SEO 101 Episode 482 - Impact of Google's Breakup Talks and Interstitials on SEO

Summary

SEO 101 Episode 482: Impact of Google's Breakup Talks and Interstitials on SEO
Hosted by Ross Dunn and Scott Vanek
Release Date: October 21, 2024

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1. Non-SEO News: Wayback Machine Data Breach [02:02 - 05:34]

The episode opens with Ross Dunn addressing a significant cybersecurity incident affecting the Wayback Machine (archive.org). He shares alarming news about a cyberattack that exposed 31 million user accounts, including email addresses, screen names, and Bcrypt-hashed passwords.

Ross Dunn [02:54]: "Temporarily offline. As of October 9th, hackers breach the Internet Archive and expose those 31 million users."

Scott Vanek expresses his lack of personal engagement with the Wayback Machine, highlighting that he never created an account and only uses the service when necessary.

Scott Vanek [02:43]: "I like you. Like I've never created an account. I just go there and use it when I need to."

The hosts delve into the potential ramifications of this breach, noting Google's recent integration of archived page links into its search results. They speculate that attackers might be aiming to alter historical records or retrieve specific information, raising concerns about data integrity and user safety.

Ross Dunn [04:08]: "And to avoid using the site until it has been secured, assuming they're clear about that."

The discussion emphasizes the importance of regular backups, with both hosts sharing personal anecdotes about data loss and recovery efforts.

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2. PPC Update: Changes to Google's Local Service Ads [05:34 - 12:10]

Scott Vanek shifts the conversation to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, highlighting a critical update from Google. Starting November 21, 2024, businesses running local service ads must ensure their Google Business Profile matches their ads precisely. This alignment is mandatory for the ads to continue appearing in search results and for displaying customer reviews.

Scott Vanek [06:18]: "Google was putting out a notice that as of November 21st of 2024, if you are running local service ads, you will need a matching Google business profile to continue appearing in search results and display to your customer or sorry."

Ross expresses mixed feelings about this change, noting that while it may curb spammy practices like keyword stuffing in business profiles, it imposes stricter regulations on advertisers.

Ross Dunn [07:03]: "Google's systems are so pathetic that you can just add keywords to your name and whatever you'll get better rankings it's just ridiculous."

The hosts discuss the potential benefits, such as cleaner ad presentations and the inclusion of genuine customer reviews, while also pondering the challenges, including possible extortion attempts by malicious actors to manipulate reviews.

Scott Vanek [08:37]: "Anyone can change your info except you."

Ross adds optimism, suggesting that advertisers who adhere to the new standards will benefit from more trustworthy advertising environments.

Ross Dunn [08:43]: "So no, you're safe there."

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3. DOJ and Potential Google Breakup [12:10 - 16:18]

Ross introduces a substantial topic concerning antitrust actions against Google. He discusses the Department of Justice's (DOJ) ongoing considerations to dismantle Google's monopoly by potentially splitting off major divisions like Chrome and Android. Additionally, the DOJ seeks to compel Google to share its search data, index, AI-assisted search features, and ad ranking algorithms with competitors.

Ross Dunn [12:10]: "The Department of Justice may be breaking up Google as a remedy to their monopoly ruling. Now they had discussed this, but this is not an actual ruling yet."

Scott Vanek provides a skeptical perspective, questioning the feasibility and potential impact of such regulatory measures.

Scott Vanek [11:42]: "Google will be fine and buy everyone off. I don't know if they've got the money to do it. And this is the end of Google. Lol."

Ross echoes the complexity and uncertainty surrounding the DOJ's intentions, noting the diverse community reactions—some supporting antitrust actions while others expressing concern over potential disruptions.

Ross Dunn [12:10]: "Google is definitely not above board. They've long, long, long since ditched. Don't be evil. So it is about time."

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4. SEO Impact of Interstitials [16:18 - 19:57]

The discussion shifts to the SEO ramifications of interstitials—pop-up elements such as ads, call-to-action prompts, and cookie consent forms. Referencing a case study by Anna Crow from Search Engine Land, Ross outlines the detrimental effects these interstitials had on a client's website.

