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Ross Dunn
Watch hello and welcome to SEO1 on WMR FM episode number 495. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and my co host is my company Senior SEO Scott Vanek. All right, let's jump into one piece of non SEO news, which is kind of SEO, but it's definitely yeah. Anyway, Google is being sued by Chegg, which I've never heard of. Probably something popular somewhere else. It's a publicly traded educational company. Anyway, they're suing them over AI overviews, hurting traffic and revenue they claim that they have, but it's literally making a major impact. It's materially impacting our acquisitions, revenue and employees. Okay, well, I don't doubt it. It's at this point really making. I don't even know how to put it. It's just the waves are insane even. We were talking today about what we're going to be discussing and a lot of it's about AI overviews. I mean it's just, it's everywhere in the news because it's, it's impacting everyone. Now this is a quote from Chegg. Chegg gets a superior product for education as evident by our brand awareness, engagement and retention. Unfortunately, traffic is being blocked from ever coming to Chegg because of Google's AI overviews and their use of Chegg's content to keep visitors on their own platform. Good, that's great. Chegg is presenting them three main arguments. First is reciprocal dealing, meaning that Google forces companies like Chegg to supply our proprietary content in order to be included in Google search function. Second is monopoly maintenance or that Google Google unfairly exercise its monopoly power within search and other anti competitive conduct to muscle up companies like Chegg. And third is unjust enrichment, meaning Google is reaping the financial benefits of Chegg's content without having to spend a dime. Some pretty strong points there.
SEO Expert
And they're definitely not wrong.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I mean I know what Google always says. Well, if you don't like it, just block us. You can't, you can't just. They are a monopoly. Granted they are starting to lose market share, which is so wonderful. Best day ever will be when they plummet. I'm just so pissed, but I'm just tired of them. They're driving me crazy for many reasons I won't get into other than the stuff you've heard me rant about before. But yeah, it's just, it's getting out of hand. So AI overviews is going to be a sticky subject for many and Google's going to be throwing everything at this lawsuit because if this president is set against them, it's going to be devastating. Devastating. So there are 2,000 lawyers I'm sure will be very busy.
SEO Expert
Well, hopefully, you know, at least this constitutes for some change. Maybe something gets tweaked, maybe the citations are more obvious or something so that that content does turn into traffic. But I mean, it's tough. Like I'm not going to lie, I kind of like AI overviews when I try to research something simple and Google gives me the answer even Though I know there's a webmaster somewhere hurting because, you know, I'm not going to their website now. I'm not their banner ads aren't loading or I'm not buying their product or whatever. But from a user perspective, it's awesome. From a marketing perspective, it kind of sucks.
Ross Dunn
So the key point here is simple. Google does a great job of with AI overviews of giving you an answer for something simple like what is the capital city of whatever, or what used to be the capital city or stuff like that. That's all simple stuff. But if it's answering a question that's quite complex and it's largely cutting out the person who created the content, that's where I think it's totally unreasonable. So what they should. I would think the best thing they could do there is just provide a snippet and then read. Click here to read more. That's if the Google cared about being fair, that's what it would do. However, someone's gonna have to get the slam down here. One of the search engines before, so precedent set. So the other ones will follow that as well. Because of course, if Edge isn't doing it. Edge, what am I talking about?
SEO Expert
Bing.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, I've had like no sleep. Feels like. Anyways, Bing. If any other search engine, again that's a competitor of Google, isn't having to worry about that and are providing the full AI overview and Google is doing the read more thing. Well, yeah, that doesn't work. You've got to have a balance. So this needs to set precedent and I hope it does. Good luck to Chegg, which is a really interesting name. I don't think I'd ever pick that for my company name.
SEO Expert
But anyway, I should have researched it. Maybe it's an acronym or something, I.
Ross Dunn
Don'T know, but maybe it's like just one letter and it's chug. And then I just think party. Beer pong.
SEO Expert
All right.
Ross Dunn
Educational party. Hey, it's a university. Yeah. Anyway, all right.
