519: The SEO Apocalypse! How Google’s Latest Changes Are Shaking Up the Internet With Toni Herrbach

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You’re listening to the My Wife, Quit or Drop podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Welcome to a brand new segment of the show called Profitable Audience, where my business partner, Tony and I discuss all things related to content creation and building an audience. Now in this episode, Tony and I are going to discuss what’s going on with SEO, artificial intelligence, and what’s in store for ranking and search going forward. But before we begin,

00:27
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and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. Now I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit’s gonna be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th May 16th.

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And right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be and the prices are going up every two weeks until the event. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon at 50 % off right now. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still grab my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube and podcasting when you grab the book.

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over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now onto the show.

02:11
Welcome to the My My Quitter Job podcast in a brand new segment called Profitable Audience. My partner, Tony Urbach and I, we’ve decided to join forces and combine the podcast because up until this point, we had two sets of editors, two sets of hosting companies, and I guess a fractured audience. It was a little bit, although I have heard from your audience, they do like you better when you’re on with me because you’re more real.

02:39
Well, I can act normal. Normally when I have someone on that I’m interviewing, I kind of have to be on my best behavior, right? Yes. Yes. You put on your, what do you call it? Your good Chinese boy hat. So now you can be your normal self. Although the last couple of guests I’ve had have been from my mastermind group and that’s been completely natural because I can bag on them all I want. But if I have one of my idols on like Robert Cialdini, I have to be extra nice, right? That’s right. I think if I had one of, I don’t know,

03:09
who that would be, but if I had an idol on, would probably be on my best behavior as well. I I wanted to push the boundaries. I remember in that interview, I was like, so do you use these techniques of persuasion on your wife and do they work? That was one of my questions. That was a risky one. But really? Yeah. Okay. Oh, that is risky. She’s fine. She’ll be quiet. Okay. So one thing that I wanted to talk about today,

03:35
Mainly because during the last office hours for both classes, I gave an update on the state of Google. I know you were off gallivanting somewhere. I’m not sure if you got a chance to catch anything. you meant working. I’m not sure if you caught any of that. I heard all about it. In fact, I saw the emails come in after you gave the office hour lessons and I heard a lot of good feedback. So you definitely got people’s attention.

04:03
I’m sure it got good feedback, but it wasn’t like a rah rah episode. Right. You know what I’m I don’t think any time in the last year where you’ve talked about Google, there has been any rahing going on. That’s probably true. You’re more depressed than anybody else, I think. You’ve said many times to me that you feel like it’s taken the fun out of blogging. Oh, I’m not even talking about that. So we’ve been talking about what’s been happening is tons of spam on Google.

04:33
Yes. Because people are using AI. so Google has been frantically trying to adjust and still put out like the best search results based on all the spam that’s being put out there. And so some of the things, just to give you guys a preview, I covered how, you know, a lot of the Reddit, Quora and LinkedIn results are now ranking like way high in the results because, you know, they’re perceived as more accurate information. And one of this, one of these things happened because a lot of people

05:01
are appending Reddit to their searches now, right, to get a real answer. Problem now is like one of my posts, which I had ranked for a long time, all of sudden got outranked by this one LinkedIn post, some random dude just posting something that wasn’t entirely accurate, but because it was a LinkedIn post, Google upgraded it. And so I’m sure there’s gonna be another, there was five updates towards the end of last year, back to back to back. So the search results were like crazy.

05:30
fluctuating. know what? It worries me a little bit. All of this stuff worries me, but the thing that worries me is, do you spend any time on Reddit? I do, just reading. I’m not really a poster though. I feel like the problem with ranking things on Reddit is you have no idea. You know how we talked, Google talked a lot about EAT, the expertise, the authority. You’re reading a blog post and let’s just say the blog post is written by Brene Brown.

05:59
who is a, what is she, a doctorate or at least a master’s degree in psychology and she has all this training and research and she’s written millions of books, all this stuff, right? So when you’re reading something by her about mindset, you feel like, okay, she is an expert. She’s done 30 years of research. She’s written multiple books. She’s interviewed hundreds of people. And then you go on Reddit and it’s like a dude in his basement giving advice. It’s like, you don’t know who that person is on the other side of Reddit.

06:29
And most people don’t use their real names or anything like that. So to me, that’s what makes me nervous is that when I search for things outside of like a recipe or something like that, and I want good information, I don’t trust any information I get anymore because I have no idea what the qualifications are when I see things come up in the search results. I agree. And in fact, people are already gaming this now. So people are posting on Quora because Quora got upgraded as well. And then in Quora, you can actually link out. Yes.

