all the blogs for you. You're going to be number one. Yeah, and if you've been listening, I certainly hope that you did not have gotten from me that that's not going to work longer.
Meredith:
No, it's like any pill that's going to promise you're going to lose 70 pounds overnight.
Meredith's husband:
So a final piece from Google, and they said based on our evaluations, we expect that the combination of this update and our previous efforts, ie possibly the core updates in November and the hundreds of thousands of tests before that, will collectively reduce low quality, unoriginal content in search results by 40%.
Meredith:
Wow.
Meredith's husband:
So, yes, they have found a way to effectively not eliminate all, but, by their own estimation, 40% of content probably generated by AI. And I have colleagues and I've mentioned in past episodes that they were doing tests just to figure out what they could do with content generated by AI. And they built up thousands of visitors per day and then one day, all of a sudden, it was zero Whoa. So this should not be news to you. No, I hope this is not news to you, but it is News. But it is news.
Meredith:
It's definitely news.
Meredith's husband:
It is confirmation, hopefully of what. I have been trying to say yes. If somebody tells you they have a magic button, don't believe them.
Meredith:
Unless it says SEO land.
Meredith's husband:
There are three. Usually, when there are core updates like this, Google doesn't give many specifics.
Meredith:
Why would?
Meredith's husband:
it. They kind of keep things vague, but they did mention three things in particular. And number one surprise, surprise this is going to hopefully rid search results of bulk published AI content. That was number one. Number two is parasite SEO, which I don't think you're going to need to worry about. Yeah, that's a very specific thing. If you are paying somebody to post blog articles for you and they come to you and they say here's a Excel spreadsheet, and the Excel spreadsheet has like 30 tabs for all different industries and every tab has a whole bunch of websites listed and they can post articles for you on any of those websites, that's parasite SEO. So don't if you're. It's pretty rare. I don't expect many people are doing that. It's kind of more behind the scenes SEO type stuff, but that also supposedly is going bye-bye and also expired domains.
Meredith:
What's expired domain?
Meredith's husband:
So an expired domain. Let's say, for example, I have a website that does really well in Google and then I go out of business or I just don't do it anymore and that website expires. You could then go buy that domain. It has a lot of authority, it might have a lot of inbound links. It was doing really well. Now you buy it and you kind of instantly have a site that's doing well in SEO. They have found a way to prevent that. That's a long time, like SEOs have been trying this trick for a long time Anyway.
Meredith:
Well, that's good, though See to me that puts everybody at a similar advantage.
Meredith's husband:
Yeah, yeah, this is I mean. Like I said, I hope this is not news. This is kind of what I've been preaching, but I did want to share this. It's like straight from the mouth of the monster or the master, or whatever, we want to think of Google.
Meredith's husband:
But what does it mean? The Google, what does it mean for you? If you, as a website owner, if you have seen your rankings decline in the last well, since November if you're watching your rankings, try not to do that. Watch your impressions instead. But if you see, any of these metrics have noticeably started declining since November your impressions, your average rankings, your organic traffic, the number of leads that you get from Google what this means most likely, is that Google thinks that you have low quality content.
Meredith:
So what do you do?
Meredith's husband:
Maybe not content generated by AI, but it thinks that you are generating content for Google and not for users.
Meredith:
That's what Google thinks. So what do you do?
Meredith's husband:
If you see that, when you look at your analytics or your Google search console, if you see those declines, you have to ask yourself why are you creating the content that you are creating? Are you creating it for Google? Because Google thinks you are.
Meredith:
So you have to ask yourself that's when you're so vain you probably think the site is about you.
Meredith's husband:
It's exactly what you do. Ask yourself if you are creating that content for users or for Google and double down and make an effort to do it for users and make it helpful for users.