535: The Death of Google Search: Here’s What’s Happening

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You’re listening to My Wife, Quit or Job 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. Today, Tony and I are going to discuss some of the Google updates that have been occurring in just the past couple of weeks and the future of Google search as we see it. But before we begin, I want to let you know that this is the last call for tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit over at sellersummit.com.

00:24
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01:57
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today we’re going to talk about Google search again, because they just rolled out. I don’t even know if it’s the same update, but they rolled out another update last week that that really rocked me for it took me on a roller coaster ride because I woke up one day and my traffic was half on the blog. And then three days later it was back to normal, but it gives me anxiety. My wife quit or Bumblebee or both.

02:26
My wife quit. Bumblebee has been pretty solid. I think e-commerce SEO is pretty stable or it has been pretty stable. Although I do have some terrible sites outranking me now for Bumblebee. My horrific sites that look like they were designed in the nineties. I’m mainly talking about my wife quit her job and the Bumblebee Linens blog actually. So, and you know, because this happened, I started talking to

02:54
a bunch of my mastermind buddies who blog. I actually had drinks with Todd Tressiter who’s in my mastermind group. Oh yeah. Cause I was in Reno this past weekend as you know, and that’s where he lives. I don’t think anyone has recovered from that first update. And if anything, things got worse. So that’s my question for you is I can’t remember, and I don’t track this as much as you do.

03:19
I can’t remember two updates so close together. Is this normal to like have the big update in March and then have another one, you know, four weeks later? There’s been a major update every single month since last, the end of last year. Okay. You just haven’t been hit until recently. I wasn’t hit majorly until recently. Okay. And this came up again, because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Reddit has become even more prominent than the last time we talked about it. And I don’t want to beat Reddit to death here, but

03:49
I figured out that Reddit went from the 80th biggest SEO site on Google to the sixth biggest SEO site.

03:59
I also found out, and I wasn’t aware of this, but Google’s actually paying Reddit 60 million bucks to access Reddit’s data. Interesting. AI training. And I’m wondering if there’s some secret side deal where they said, we’ll throw you a bunch of traffic also. You’re wondering. I mean, I don’t know. I mean, my biggest problem with all of this is that

04:25
The content that Google is serving up via Reddit is usually garbage. It’s usually three to four years old. It’s mostly irrelevant. And a lot of times the answers are wrong. it’s not even actually answering the question that you type into Google. You know, it’s funny, I talked to a bunch of other webmasters and I went on a bunch of forums. People are actually giving up this time. Like the SEO landscape is so kind of up in the air right now.

04:53
that people are debating whether to just continue investing in content creation because it’s random now, right? If you have Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn dominating the search results, and this is probably why most people haven’t recovered, right? They haven’t recovered and they continue to drop because those types of sites continue to rise. And I’m sure Google has deals with them because they want their content for AI, right? For AI training.

05:20
And there must be some sort of back deal. And this is all speculation, obviously, but. At what point do people, like not the content creators, but the consumers give up on Google? Because I feel like the search results are really poor. And people that I’ve talked to, people that are not content creators, that are just using Google as a citizen have also been unhappy with the changes. You know what? I remember this happening and maybe history is repeating itself.

05:48
When I was in college, when Yahoo was the de facto search engine, and then Google came, and then Yahoo was gone pretty much within a year and a half, I want to say. Google’s more entrenched because they own Android phones. And I think they’re still paying Apple a god amount of money in order to make search the default. But they’ve been getting a lot of heat. the main, yeah, I forgot his name offhand, but the forward facing guy on Google who replaced Matt Cutts,

06:18
He’s been on Twitter a lot, just answering questions about stuff. then Sundar, the CEO, actually gave a talk on what he views as the future of search. And Sundar didn’t mention anything about Reddit and LinkedIn being the future of search. guess I don’t understand how he could leave that out when it’s so much of what the search landscape is right now, though. Well, so this article that I read about his talk, I didn’t actually listen to his talk.

06:47
But I got the Cliff Notes and there’s so many people covering it. His response actually, basically the question that was asked was, how does he see Google search evolving with AI? And he basically said that Google’s results have been AI for a long time, since 2016. And people always like to think of Google as 10 blue links.

