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- [00:00]
Grumpy SEO Guy
This is Grumpy SEO Guy, episode 119. Two things we're telling our clients about AI and SEO. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. I'm the grumpy SEO Guy and I'm sharing with you the strategies that have helped me successfully run my SEO agency for the last 14 years. In this podcast, I'll be sharing my knowledge and experience, discussing tips and strategies and and trying to help you cut through the confusion that permeates this industry. If you listen to this podcast, you will know more about SEO than 99% of people on the planet. Ready? Let's get started. I'm the grumpy SEO guy. Let me tell you why I'm grumpy today. I'm grumpy today because there's a lot of dialogue around AI and how it connects to SEO. And in this episode, I'm going to give you my recommendations. Okay, so just wait for a second. Okay, so before we do that, a couple reminders. New episodes come out on Wednesday, 9am Central Standard Time. That's for the podcast. If you're listening on YouTube, it's gonna be a little bit after that. If you leave a comment on YouTube, I try to reply on Wednesday, but sometimes it's not until Thursday. If you like the podcast and you wanna subscribe, that would be great. If you really like the podcast and you wanna support us on Patreon, you can do so@patreon.com grumpyscoguy and if you have a complicated question that is more than can be hand or in a Reddit thread or something, and you want to set up a SEO Zoom advisory call, you can email me@hellorumpy seoguy.com and we can talk about how to schedule that. If you just want to drop by and say hi, you can Visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit Reddit.comr grumpyseoguy. My username there is Grumpy SEOguy. Okay, so let's get started. But before we do that, my lawyer tells me that I have to say this right now. A quick disclaimer before we get started. Everything I say here is based on my experience and opinion from 14 years in the industry. I don't officially know how Google or any other search engines work. Everything I say here is hypothetical. And based on my experience, this podcast does not constitute advice or services. What worked for me may or may not work for you. Okay, back to the show. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a couple things about AI and this is, this is just what I think right now.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
I'm not sure if this is true, but what's interesting is nobody is sure if anything anybody is saying is true. Okay, so here we go. Number one, you should avoid paying anybody to do anything related to AI right now.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
I've seen services that are like, we will get you listed in whatever AI tool you like. We will get you listed in such and such. Like, really? Nobody knows exactly how that works right now, but I can tell you it's not with LLMs txt.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
We just did an episode on this, that's episode 115. That episode is called SEO, AI and LLMs TXT Part One. Probably. So anyway, people are saying, oh, just use LLMs TXT. No, no, because all of the AI tools that everybody's talking about actually have said they do not use LLMs txt. So you can, for example, you can have an LLMs TXT file if you want, but as of today, it's not used by the AI tools that everybody is talking about. So let me ask you a question. Are you gonna pay somebody to set up LLMs TXT for you when it doesn't do anything? I wouldn't, but whatever. So anyway, the general consensus, as far as I understand is that AI, SEO or GEO or AIO or whatever you wanna name these is the same as regular SEO. And I can already hear everybody has a problem with that. No grumpy SEO guy, blah, blah, blah. Okay, good. Show me an ex of this not being true, okay? Show me. Just like when people say they can rank without backlinks. Show me an example of it not being true, okay? Which by the way, I've been waiting for over 12 months for an example of that. Lots of liars saying they can rank with only content and no backlinks because it's really, really great quality content and we don't need backlinks. But not a single person has ever shown proof that they can do so. I'm still waiting. It's been over 12 months. My public challenge. I'm still waiting. Show me an example of a website that ranks in medium to difficult keyword without backlinks. Show me. I will name you if you want. I will probably hire you because I guarantee you that paying you to write content is less than it costs to run a pbn. So I'll probably hire you if you can show me an example of this. So far, nobody's been able to do it. It's because SEO doesn't work that way anyways. By the way, the burden of proof is on the person making the claim. So if you say you can rank without backlinks, you need to show an example of that. I'll show you an example of websites that rank with backlinks. Search for whatever you want, and I guarantee you the sites on the first page have backlinks. Okay? Anyways, back to AI and stuff. So you should avoid paying anybody for any AI services. You should avoid paying anybody to be listed in the AI tools. You should avoid paying anybody for any of that because nobody knows how to do it conclusively. I've seen people offering it. I've seen people who are subtly like, hey, contact me and we will help you get listed in the AI software. No, no you won't, because nobody knows how it works conclusively.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