Ross Dunn [04:36]: "Anna's client launched mobile and desktop pop-up for all visitors... they lost 82% of their desktop organic traffic and 97% of their organic keyword rankings for desktop."

Scott Vanek elaborates on acceptable vs. problematic interstitials, emphasizing that certain types like age verification and time/scroll-based pop-ups are generally permissible by Google’s guidelines.

Scott Vanek [15:23]: "So things that display a cookie policy, legal interstitials, those are generally okay as long as Google can still access your content without doing anything special."

Ross shares his experiences dealing with clients who stubbornly maintain intrusive interstitials, often ignoring evidence of their negative impact on SEO and user experience.

Ross Dunn [15:23]: "It's frustrating because they think it's working, but they really don't know."

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5. Google’s Changes to Recipe Search and Impact on Recipe Sites [21:07 - 28:46]

One of the episode's focal points is Google's experimental feature—a Quick View button for recipes. This feature allows users to see recipe details directly within Google search results without navigating to the publisher's website. Ross expresses concerns about its potential adverse effects on food bloggers and recipe websites.

Ross Dunn [21:07]: "Google is testing a Quick View button for recipes... This is a terrible change for food bloggers, but it's awesome for Google users."

Scott comments on the limited initial rollout and the uncertainty surrounding its long-term implications. He reflects nostalgically on the early days of SEO when multiple search engines existed, providing more opportunities for rankings beyond Google.

Scott Vanek [25:00]: "I miss the early days of SEO where we had eight search engines to get rankings for, for a client."

The hosts debate the balance between user convenience and the financial viability of content creators, acknowledging that while quick previews may marginally reduce traffic, they could drive users to visit websites for more detailed information.

Ross Dunn [25:38]: "It seriously, it can't take a whole page is what I'm getting at. It's just going to be a brief glimpse."

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6. AI Developments: OpenAI's Search GPT Integration [28:46 - 35:30]

Ross and Scott discuss OpenAI's plans to integrate Search GPT into ChatGPT by the end of 2024, aiming to enhance information delivery while encouraging click-throughs to publishers for verification and deeper insights.

Scott Vanek [26:19]: "OpenAI wants to create an information-dense experience while also creating opportunities for click through to balance the experience of wanting to find an answer while correctly attributing publishers to drive traffic to their sites."

Ross muses about the competitive landscape, noting the dominance of Google but expressing hope that Search GPT could introduce significant competition.

Ross Dunn [28:46]: "It's going to be a real competitor for Google. I miss the early days of SEO where we had eight search engines..."

Scott highlights the potential benefits for publishers through increased traffic from new audiences, though he remains cautious about the overall impact on SEO strategies.

Scott Vanek [28:46]: "He mentioned this when he spoke on October 7 at an event for news publishers... incremental traffic from new audiences."

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7. Practical SEO Advice: Domain Management and Backups [30:07 - 35:30]

The hosts offer actionable advice on managing domain expirations and emphasize the critical nature of regular backups. Sharing personal anecdotes, Scott recounts a friend's stressful experience with a lapsed domain and exorbitant restoration fees from GoDaddy.

Scott Vanek [30:07]: "She expired and it was still kind of in the grace period within 30 days... they said it's going to cost 1500 US dollars and likely other fees."

Ross underscores the importance of proactive measures, recommending domain locking, long-term registration, and vigilant monitoring of renewal notifications to prevent similar mishaps.

Ross Dunn [32:14]: "Pay for a long period of time of registration and don't ignore the emails that come through because things change and you don't want to be behind the eight ball on that."

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Closing Remarks

Ross and Scott wrap up the episode by reiterating the importance of vigilance in SEO practices, such as avoiding intrusive interstitials and ensuring domain security. They encourage listeners to subscribe to their newsletter for show notes and to stay tuned for future episodes.

Ross Dunn [33:19]: "Don't let it happen. People. Don't let it happen."

Scott Vanek [34:38]: "Thanks for listening everyone."