07:16
but it’s really evolved. And he mentioned that when mobile phones became pervasive, that’s when rich snippets came out. That’s when more images came out in the search results. So he claims that Google has been using AI for a long time. And I guess if you think about it that way, it’s true. But what’s interesting about what he said, and I think this has to do with just the backlash in the blogging community, is that he said that AI is not gonna replace traditional search. I don’t know about that though.

07:45
I was thinking about what he said. He said, role of websites remains crucial because it maintains the richness and the diversity of content. The role of websites remains crucial because that’s how AI is getting all their information. I know. AI is not coming up with this on its own at this point. Who knows in the future? It can’t come up with everything on its own. AI can’t cover events and all that stuff.

08:14
can’t remember the last time I actually used Google for information outside of researching what he said in this speech. I actually go to chat GPT now first, ask it for whatever’s going on or whatever question I want. And then I just kind of use search, guess, to double check. To fact check essentially. Yeah, I was actually watching a webinar this morning on, it was an AI webinar, but it was basically,

08:43
fact-checking AI. So it was a content creator who was getting ready to do a podcast interview with someone who’d written a book. And so they were on ChatGBT basically asking for like, what famous people have said things about this book and what, know, asking questions like that. And it came back with like, what if Paltrow said this and Jennifer Aniston said this. But then when they fact-checked that AI basically said, oh, I’m sorry.

09:10
this is what they would have said if they gave a quote for the book, but there’s no evidence that they gave a quote for the book. So anyway, I feel like stuff like that you have to fact check, right? Because basically AI took that to mean, and the prompt was good, wasn’t a prompt that would create a fake answer, but it gave a fake answer based on what someone would say if they did say something kind of thing. I mean, there’s a search engine out there now called Perplexity. Yep.

09:40
that I’ve been actually dabbling with for like the last month or so. It gives an AI response and then it cites sources. it’s kind of a combination of ChatGPT and Google. And maybe that’s what he’s getting at, but he’s trying to reassure all the content creators out there to continue creating content and that websites aren’t going away. The thing is though, when you think about search behavior,

10:08
If you’re gonna search for, like I think about the things that I search for just on regular basis, like how many feet are in a mile, right? Or how many steps do I have to walk to, know, walk, if I wanna walk five miles a day, how many steps is that? know, things like those, or how do I find the percentage of this by doing, you know, like things like that, which is typically what I Google search. I do all of that on ChatGPT because it’s like those things aren’t,

10:37
Like the number of feet in a mile is just a fact, right? There’s no perspective to that. There’s no color commentary. It’s just, it is what it is. Who won the Heisman Trophy in 1984? know, stuff like that. Like to me, that’s where Google’s gonna go away. Because I don’t need the history of the Heisman Trophy if I wanna know who won it in 1994. It’s probably because I got the answer wrong in trivia and I’m irritated or something like that. So in that way, I do think that AI will replace

11:06
some of Google, I feel like where it’s not gonna replace it is, and this is one of the things that was in this webinar that I was listening to this morning was about when you’re making like a purchase decision or you’re choosing to make like a time or money investment into something, people typically invest in people, right? Like why do people have such a loyalty to the brand Yeti?

11:29
Well, one, because they have like superior products, but two, they’ve created this like lifestyle brand, right? So people are connected to that. like when you are creating content, whether it’s for a product or a course or whatever, the content becomes important because that’s where you connect with the people, the brand story, the whole, like I got glasses at Warby Parker the other day, right? And for every glasses you buy at Warby Parker, they donate a pair of glasses overseas.

11:56
Same thing with the sock, right? Doesn’t Tom or Tom shoes does it with shoes? I think there’s another company does it with socks and bombas does it So I think that’s where like the contents not dead because you still need people to know your brand story or your content story But that general information stuff. I don’t know. I feel like that could easily be replaced I mean in the context of ranking and search and no one really knows what’s going on but

12:22
I actually looked at the top 10 and some people jumped ahead of me and I just kind of looked at their articles. There’s really no personal stories there. Yeah. At all. And there’ve been people who have done experiments where they just rewrote like their top posts that used to rank and included stories and really demonstrate their experience with whatever they’re reviewing. And maybe it’s still early, but so far no dice. Like it hasn’t really helped.

