SEO 101 Episode 496 - March 2025 Core Update, a Little Known Mistake to Avoid, and AI Errors

Summary

SEO 101: Episode 496 - March 2025 Core Update, a Little Known Mistake to Avoid, and AI Errors
Hosted by Ross Dunn and Scott Van Aken on WMR.FM
Release Date: March 18, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 496 of SEO 101, hosts Ross Dunn and Scott Van Aken delve into the latest developments in search engine optimization, covering significant updates from Google, insights into browser privacy changes, the exponential growth of search queries, and the burgeoning role of artificial intelligence in search. The episode is packed with expert analysis, practical advice, and real-world examples to help beginners navigate the evolving SEO landscape without getting bogged down by technical jargon.

Google's Paperclip Icon for Search Results

Timestamp: [03:38]

Scott Van Aken introduces a new feature Google is testing: a paperclip icon adjacent to the search bar. This tool allows users to copy the search result URL into a shortened Google link, potentially streamlining the process of sharing search results.

Scott Van Aken [03:50]: "It's just a fun little addition that Google's testing out. Every time I see a paperclip, I think Microsoft Clippy. Clippy. It's never clippy though."

Ross Dunn reflects on the practicality of the feature, questioning its utility for general users but acknowledging its potential benefits for SEO professionals when sharing search results with clients.

Ross Dunn [05:00]: "But then I thought as an SEO I'd probably use it quite a bit because sometimes I'm sending screenshots to clients... It makes it a bit easier from that regard."

Firefox's Privacy Policy Changes

Timestamp: [06:16]

The hosts discuss Mozilla Firefox altering its privacy terms, which initially sparked user panic by implying potential data selling. After significant backlash, Firefox clarified that the changes are designed to enhance user experience without granting Mozilla ownership of user content.

Ross Dunn [07:00]: "It really doesn't answer the main question of the main concern. And I guess that's why a lot of people are absolutely losing their crap over this dropping Firefox."

Scott commends Firefox for responding to user concerns and making the terms clearer, though he expresses skepticism about Firefox's commitment to not selling personal data.

Scott Van Aken [07:27]: "What I like about it though is the verbiage they used wasn't super clear. People got ticked off, Firefox responded and they changed it to make it a bit more clear."

Exponential Growth in Google Searches

Timestamp: [09:22]

Scott shares staggering statistics about Google's search volume, highlighting that as of March 3, 2025, Google processes over 5 trillion searches annually, equating to approximately 158,000 searches per second. This growth underscores the increasing importance of SEO in a vast and competitive digital ecosystem.

Scott Van Aken [09:30]: "Google now sees more than 5 trillion searches per year... It works out to about 158,000 searches per second."

Ross expresses awe at the sheer volume, emphasizing the inconceivable scale of data being processed.

Ross Dunn [10:34]: "Yeah, it's inconceivable."

Google March 2025 Core Update

Timestamp: [10:34]

The core topic of the episode revolves around Google's latest algorithm update. Ross and Scott discuss the typical uncertainties surrounding core updates, advising listeners to focus on producing quality content and not to react hastily to ranking fluctuations.

Ross Dunn [10:37]: "It's the first core update of 2025. The last one was in December. It's expected to take about two weeks, but who knows?"

Scott shares a client success story where initial traffic drops during an update were followed by significant gains post-update, reinforcing the unpredictable yet ultimately beneficial nature of these changes.

Scott Van Aken [12:20]: "His traffic levels were higher than they'd ever been, like, record level height... he came out ahead."

Ross laments Google's unpredictable update schedule, expressing frustration over the lack of consistency and control.

Ross Dunn [13:05]: "I just can't wait for, I pray for the DOJ to tear them apart a little bit, mess up Google a bit."

Published vs. Updated Dates Impacting SEO

Timestamp: [16:28]

A critical insight shared by Ross and Scott revolves around the SEO pitfalls of displaying both published and updated dates on web pages. They explain how this can confuse Google's algorithms, leading to decreased organic click-through rates as outdated dates may overshadow recent updates.