06:58
It’s like another game, people are just going to start gaming those things. I think it stinks for the user. Google’s got to figure this out because I don’t… Then I get worried when people tell me that they are educating themselves from the internet and it’s like, oh, should you be? Are you taking medical advice from the internet? Are you taking marriage advice? I don’t know, it just makes me very, very nervous. You know what makes me really nervous now is…

07:27
You know my feed is a lot of Golden State Warriors. Yes. And what happened recently was there was this on both YouTube and TikTok, it popped up that LeBron James got traded to the Warriors. That’s kind of funny. And I flipped out and it actually looked real the way it was put together. So I was about to text you and then I just Googled it and yeah, it was, was completely false. But there’s a whole bunch of those out there now.

07:52
Well, same thing with the marathon runner who died in the car accident. He did die, the guy who set the world record for under two hours on a marathon. I saw it come across my feed and I was like, oh, that’s fake news. Then I dug deeper and I found that he did indeed die in Kenya in a car accident a couple of days ago. It’s like I can’t believe anything that I see because half of it’s fake. Then I just saw this article, I want to say it was on CNBC about

08:19
how the latest generation is getting most of their tips and searches doing TikTok searches now. Oh, my kids think, like my girls think TikTok is like Encyclopedia Britannica. I mean, isn’t that scary? Oh, yeah, you have, And I will, I’ll tell this story. My daughter does not listen to the podcast, so I am safe, because she got in a lot of trouble for this, but she saw a TikTok hack about cleaning like your drain.

08:47
And so she was doing it with chemicals that could have an explosion in the bathroom. I don’t know what she was mixing, they were too, you know how you can’t mix like bleach and ammonia? I don’t know what it was, but apparently she came out and told Brian, she’s like, hey, I think something’s wrong. And she told him what he did and that she had learned it on TikTok. And he was like, never, ever, ever. If you see something on TikTok, run it by me, right? Run it by your mom or

09:16
whatever before you do it, but he’s like, could have blown up the bathroom with some TikTok hack. Yes. Sorry. It’s presented with such authority. That’s the thing, right? With the editing and the way things are presented, it feels real. When I saw that that runner was killed, I was like, oh, and then I was like, oh, no, it’s not true. This is another one of these so-and-so died, they didn’t really die.

09:45
Yeah, I was just noticing that my YouTube feed is almost a third AI generated content now. Because the sports stuff, think is the easiest thing to do that with. A game just happens. You just have AI do the summary and then you just move pictures around. I think the NBA allows you to make clips, which is why everyone does it. Right. Yeah. And so it looks like a real broadcast. Mm hmm. Yeah. And they even use like the name of the channel is something that sounds real.

10:14
Like highlight deals or something like that. You’ll think this is funny because you’re not in, I mean, I’m not really in this world either, but people are using AI to create their dating profile. Oh, you mean the pictures? Yes. Yes, I’ve that program. I got an ads for it on TikTok. Yes, which, know.

10:35
Anyway, yeah. Okay, so we’re gonna talk about AI, because one of our friends did- We are, but I want to finish. I want to hear this profile thing. what was the- Well, so basically they’re using AI prompts to feed the chat, which is kind of funny because a girl will like- So I’m in a couple of Facebook groups that are like, basically that you’re gonna go on a date and does anybody know if this person, is it gonna be safe? Right? Has anyone ever dated this person before?

11:01
So I joined the groups a long time ago, but now I can’t leave because it’s like soap opera. But what I’ve been seeing lately is people are using AI prompts to respond back and forth via text or in the dating app chats. And what’s funny is, is that people are getting the same prompts, right? So like a girl will screenshot the messages and another girl will be like, I got the exact same message and she’ll put up and it’s the exact same message from a different guy.

11:29
It’s creating very similar prompts when you want to say certain things to people. That’s happening. Then people are either completely generating photos from AI. It’s not even them. It’s not them enhanced with AI. Oh my God. Okay. Which is basically like catfishing on another level. You’re not using someone else’s picture. You’re using someone else’s picture that’s been upgraded by a computer.

11:55
and which is nuts. And then people will post the photo and say like, hey, does anybody have any information on this person? And everyone’s like AI, that’s AI. And you can tell, like the pictures are too perfect. Right. Right. But also on a dating app, if you think about it, you’re on your phone, the picture is small, you’re kind of swiping quickly. Like anyway, it’s effective, right? It’s getting people in the door for who knows what kind of scam or something like that. But oh, it’s infiltrated.