12:53
Don’t you think so, like, if you establish yourself as a brand, so let’s just take my wife, quit her job, you’ve established yourself as an e-commerce expert. If I, well, so we know somebody actually who wanted to put up a store website and they actually researched just based on your content, your videos and your blog posts, whether they should go with Shopify or BigCommerce. And they made a decision based on your articles and your videos, not on

13:22
like a wide variety of things. It’s kind of like when I wanna look for a better credit card, I always go to NerdWallet. I don’t Google search that, because I don’t want some random person telling me what credit card to get. Like I like NerdWallet, I trust them. I don’t know why I do, but I do, right? So I do feel like that is an advantage for someone like you, who’s built this expertise and this brand, that people won’t, maybe they won’t even go to Google, they’ll just go to your site directly and then search on your site for information.

13:54
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

14:23
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

14:35
I mean, it’s possible, but it’s funny you mentioned that article. It used to be like number six for Shopify versus Big Commerce. Yeah. And now it’s on like the fifth page. Really? I don’t know what happened. And that one actually has a lot of personal experience stuff in there. And that one, ironically of all my reviews, I think dropped the most, but perhaps it’s probably one of the most competitive ones. Yeah, I’m sure. Because the payouts are so high on that, right? Yeah.

15:02
So I don’t know what’s going on. I actually have not really physically talked to anyone that has benefited from this update. It seems, and maybe it’s because my colleagues are kind of skewed towards personal finance and business blogging, but I think all of them have been knocked down primarily because of the upgrades of Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, and those types of sites. Have you heard any chatter from like the lifestyle space? Yes, actually.

15:31
One of our friends, one of our frugal blogger, like coupon blogger got hit big time with the update. I want to say probably close to half the traffic. Wow. So yeah, I’ve heard I’ve heard little rumblings here and there. I’m wondering, though, like, let’s just take your big commerce post, right? Because you dropped to page five. Is the is the YouTube video ranking at all in search? YouTube video still pops up from time to time, actually.

16:00
Because I’m- that, you know what’s ironic? Is that YouTube video was back when I was practically reading the blog posts. Because it was one of my early videos. And I was just trying to put out videos the lowest energy way. That video is like the same content as the blog post. Correct. But what I have seen in like my own Google experience is that a lot of times the video will show up well before the blog post. So I’m wondering if, since you have a lot of video content based on

16:30
the very same topics you’re writing about. If your video now, even though you are on number five for that particular article, maybe the video’s coming up in the top, know, because video shows up in the top on the front page. Yeah, you know what’s funny is I haven’t, I didn’t do that search. I wasn’t paying attention to the video. I was just looking for my article and I just scrolled way down. In the old days, and when I say old days, I mean last year, I had the video and the post on the front page. Okay.

16:59
Because what I found, and this isn’t true anymore, but back when Pinterest was getting a lot of favoritism in Google search results, that sometimes I would lose the search result for the blog post, but my pen would show up within the top couple things. So I’m just wondering if the same thing’s gonna happen with YouTube on particular articles, right, where you ranked on the blog, but now you’ve lost that, but your YouTube is still ranking up there in Google search, not on YouTube search. You know what’s funny is,

17:28
I can’t see Pinterest at all. I haven’t noticed Pinterest at all in the search results. It doesn’t happen anymore. It’s not every once in a while. I probably see more than you do because I’m more of a Pinterest user than you are. But it used to be like before 2000. So, know, 2018, 2019. Like if you could get a pin to come up in Google search now, it’s on Pinterest, right? It’s not on your website, but that could really boost a pin pretty significantly. And then, of course, would boost your website traffic as well. So I’m just, you know, my thinking is maybe

17:58
Maybe the silver lighting in this is your YouTube stuff will continue to propel some of those articles that you aren’t on the first page for anymore. Yeah. It’s funny. I just realized how affected I am by Google because during that roller coaster ride, I was like, okay, I’m done. And then it recovered like three days later. It’s like a roller coaster ride. This entire, I would say, last two months. Here are just some other stats that I just kind of picked up. Bing is actually gaining market share.