Ross Dunn [16:28]: "Published versus date updated or actually having both on the page can wreck your organic click through rate."

Scott elaborates on a case study where displaying both dates resulted in Google favoring the original publication date, causing traffic to plummet until the solution involved reverting to a single, most relevant date.

Scott Van Aken [17:19]: "Google was showing the original date published... they lost click through rate... they had to revert back to a single date."

Personalization in Google Search Results

Timestamp: [21:12]

Scott shares an intriguing observation about Google's personalization features, wherein his searches began to reflect preferences for multiple languages based on his interactions, despite not being multilingual. This raises questions about the extent and implications of search personalization.

Scott Van Aken [21:12]: "Google in personalization has discovered that I visit these pages in these other languages... Now Google thinks I speak Japanese, Dutch, and German."

Ross finds the phenomenon noteworthy, suggesting it might be a new dimension of personalization that could impact SEO strategies.

Local SEO News: Google Business Profiles

Timestamp: [19:56]

The discussion shifts to local SEO, focusing on the volatility of Google Business Profiles. Ross advises businesses to minimize major changes to their profiles to avoid suspensions, which can occur unpredictably even with minor updates. Emphasis is placed on maintaining consistency, especially for new profiles.

Ross Dunn [19:56]: "Google business profiles... profiles are being suspended for seemingly little reason for just innocent updates."

Scott concurs, highlighting the importance of cautious optimization to build trust and avoid disruptions.

AI News: Google AI Mode and AI Overviews

Timestamp: [24:25]

Scott introduces Google's experimentation with an AI Mode in Search Labs, which integrates conversational AI directly into search results. They discuss concerns about how AI might impact click-through rates and site traffic, with Scott noting that third-party studies indicate AI overviews could potentially decrease user engagement with organic search results.

Scott Van Aken [26:20]: "Third-party studies have actually shown evidence that click through rate from AI overviews is weak at best."

Ross expresses skepticism about the promised increase in clicks from AI overviews, pointing out the lack of transparent reporting tools from Google like Search Console to track AI-driven traffic.

Ross Dunn [27:12]: "But there's a reason why they're not including that data in Search Console. They're afraid."

AI Errors and Chatbot Inaccuracies

Timestamp: [29:48]

The hosts discuss a study by the Columbia Journalism Review revealing significant inaccuracies in AI chatbot responses. Over 60% of queries tested resulted in incorrect answers, with some models exhibiting up to 94% error rates. Additionally, chatbots were found to fabricate citations and bypass website restrictions, raising concerns about the integrity and reliability of AI-generated information.

Scott Van Aken [30:45]: "Chatbots provided incorrect answers to more than 60% of the queries... Grok3 was much higher at 94%."

Ross underscores the implications of these findings, emphasizing the potential for AI to contribute to the spread of misinformation.

Ross Dunn [31:48]: "AI is making fake news."

Conclusion and Takeaways

Throughout the episode, Ross and Scott emphasize the importance of staying informed and adaptable in the face of continual changes in SEO practices and search engine algorithms. They advocate for focusing on high-quality content, cautious optimization strategies, and leveraging multiple platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn to enhance visibility amidst evolving search landscapes influenced by AI.

Scott Van Aken [28:55]: "You'll be rewarded for it."

Ross Dunn [29:49]: "It's not all doom and gloom. If you put that effort in, you are going to stand out because not everyone wants to."

Final Thoughts

Episode 496 of SEO 101 provides a comprehensive overview of current SEO challenges and trends, from algorithm updates and browser privacy policies to the impact of artificial intelligence on search behavior and content accuracy. Ross Dunn and Scott Van Aken offer valuable insights and actionable advice, making this episode a must-listen for SEO beginners aiming to navigate the complexities of digital marketing effectively.