12:24
the dating app scheme. Filters are no more, it’s AI now. So I’ve been out of the dating scene obviously for For a very long time. I would imagine a conversation that’s run by AI would be really easy to spot, wouldn’t it? So here’s what I think. I think females, and I’m going to make a global generalization here. I think they want, because the dating apps are so cruddy, right? You meet so many people that’ll ghost you or stand you up or no show.

12:53
that when you get someone that seems interested and nice, you sort of cling to, you’re like, oh, it’s a good one, right? Like, oh, this is not gonna be a total jerk. But then, so even though the conversation to me, when I look at it, I’m like, oh, 100 % AI. I think there’s that, right, your brain is saying, there’s hope, this person’s nice, they look safe, right? And so the message is even though once you read them as an outsider who has no attachment, you’re like, oh, AI.

13:22
If you’re in it, you’re overlooking things, right? It’s just like you overlook things about people when you are crazy in love with them. You just meet them and you think they’re wonderful and all your friends are like, yeah, but did you notice this? And you’re like, what are you talking about? I think it’s the same thing. They just don’t notice it. I’m so glad that I’ve been married for so long and I’m not in this world that we’re living in right now. Can you imagine just at another level of weeding out computers versus real people? That’s nuts.

13:50
Okay, well, you what’s funny is the original topic that I wanted to talk about on this episode was our mutual friend Spencer Hawes, who’s actually speaking at Seller Summit. He’s an excellent content creator. He’s kind of always on the cutting edge. He runs niche pursuits. You guys should all go check out his podcast. He, in the light of AI, decided to run what he called a Google versus AI content challenge. I love that he does these things. I know, it’s so much work.

14:19
Last year he said I’m going to write a thousand blog posts, not him personally, but his team was going to do a thousand blog posts in a year, see what happened to his traffic, his rankings. I think he ended up with what, 960? Something crazy like that. Yeah. He has a whole YouTube video about it. You can check them out. Yeah, I love that he does these things, but they are so much. I’m glad he does them so we don’t have to. They are so much work and we can just talk about it on the podcast and give him some extra props if you guys want to go check out all the details. What he did is he wanted to see

14:49
whether you could actually rank a pure AI site pretty much in 90 days. Which seems crazy to me. It does. So what he did is he just blasted out to his list and he said, hey, I’m running this contest and at the end of 90 days, whoever gets the most organic traffic from Google from an AI content site receives 2,500 bucks. That’s a lot of money. It’s a decent amount of money for the experiment.

15:16
And not only that, you have to check everyone’s analytics. You got to make sure that no one’s cheating and that sort of thing. It really is a lot of work. So what ended up happening is he got 74 people to join. That’s a lot. Which is actually a lot of people, right? Yeah. And then some of just some of the rules that he specified was only traffic to the new published articles would count towards the competition. So let’s say you had the domain or something for a while and maybe it had a couple of articles.

15:46
It’s only the new stuff. Interesting. You could participate if you already had a content site. I think so. I think so, which seems a little bit like cheating because if your domain was a little stronger. I don’t know those details actually or whether he talks about it. Well, you all have to watch his. For the most part, it was new people creating AI content. I don’t think anyone had an outsized domain rank. I’m pretty sure he would have accounted for that.

16:16
Yeah. So I was actually really skeptical when I, I actually had a call with Spencer not too long ago, cause we were trying to get him to, um, speak at seller summit and I was skeptical that people could achieve any sort of results in, well, so he, he checked like every month, right? But 90 days is pretty aggressive. I think, uh, to, rank stuff in search, but, um, after 30 days,

16:43
The top participant already had 4,800 visitors in a month. Really? They had published 850 articles. What? 850 articles in one month. AI. All AI and it was in the beverage niche. The beverage niche? I don’t know what that means. Maybe it’s coffee or I don’t know. Alcohol maybe? It could be alcohol. Yes.

17:11
But I could not think of 10 articles to write about beverages, let alone 864 or whatever. what you do is you have one, AI produce all the topics. Yeah. I haven’t actually used the, so a while ago I talked about this AI PRM plugin for ChatGBT, which is essentially an SEO plugin for ChatGBT that goes and it can create an entire article map for you. Like you give it a topic. let’s say,

17:40
Let’s say it’s blogging. You tell it, I want to create a blog about blogging and it will output every single article that covers every possible topic. Okay. Right. So it actually does it in like a table form, the name of the article, the keyword, and then a description of what goes inside. Interesting. And then from there, you can take that description and topic and then have AI actually create the article. I’m pretty sure that’s what this person did. Okay.