SEO Expert
Squirrel.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be good on squirreling today. Okay. So SEO News now survey says 42% of people say Google search is becoming less useful. Interesting what we got here.
SEO Expert
Yeah. So this is a Vox Media survey with what was the other company involved with Verge. And they found that 61% of Gen Z and 53% of millennials are using AI tools instead of Google or other traditional search engines. I'm neither a millennial or Gen Z and I'm doing that as well. So I'd be curious to See this across everybody, because I'm definitely using AI more than Google. Not more than Google, but more often than before, naturally. 76% say that more than 25% of Google Shopping results appear to be sponsored or promoted, with only 14% describing those results as being helpful, which. Yeah, I can agree with that as well. 42% said that Google and search engines are becoming less useful. 55% say they get information from community more than online search platforms, which I don't. I think that's probably a good thing. I'm assuming by community, they. I don't know if they're referring to like a local community or like certain niche communities online. I'm not sure what that is referencing exactly.
Ross Dunn
Could be bad, could be good. Yeah, yeah.
SEO Expert
It depends on where they're actually pulling that from. 52% say they use AI chatbots or alternative platforms like TikTok. Please don't.
Ross Dunn
There's the bad one.
SEO Expert
Yeah, there's the bad one. Yeah, for information instead of Google, you know, Google is, is. I feel like the information is probably reasonably okay for the most part. If you're trying to research facts like you're fact checking, whatever. Don't use TikTok. This is red. I don't. Don't use social media at all for fact checking or never, kind of.
Ross Dunn
Yeah. And that's why I like. I mean, it's old school, I guess, but that's why I like the layout of results as they were, I want to say as they are, but it changed too much where you see multiple results and you could choose the result, you're not being fed the result. That really creeps me out because it's going to be too easy for someone to skew our view of the world.
SEO Expert
And yeah, I, I will change what I said a little bit though. I said never use TikTok and things like that. I think there are exceptions to that because there are very good verified experts that use these platforms. The problem though is knowing who you can trust and who you can't trust. And that's, you know, that's different, of course. So that could be tricky if you don't already know that a certain person is a very trusted authority and unbiased and all that. If you just, you're just doing a search in TikTok. Can you search in TikTok? I actually don't know how TikTok works. I've never used it and I'm proud to see it. Yeah, I'm proud. I have no idea. I refuse. I'm like, no, this Is my stand right there. It's TikTok.
Ross Dunn
Anyways, I have used it. It's actually quite fun to use, but it's just. What would be the term for it? Trying to make it up on the spot. Squirrel logic. I mean, you're just being sucked to the next to next to the next to the next. And it's, it's kind of fun. My kids or my daughter loves it beyond comprehension and it scares the hell out of me because she spent so much time on it. But yeah, there are great places and I know that as with anything we say, obviously got to say that would take, you know, there's gray areas, you know, there's useful aspects of some of the stuff we say don't use. It's just we're trying to be general and when it comes to TikTok, there's a lot of garbage. But, you know, if your local, your city has a TikTok page and they, they're keeping you updated on stuff, well, fine, that's great place to get information. You know, it's all dependent on what you're talking about. I just by and large find there's a lot of garbage and I would never take that at face value because you're being fed it again. It just creeps me out.
SEO Expert
Exactly.
Ross Dunn
One more stat, I think, right?
SEO Expert
Yeah. The last stat, 66, said the quality of information in search is deteriorating. And I would have, I would have hoped that number was higher because especially with like the political landscape, I don't care whose side you're on in the whole politics world. But there's so much misinformation everywhere now. And that's, you know, it's flowing into search now. It's not just in social media, it's everywhere. And, and so, I mean, you can't do a search in Google and trust everything 100% at face value unless you know the source. If you don't know the source, it's like constantly fact checking. It's just, it's scary. And so 66%, I guess that's good. It would be great if people, you know, if it was like 100%, if everybody knew that, hey, these results are not necessarily good.