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This episode of SEO 101 provides a comprehensive overview of current events impacting SEO, including major changes in Google's advertising policies, potential antitrust actions, the effects of interstitials on website performance, and emerging trends in AI integration for search functionalities. The hosts deliver insightful discussions paired with practical advice, making it a valuable resource for both SEO novices and seasoned professionals.

Transcript

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[Ross Dunn]

Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM episode number 482. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing. And my co host is my company senior SEO Scott Vanek. All right, we got quite a bit to share today, so let's jump right in some non SEO news. This is pretty creepy. So the Wayback Machine, otherwise known as archive.org, is down amid a cyber attack where 31 million accounts have been exposed. Now, I don't really see. I don't know enough about the Wayback Machine to know if there's really anything that's sensitive there. But did you see anything about that?

[Scott Vanek]

No, I didn't. And I like you. Like I've never created an account. I just go there and use it when I need to. So I actually don't even know what benefits you get from an account. Although when it's back online I want to look into that because I. Yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

I mean, maybe it allows you to go in there to request that things are removed or I really have no idea. But anyway, it's temporary. Temporarily offline. As of October 9th, hackers breach the Internet Archive and expose those 31 million users. Obviously, users are advised to change passwords when it's back online and to avoid using the site until it has been secured, assuming they're clear about that. What was exposed were user records, including email addresses, screen names and B crypt hashed passwords. That usually means those are encrypted, so they really wouldn't be visible anyway. Google recently began adding links to archived versions of pages within its own search to get search results within the about this page feature. So they were linking to this and we talked about in our last show, in fact. So why do this? Cybersecurity experts are speculating that the attackers might be searching for specific information or possibly attempting to alter historical records. Oh, how that couldn't go wrong. Anyway, hopefully the archive has a backup of its archive. It's awesome.

[Scott Vanek]

The archive archive.

[Ross Dunn]

Yes, like me, probably be the archive. Archive, archive, archive. I've got so many. Gosh, Dan, I've got so many backups.

[Scott Vanek]

You need all the archives.

[Ross Dunn]

I actually forget how many I have. I've got to like put it on a wall or something. This one's archived from this and this is from this. When I reset up a computer again, it's insane. I'm like, okay, this one goes here. I have to. It's nuts. But I'm so paranoid. I mean, I've had things break. I've lost valuable photos and anyway, we.

[Scott Vanek]

Lost a year of photos from when our kids were young, when a laptop crashed and I was able to recover almost all our photos. But there was like, I think it was like 2012 or something. It just was unrecoverable. And so then we started doing cloud based stuff and backing up and that's when I got serious about backing up my personal stuff. But you don't think it can happen to you. And then it does. And it actually, it happened to me on my work computer. I lived in Dee's Lake years ago and I had a computer crash when I lived up there. My work computer got wiped out. That was a nightmare. Thankfully again we had backups and. But still, what a nightmare.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, I've always been paranoid about it and even the time when I lost stuff, I had been paranoid about it, but it just, I forget exactly what happened. But it was like multiple crash scenario. So now I have so many multiples, it's staggering, which is problematic by itself. Anyway. Back your stuff up, people. We somehow got to that point anyway.

[Scott Vanek]

Archive. Archive, yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

All right, what's next here?

[Scott Vanek]

Yeah, so we don't really talk about pay per click because I am definitely not a pay per click expert. I certainly was a long time ago, but it's changed a lot in the last 20 years from when I was doing it. Safe to say Ross is the same. So I don't want to go deep into pay per click, but this kind of popped up and I thought it might be helpful for some people out there. Google was putting out a notice that as of November 21st of 2024, if you are running local service ads, you will need a matching Google business profile to continue appearing in search results and display to your customer or sorry. And to display your customer reviews with the ad. So this is really important if you are running local service ads. If you're not, it doesn't matter. I think most people probably have that Google business profile as well anyways. I'd be surprised if a lot of local businesses are running the ads and don't have that. But if you don't. Oh yeah, yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

Wait, what if your Google business profile name or address do not match your local service ads? Your ad will be paused. That's going to make a lot of spammers nervous.

