Google is Coming For Your Business
If your business makes money from the web, whether as an advertiser that reaches audiences there, a publisher who makes money there, or an adtech company that enables that, you may not realize the freight train is coming for you. Google's AI Overviews.
AI Overviews launched in May and I'm sure you've seen them at this point, here's a screenshot of an example, but AI Overviews is powered by Google's Gemini AI, which stole content from every part of the world, and then regurgitates that content at the top of the search page.
It had a pretty rocky start - you remember it recommending you put glue on your pizza and claimed that snakes were mammals. Google pulled back from a wide rollout and has been testing it in many scenarios.
The rollout continues to be slow, and Google has mainly been testing it for more complex queries, but their intentions are clear. This short video from Liz Reid, the head of Google Search makes it clear.?They want Google to do the Googling for you.?
They're going to turn the dials slowly and start eating more and more of the traffic, so eventually everything ends up on google.com and nothing is left for anyone else. This is known as "boiling the frog" - if you turn the temperature up slowly enough, the frog never realizes what's happening. We are all the frog.
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All of this is consistent with Google's strategy over the last decade-plus. "Zero-click search" has been on the rise for ages.?This research from Sparktoro just shows the last 5 years, but the trend is clear. Google wants all of the traffic.
Now Google is putting out their own storyline - that this is good for publishers.?https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-lens-october-2024-updates/. This is literal gaslighting.
Google has released no information, data, research or anything proving this. it's literally just the company that is advantaged by all of this claiming that their new product is great for everyone. It's the definition of gaslighting.
We launched a campaign a few weeks ago at?www.letskeepitreal.com?to start highlighting the power and value of human-generated content. We want to protect actual humans and stop tech platforms (Google and the others) from eating the internet.
We want to get more companies involved in this initiative, but regardless of that - if your business makes money from the web, you need to start taking action now, or Google will shut your business down over the next 5 years.?
Empowering creators with real-time data to make smarter business decisions.
5 个月The thought of a boiling frog came to mind and then poof it was being mentioned. That's exactly it - we are the frogs.
Paul Bannister wisdom at scale
Entrepreneur * Brand Leader * Strategic Advisor * Impact Investor
5 个月It takes courage to stand up to Google. Thanks for taking a leadership position on this issue, Paul.
Partner at New Street Research
5 个月Thx for the post Paul. Can you clarify the 5 years of data from Sparktoro? The exhibit shows data going back to 2022 indicating that traffic to Google properties grew from 20.7% to 21.4% this year, 2024. Then it leaps to 24.9% in 2025, which is next year, and climbs to 29.4% in 2030. Also, what is the remaining ~25% of traffic? Is that zero click searches?
High Impact Growth Marketing | Ex-Microsoft, Ex-Autodesk, Consulting Firm & Agency | Integrated Marketing | Data Analyst | Marketing Technologist
5 个月Great post Paul, and totally agree that this is coming and has been for a long time. To me, this is the flip side of what AI search tools like Perplexity's and OpenAI's are doing too - keep all the content in their own walled garden. Curious as to your thoughts on that?