Ross Dunn
So I can see Google panicking pretty soon. Yeah, because I, I'm not their target market. Obviously they want me to be on there. But we're pretty, we're extreme early adopters, let's say, or at least I know I am. I've got Claude, a Synthropics AI, I've got the app installed on my computer. I use it 90% of the time now instead of Google Search, I go to IT and I ask it questions and it has a conversation with me and gives me results and sources so I can check things. I love it. And the beauty of it is they're brilliant. When they made it, they, they cut it off. I think it's early 2024. So yeah, sure there's still bias and stuff in there, but it's not being fed by all the garbage that's coming out from AI ironically online. And it doesn't actually interface with online, it only uses its own system. There's some downsides to that. I can use ChatGPT if I need to use something that interfaces online. Anyway, I'm using it all the time and I am blown away by how fun it is. Like I'm enjoying search. Yeah, that's kind of crazy and a bit, it's a bit alerting to concerning to us as marketers, like how do we do this? But it is fantastic. I just can't say enough.
SEO Expert
I'm finding AI really useful for any kind of long tail searches really that I'm doing. Like, I had a weird question this morning and honestly I can't remember what the question was, but so I tried Google at first thinking AI overviews to give me an answer. And it's kind of long tail and kind of obscure and AI overviews didn't really help me. So I went into what did I use? ChatGPT and asked the same question and it was like, boom, there's a correct answer. It's simplified. I was trying to get a definition or something from something and it was just the exact right answer I wanted. Now if I was looking for a website, I would never even consider going to AI. But if I'm just looking for Clarific on something, it's like, here's an encyclopedia, give me the answer I want from the Encyclopa. And it just knows all the answers and it, you know, you do have to fact check it sometimes, depending on what you're asking. But for what I was asking, it was clear I didn't need to. I knew it was right. So, and, and that's just happening to me more and more. And if it's happening to me more and more, it's everybody and Google certainly knows it.
Ross Dunn
So the question now becomes if you know, you certainly can't influence cloud because getting a ranking in cloud is impossible if you weren't already there, because it's frozen, it's frozen 8 of ranking. Like it's data is there. There's nothing editing it, nothing improving it. I mentioned at some point they will, but yeah, not a good example for rankings. Yeah, you can't influence anything there, but you can with some of the the other systems. Perplexity being one of the great ones as well. And the good news is we're not just talking your ear off about AI for no reason. We'll be getting into some of the ways you can influence it, at least basically in the rest of the show. All right, minimize zoom. Okay, here we go. Google Simplifies Removing Personal Info from Search Results Google has updated its Results about you tool, simplifying removing personal data from search with new alerts, streamlined takedown requests and search result refreshing. That's good. I like that. At least the updates include a redesigned results about you hub. The new interface makes it easier to sign up and manage alerts. It now proactively searches for personal info and alerts you if it finds any. When you receive the alert, you can ask Google to remove the information or contact the website directly. A simplified removal request process just. That's it. It's really what it comes down to. An option to refresh outdated search results. You can prompt its system to recrawl a page by clicking the ellipsis, the three vertical dots. You can request a refresh. Google will then recrawl that page. Now, I didn't look at this article. Does that only happen when it's your site?
SEO Expert
No. So this is like I can't actually replicate this because you know, we're in Canada and we can't do these things. So if you have a search result and let's say you're mentioned on a web page and that webpage has removed you, but Google still displaying in search results, you click the ellipsis and there's an option for Google to recall that page whether it's yours or not and refresh the results based on what that page is currently supposedly. So which is interesting. I mean there might be ways for people to abuse that. For instance, if like the hackers out there, right? Like you hack a website, you put your own junk on there and then you tell Google, hey, refresh the site that I just hacked so that it shows my my new hacked content. I don't know there. I'm sure there are always ways to abuse that. But at the same time, you know Google is going to crawl it and respite anyways. So it apparently will expedite that a little bit.
Ross Dunn
So. All right, well let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about local SEOs. Just a couple key points on local SEO and then we're going to get into the more AI overview information that you can take on foreign welcome back to SEO 101 on WMR FM, hosted by myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing.