You want good AI SEO, do good SEO. That's how it works.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Anyways, long, long story, but that's how we're just going to put it now. Oh, and you should avoid paying anybody for any kind of AI audit or anything. I'm not even sure if this exists yet. It wouldn't surprise me. Do you guys remember when EEAT came out and all of the charlatans started charging people thousands of dollars for eeat, which isn't even a ranking factor. EEAT is unrelated to where you rank. It is not a ranking factor, okay? And EEAT is not a ranking factor. Even Google has said in their official documentation that EEAT is not a ranking factor.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Yet there are scammers charging thousands of dollars for EEAT audits, okay? EEAT is not a ranking factor. So if you pay money to like fix your EEAT or something, it's not going to improve your rankings because it's not a ranking factor. So the reason it's a scam is because you paid money for an SEO service that is not actually an SEO service. It would be like if you paid money for somebody to increase your dwell time or something that is also not a ranking factor.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Like, EEAT is great. It's awesome, but it is not a ranking factor. Having higher dwell time is awesome. It means you probably have good content and people want to read it. Or. Or it means your website is so horrendous that they can't find what they're looking for. But anyways, dwell time is not a ranking factor, so it doesn't matter.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
EEAT not a ranking factor. Never pay anybody for an EEAT Audit because it's a waste of money. So the reason EeAT audits are a scam is because they don't do anything for SEO.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
You're paying money for something that cannot possibly help SEO. So it's a scam, okay? It's a scam because it is 100% unequivocally unrelated to SEO.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
You can pay all the money you want for an EAT audit. Just realize it will not help your SEO because it is not a ranking factor. It is not a ranking factor. If you want to learn more about why EAT is not a ranking factor, you can listen to episode 46. The name of that episode is Eat is Not a Ranking Factor. But anyway, you still have the people that try to tell you content is king and EAT matters and all that stuff. It's kind of like hcu. Remember the Helpful Content Update? And I think there were people offering to look at your website and tell you how to fix your HCU or some nonsense like that. No, no, no. It's not how it works. We have a whole other episode that explains at least what I think HCU is. If you want to learn more about that, it's episode 48, helpful content update HCU. Because you have to remember all along, search engines cannot tell the quality of content. It is literally impossible for them to tell the quality of content.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
So what they do instead is they have to use analogs like authority, which could also be described as popularity, which is a different topic that we're going to cover on a different episode, even though we've already covered it in the past.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
But the general assumption is that a popular website is probably better quality, therefore it's going to rank higher.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Even if they could tell. Even if they could tell quality, which they can't, but even if they could, how would you account for bias? Not a single person has ever been able to answer that question. How would you account for bias? What you think is good, I might think is terrible. Which one of those is good quality content? I'll wait. I'll wait while you answer that question. But just waiting over here Anyways. Still waiting. I'm still waiting for an answer to that question. Anybody? Anybody? Post in the comments below. Post in the comments below. Okay, Anyways, so look, here's the point. You should avoid paying money to people to do anything related to AI and SEO right now. Unless you're just paying them to do SEO, in which case that will also help your AI, SEO or GEO or whatever.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
So there are four things, and I Feel like I say this on all the episodes, but we're say it again anyway because that's how important it is. There are four things you need to rank. These are the four things that it is worth paying for for SEO, because these are the four things that you need to rank. And this is for regular SEO, not for local SEO.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Local SEO being map pack results. This is for normal SEO. One, have zero penalties. Your highest priority is to have no penalties. Number two, content.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