18:11
But still, 850 articles in 30 days. head is hurting. That’s 30 a day approximately. I can’t imagine even reading that many articles in a day, let alone editing it. Realistically, they probably couldn’t do a whole lot of editing or manipulating what they got from AI. They probably just published it almost as is. I mean, this is what people are doing right now.

18:40
What’s funny is I think Spencer also participated in his own challenge like he always does. Of course he does. He only got 52 clicks in the first month. Interesting. What was his topic? Do you know? That I don’t know actually. Probably running shoes. Wasn’t that one of his first niche sites was long distance running? He used to use it in all of his explanation things back in the day, like a long, long time ago. Yes.

19:08
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19:35
and you can sign up over at profitableaudience.com slash free. Once again, that’s profitableaudience.com slash free. Now back to the show.

19:46
Yeah, I think like most of the people that were creating articles for this contest were just using listicles. And the people who did really well, it says here there was substantial human editing. Although that person that published that many articles, I can’t imagine human editing that. don’t know. Anyway, what ended up happening is so the results after 90 days, the top five participants achieved over

20:18
15,800 clicks total in three months, which is astounding to me. Yeah, that’s a lot. That means it works. Oh, does it? Right? I don’t know. I mean, the winner ended up with 274 articles. And they just use, the strategy they use is they use AI to generate the outline.

20:45
And then they just ran it over and over and over again for each section of the post, which is actually the way I kind of taught it in profitable audience. Like that AI article that I wrote about Alibaba still ranks on the front page and gets me a ton of traffic. And that’s exactly the way I did it. I ran it to create an outline. I don’t remember what the article was now. Something to do with Alibaba. And then for each section, I So I ended up running ChatGPT probably like 15 times.

21:13
Throughout the course of that article and then I human edited that it actually took quite a bit of time Yeah, but it was I would say it was like 75 % AI Interesting. Yeah So the person who won I think ended up publishing articles based on current events. Oh Okay. Yeah, but not the type of current events that you would think he covered cricket matches

21:42
I don’t even know how to play cricket. I don’t know either. I just remember we met one of your friends at a conference once that was investing in a cricket team. Do remember that guy? Yes, I’m trying to remember who that was actually. Yes, he’s a huge cricket fan. He’s like, is the sport of the future. like, I don’t think it is, but have fun watching it. I feel like cricket’s one of those sports that is way more popular outside of the US.

22:08
being in the US and that being our frame of reference, we don’t think it’s as popular as it actually is. It probably has a lot of big fan base that we’re just not familiar with. I know that every Indian friend I have here watches cricket. Yeah. So I know it’s big among the Indian population, but it’s one of those things that it’s a little bit more obscure, right? Probably less competition. I would imagine. So I think that’s why it worked. So here’s my question.

22:37
Obviously, we haven’t read all these articles, but just like we were talking about how you’re getting fake warrior stuff in your feed, to me, that information can’t all be correct.

22:51
I don’t know. You know what I’m saying? Because we’ve already seen AI manipulate news and current events. I wonder how much of the cricket info is correct. I have no idea. The contest wasn’t an accuracy contest. was just how much traffic you can get. A straight-up traffic play. A lot of those Warriors videos that I watch, they have 10,000 views by the time I get to them. I wouldn’t watch them if it only had 100 views.

23:21
Yeah. And that LeBron one had a ton of views. Well, yeah, because every Warriors fan was like, please, please, please give us LeBron. I actually had a dream that LeBron and Steph were on the same team like two nights ago. So I probably saw it in your feed. you did. Yeah, because I wouldn’t normally dream that. I think the problem with creating, I mean, this is a contest for that was limited to three months. But I think if you’re doing current events, AI articles, they have like no value in the search results.

23:51
pretty much right away, right? It’s almost like a social media post.

23:57
I don’t know, I remember when I started blogging, I started blogging in 2008, 2009 was the big recession, people were feeling the economic squeeze. I would write articles based on, remember when the government was going to shut down and when the government shuts down, the military doesn’t get their paycheck? Yes.

24:22
So I wrote a couple articles about, you know, the military not getting their paychecks in the angle of like, hey, here’s what to do. Here’s how you can stretch what you already have. Here’s some chat, you know, was, but it was all based on that. When the extreme couponing phase and all that show came out, I wrote a couple articles and I always ranked, like I ranked number two or three for extreme couponing for a couple of years, even though I was never on the show. I didn’t do anything with the show, but I did piggyback on

24:51
I mean, current events is weird because extreme couponing isn’t a current event, but it’s like a current news cycle topic, right? Same thing with stuff with the military. I would try to capitalize on those sorts of things as they were happening because I think people, when there is stuff going on in the world, they get paranoid or upset or interested and they start searching for more information. I agree. Yeah. And then I guess there’s just a lot of attention right now. Yeah.