[Scott Vanek]

Yes.

[Ross Dunn]

Oh yes.

[Scott Vanek]

Makes me happy. Anything that makes a spammer's life miserable. It's funny because when I wrote that I wasn't thinking about it as being funny, but it totally is if I think about it. So you're like I love this next bit but like I feel like I'm missing something and then I went cutting off.

[Ross Dunn]

Sorry about that.

[Scott Vanek]

Yeah, it's all good. Do it all the time. Yeah. So I don't going to go deep into that because it's not our specific expertise. But if you do run local service ads, check out Barry's post at Scroundtable. Lots of information there on what you need to do. Just be aware of it because if you aren't, you're going to be sad when they stop working and you have to deal with it in the 11th hour or so.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. And to give you a little background why I was excited. There is a lot of people adjust their Google business profile name to make it more keywordy. You know, adding stuff in there to make it more attractive and for. Unfortunately Google's so lame. They're. I really gotta find better words to discourage. Just disparage them anyway. Their systems are so pathetic that you can just add keywords to your name and whatever you'll get better rankings it's just ridiculous. Well, if now it has to match what's on your local service ads, well those are a little more regulated because it's ads. So that actually might clean stuff up a bit. We'll see. Because people are not going to be able to mess with their name if they need to have ads. And ads are a lot of income for many, many, many small businesses. So this could be wonderful.

[Scott Vanek]

Well, what's going to happen is this will be, it'll restrict you if you're an advertiser to make sure it matches. But then a random person will be able to go in and change the name. I think that's how it works with Google. Anyone can change your info except you. Yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

And then your ads will pause because someone changed your name.

[Scott Vanek]

It's going to be fun.

[Ross Dunn]

No, they'll never let that happen.

[Scott Vanek]

Not when there's money. Yeah, there's direct dollars connected to that.

[Ross Dunn]

So no, you're safe there. And the other thing too is they want to be able to display customer reviews as well. Again, and this is a positive thing to ensure that those who are legitimately doing good business, assuming the reviews aren't fake, and we talked about that recently, they're going to get some extra click through rates. This again becomes an issue for rep, actually a big business generator for reputation management companies who will be going, so now if you've got bad reviews and you need some help with that, they're going to be there to help you to try to get those removed or changed and people will be able, it's, it's just unravel. Everything unravels. Because you can just imagine now people are going to be extorting people saying I'll put a given negative review if you don't do this. And that's going to hurt your ads. And we've been at this too long. Yeah, it's all going to fall apart.

[Scott Vanek]

You're talking about that and I'm thinking like how can you prevent that level of extortion with fake negative ads? And I don't know that you really can do anything about it because what's stopping someone? I mean, unless you can get their account flagged by Google. But Google's going to ignore you if it looks like a legit review. That's bad.

[Ross Dunn]

I could go into ways that could do it, but it's going to take too long. And a major rabbit hole here since we're not even in the SEO news yet. Let's jump into that. So the Department of Justice, we've talked about this before may be breaking up Google as a remedy to their monopoly ruling. Now they had discussed this, but this is not an actual ruling yet. But the early intent from the DOJ is that they will not only split off Chrome, Android and many other things, but Google will make available to competitors its data. Google make available to its competitors as data within search and index and models as well as AI assisted search features and ad ranking data. I don't know about all this. This is lofty man. There's no way this is getting through anyway. Somehow and I don't know the details here, Barry put in privacy regulations about retaining its data. I guess there might be new privacy regulations or more rigid ones. Not sure about that. But that makes good sense that that would be what they're intending there. And limitations on its partnership deals with Apple and others and more at. Wow. I bet the lawyers at Google are so thrilled. I mean they're going to be busy forever. Wow. Just. Anyway, some of the comments from the community are typically diverse. Good. Google deserves it. What are some of the other ones, Scott? I'll let you have some fun.

[Scott Vanek]

You do like government stinks. What are they doing? What will happen to my Google products? And that actually seems like a legit one. If everything's breaking apart where what's happening there? Who knows?