18:27
on Google by 2%, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but it hasn’t really happened. Bing has not gained market share in a very long time. Have you noticed they’re redoubling their efforts to reach out to content creators? I have noticed that. have gotten emails from Bing. When was the last time you got an email from Bing before 2024? I can think of maybe once when there was some announcement. I probably have…

18:56
three emails from Bing in my inbox right now that I’ve sort of just like, I’ll look at this later, I don’t have time. You know, what’s interesting about this is Bing is also, it also has like the AI built in. Whereas Google has not done that yet. And there was an article that I read that Google was considering charging for the AI experience. Interesting. the cost of an AI query is like an order of magnitude more expensive than just a regular search.

19:26
And it sounded like they didn’t want to fund that because it was like a losing proposition. And then here we have Bing just freely incorporating the AI search results. Not really caring about the money, but Google’s richer than Microsoft, right? Yeah. I mean, this is their entire business. So I don’t see what the issue is. So this is you and I are old.

19:53
I can’t imagine a world where Google is not dominating. It’s been such a part of the internet for as long as I can remember. Gmail, Google search, just everything. But then I bet there’s people out there that are like, I can’t imagine a world without Pan American Airlines.

20:17
Right, or some of these are continental, right, these giants in their own industry, or certain car brands, things like that, where it’s like, this was the top of the top of the top, and now it’s obsolete, right, for a variety of reasons. Could be poor management, it could be unable to keep up with the times, things like that. But to me, it’s like, I can’t imagine a world without Google, but that could very well be the case at some point. I mean, in tech, things fall fast, just like my Yahoo story. Yeah.

20:46
What’s funny is that so Google has SGE, which stands for search generative experience. I don’t know if you ever played around with it. It’s essentially like a chat bot. Okay. In the search results. In the interview with the Google CEO, he clarified that chat bots and SG was different. And that everything that they’ve been working on is there to enhance the existing search. But

21:16
I mean, if you’re just going to get the answer right away, why do I need search? Yeah, I don’t know how to read into this. Maybe he’s just I’m sure he didn’t really talk about anything related to SEO or anything like that. Yeah. But maybe bloggers are leaving in droves, which is why he felt compelled to to do this. I mean, if he really wanted websites to still be around, he wouldn’t be promoting like these user generated content sites, right?

21:41
Except for the fact that if you want to take a full circle, mean, not Reddit per se, but like forums were the original blogs. That’s true. Because I was like, I was a forum queen back before I had my blog. mean, like 2002, 2003, 2004, I was like, had my forum name and you you’re like, I mean, to me, it was like, I was writing blog posts in forums before I knew that you could use WordPress to start a website.

22:10
I mean, if you think about it, go back to 2004, 2005. That’s true. I wasn’t really a forum junkie, but you were posting like full on blog posts on there. Yeah. So I was in forums that were very specific to my life. So I was in a lot of homeschool and homemaking, homesteading forums. So someone would go on there and say,

22:32
I can’t find a math curriculum for my kid. They can’t seem to learn their addition facts, right? And so then I would go in there and I would write eight, nine paragraphs of like, well, I tried this and this is what I saw and then we did this and then this something, I have a son that’s dyslexic and this, and I would write basically blog posts. And that was what kind of fueled me to start the blog because I felt like I’m writing all this content in here in this forum and then it’s getting lost, right? Because in forums you get threads and everything just it’s.

23:00
Back then, forums are so much better now, for search, you know, to search in a forum for something, but like back then they weren’t. And I was like, well, wouldn’t it be cool if I could just put this article, you know, put these things that I’m already saying on a website. And then when my people in real life ask me these questions, I can just point them to the website as opposed to like going, well, I put it in a forum, you know, dig down three sub forums and you can find it. I mean, I think that’s how a lot of people like that got started when I did.

23:29
they were forum people before they were bloggers. know forums actually used to show up in the search results once upon a time. A long time ago. And I guess Reddit has displaced the forum, but I’m wondering why Google isn’t bringing forums back if real content is actually making a comeback, right? Here’s the problem that I see is that I feel like today, and I’m just gonna get so much hate for this.

23:56
Like I felt like when I was in forums, you know, 20 years ago, the information being shared was really good. And now I feel like anybody with five minutes of free time is in there spouting off some idiotic, you know, position on something. I just don’t feel like they’re the same as they used to be. I feel like before, and I think there are still forums, like my brother’s in some discord groups for like tech and AV. And I think there are still places like that where the information is really good.