25:21
I mean, it’s a volume game. Like just think about how many articles that these people published in such a short period of time. Yeah, because the winner did 264. 274 articles. that’s they’re basically doing almost 90 basically 90 articles a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. had to just verify your math. Look at that quick math that I have this week. I’m definitely I’m on top of my game right now. The winner did do human edits, though.

25:51
I guess to be fair. And I think Spencer, when he published those 900 articles, he had a lot of writers, but I think his policy with those writers were it was okay to use AI-generated content as long as you fact-checked all the numbers and everything related to the article. Which I think is something, because we get this question, I think we get this every webinar, right? Can I use AI to write my articles? I mean, think that’s probably one of our top questions in the past year, which is a question we never received.

26:22
before 2023. And I think you have to, if you want to create a lasting product with content, you have to fact check the stuff that you’re putting out there. I think you have to fact check no matter what, right? But if definitely you’re using AI, that needs to be a priority. Whether you’re having one of your VAs do it or you’re doing it personally, I don’t think you can just, I would never recommend someone just publish AI content straight from ChatGBT ever.

26:51
Apparently it works though, that’s thing. I would love to see where are these people in three years? If they just leave the site. Now current events would be tough, right? Because cricket games, probably people aren’t looking up three years ago from a cricket game. The person who’s writing about beverages, that stuff doesn’t change. A drink is a drink. I wonder in three years, are they getting any traffic at all to that? I’d be curious.

27:19
I’d be curious too, and maybe I’ll go and ask Spencer to see some of the URLs for these sites. I wonder if these are just walls of text or whether they’ve actually used images to break up the content and that sort of thing. Whether they had an author bio and everything that just makes a content site more trustworthy these days. I’d be very curious. Well, because for me, some of my older posts are still my strongest posts and they were written 10 years ago.

27:47
So I’m just about the longevity of that sort of a thing because it’s like, okay, you’re going to write three posts a day. You can’t keep that up unless you’re making a full-time income, like three posts a day. Even if you’re doing any editing at all, I guess you’re spending every single night making edits. You know what I’m saying? That’s a big time commitment even if AI is doing 90 % of it. Yeah. I do know that a couple of students in the class got hit by the series of five updates.

28:17
that happened toward the end of the year. And one student in particular was like, hey, should I switch up my content strategy? Because Reddit and Quora and LinkedIn are getting a lot of the clicks now because they’ve been raised. Actually, if you look in the search results now, there’s like a special section for those sites that is a wonderful. It’s called, I think, forum and discussions. But sometimes the Reddit actually gets the top spot with a quote from some random schmo, from some upvoted article.

28:47
Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s like crowdsourcing. I don’t know. The whole thing’s crazy. It was pretty easy to game Reddit back in the day. When I first started, I was friends with all these Redditors who had really high ranks. Occasionally I’d just say, can you promote this article for me? What ended up happening is that article would get 2,000 visits in the next hour. Then I had this voting group that just upvoted everything.

29:16
That reminds me of stumble upon, which was a similar tactic, right? Is you would put something on stumble upon. I don’t even know if that exists anymore actually now that I’m saying it. I’m to Google it right now as you’re talking. It’s the same theory, right? Is that you would have your little stumble group stumble your content and then for the next 24 to 48 hours, you would get some ridiculous amount of traffic and then it just disappeared immediately. It wasn’t a-

29:44
a longevity play for sure. The fact that you can upload things on Reddit, I think is great, but I don’t want that in my search result. I just don’t. I don’t know. I’m dating myself so much right now, but- That’s the trend because people actually say what they mean. If you do a search, what was I doing a search for the other day? It was best router because I need to update my router. All the search results with the exception of maybe Wirecutter who was clout was all bogus.

30:13
I think it was just whoever, like if you do best web host. You come up. It’s Pat Flynn’s post that’s made him millions of dollars. Or best mattress. So you know what’s funny is that if I’m searching for anything finance related when it comes to like credit cards or you know, best like business bank account, stuff like that, not like stock stuff, but just banking in general, I just go to nerd wallet.