But it doesn't matter if the content is good or not. It just needs to be there because you can't ran like a website with nothing on it. Well, you probably could, but there's no reason to try. Like, what would be the point? People get to your website and there's nothing there. Like, are they gonna buy anything from you if your website has nothing on it? No, of course not. Whatever. Okay, number one, you need to have no penalties. Number two, you need to have content. Number three, you need to have relevancy. Relevancy comes from anchor text and from content.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Number four, you need to have authority. Authority is shared with backlinks.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Those are the four things you need to ran, not eeat, not hcu.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Not dwell time, not user experience, not any of the other. There's more, and I can't even, like, recollect them right now. But you know what? I'm like, all the things that people try to talk about and sell you and make a big deal out of that are not actually ranking factors. Those are the things that I'm talking about. Anyways, number two, let's talk about whether or not you should use AI content. Okay? This is another big discussion in the SEO industry. I have heard arguments on each side of the argument, okay? And I'm truly not sure which side I agree with. But let me. Let me tell you, Let me just tell you both sides, okay? And then I'll tell you what we've been telling clients. So people say, okay, so on the one hand, you've got people that say AI content is just fine. And on the other hand, you've got people that say you shouldn't use AI content. Okay, that's fine. Fine, great. Whatever. Look, you guys have heard probably of AI Slop, right? AI slop is just AI written content that doesn't really do anything. It doesn't provide any value. It's filler content that takes up space, right? Like, look, let's say you're selling washing machines, okay? Everybody in the Internet selling washing machines or whatever, they've all got content about their washing machines, right? Is anyone really saying anything unique? Like, really? And just. Just. This isn't an argument for uniqueness. Just. Just hold on for a second. Is anyone, like, actually, is anybody. Is anybody really saying anything unique? If you have AI right? Content about washing machines, is that really benefiting anybody, or is it ultimately just the same as what everybody else does? Now, again, I'm not talking about quality of content, and I'm not talking about uniqueness, because as you know, duplicate content, even if you had the same exact content as your competition is. Duplicate content is also not a thing. Okay, we have an episode that explains not only why this is not the case, but gives examples of websites that rank with identical content on the first page. If you want to learn more about this, you can listen to episode 74, which is everyone is lying to you about duplicate content. And even more SEO job interview questions. The only time duplicate content is a problem is if it's on your site. Like, if you have two pages with the same content, that's a problem. If you have two, and I've seen this next one in real life, if you have two websites on the same server that have the same content, that's also a problem. But technically, if you use the same content as somebody else, it's not a problem.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Medical papers that get published on multiple sites, they rank. They're exactly the same. Lyric websites, they rank. I shouldn't say medical papers or lyric websites are exactly the same because the layout and stuff is different. And. And, you know, like, the navigation is different, but the content is the same. They're probably 85 or 90% the same. The lyrics are the same. Okay, that should be a duplicate content penalty, although there is no duplicate content penalty because it's not a thing, so it doesn't matter. Okay, look. Okay, look. Let me. Let me. Let me put it like this. So AI Slop is basically just placeholder content. You've probably seen it on Reddit. There are a lot of posts on Reddit that you can tell are written by AI. Now, I'm not certain if that's because it's a ton, it's a bot writing the post, or maybe somebody, you know, wasn't so sure about their grammar or something, and they had some AI, you know, correct it for them or something. I don't know, but I can tell when AI writes something, and you probably can, too, okay? And I'm not even talking about the emojis and the bold that just. You guys know what I'm talking About, right? AI, AI slop. It's pretty much rubbish. And it doesn't really contribute anything to anything, right? Like if you're buying a washing machine online, you know, like, fine, like nobody, nobody really cares about the content outside of, you know, detailing like what the washing machine can do or I don't know, whatever. But anyways, so here's, here's the point. There are people who say, well, search engines want good content and it doesn't matter if it was written by AI or human. And if content quality was a ranking factor, I would 100% agree with you on that. If the purpose of the search engine is to return, let's say, good or useful content, right? Again, search engines cannot tell from reading the content if it is good or useful, but let's just say that's the purpose. Okay, then it actually shouldn't matter. Okay, it shouldn't matter. However, let's assume that the purpose of search engines is also to keep people from getting stuff that is not going to help them. Or it's going to keep people from reading low effort, low, low usefulness stuff. Right? So useless stuff, I guess. I don't know. Anyways, so if it's possible. Now, hold on. If it's. And I'm not saying this is possible, but if it's possible that a search engine could detect AI content, and they probably can. They probably can. It's possible that it will somehow be penalized or devalued at some point in the future. Why? Because this is low effort. Nobody needs another website that produces AI written content about washing machines. Because what are you possibly going to say that hasn't been said before? Why should that website rank better than another website? Now obviously, obviously the answer to that question is because it has more authority.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay, just.