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Notable Quotes:

• Scott Van Aken [03:50]: "It's just a fun little addition that Google's testing out. Every time I see a paperclip, I think Microsoft Clippy. Clippy. It's never clippy though."

• Ross Dunn [10:37]: "It's the first core update of 2025. The last one was in December. It's expected to take about two weeks, but who knows?"

• Scott Van Aken [12:20]: "His traffic levels were higher than they'd ever been, like, record level height... he came out ahead."

• Ross Dunn [16:28]: "Published versus date updated or actually having both on the page can wreck your organic click through rate."

• Scott Van Aken [30:45]: "Chatbots provided incorrect answers to more than 60% of the queries... Grok3 was much higher at 94%."

• Ross Dunn [31:48]: "AI is making fake news."

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For more insights and updates, listeners are encouraged to subscribe to the SEO 101 newsletter at seo101radio.com and engage with the community on their Facebook page.

Transcript

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[Ross Dunn]

Hello and welcome to SEO 101 on WMR FM episode number 496. This is Ross Dunn, CEO of Step Forth Web Marketing and my co host is my company Senior SEO Scott Vanack. Well, or apologize missing our last episode, we were both at a dental convention. Dental convention? How are you talking like that? Anyways, the Pacific Dental Conference and we were sitting in a booth for another business we're involved with first dentist.com Anyway, it was interesting. We met lots of really interesting people and had lots of, well, lots of fun just being goofs. So we're back.

[Scott Van Aken]

I was very serious the entire time. I don't know what to talk about.

[Ross Dunn]

Of course, that goes without saying. We're back and then Scott's going away and I'll be soloing it. And then in a short time after that it'll be both of us. I think we'll get one episode and before I go away and then he'll be soloing it. So it'll be interesting. Couple months. Well, let's jump right in here to some non SEO news. Google Search Paperclip icon for search results Tell me about this.

[Scott Van Aken]

It's just a fun little addition that Google's testing out. Every time I see a paperclip I think Microsoft Clippy. Clippy. It's never clippy though. Not clippy Anyways, they're testing a paperclip icon which sits to the right of the search bar. If you click the pay per click icon it copies to the clipboard the search string URL used for those search results. So I wasn't sure why there testing this because as a regular person I would probably never use that ever. Like when are you sharing search results with your mom or your buddy? Like maybe never. But then I thought as an SEO I'd probably use it quite a bit because sometimes I'm sending screenshots to clients or you're trying to share search results. So maybe I would use it for that. And rather than send a big long string, Google takes that search result string or sorry the URL for that search result and puts it into a Google a goo GL link. So it's a shortener, so it makes it a bit easier from that regard. But then I started thinking about personalization and I'm wondering does it send and share the personalized results or does it share whatever that person would see if they did the same search? That I don't know. And of course being in Canada, I can't test it to know for sure, but potentially kind of helpful for SEOs or helpful for anyone who share search results periodically. I don't know if anyone not an SEO would ever do that, but who knows? Maybe.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. You know, funny, I got stuck on goo gl. I didn't they weren't they shutting that down?

[Scott Van Aken]

Well, that's what I thought. But who knows, maybe they, they breathe.

[Ross Dunn]

A new life into it just for their own use. Maybe. But anyway, I think that the tool is kind of useful. I mean obviously There's a need for it, but they probably see a ton of people sharing search results, so why not, right? I think I will use it, but not very often. All right, next, Firefox deletes its promise to never sell personal data and asks users not to panic. How could they? Why would they panic? Right. And when I read about this a while ago, I was just like, oh, geez, what's going on? It the changes were very significant and caused a huge panic and there's a lot of people now who won't touch it. Doesn't matter what Firefox says. But anyway, this is what was originally there. Does Firefox sell your personal data? Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That's a promise.

[Scott Van Aken]

A few holes in that promise, I guess.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. So the new terms also.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, that's gone now. So.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, that's gone. It says when you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a non exclusive royalty free worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox. You know, it's reading between the lines, I guess is what it comes down to. Anyway, after user backlash, Firefox updated it to say you give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we described in the Firefox privacy notice. It also includes a non exclusive royalty free worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request, what with the content you input in Firefox, this does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.