30:42
I don’t even look anywhere else. It’s just like, feel like, listen, we don’t know those guys, but they’ve been around forever. They actually are a trusted resource. I know they’re making commission off of everything, but I’m not going to go to any other site unless it’s someone that we know that comes up. It’s it’s nerd wallet or someone we know or nobody, but I’m definitely not going to a random site when it comes to.

31:08
like finding a credit card. When I did all the research about the travel card, I wanted to find the best card for traveling. I read Greg and Holly’s stuff because they obviously play the points game. Then eventually I ended up on NerdWallet because of course they have a great comparison chart and all that stuff. I was like, can you imagine going on Reddit and picking a credit card? No way. I don’t know. You know, the one thing I will hand it to those guys is they have a really good experience. Even on your phone,

31:38
you know, the images change like the aspect ratio. So it’s actually nice and easy to scroll. I actually did this experiment with my wife, quit her job. And there’s a bunch of articles actually that I’ve written where it looks good on desktop, but on a phone, it’s literally like this wall of text. Oh yeah. So maybe like I have to actually go back and maybe even break up those walls of text with even more images to make it easier to read on mobile. Because I think

32:08
Google the way they have to proceed going forward is it has to be, you know, how much time does someone spend on your site or what is their behavior like? Right. Right. Because what they’re doing right now, I don’t think it’s sustainable. Like someone will just game core Reddit and LinkedIn or whatnot. And so they’re going to have to I’m pretty sure there’s another update that’s going to happen. Yeah. Like pretty soon if it hasn’t happened already. And so I told that student to just kind of stand Pat, like things are just

32:37
You don’t want to like chase like the next strategy. So, um, my strategy personally has, has been to just kind of proceed the way I’ve been doing it, but just paying particular attention to my mobile experience and making sure that it answers the question thoroughly. There’s really no fluff. And if there’s some amount of personal experience where I have like a real experience using a tool, if I’m doing a review or whatnot, include, you know, a little bit of it that after the question is answered. Right.

33:07
And we’ll just see what happens. It’s so interesting because I was trying to think about my own search behavior. How do I search? Because obviously I’m a Gen Xer, so my search behavior… I just read this article this morning that Gen Z-er are getting all their information from Pinterest right now. I thought it was TikTok. Wait, Gen Z? No, they use TikTok, but Pinterest has kind of become…

33:31
Like they feel like they’re taking over Pinterest. And it’s funny because my kids who are my girls, which are all Gen Z-ers are active, active Pinterest users. And when I was talking to your sister-in-law, we were talking about how Pinterest is very interested in Gen Z and getting, because I think that’s their fastest growing demographic on, you know, for searching and creating boards and all that.

33:57
content stuff. And my kids are like, that’s their search engine, right? It’s TikTok and Pinterest. They would never go to Google to search for anything. And so I was thinking about my own search behavior. And what’s crazy is that, so you know how when you get labs done, you don’t get like, you get the results, but you don’t know what any of them mean until you go to the doctor and they’re like, oh, everything looks normal. So like sometimes if you, and they always tell you like, they have like a little sliding scale usually, like if you go to lab core.

34:23
and it’s like the dot is somewhere usually in between like the high and low, right? As long as you’re in between the high and low, you’re apparently fine. So I got lab results a couple of weeks ago and I had a couple of dots that were like close to the edge of like high and low, but I have no idea what that means, right? So I’m Googling like, you know, what is this? What is that? And of course it’s like half of the sites, actually probably 75 % of the sites that came up were all sites selling a drug.

34:51
for whatever that was versus a Mayo Clinic or a WebMD or something like that, which is more of an agnostic type of site, just providing that data. Obviously, Mayo Clinic wants you to go to Mayo Clinic, but they’re not trying to sell you a prescription. It’s interesting to me how many of those drug makers ranked for content when I feel like Mayo and WebMD are the stalwarts. They’ve been around forever.

35:17
They put out tons and tons of content on everything medical related. So it’s just, to me, it’s like really tricky to figure out who’s telling you the right information these days. Can you describe to me how a Gen Z user uses Pinterest? Why is Pinterest results more reliable than Google?

35:34
I don’t think they’re more reliable at all, right? Yeah, I mean, it’s just people pinning stuff, right, that they’re seeing. I think so. think people… So how I think Gen Z is using Pinterest versus TikTok, I think they’re using TikTok to search a recipe, right? Like how to make a 15-minute pasta dish or something like that. Whereas Pinterest is, what do I wear to Coachella? Right? What do I do? So see the difference of like…

36:03
the types of information because, I want to decorate, I want peach and teal in my room, right? That’s on Pinterest versus I want to unclog my bathroom drain. What can I do? What can I find on TikTok? Right? I don’t think the results on either one are accurate or necessarily truthful. However, I think how they’re searching on Pinterest is more of like preferences, right? Like what styles and it doesn’t, you you’re not going to get hurt from a style. You’re not going to get hurt from decorating your room a certain way.