[Ross Dunn]

They're already a mess.

[Scott Vanek]

So yeah, this is a bluff. Google will be fine and buy everyone off. I don't know if they've got the money to do it. And this is the end of Google. Lol.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, I added the lol. I couldn't.

[Scott Vanek]

Oh you did? I was like, I don't remember adding that part of the quote but okay.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, as if it's just too big a monster. But I love how Barry ended the article. He says essentially, I honestly have no idea and I hate covering legal news. Amen. That stuff is just no fun. However, this is long overdue. I don't trust them as far as I could throw them. Google is definitely not above board. They've long, long, long since ditched. Don't be evil. So it is about time. Now there's another article here you can cover here the SEO impact of interstitials before and after.

[Scott Vanek]

Yeah. So over at Search Engine Land, Anna Crow posted a case study of the impact of interstitials and how they related to one of her clients. First for you out there, like what the heck is an interstitial? Essentially it's a pop up that contains content ads, call to action, legal notices, cookie authorization, that sort of thing. Usually they require user interactions to dismiss and they can take up some or all of your screen. They also like to put the little X to close them in places where you can't find them. So when you're on your phone and you've got fat fingers like me, you can't exit out and then you get mad and then throw your phone. I don't actually throw my phone, but interstitials on mobile can be a nightmare sometimes anyways. So when it comes to interstitials, Anna's the interstitials Anna's client used here were her findings. So against her advice, they launched mobile and desktop pop up for all us visitors. The client had hoped that the conversions would outweigh the decline in organic results. Well, they were a little bit wrong. So here's what ended up happening. They lost 82% of their desktop organic traffic and 97% of their organic keyword rankings for desktop. For mobile they lost 97% of their traffic and 96% of their organic rankings. Their website also went from about a 3 second load time to a 13 second load time, which is probably a big reason why a lot of their rankings plummeted there. Brutal. That is just brutal. So the impact recovery efforts have yet to be seen as sort of an ongoing situation. So she doesn't have a fix for them at this time. I'm sure removing the interstitial things should go back to how they were, but I guess we'll find out in the future. Maybe by next week we'll be able to report back on that. She did list a few examples of acceptable interstitials. So things that display a cookie policy, legal interstitials, those are generally okay as long as Google can still access your content without doing anything special. You don't want Google to have to interact with your interstitial or they're not going to see your content. Age verification interstitials are okay. So that would be, you know, adult oriented content. We'll have those. Any kind of websites that talk about alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, you see them, places like that, probably others like maybe gambling sites, I don't know. And any pop ups that are time or scroll based. So if you have to scroll a certain amount to see the pop up or a certain amount of time has to pass, those are generally okay.

[Ross Dunn]

I appreciate those. If I'm going to have to see them, that's the best kind. And don't make it like two seconds. Oh my God, I see that so often. It's just like oh what? I just Got here turns me right off, I'm going somewhere, I'm bye, bye. And I see it on client sites sometimes and I have to tell them, and I would say it's 70% of the time, they don't listen. Yeah, they leave it there. It's frustrating because they think it's working, but they really don't know. And we try to clear it up for them, but unfortunately it is difficult to clear that up. We just know from stuff like this. Exactly. Things like this and how bad it can be. And you don't. How would you like it when you go to a page and, well, everyone's done this, I'm sure. And you get immediately a pop up. You're just trying to read the page first. You don't need a pop up. It just makes no sense.

[Scott Vanek]

What's almost worse though, is when you're reading an article, oh, this is a great article. And it's like to continue, subscribe. Thanks very much, Washington Post and Wired and whoever else is doing it. And these things, those are the worst because you're like, oh, I really want to know what this article is. And I can't just go to Google and look at the cache of it and I can't go to archive.org and look at it because they've been hacked. So you never get the free article that's not supposed to be free.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, well, you know, they got to survive. I get that.

[Scott Vanek]

I do too.

[Ross Dunn]

It does. Yeah. I like that when they give you one or two freebies a month or something because once in a while I do want to read through one and I don't have any reason to subscribe.