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Ross Dunn
Options finance your car with Carvana and experience total control financing subject to credit approval and my company, Senior SEO Scott Vanack. All right, so just a couple keynotes on local SEO. These are really just follow ups from our last show. These are some questions and answers that I saw on the local search forums. One of the question was what is the current wait time for Google Business Profile suspensions the appeal process? Unfortunately it's about three to four weeks now. Is that for the average person or someone who can contact Joy Hawkins or one of the leaders in local world to help you out? I don't know. I would expect that that's the average and hoping so be scary if it was a much longer than that because it's pretty devastating to a business if you've got a suspension. Next, if your homepage is ranking organically. So that means. Okay, I'm just going to rewind here a bit. We spoke last week about how Google is now no longer allowing you to be in well only allows you to be in one place, not both in terms of local pack. So if you're in a map and you show up in the local pack in search result, it won't allow you to be in the classic organic results below. If you're in the classic organic organic below, it won't allow you to be in the local in the maps. Now if it's a map, when do the when do they make the decision? Well I guess if it's a very specifically local search and they clearly local, they'll probably give you the map first. Right? That's what they want you to be in. And then it won't show up in organic in organic rankings. So one of the fixes that's being thrown around is that if your homepage is ranking organically then what you want in. But again trying to be clear here in the organic results at the bottom or you did have rankings there and then you only got your local pack and it happens to be linked to your homepage as well. Change your Google Business profile link to a service page or a local page or a location page on your site instead of the homepage. That way there's a better chance that your original organic ranking below for your homepage will show up again because they're separate URLs. I hope that made sense. It's Again, I don't know if it's it's a certain fix, but I believe Joy has been seeing results with that, so she's definitely in the thick of it. I think that's a pretty wise move to make if you can. If you don't have a good location page, you may want to build one that just talks a little bit more about the area you're in and all that stuff. But you don't have to. A service page will work as well if it's relevant and you got it set up to be a good entry page. You got to keep that in mind. You know, your service page should be built that way anyway, so the person gets to it directly from a search engine, it's going to convert into business. Just keep this in mind as a good task you would need to do anyways to make sure those are all set up that way. All right, let's jump into AI News. Google AI Overviews are more More Volatile than Organic Rankings this is a report on Search Engine Land. What have we got here?
SEO Expert
Yeah, so according to a study by authorita. There we go. They're an E commerce SEO platform. Within two to three months, 70% of AI overview results changed. So that's pretty dramatic. Like if you think about regular organic search, 70% of what you see in the traditional top 10 doesn't swap out every three months. It's just, you know, things change, but not that dramatically. Over the past 13 weeks, AI overviews has seen a volatility score of 0.73 compared to regular organic search with a volatility score of 0.55. Now, I couldn't find anywhere specifically that says where they're pulling that volatility score from. Different tools measure things in different ways, but the gist is a bigger number is more volatile and AI overviews is about 50% more volatile than a regular organic search. Also similar to what Ross is just saying about local ranking in the top 10. Well, I guess it's not that similar. Ranking in the top 10 organically does not guarantee A in AI overviews. But the study did find that about 60% of the time, pages that rank in the top 10 also appear in AI Overviews. So if you're getting that top 10 result, your odds of being in AI overviews increases. Subsequently, of course, 40% of the time, pages that rank do not appear in A overviews do not appear in the regular organic top 10. So just some data there. It's very volatile. So if you have a listing in AI overviews that you love, just know that you, you know, don't get too attached to it. It might be gone pretty soon at least. And I think that's going to be the same for, well, months and maybe even years into the future because AI is evolving so rapidly. Naturally this is going to change and continue to evolve.
Ross Dunn
I wonder how much longer the term top 10 is going to be around. I mean it doesn't apply anymore. We just use it interchangeably to talk about rankings. But there's been the top 10 blue links in how long?