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Grumpy SEO Guy
But just go with me for a second on this, okay? Like we don't need. If there's already a thousand websites on the Internet talking about washing machines with AI content, we don't need another one.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
So it's entirely possible that from that perspective, search engines will detect AI content and stop it from ranking. With that said, we are recommending to our clients that they do not use AI, at least not 100% AI written content for this reason. This is a proactive step that we are taking. Okay, so for example, because let me look, here's the reasoning behind this. You guys know what over optimization is, right? Over optimization is a penalty when too many of your anchor texts are similar, right? So if you're trying to sell washing machines and 80% of your backlinks, use the word washing machines, okay? That's possibly going to give you an over optimization penalty.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
When this technique used to work very well a long time ago, people did a lot of it and they ranked very well. And then because it was being leveraged, okay, the search engine said, oh, we're not going to let people do this anymore. You're going to get a penalty because it looks unnatural, okay? So everybody who did a lot of over optimizing because it worked really well suddenly got penalties and couldn't rank anymore.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
I, I recommend to clients do not use too much AI content because if at some point in the future it gets classified as AI slop, you are ruining your website. I'm not saying that that's happened now. I'm saying that might happen, okay? It's low effort. You can churn out a website in like an entire website in like 20 minutes, okay? 50 articles, all right? That's low, guys. That's low effort. And what, again, I'm not saying that content is king, okay, because it's not. But like, what, what, what is AI writing that is useful or helpful or different? Because remember, AI was trained on existing content, okay? So you're basically getting a synthesis of everything that already exists. What, what's, what's even the point? What's even the point? Right? So anyway, and so, oh, let me tell you the other reason I'm mentioning this. This is very important. We have been talking to people recently who are having a little bit of difficulty getting some of their PBN posts indexed. And one of the commonalities that we found is that they are using AI content. Again, these are very good quality domains. Some of these people are very, very good at building PBNs, and they've been doing it for a long time. And I like to say it's because episodes three, four and five are so wonderful and that's where they learned how to do it. But, you know, I can't take all the credit. They're also talented people. But anyways, look, we recently were talking to somebody who's having trouble getting a few of their PBN sites indexed, and they were using AI content. And one of the resolutions to that problem that we talked about was to maybe stop, delete the posts that are written with AI, write them as a human would, okay? And see if that makes a difference. There's more than one person has told me they're having hurdles getting AI content indexed on new web websites. Even if these websites are good and have backlinks and have authority. Again, I am not saying that search engines are identifying AI content and penalizing it. I am not saying that. I'm not saying they're not letting it index. I'm not saying that. I'm saying. On the topic, a number of people have mentioned to me that they are struggling to get AI content indexed. One possible solution to that is to stop using AI content if your goal is to get your sites or those posts indexed. Okay, I'm not saying that's the answer. I'm not saying that's going to fix the problem. I'm not even saying this is what the, the, the origin of the problem is. I'm just saying could, it could be a reason so we. I know in the past I've said, like, you can use AI content if you want, but I don't think I ever, like fully 100% endorsed it. I'm saying maybe shouldn't do it. And the reason that maybe you shouldn't do it so much is for the reasons I mentioned, because if everybody starts relying on it, it's probably going to be devalued. One of the things you've learned in my podcast is how SEO is kind of like economics, and if something is easy, it doesn't tend to have much value. If you want to learn more about this, you can listen to episode 81, which is how to tell whether or not something is a ranking factor. All of the things that everybody talks about, right? Like user experience, content dwell time, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I don't know if those are necessarily easy, but they're easier than getting good quality backlinks from good quality domains.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