[Scott Vanek]

So yeah, it's unfortunate because I.

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[Ross Dunn]

Hey mom, you seen my toothbrush?

[Scott Vanek]

I'm almost done with it.

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[Scott Vanek]

Yeah, I go to Wired. I don't know. Rarely. It's very rare. There's an article there that I want to read and to pay for. It makes no sense. Not for me anyway. So. But yeah, this is a good reminder though as well. If you do plan on launching any sort of interstitials on your site, keep a very close eye on your rankings and traffic because if you lose 97% of your traffic, you're probably not going to be happy. Just guessing there.

[Ross Dunn]

All right, well, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about some changes in the recipe world that is going to make a lot of angry people. We'll be right back. SEO101 will be back right after recess. Welcome back to SEO101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanak. All right, so I've talked to many people over the years with recipe sites. We have a client that has a recipe site. It's, it's, it's quite an industry. Lots of money is made if you ever go to a recipe site. I have to admit I'm with some of the complainers. They're annoying as hell, usually way too many ads. Unfortunately, it comes down to survival. These guys need these ads to make money to survive, so it's hard to. It's hard to blame them if it's really bad. I have to admit I'm going to go to my ad blocker browser. I've actually got a browser and I will use that and just get to the meat of it all because sometimes it's atrocious.

[Scott Vanek]

You might not have to anymore.

[Ross Dunn]

Well, yeah, unfortunately, that's the case. I. I hate to say that it's. It's a weird thing to say, unfortunately, but anyway, Google is testing a Quick View button for recipes. This is going to keep you on Google and keep you from going to their site. So essentially think of it as like a preview of the recipe, but in this case, this Quick View button will show the full recipe. There's enough nuance to instructions and stuff. I can't really imagine how this is going to work, but we'll see. I guess. Sometimes the recipe instructions are extensive, so I guess we'll see. Anyway, this is how it'll work, essentially. Probably not surprising, but when your search brings up recipes, you may find a Quick View button placed over related images. Clicking on this brings up a snapshot from the publisher with recipe details without ever sending you to the publisher website. This is a terrible change for food bloggers, but it's awesome for Google users. Now I still, you know, let's. I'll reserve my right for the answer in that. Right now I think that actually may not be as terrible as it sounds, but essentially this is. When Barry asked Google if they're paying some publishers or not, the statement he received was political bs. We're always experimenting with different ways to connect our users with high quality and helpful information. We have partnered with a limited number of creators to begin to explore new recipe experiences on search that are both helpful for users and drive value to the web ecosystem. We don't have anything to announce right now. Unquote. Oh gee, that says a lot. So probably not. Now someone. This is a quote that Scott posted here. Was it also in the article?

[Scott Vanek]

This is in the comment. In Barry's article. It's in the comments.

[Ross Dunn]

There.

[Scott Vanek]

There are lots of comments. Go to this article on SE Roundtable and read the comments. They're great.

[Ross Dunn]

Oh my. Well, this one from. What a name. BP Data Center. Okay.

[Scott Vanek]

His parents were in a weird state when they named him.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. Quote oh my God, who the F cares? You SEOs literally only care about your stupid clicks and will never understand it is about the searcher, not you and your stupid site. Buried under 10 paragraphs of SEO word vomit before I can ever get to the effing recipe. Sorry, not sorry. Many thanks to Google for. And this is all caps. Listening to literally every meme about how BS recipe blogs are unquote. Oh, like I said, I fully understand what that person is saying. It's annoying as heck. And it seems like this is just a wonder and a blessing. Now on the surface, from an SEO perspective, this makes no sense because of course if, well, just from a pure business perspective, I mean if those recipe sites can't make money, there'll be no recipes for you, buddy. Sorry bp, you just won't be getting it. You've got to feed them, right? These people need money. They need some reason to do what they're doing. So that doesn't work. Now on the flip side, I think positively this is actually a. This might be good because like I said, they can only give you the surface level info about a recipe. There's usually a lot of nuance to them. What if you substitute this? What if you substitute that? Yes, there might be some reduction in traffic to sites, but I haven't seen what this is going to look like in the final version. I'm sure there's tests and everything, but the final version, it seriously, it can't take a whole page is what I'm getting at. It's just going to be a brief glimpse. So people are still going to go to the site to see if there's any other notes. I'm not so sure this will be as bad as it sounds.