SEO Expert
Yeah, it's not, it's just so. Yeah, it's so interwoven with everything and you know, sometimes you have continuous scroll. So I mean, I guess you could still be in the top 10 but it doesn't have the same meaning as it used to.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, so yeah, I don't know anyway, I guess it, I guess I could be over literal. I guess it does still have some bearing. But anyway, it's just interesting to me. Of course, I just hark back to the days when we just had 10 links and then you had to go to the next page and I guess that's old thinking. So anyway, let's jump into the next bit which I think you'll all find more interesting in terms of takeaways. Title is AI Search engines often cite third party content. This is a study that's on Search Engine Journal. It was based on a recent analysis by xfunnel AI. Sorry, I don't know that business but I'll check into it. It's always interesting to see what these guys are up to. All these people doing research are up to. They did this examination across the major AI search engines in terms of how they're citing content. The study analyzed 40,000 responses which contained 250,000 citations. In perplexity, there were 6.61 citations per response. Predictably bigger. It's always had really good. Done a good job of that. In fact I think it led that the other ones are catching up. Google Gemini 6.1, which is higher than I thought. ChatGPT has only 2.62 citations per response. I need to improve upon that. It makes me wonder, are they only using almost three sources or are they just hiding the other ones? Because that was. That wouldn't be a good indicator either, would it?
SEO Expert
That's a good point actually. Yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't know if anybody.
Ross Dunn
Knows really hidden in the algorithm, I guess in terms of quality distribution, where were they getting this information? And this, this one really piqued my interest. High quality sources 31.5% I'm just not going to do the points here. 31% of citations come from high quality sources. I don't know exactly how they're determining that, but upper mid quality sources 15%, mid quality surfaces sources 26% lower mid quality sources 22% and lower quality sources 5%. So lower quality. That's good. I like to see that's not being shown there very often. It just want to know how they're quantifying all that. Are they. Are they did they when they did the study? Are they just basing that on the rather ethereal authority of the website provided by Moz or I don't know. Little digging is required there. But the best takeaway, best takeaway you're going to get from all this is coming up here. So perplexity, where are they getting their citations from for all these different guys? For perplexity, they're favoring YouTube and peer spot. I've never heard of Pure Spots to check that out.
SEO Expert
Me neither.
Ross Dunn
Yeah, Google Gemini frequently cites Medium, Reddit. No surprise there. And YouTube. Really no surprise there.
SEO Expert
Can you imagine if they didn't? It was like all Vimeo, all Vimeo, all day.
Ross Dunn
ChatGPT often references LinkedIn, G2 and Gartner peer reviews. Interesting. I can say from my experience, at least in this marketplace and any kind of B2B LinkedIn is strong. Reddit and YouTube are. Yeah, I'd say LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube would be places I'd focus. Yeah, if you're a writer you're. You're putting out some deep thoughts and stuff. Medium's great surprise that substack's not showing up yet. I guess it's just too small. But it's just. It's exploding. If you haven't used Substack before, it's S U B S T A C K. Check it out. It's an amazing platform. It's. And it's mobile only but it's fantastic for reading content and just learning a ton and it's. It's going to be and talked about a lot this year as it gets. As it grows even more. The writer of this article, Matt Southern, his top takeaway is invest in a mix of owned content, third party coverage and presence on relevant user generated content platforms, I.e. reddit to increase the likelihood of your content being cited by AI search engines. This Data suggests that earning mentions on trusted third party sites may be even more valuable than optimizing your domain content. Wow, that's something to just sit on and think a bit. It's. I don't know, I mean we, we talked about a second ago in your last bit here that there's been a lot of variability in AI overviews. The content turning over a lot. That's highly expected right now because they're testing it. I mean, they don't even know how they want it to look. It's going to be like that for months. I expect this. Nothing will be static by any stretch of the imagination, if ever in AI reviews until they've completely found the right mix. And really can we expect that? I doubt it. So. But right now it's going to be turbulent. Making sure that you're in YouTube is big these days. I've heard nothing but strong, like powerful feedback from peers that it's just killing, it's just doing so good. It's not what a lot of people like to do. We try to get our clients to it on YouTube and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. It never happens. It's very difficult. It's, it's more effort, it's putting yourself out there. It's a lot of things that people don't like to do and they can't fit the time into. And that why when you do a good job on YouTube, it just excels. It really does. And it provides multiple content opportunities too. You can take a YouTube video, you can spin it off into articles, put it into a newsletter, like the content from it just by doing transcription or even so many different things you can make into a podcast as well. It's immense how much value you can get out of doing one great YouTube channel. So do keep it in mind. It's well worth the time. And I say that, but still haven't done enough of it myself.
