Yesterday's Google Creator Event: An SEO's Take

(Let's start with a full disclaimer) I have the luxury of being a full-time SEO consultant and part-time creator over on Board of the World. While my site was hit to the point of near extinction with last September's HCU, it has been bouncing back since August's update. I disclose this because yesterday, there were moments when it felt like I was the one SEO who snuck into the creator event as well as one of only a handful of attendees?who has had some success with coming out of the other side of this whole ranking mess.??

I saw the reaction posts of a few other creators who attended?the event where they expressed their discontent with the state of search as well as the event (rightfully so). On a more positive note,?I think the event was beneficial for both creators and Googlers alike.

I actually walked away from it with a lot of notes and the sense that Google would eventually sort this out.

Why do I think that?

Well, because they took the time to meet with us, fly us out, and hear our stories. If that was all for PR purposes, there would have been far fewer Googlers in that room or dialed into our sessions. I think the count said that in addition to the 15-20 Googlers who were in the room with us, there were another 28 who dialed in remotely also.

So it seemed like there was a vested interest in hearing everyone out.

The general narrative of the meeting felt like it was saying to me, "Hey, passionate writer, we see you, we are sorry, it's more complicated than you might realize, and we are working on it." It felt sincere, and the answers were as direct as Google probably could be, no more, no less. The reactions from my fellow creators are, "This is coming far too late."

For me, the most valuable part of the day was when we broke into whiteboard panels with the search engineers and project managers on the topics of Reviews, Entertainment, Travel, and General search experience. The exercise was similar to the whiteboard scene from the Internship. I am not 100% sure of the exact goal of the drafting exercise, but it seemed like we were trying to solve the question, "How might we better promote authentic voices online so that you get traffic back while bad actors do not?"

During this session, we spoke directly with engineers and project managers. As an SEO, I found this session invaluable because the engineers spoke up and chimed in along with us.

We got firsthand insight into how they think as they mentioned potential ideas and challenges on why an example might or might not work as a possible signal.

An example of the dialogue from the Reviews session that I was in was - Someone said, "It should be easy to find the authentic reviewers; just look at their images."?

Then, an engineer said, "Okay, but what happens when it's?just a review of a book?"?

I then got to chime in with, "Well, it depends on the main entity; if it's a product that centers around an activity, then definitely look at those images. However, if it's?media, let's find something else to consider for a signal."?

And we would exchange ideas, building on each other's thoughts until time ran out.

Will anything come out of this exact whiteboard session? No, probably not.??

However, playing at that level with those specific players, even just for fun, was a valuable and special learning experience.

On the creator's side, though, the attendees had already lost so much that they really just went to the event wanting to hear timelines and solutions, while Google was trying to illustrate to us that there are nuances to every little change. These things take time to develop, test, and implement.??

I left thinking "Okay, I'll keep the faith."?

But I know?I have the luxury of still having a full time job and a site that's rebounding. The real challenge is that some of my new creator friends don't have that luxury.