[Scott Vanek]

I hope not. Like you said, we do have the one client who does recipe stuff and, and his cookbooks and he's very successful, he's got massive amounts of traffic. So I'm definitely going to be watching him closely to see what happens here and I'll be curious, like maybe it won't hurt as bad. And, and like Barry said, you, you know, ask Google if they'll be paying publishers. Not like I don't see the day where they pay publishers to do this, but you know, that's kind of cool if they would. Let's be real, like, you know, every time one of these recipes gets expanded and the other content's avoided, give the publisher, I don't know, some monetary value. I don't know how much Money would be fair, but some small amount that keeps them happy keeps Google happy with the content. I don't know.

[Ross Dunn]

It would never be enough based on comparative. Compared to how much they could get from all the traffic from those ads or sorry, all the loads of those ads. I can't imagine Google ever paying enough to make it worth their while. Let's just hope that, you know, they're not going to overuse AI and make this preview too detailed and, and actually take traffic away from people. That wouldn't be cool. All right, so AI news OpenAI is to integrate search GPT into chat GPT before 2024 ends. What's this all about?

[Scott Vanek]

Yeah, so I really wish I could play with Search GPT, but I signed up for the. It wasn't really a bait. I think it was just a wait list and I never, they never let me in. I don't know if it's because I'm Canadian. They just don't like me personally. They've probably. That's what it is anyways. Search GPT did announce as a temporary. Was announced as a temporary prototype when it launched back in July. Now it will be integrated into Chat GPT before the end of the year, according to Barun Shetty, who is OpenAI's head of media partnerships. He mentioned this when he spoke on October 7 at an event for news publishers. He said that OpenAI wants to create information, an information dense experience while also creating opportunities for click through to balance the experience of wanting to find an answer while correctly attributing publishers to drive traffic to their sites. They believe that people want to go further. They want to click through to verify what they're seeing and get a deeper understanding of what's being presented to them. I kind of agree with that a little bit. Like when I'm doing any kind of content generation or I'm asking questions for to Chat GPT, you know, sometimes you wonder like is this information legit or not? And you know, to be able to easily fact check it, that'd be great. Shetty had said that publishers will be fairly compensated through significant incremental traffic from new audiences. So compensated in clicks, not in money. Not a surprise there. I'm really curious how this is going to play out. Will they be a competitor? I don't know. Search GPT only has about 10,000 current US users because of this wait list, but they do have over 180 million regular users. In contrast, Google has about 5 billion. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Chat GPT has 180 million users. I should have updated that there. Google has about 5 billion, but if they do a good job with search, GPT and integration, it could become a real competitor for Google. I mean, they're growing crazy fast. Long ways to go, but I would love to see some really tough Google competition in there. I miss the early days of SEO where we had eight search engines to get rankings for, for a client. And you know, if one failed, it didn't matter because you had seven more that all had about equal market share. It was great. But you know, all our eggs are in Google now and it. I don't like it.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. And, and you know, we've spoken not very often, but there are in the past we've spoken about how there are niches, like there's certain search engines which may have different audiences, but none of them are going to compare to the bulk that Google gets. You should still not dismiss them. A really off the wall example is things like DuckDuckGo, which are highly private. Well, a lot of people who are a little bit, let's say you're targeting preppers or people who are very paranoid about certain things. I'm totally over generalizing. I'm sorry, I'm just trying to give a quick example here. Don't hurt me. But you know, if this is the case, maybe they're going to be the people that are more likely to go there. And some people who are also highly private may also have higher incomes. You know, these are all the kind of things you can research and then make your own decisions on. But that does make DuckDuckGo perhaps a more interesting target for you. So you don't forget about the other ones. Even if they have a small market share, it's still millions and millions of users instead of billions. But still it's nothing to sneeze at. So keep that in mind. All right. You have an update on your friend. This is something, an update to what you were talking about, I believe. Was it last time or.