SEO Expert
Well, it's like you said, it's a lot of work and a lot of effort and if you're a smaller business that's hard to put that kind of time in or it might be hard to have the money to pay someone to do it. So, you know, you either just have to find the time or find the money or, I don't even know, just do it. We've got a few clients that do it and they do an awesome job, like a really awesome job, but it's hard to get them to do it. Really hard. And I, I get it totally.
Ross Dunn
But I guess if we're all, if we want to remain in rankings and, and keep bringing in business, we're going to have to start pushing it more to our clients and really emphasizing that taking that extra step is going to be important. Sad truth. Now, in my opinion, there's always, there's going to be a search engine that comes, that sticks to the top 10 links concept. It may not be just 10 again, it's probably going to be universal search results. That's kind of a given where we have a mixture of media, but I don't think that'll ever die because there's always people who want that experience where you can choose the source that you're going to go to. Will Google just have another tab where you can do that? Likely. But the same thing is that you're going to see that elsewhere and Google is going to lose market share. I don't see how they're not. They got a lot of stuff they're rolling out this year, but they're. This year, but they're losing trust with all these ethical things. They're doing unethical changes to their ethical policies. It's. They're just getting bossy, pushy. They're losing a lot of the allure and frankly, they're being outpaced by other AI companies that are focused only on AI. So very interesting year coming. This year is going to be. I don't even, I can't even fathom how fast this is going already. Claude just launched another upgrade to their AI chat. GPT is going to be coming at one in a bit. It's just. And these are massive changes. Some of these just incredibly different and awe inspiring. Yeah. Anyway, as you can tell, it's overwhelming for even us who are on top trying to keep on top of this stuff. So we'll be there to help you out. Hopefully you'll keep listening and enjoy the shows. With that said, on behalf of Myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Van Ak, thank you for joining us today. If you have any questions you'd like to share with us, please feel free to post them on our Facebook group. Easily found by searching SEO101podcast on Facebook. And yes, we will have to try and find an alternative because a lot of people are getting off Facebook for good reason these days. I don't know when that'll come. Yeah, I'm not in there as much either. It's just poisonous at times. So. Yeah, it's. But I want to note though, whoever does post questions there, get responses and they get noted on the air and we answer their questions. So free advice. Keep that in mind.
SEO Expert
I will say one thing real quick and I don't care if I mentioned this on the show or not, but I basically am boycotting Facebook. However, I still go on Facebook and check the SEO 101 group. So I'm still active in there as much as I can be. If more people are active, I'll be more active. So it's one of the few reasons I did not delete my account completely. So I'm still there if you need me.
Ross Dunn
Awesome. Well, have a great week everyone and remember to tune into future episodes, which are every week on WMR fm. Great.
SEO Expert
Thanks for listening everybody.
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Podcast Summary: SEO 101 Episode 495 - Google Search Decline: AI Preferences, User Trust, and Ranking Volatility
Podcast Information:
[07:08 - 07:22]
Ross Dunn welcomes listeners to Episode 495 of SEO 101 on WMR.FM. He introduces himself as the CEO of Step 4th Web Marketing and his co-host, Scott Vanek, the Senior SEO at the same company. They immediately delve into the episode’s primary focus: the ongoing lawsuit between Google and Chegg, which centers around the impact of AI-generated overviews on search traffic and revenue.