36:32
Whereas you could get hurt from a recipe or something like that. You know, I started using TikTok as a search engine relatively recently too, because it’s actually a great place to find new restaurants in your area. My brother has been using TikTok for like news. I mean, he follows very specific people, but I, it’s so funny. So recently I was in the true crime TikTok for like six months. I was loving it. Okay.

36:58
Brian was like, what are you listening to? And I was like, leave me alone. I need to find out what happens. But somehow I got into the auto repair TikTok. And so now I follow like five repair shops and they basically, it’s like the head guy, he’s clearly been a mechanic for like 40 years. And like this one that’s my favorite, it’s this kid, not a kid, he’s probably like 40. And he’s like, dad, top five SUVs you wouldn’t ever buy. And he’s like,

37:25
only stay the car, don’t sell why. And the dad’s like, I can’t do it, I have to tell you why. And he’s like, we’ll talk about it in the comments. And he’s like, and he basically lists off like five SUV, three row SUVs that he thinks are terrible as far as reliability. They’re always pulling numbers from their computer, like cars with the most expensive repairs, top five, you know. And then in the comments, they actually go through and answer. So one of the cars that he said he wouldn’t recommend is a suburban, which is what I drive. So you better believe I in those, I was in those comments, like.

37:53
What’s wrong with a suburban? And so then in the comments, someone’s like, I drive a suburban, what’s wrong with that? And he’s like, well, if it’s this year to this year, it’s fine. But if you have this year to this year, look out for these four things or whatever. So they’re like giving you all this great information. But I’m in like, I’m in that TikTok car thing now permanently. I’m like, this is amazing. If I ever buy a car, like I’m totally going to these people to get information because to me, like that is reliable. He is, it’s like talking to your local mechanic, except for you don’t have to go down to the garage to do it.

38:23
Yeah, I think that’s where TikTok has the advantage, right? Once you follow some for a while and you trust them, then it’s all good. It’s just like the random TikToks that I see my kids watch or whatever that worries me. Yes, that worries me a ton because I feel like it’s such garbage. Yeah, I I think the other thing that Google has to do is they’ll rank based on your reputation, are people Googling you? I actually just did this exercise with me. People actually, I get

38:53
Like I think almost a thousand searches for just my wife quit her job. And then I get an equal number for just Steve Chu. I think if Google sees that, then they’ll give your site a little bit more weight as well, which is why I think social media actually plays a part. YouTube, TikTok, you know, if people are searching for you after the fact, after watching one of your short form pieces of content, that is one way I think Google will determine whether you’re trustworthy or not also.

39:21
When my last name was Anderson, I could not rank for my name because there was an author named Tony Anderson who’s actually a pretty, it’s not like a Grisham level, but I think it’s a she, is a pretty pluralistic writer. I could never get, because everything would come up as her stuff, her books, her things like that. I was like, it’s probably a good thing that I’m a little anonymous. Now I’m not at all. No, I mean.

39:49
When you switch last names from a very common one to one that only people you are related to have, it’s good and bad, right though? I mean, I don’t mind it. Do you rank number? I’m just gonna do a search for you right now. I don’t know if I rank for my, I haven’t even checked it. You do? Yep. Well, there’s probably only one of me, unless I go back to Germany. That’s true. Actually, I show up too.

40:14
You are trying to encroach on a Herbhawk? You’re not allowed to do that. because our podcast comes up and that sort of thing. That’s funny. What’s funny too is- I don’t know. weird. You’re under speakers for amzsummit.com also. Was that a virtual one? Maybe. It was probably virtual. That’s probably what it was. I was like, yes, I think I did.

40:39
It’s funny because I think when you live your life online, you toe the line between wanting some anonymity, but also wanting everybody to know everything about you so that you can get more traction. It’s like, where do you balance that? Do you rank number one for Steve Chiu? I used to. Let’s see if I do.

41:01
I haven’t Googled myself in a while. Yep, I do. I got the top five spots. Oh yeah. Oh, Twitter is number one. That’s what’s coming up for me. Yep. Twitter is number one followed by the blog. sorry. X, number one. Wow. So this is actually really interesting. Oh, you actually have an author on my side, on the side search results. Did you know that? Oh no. Chu is a highly recognized influencer and speaker in the world of e-commerce. It’s your author bio.