[Scott Vanek]

I think it was the last episode. I'm talking about a friend who was dealing with an expired domain that she let lapse. And I won't go back into the reasons why it lapsed, but it was partially her fault. Well, it was all her fault anyways. It expired and it was still kind of in the grace period within 30 days. And I was just talking to her last night or the night before and I got an update from her and she's not happy. So she had many calls with different people at GoDaddy. They bounced her around to different departments and at the end of the day, they said it's going to cost 1500 US dollars and likely other fees. How they wouldn't know this, I don't know. Likely other fees as well for her to get her domain back. And keep in mind it's been less than a month since it's been expired and I'm pretty sure most registrars can just flip it back. I don't know all the nuts and bolts on how you get an expired domain live again, but my understanding is within the first few weeks at least, it's pretty easy. They want fifteen hundred dollars. So her response to them, and this is an exact quote, she said, go F yourself, I don't need an effing website. And she hung up on them. So she's gonna delete her hosting account and that's it. She's gonna rely solely on Facebook. And Ross asked me, why not Google business profile? I'm like, well, I'm not even going there because she will want my help. And she's. I'm not going to say anything bad.

[Ross Dunn]

About her, but yeah, you don't have the time, right? I mean it's fair enough.

[Scott Vanek]

And yeah, we're not going to pay.

[Ross Dunn]

When our friends have these issues. It's. Oh dear. It's bad enough we have my parents, I have this. I have to do all this stuff for. Not Google business profiles. But oh my gosh.

[Scott Vanek]

Anyway, yeah, my mom called me one time. This is back years ago. She was still working and I was her tech guy. Like. Like I'm not even a tech guy, but whatever. She called me from work. She worked at a hotel because her printer stopped working and needed my help. I'm like, mom, call your boss. They have tech people for this. Like what? It was a major chain. It's not even like a little one off hotel shirt for a major hotel chain. It's like, why are you calling me? Like people will pay people to. It's just anyways that. I don't know why I went into that, but it felt relevant. So the long story short here is don't let your domain expire. People. Don't let it happen. Because.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, and I think we've talked about it in the past episode again, I said that a lot today. But anyway, a few ways to prevent this is obviously to lock down your domain so no one can take it. But from an expiration point of view, just if it's an important domain, pay for it for like 10 years. I mean, it's worth every penny. It's your it's worth thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars and perhaps even hundreds of thousands of dollars depending how much business you make or more so spending. Let's say worst case scenario, a thousand bucks to register for 10 years. Do it. Duh, it's a no brainer. And make sure that you then if you want to be paranoid, go into your calendar and say nine years from now.

[Scott Vanek]

Don't change calendars either. Never change.

[Ross Dunn]

Exactly. Never change them. No, no.

[Scott Vanek]

Maybe get a Tattoo that says 12-14-2034. Check domain status. I don't know exactly.

[Ross Dunn]

Anyways, you'll still get notices once in a while about your domain. You've got to update your records, all that sort of stuff because you can't get in trouble if you don't do that. So you know, just don't ignore them because you do get bulletins about all of this stuff. But a lot of us throw it into our our spam or onto our trash, sometimes automatically and you're really in trouble then. So yeah, just pay for a long period of time of registration and don't ignore the emails that come through because things change and you don't want to be behind the the eight ball on that. Well, on behalf of Myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and my company senior SEO Scott Vanack, thank you for joining us today. Remember, we have a show notes newsletter you can sign up [e-mail] don't miss a single link and you can refresh your memory of a past show at any time. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes which air every week on WMR fm.

[Scott Vanek]

Thanks for listening everyone. Foreign.

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[Scott Vanek]

Yeah, sure thing. Hey, you sold that car yet? Yeah, sold it to Carvana. Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy. The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency, no interest over 36 months. Yeah, no. Carvana gave me an offer in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot. It was so convenient. Just like that.

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[Scott Vanek]

No hassle. None. That is super convenient.

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