24:25
But then I think you can get on, you know, some of these Reddit threads and it’s just like it devolves so quickly. And the information just isn’t the quality that it that I remember it being before. And there’s so many people being paid to post stuff. So this is what happened the other day on one of my team of videos. I’m almost positive now. I’m like 99 percent sure that team is paying people to leave comments, positive comments on videos and stuff. So this guy.

24:53
went on my Tmoo video and he said, I’ve been using Tmoo for many years now. And it’s been rocks. I’m like, Tmoo has only been around since 2022, the end of 2022, right? I’m like, okay, you screwed up on that one, buddy. Well, Tmoo is using AI to generate comments to have people post. So it’s probably like wildly inaccurate. I guess the real question that came out of this and this was a discussion among my mastermind group.

25:23
Is blogging still worth it? Like should you invest all this time and money into blogging with all these changes in AI? Google not even knowing what the heck they’re doing. The consensus actually of the guys, and we’re having a live Mastermind meetup at some point this year, the topic’s gonna be alternatives to Google. And we’ve just been realizing how reliant we’ve been on Google. mean especially in these, so the members of my Mastermind group,

25:52
primarily are affiliate marketers. So what they do is they just try to rank a review and search. And then whenever someone signs up for something, they get a huge cut. And that’s worked. I my buddies are making millions. Yeah, for like over a decade, millions of dollars every single year, putting out great content. And now that they’ve been getting pushed down by, you know, user generated sites, they’re like, what is the point?

26:19
And then there’s still some sites like the big ones like Nordwallet that you mentioned that still kind of dominate the search results. But for the most part, all the medium sized guys have been pushed down. So this is where I see the adaptability of people and the ability to pivot becomes such a valuable skill. So let’s talk about two of our friends that started out as bloggers. First of all, let’s talk about Tiffany Ivanovsky.

26:49
Right? She started blogging sometime around the same time I did with a deal blog, right? Telling people how to use coupons, know, how to shop the sales. Her husband had a blog, how to get deals at Walmart. They did that for probably six or seven years and made full time. You know, they both had quit their regular jobs, all that stuff. But then, you know,

27:12
at some point they pivoted, right? And they got into like a network marketing company, which they then sold clothing online, but they leveraged the audience that they built from the blogs to launch this network marketing with the clothing. that happened, that went on for a couple of years. They took what they learned selling clothing online and created their own brand, right? Their own shop, even manufacture some of their own clothing, right? And now they have a multimillion dollar business, more,

27:41
more successful than they ever were at blogging, although their blogs were very successful, right? Completely shifting. Another person, Jamreel, started as a, a homeschool site, right? How to get homeschool deals. Did that, sold that site, leveraged it, started writing about, she has a lot of kids, so she started writing about how to bulk cook, right? How to make all these things. Started a YouTube channel way before most people were taking YouTube very seriously, right? Now she has a whole suite of digital products. Her YouTube channel is wildly successful.

28:11
You know, so she pivoted from initially starting about talking about how to get homeschool products for inexpensive to now she’s this big time YouTuber. Same with our friend Leslie Samuel. Started out as a blogger, then was a business coach, then pivoted back to YouTube. And he wasn’t talking about business on YouTube, he was talking about science, because that’s his background. He’s built once again a wildly successful YouTube channel, been able to leverage that. So I think the ability to like leverage

28:40
what you build into something else is critical in if you live in the world of like internet marketing. So being able to take what you learn from one thing and leverage it into something else is how you can last for 10 to 20 years. And I was just thinking to myself, if I hadn’t started that YouTube channel, I’d be pretty worried right now. mean, YouTube has been really good. And I think the guys have always been reluctant. Did you see I sent you a TikTok this morning? I didn’t see it. I saw that you sent me one.

29:10
I sent you one because it’s our buddy who would never in a million years go on video and do TikToks. So now they’re doing TikTok. Ready to TikTok. OK, yeah. Right. And you know who I’m talking about? He’s been on the podcast before. yes. But he likes to just hide in the corner and just collect money. That’s generally his personality. But I do feel like I mean, there’s something to be said about I know a lot of the guys in this group, like there’s something to be said about that. A lot of them have sold websites. They don’t have to work again if they don’t want to.

