Google's Orwellian I/O updates

Hey reader,

In George Orwell's classic 1984, everyday citizens are fed extreme propaganda from governing bodies, and expected to swallow it without question, even though it directly contradicts reality.

Sorry, did I say 1984? I meant 2024, and I'm talking about Google I/O, Google's annual developer conference that kicked off yesterday.

Ok, obviously Google isn't as bad as Orwell's authoritarian Big Brother, but what the company's slick corporate face is trying to pull off right now has me wondering, have we always been at war with Eurasia?

Whenever a corporation has a big event like this, we know there's going to be heaps of propaganda BS coming our way. But what Google is doing right now is unprecedented for this industry.

You can read CEO Sundar Pichai's full opening comments here, and it's definitely worth a read/listen.

But I want to focus on a few things that were announced during yesterday's event, the ones that give me the most pause about where SEO is headed.

The biggest announcement for SEOs like us has to do with what Google is now calling "AI Overviews" - what was called "Search Generative Experience" or SGE before.

These are AI summaries of Search Results, which we've known were coming for some time now. It's Google's knee-jerk response to things like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

In their presentation, Google used a prompt about "how to clean a fabric sofa," but I like my example better:

As you can see, Google has basically scraped the content from the top two results, and regurgitated it for the reader, so that there's really no need to click over to the people who actually researched, wrote, and provided the answer to this question.

The irony is, this is exactly what Google has told us will get us banned. If you're creating AI-generated garbage summaries of others' work, you'll be penalized by the algo. But apparently it's fine for Google to do it with our content?

Anyone with half a brain can see why Google is doing this: They want people to stay on Google, click on paid ads, and not navigate to other pages. And they apparently have no qualms about stealing content to serve that mission.

But here comes the Orwellian part. Google says this will actually be good for content creators and organic traffic numbers. From Pachai's remarks:

Really? Because I've had access to AI overviews for many months now, and I can guarantee you it's not giving me satisfaction or causing me to click through more. In other words:

I can almost guarantee that this will dilute traffic for the types of content that have historically been the best performers for SEO: how-to questions and "why" or "what is" prompts that people so frequently type into Google.

What's disturbing about it is how willingly Google lies about this. They say they see more satisfaction and traffic, and provide absolutely no data or statistics to back that up. Do they think we're stupid? (AI Overview answer: Yes.)

They also say that the data about AI Overview results will not be available in Google Search Console. If it's going to be so good for our content, why are they scared to show us the data?

I'm not the only one with these questions.

Google's Search Liason is getting grilled intensely on Twitter, and they will not address the concerns of theft. Matt Gibbs puts it nicely in this tweet:

There's one more upsetting thing to share, and it has to do with the wildly unpopular and confusing "Helpful Content Update" that rolled out at the end of last year.

So many websites lost traffic as part of this update, including some of the clients I work with. This is despite doing everything "right" according to Google: No ads on the site, a strong backlink profile, technical SEO working beautifully, high-quality, unique, human-generated content published on the regular.

A lot of us were left scratching our heads. What did we do wrong? And why has no one regained any traffic, even after making adjustments to their content?

Well, the answer might be this:

Google wanted to suppress certain types of search results, so that Gemini, their AI tool, could seamlessly take their place.

This seems to be most pronounced within the travel sector. So many small travel bloggers and publishers lost everything with HCU, and I think we now understand why.

Here's how Nate Hake put it on Twitter:

Ok, so I know I'm being a a conspiracy theorist, and more than a little doom and gloom about all this.

I make no secret that I'm very uncomfortable with these changes, and as I said in my last email, the whole thing gives me a boatload of anxiety.

But before anyone says it, I want to be crystal clear:

These changes do not mean SEO dead.

They mean SEO is getting harder. They mean SEO is getting more competitive. They mean the future of SEO (as it always has been) is uncertain.

But right now, I think these AI changes may actually present some opportunities for SEOs, because:

1. There is now something new to optimize for. Getting into the AI Overviews will become a major goal for many companies, and we'll have lots of work ahead to figure out exactly how Google decides who ends up there.
2. I'm sure it will get better, but right now the AI results suck more often than not. They are typically a bad approximation of the top results, or full of hallucinations, or just plain not as good as getting the results from the source. So traffic to the top pages in the SERPs will still be coming in strong.
3. You have to hit "expand" to see the full AI results. Otherwise it's just a paragraph of text, which I have already started to ignore because it's so unhelpful (ironically). I imagine many users will do the same.

The key for people who want to thrive in this brave new world (get it?) is to foster patience, not panic.

We do not know how this will change things, and it will be weeks (or more likely months) before we know what this means.

And when the results shake out, it's not like SEO is going to be dead and gone. It's just going to be a different playing field, one that will take some getting used to.

And if you're not the kind of person who can handle working in an industry without some uncertainty, well, SEO probably isn't for you anyway.

Speaking of which...

I'm still looking for a few more freelancers for my upcoming case study group, where we'll focus on helping you create and launch a lucrative SEO freelance offering, so you land your next high-ticket SEO client before the program ends.

Specifically, I'm looking for people who fit the following criteria:

• You want to land a high-ticket SEO client in the next few weeks
• You have general SEO knowledge, but you need more experience (and a portfolio)
• You currently earn less than $3,000 a month on average from SEO
• You want to build up a steady stream of top-tier SEO leads for the foreseeable future
• You can dedicate 3 - 5 hours a week for the next few weeks to the program

?? If that sounds like you, let me know by replying to this email. I'll send you more details about the program.

Until then, don't lose hope. I'm still here, sassy and anxious but working hard to keep you and my clients informed and successful in this strange era of search.

- Liam