41:31
Oh, interesting. Yes. What’s interesting about this is in my… I’m an incognito right now, but I have X is number one for you, then my wife quit her job, then Instagram, and then it’s your YouTube videos. For me, it’s followed by LinkedIn, and then my about page, and then a bunch of podcast interviews that I’ve done. Interesting. All because of the book, actually. What’s also funny is Steve 251 went on America’s Got Talent.

42:00
It’s a picture of some random dude with a microphone. Stephen Chu used to be the secretary of energy and he used to outrank me for a while. Thank goodness they got rid of him. I know. Actually, he’s down the second page now, Stephen Y. Chu. That’s pretty funny. Anyway. think that does totally going off the AI stuff. I do think that shows that-

42:25
if you’re trying to get your name as the brand out there, having that social presence is effective in search. Google’s clearly ranking that stuff as important, right? The fact that your Instagram is coming up for me third, your Twitter’s number one. That stuff is weird because I put no effort in Instagram whatsoever. I know. Yeah. I’m just going to bite the bullet and start. You know what I’m

42:49
I want a dollar every time you tell me that. I know. I’m posting consistently on shorts and TikToks now. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I have. like them all. Whenever I post one of my business things on Instagram, I always get a lot of flack from my friends who private message me. Your friends aren’t paying the bills. I they aren’t paying the bills. I mean, neither is Instagram to be straight out.

43:13
That’s the rub. We should do this as the next podcast. What is a realistic Instagram strategy for you? I know what I have to do. It’s just posting. What should you post about though? I don’t want to make additional content just for Instagram. It would be my TikTok stuff. It would be my YouTube short stuff. Can you just AI yourself? Stevebot. What’s funny is I am going to do that. This is another topic for a different episode.

43:42
But I record intros and outros for this particular podcast. And then now, you know, with profitable audience on this, I might have to do this potentially three times a week. Right. And usually I record it from scratch just so it flows better. Cause you know, the, levels might change, but 11 labs, which is the leader in, in this space for AI voices. If you train it well enough, then it actually sounds pretty close.

44:10
And fact, there’s a guy who does like a fake Joe Rogan podcast where he like conducts interviews just randomly generated by AI. And it sounds just like Joe Rogan and whoever he gets as the guest. And it works pretty well. So I might start just generating the intros or even just putting my YouTube, you know, transcripts on the podcast also, because I just need to make subtle changes. Like instead of video, it’ll be episode, you know, just subtle changes to the script.

44:39
to make it work and that in theory should save a lot of time. You know to put together one of these podcasts, like the one that we just published for profitable audience on My Wife Could Her Job, it took me like a good 40 minutes for some reason. Really? To record the intro. Maybe it’s because I was coughing so much, I was still sick. Yeah, I was gonna say, I think 40 minutes seems extreme. But I had to line it up also and then I recorded an outro. Oh, I know why, I also had to…

45:08
create a a mid-roll ad for our mini course also. Maybe that’s what it But anyway, it took 40 minutes, but I would say it still takes 20 minutes, even if I didn’t have to do that stuff. So you know what’s interesting is you remember last year at ECF where Andrew Udarian said you’re fed your podcast into AI and created this fake apology from you to him, which was hilarious, but it sounded, I mean, as someone who talks to you,

45:35
on a very regular basis and is very familiar with your voice, I would say I would have given that a score of probably like a 90 to 92 % of like being able to fool me. Like if I would have heard that, I would have been fooled that it was you. Whereas literally two months earlier, Mike Jackness, I was in the car with Mike and he was playing his own AI, his voice on AI and I would have said it was like 50%, right? So just even in like a couple months, like the changes in

46:05
the quality are pretty crazy. Well, Living Labs allows you to upload all of your content. And the more you have, the better it sounds, which means that you, Darien, probably spent a good amount of time on that. He did. I think he took the entire month of January.

46:22
Alright, well, if you guys, since we were talking about Spencer, if you want to see the guy speak, he is going to be a speaker at Seller Summit. I’m not sure when this episode is going to come out, but we’re running low on mastermind tickets right now. Spencer, I’m not sure what he’s going to talk about. Probably his content strategy and blogging. He’s always on the cutting edge. So I know we talked a lot about Spencer today. If you want to see him and meet him in person, he’s an amazing guy.

46:51
Hope you enjoyed this episode. Google is in a state of flux and we will report back as soon as we have more information. Now for more information about this episode, go to mywifecoupterjob.com slash episode 519. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com. And if you were interested in starting your own e-commerce store,

47:21
head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.