29:40
But a lot of them are still, they’ve built a really great business, but now they’re having the repercussions of all these Google updates, their traffic’s not what it used to be. I mean, one of our friends didn’t build an email list, right, in your group? And it’s like, those things are so important because you just don’t know when, I mean, like,

30:04
We always talk about like, all these bloggers that build their entire business on social media, right? They’re just Facebooks or Instagram hacks, right? And it’s not much different than Google when it comes to it being able to be wiped away in a minute. It’s different in that when you try to build something on Instagram, it’s that constant cycle, whereas Google, it’s a slow burn, right? So you create something, it builds up, that sort of thing. So in that way, it’s different. But at the end of the day,

30:32
you can lose your Instagram or you can lose your Google search, your number one rankings, and you literally have zero control over it. I don’t know these people, but there have been reports of traffic literally going to zero. People posting their search consoles because of some slap from Google. What kind of irks me a little bit is, you know how they’ve been promoting EAT, which stands for Expertise, Authority, and Trust. Yeah.

30:59
I think that’s all gone out the window. I don’t really think it matters. I don’t think so either. Because it’s been promoting Reddit posts from people who have no idea what the hell they’re talking about. Exactly. So Google always says one thing and then they do the other. Yeah. And I think this last slap where they actually manually penalize a bunch of sites. I think that was just a statement to scare people into not using AI to generate the results because I don’t think they can really detect it.

31:29
Yeah, I think they would have trouble. mean, all these search updates that keep happening every single month are probably the result of the fact that they can’t control this and they don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re just flipping dials and whatnot. Yeah, I know. But to me, it’s like this is why having that email list is so important. Having that loyal fan base is so important.

31:55
Because then, even if Google’s not showing your stuff to new people, right, people that are just searching and they land on your site, which is, you know, obviously a pretty important component of this, you still have a group of people that like you, trust you, know you, will recommend you. I mean, I’ve seen people when stuff like this happens, send an email to their list and be like, hey guys, I got decimated by this Google update. Would you please share this newsletter with your friends? Right?

32:23
relying on that relationship that you built with your audience to help you weather these types of storms. Yeah, I agree. Email and SMS are both factors that will reduce the speed of the decline, I would say. Yeah. Because every time you send, you do lose some subs, and so you always have to be replenishing the ones that you lose. Yeah. But yeah, I absolutely agree. I guess even if the entire traffic

32:52
Spigot stopped, I’d probably be okay for a solid year or two, I think. You would be okay. Well, you’d be okay for a variety of but like your YouTube traffic isn’t gonna stop. I mean, what if, remember our buddy Leslie got hacked and lost his video? Yes, but that’s more of an anomaly versus like a global update, right? Correct, yeah. Reddit’s not gonna be at the top of YouTube ever.

33:23
Although all these AI videos seem to be creeping up into my feed that bothers me to no end actually. don’t think that most of them have staying power, especially about the stuff that you talk about. Yeah, they’re not competitors. I’m just saying like, I’m seeing all these AI videos pop up in my feed and I keep, you know what I’ve been doing? I’ve been marking them as spam, but I keep getting them. Interesting.

33:51
I didn’t know you could market video as spam. can block that. Oh, channel? You can suggest, yeah. OK. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully Google gets the point, but they haven’t. I don’t know. The key point here is I think everyone needs to diversify. Mm hmm. Right. And I think the key to ranking in Google search is really just a long term investment in brand and authority building. Mm hmm. Because there are sites that still rank like I’m still ranking for a bunch of stuff. Yeah.

34:22
It just pains me when I see some no name on Reddit outrank me for something, some person that has no authority and probably doesn’t even know what they’re talking about. Yeah, and I think that does a disservice. I mean, honestly, it does a disservice to the person searching too, right? Because they’re probably going to end up with bad information. It’s like it reminds me of back in the day, like on Facebook, and I’m sure this still goes around. I just don’t see it. like.

34:46
you need to repost this because so Facebook protects your data and if you don’t repost this on Facebook, like I feel like all the people that reposted that on Facebook are reading bad results in Google and getting the wrong information. Yeah, so I mean what I’m doing right now personally is I’m on social media. I actually have a method of posting regularly now both for Bumblebee and I’m gonna talk about this as soon as I get some more data to actually make a presentation of all this.