[Scott Van Aken]

That's better.

[Ross Dunn]

It is better. It's clearer and I don't know, it's a shame they had to be all legally about it, but that's what lawyers are paid for. So.

[Scott Van Aken]

What I like about it though is the verbiage they used wasn't super clear. People got ticked off, Firefox responded and they changed it to make it a bit more clear. A lot of companies probably wouldn't do that. So at least they, you know, acknowledged that their user base wasn't happy with it. So a little bit of credit there, I guess.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, I don't understand why it doesn't say it won't sell your personal data. Because they never say that, even in this new one. So it really doesn't answer the main question of the main concern. And I guess that's why a lot of people are absolutely losing Their crap over this dropping Firefox. So it was. Ironically, it's right when I went to it, I switched to it, this happened. I'm like, oh, for the love of. Because Chrome is a mess. It's giving away way too much information now. And yet we are, we're beholden to it really. We don't have to use it all the time, but we do it all the time for step forth, for all of our content and everything. It makes things a lot easier. But I am looking for an alternative and hopefully there will be something really, really good soon.

[Scott Van Aken]

You know, we live our life, we collectively as people that use the Internet in a way that you almost have to assume that every app, every website, everything you use, they're selling your personal data. Everybody just so I kind of live in the sense that I'm just assume everybody's selling my data and I'm careful about what I put out there. Even social media, like I'm cutting back big time on that because of partially that exact reason. So, you know, if you, you know, you have to be careful, be careful with what you put out there. If it really doesn't want to, you know, see the whole world, just don't do it. Yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

As. As evidence here, it can change. Yep. All right, what's next here?

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, so we just have a little bit of data. I like to share this stuff. Sometimes I, I don't know, maybe I'm the only one that cares, but I find it a little bit interesting, and that is that Google now sees more than 5 trillion searches per year. On March 3, they announced in a blog post that they're processing 5 trillion searches. And so I want to take a look. And actually, conveniently, Search Engine Land had it there for me. So that was perfect with some of the previous historical numbers here. Just to give you an idea how quickly they've grown. In 99, before my time in SEO, they were processing about a billion searches a year in 2014 billion, 2001 to, oh 3,55 billion, which is when I got my start. 04 to 08,73 billion and oh 9,365 billion. And then in 2012, they broke a trillion with 1.2 trillion. 2016 to 2 trillion. And now we're up to 5 trillion. So, you know, that's, that's a lot of growth in what is that, 26 years. So what do they say as well? It works out to about 158,000 searches per second. So we've had about a million, 2, 3 million searches since I Started talking about this.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, it's inconceivable.

[Scott Van Aken]

It really is. If I could have a dollar for every search. I don't know. Stupid thing to say.

[Ross Dunn]

All right, let's jump into SEO news. So Google March 2025 core update is rolling out now. As usual, there's really not much to report. It's the first core update of 2025. The last one was in December. It's expected to take about two weeks, but who knows? There's nothing new about it. Just the typical advice that you need to produce quality content. I mean, nothing changes and hopefully this isn't a crazy ride. What? We have no idea yet.

[Scott Van Aken]

Exactly. Yeah. So just, you know, keep an eye on things and don't, don't. I think this is the biggest takeaway. Don't react to anything in the next two weeks. If something goes bad, don't freak out. Just. Just wait. Wait till it's done and then freak out when it's done if things bounce back.

[Ross Dunn]

But while us to help you out.

[Scott Van Aken]

I've seen clients have their rankings tank during an update, and when the update's over, everything's as it was or better or sometimes better. So, you know, don't worry about it. Just have a coffee, go down to the beach. You're going to be okay. Decaf, I guess, in this case, probably decaf. Yeah.

[Marketing Representative]

Yeah.