That is the hardest thing to do in SEO, which is why it is the most useful thing in SEO. If it's easy, everybody would do it and then it would lose its competitive advantage.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
So if Everybody can write AI slop and populate a website in like 10 minutes, that's not going to be a competitive advantage. And again, I'm not saying this is how it works. I'm saying it would make perfect sense to me if at some point in the future or now, search engines decided to be more scrutinizing of AI content simply for that reason.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Anyways, and here's another reason, like maybe not to use AI content if you're really an expert in your field. If you're really an expert, do you really think AI content is going to be able to write better than you? Okay, like, really, like you've been doing something for years and years and you're one of the best in the world at it, and you're gonna ask AI to provide, like, what's essentially a generic description of the thing you do that's not even. Again, quality of content is not a ranking factor, okay? But it is a conversion factor, okay? Like, it has nothing to do with where you rank or if you rank, but it does have something to do with how users behave once they get to your site.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
So if you're using generated content that is, you know, vague and mainstream, right? And it doesn't portray your specific expertise and knowledge, why would you even do that in the first place? Seriously, like, you're gonna have SEO problems and conversion problems, okay? Like, I don't know what to tell you about that. And by the way, if you want to learn more about the difference between those, you can listen to episode 112, which is titled SEO is not conversion Optimization. Anyways, these are just my thoughts. Everybody's gonna say I'm wrong. But guys, there are so many people right now selling AI nonsense, like for SEO that you should probably stay away from it because it's just a cash grab. Just like EEAT nonsense was a cash grab. HCU nonsense was a cash grab. All this other nonsense is a cash grab from people that are trying to make you freak out. Oh no, AI, oh no. I need to spend money to fix the problems. You might, you might, but nobody knows yet. Also, also, just remember, the Internet thrives on clicks, okay? So every marketer, every SEO person who can frighten you into clicking their video about AI and how you need to buy all this nonsense, right, is getting clicks, right? So I bet you, I bet you if you watch. I'm not naming anybody, but I bet you if you watch these videos, a, they have no actual actionable, useful information, right? And B, if they do, it's nothing that has been proven. And it's probably we'll build you an LLMs TXT nonsense, which doesn't even help you at the AI tools own acknowledgement.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
So let me just be clear. I'm not saying LLMs TXT isn't going to help at some point in the future. I'm saying it's not used by the big AI tools right now, okay? So anybody telling you that it will get you listed in whatever AI tool you like is lying, because it's not going to.
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Co-host or Listener
Okay?
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Grumpy SEO Guy
Go listen. Episode 115. There's a link in that episode to the article where big AI companies admit they do not use LLMs txt, okay? But do whatever you look, listen to whatever you want. I'm not telling you not to listen to other, like, SEO sources. It doesn't matter to me at all, honestly. But just think, think though. What is this person trying to sell me? Okay, what are they trying to sell me? Okay, are they trying to sell me an AI? Are they trying to sell me something that, you know, like something based on fear? In conclusion, there's no reason to be concerned about AI. Just do good SEO. We're gonna talk a bit more about this topic. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe and if you enjoy this podcast, please leave a review. It would really help the show out. I hope this episode was helpful. If you have any questions or want to suggest a subject for a future episode, you can contact me on Reddit. My username is Grumpy SEO Guy. You can visit the Grumpy SEO Guy subreddit or you can email me@hellorumpyseoguy.com if you email me, please either whitelist my email address or check your junk folders because I've been told that my replies are going into the junk folder and it's probably because we're talking about things like SEO and backlinks and I think those words will clash. Classify an email as spam. And if you want to support the podcast because it's the best source of SEO information on the planet and it's free, you can do so@patreon.com Grumpy Seoguy and I will talk to you later. You're listening to Grumpy SEO Guy, the SEO podcast that doesn't waste your time with nonsense that doesn't work. Join us next Wednesday for another episode. Sam.