[07:22 - 07:03]
Ross initiates the discussion by explaining that Chegg, a publicly traded educational company, has filed a lawsuit against Google. Chegg alleges that Google's AI overviews are adversely affecting their traffic and revenue. Ross summarizes Chegg's three main arguments:
Notable Quote:
"Chegg is presenting them three main arguments... reciprocal dealing, monopoly maintenance, and unjust enrichment. Some pretty strong points there."
– Ross Dunn [04:04]
Scott agrees, emphasizing the validity of Chegg's claims and expressing frustration with Google's monopolistic practices.
[05:27 - 07:08]
The hosts discuss the broader implications of AI overviews on search engine optimization. Scott highlights both the benefits and drawbacks:
Notable Quote:
"From a user perspective, it's awesome. From a marketing perspective, it kind of sucks."
– Scott Vanek [05:27]
Ross suggests that Google should implement a more balanced approach by providing snippets with links to full content, fostering fairness for content creators.
[07:22 - 11:14]
Ross and Scott delve into recent survey findings from Vox Media and The Verge, revealing that:
Notable Quotes:
"There's the bad one."
– Scott Vanek [08:41]
"There's a lot of garbage, but if your local city has a TikTok page keeping you updated, that's great."
– Ross Dunn [10:03]
The hosts express mixed feelings about the shift towards AI and community-driven information, highlighting concerns over misinformation and the loss of traditional search reliability.
[16:07 - 17:00]
Ross introduces an update from Search Engine Land regarding Google's enhanced "Results About You" tool. This update aims to simplify the removal of personal data from search results by:
Scott notes potential abuse of this system, such as malicious actors attempting to manipulate search results by hacking websites. However, he acknowledges that Google’s proactive crawling could mitigate such risks.
[20:02 - 23:33]
Ross and Scott address questions from local search forums, specifically about Google Business Profile suspensions and the appeal process, which currently takes three to four weeks. They discuss strategies to maintain organic rankings while appearing in local packs, such as:
Notable Quote:
"You can't influence cloud because getting a ranking in cloud is impossible if you weren't already there."
– Ross Dunn [14:18]
[23:33 - 29:02]
The conversation shifts to a report by Authorita on Search Engine Land, highlighting the volatility of AI-generated search overviews compared to traditional organic rankings:
Ross expresses concern over the unpredictability of AI search results, noting that the term "top 10" may lose its significance due to the continuous evolution of AI algorithms and search interfaces.
[28:46 - 32:37]
Ross and Scott discuss a study from Search Engine Journal based on xfunnel AI’s analysis:
Notable Quote:
"The best takeaway you're going to get from all this is... invest in a mix of owned content, third-party coverage, and presence on relevant user-generated content platforms."
– Ross Dunn [27:28]
The hosts emphasize the importance of earning mentions on trusted third-party sites and maintaining a robust presence on platforms like YouTube, despite the increased effort required.
[32:37 - 36:15]
Ross and Scott wrap up the episode by reflecting on the rapid changes in SEO driven by AI advancements. They acknowledge the challenges but encourage listeners to adapt by:
Ross highlights the inevitability of search engine evolution and the necessity for marketers to stay informed and proactive. He invites listeners to engage with their Facebook group for further discussions and questions, despite personal reservations about the platform.
Notable Quote:
"If we want to remain in rankings and keep bringing in business, we're going to have to start pushing it more to our clients and really emphasizing that taking that extra step is going to be important."
– Ross Dunn [32:37]
Google's Monopoly and Legal Challenges:
AI Overviews are a Double-Edged Sword:
Public Sentiment Shifts Away from Traditional Search:
Google’s Enhancements on Personal Data Management:
Volatility in AI-Driven Search Results:
Importance of Third-Party Content and Diverse Platforms:
Evolving SEO Strategies:
Conclusion: Episode 495 of SEO 101 provides an in-depth analysis of the evolving SEO landscape influenced by AI advancements. Hosts Ross Dunn and Scott Vanek dissect the implications of Google's legal battles, the rise of AI overviews, and shifting public preferences, offering valuable insights and strategic recommendations for SEO practitioners navigating these changes.