35:16
But I’m going to report on the results and I’ve, hated social media for a long time and desperate times call for desperate measures. When SEO goes down, it’s time for the tick tock dances. Something’s gotta go back up. I’m always bullish on email and SMS always. And I am staying the course on my content creation for the blog. I don’t think the strategies have changed. Right.

35:43
You want to answer the questions that people are asking online. Really, the only thing that’s changed, at least in my domain, I can’t really talk about yours in the lifestyle space, is that these bigger sites are basically displacing the smaller guys. And by bigger sites, I mean the Reddits and the LinkedIn’s and the Quarers. Like if you add all those sites in there, you’re basically getting knocked down like five or six spots. Yeah. Right. Because there’s always like another informational panel in between there too.

36:12
And getting knocked down five or six spots is actually a big deal in Google search. But in terms of ranking, like I just wrote another article just the other day that went live and it instantly jumped to like number 12 and hopefully it’ll continue to climb. So the strategies haven’t changed. What’s really changed is Google and what they’re favoring. And I have to think that this is going to be some sort of yo-yo effect, right? Like you’re already getting fed up with the Reddit results and whatnot.

36:42
And if it continues on like this, people just aren’t going to use search anymore and Bing is going to get even more market share. Which sounds crazy that we’re saying this, but also we were all using AOL. Yeah. And we talked about Bing a bunch of times already. I can’t remember the last time I’ve even used Bing, but I kind of gave it a try recently and I even fired up my Bing Webmaster tools. Are you even signed up for Bing Webmaster? Yes, I am. That was one of the emails I got. I thought to myself,

37:10
I’m signed up for Ping Webmaster Tools. Like I must have signed up years ago, but I am. Because the Bing search results haven’t really changed. probably like the Google of old. Yeah, yeah. Because they don’t have deals, I guess, with Reddit. I mean, hopefully it stays that way. It’ll be interesting. Like in a year, it’ll be interesting to listen to this podcast and see what’s changed and what stayed the same. Yeah. And actually, you’re not on Windows, right? I’m not. I’m not. No.

37:40
I’m on Windows and every time there’s an update, which probably happens like every month or so, they try to set Edge to be the default search engine. Oh yeah, I do remember that. default browser on the machine. Just for fun, because of all this is happening, I’m a little anti-Google right now. I started using the Edge browser just for kicks. It’s actually faster than Chrome. So Apple does that with Safari?

38:09
every time that’s the same exact, you know, hook. What’s interesting and probably the only reason why, although not every site’s compatible with Safari, which is annoying, but the reason why Chrome has my loyalty is because they have my password saved. That’s how they get you, right? I’m sure Kevin’s rolling over right now in just disgust. But no, like if you think about like the Chrome password manager is…

38:38
Probably, I’m not recommending it for anybody. It’s probably not secure, don’t use it. But for me, there’s no way I would remember my passwords. And so I got an email right before we got on from one of my doctors, like, you have a secure message? And I was like, I don’t even remember being on this site. I mean, knew that I had, but I couldn’t, I was like, thank goodness that Google has my password saved, because I haven’t logged into this site in six months. I have no idea what my password is. So yeah.

39:04
What keeps me on Chrome are the plugins that I use. Jungle Scout, the Helium Test. have all these helper functions. Fluencer Fruit, yeah, that’s all set up. Pinterest has got a plug in there that I use. Actually, those are my three. I’ve got Pinterest, Fluencer Fruit, and Jungle Scout sitting on my browser. So is Google going away anytime soon? Probably not. I mean, they this huge moat. But if they lose search market share continually,

39:32
I mean, that’s their revenue source, right? And once they have less money, and if, let’s say, Bing becomes the dominant search engine at some point, maybe they can pay Apple to displace Google Search. I don’t know. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Now, we’re just going to have to see how all this Google stuff pans out. But at its current trajectory, I think it’s not looking good.

39:58
More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 535. And once again, tickets to Seller Summit 2024 are on sale over at seller summits.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 seller summits.com. And if you are interested in starting your own e-commerce store, 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.