[Ross Dunn]

You know, it's. It's amazing when everything seems to go into the crapper and clients are on our tail and what's going on, why, why, why? And. And we just have to calm them down. And it can be. Thankfully, it's very rare, but can be a very difficult few weeks of lots of reassuring, reassuring. And then when they come back, they're either there right as they were, or better.

[Scott Van Aken]

Well, I have a client who has a recipe website, and in December, he messaged me in a panic. His rankings were tanking, his traffic was tanking, he was so freaked out. And by the end of December, when the updates were done, he had. His traffic levels were higher than they'd ever been, like, record level height. And he has, according to Semrush, more rankings than he's ever had before after it was completed. So he was pretty happy, needless to say. But of course, it happened at his busiest time of year, too, which was kind of a bummer for him. So he did lose traffic in that period, but at the end of the day, he came out ahead. So Google don't do that in December. Come on, Matt.

[Ross Dunn]

You'd think they learned, but they don't care. All those people are gone now. The ones that learned that's true. Yeah.

[Scott Van Aken]

They're all retired with their buyouts.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. Or they just forgotten or they're. Who knows. It's just a shame. But yeah, the Florida update was the one that really caused the worst chaos. But it's now become just norm. The norm for them to switch things whenever they want to.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yep.

[Ross Dunn]

That's why I just can't wait for, I pray for the DOJ to tear them apart a little bit, mess up Google a bit. I know they're talking about actually removing Chrome from their ownership. We'll see what happens. I have no idea.

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[Ross Dunn]

Published versus date updated or actually having both on the page can wreck your organic click through rate. Well, I think we'll tag team this one. Essentially the deal here is if you put two dates on the page and this is the visible part of your page and on a piece of content you've written, let's say, and the first date is when it was originally written, the second date is when you've updated it, Google can get very confused. You don't want to confuse Google. It's a bad thing. Yes, and when they get confused it tends to mess up the results and can give users or viewers the wrong idea and dissuade them from clicking. Back in September they've visually. Let's see here, this is. Well, I'll let you take this next part because he wrote it and I'll probably mess it up.

[Scott Van Aken]

Okay. Yeah, so Abby gleason, who's an SEO and had posted all this to YouTube or sorry to LinkedIn in September they visually added date updated alongside date published. So both dates were appearing in the blog posts and what ended up happening is Google was showing the original date published date even though everything had been updated to a current date. And when that happened their click through rate plummeted because it now looked like an old article. I believe it's from 2011 or something like quite old. But now it has been completely updated so it was new and current. But Google pushed the wrong date so it just messed everything up. They lost click through rate or sorry, yeah, they lost traffic and what they ended up having to do to fix it was to revert back to a single date, which in this case I believe was their updated date. The more modern date that actually reflected accurately reflected what content was in that post. So she did notice some note something as well. It does not appear that Schema has any impact on this because what's happening is Google sees the two dates and they pick one. They don't necessarily pick the one you want them to pick. So only display the date you want Google to pick in schema. You can have multiple dates in schema. You'll have like date modified or updated, that kind of stuff and that's okay. That is not confusing Google because it's very clear to Google what that date is. If we look in Google's help documents, they even say to minimize the presence of other dates on a page. If you follow the best practice practices and find incorrect dates are being selected in search results, consider removing all but the most relevant date on the page, that which reflects the date of the content now. So again now that would be the updated date is most likely what you will want to display on that page. And that's Google saying that as well. So confusing.

[Ross Dunn]

Maybe it's good to know though this is very valuable info because hell everyone can use all the click through rate they can get these days. So it just seems to be double dropping, like dropping and dropping with all this AI overview. So very good to know.

[Scott Van Aken]

Absolutely.

[Ross Dunn]

All right, well, it's you again. You've got an interesting observation.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, so I saw something on, I think it was on Tuesday or something this weekend. I've never seen happen before. So a little background first. We have a client who has their website in four languages. It's available in English, Japanese, Dutch and German. When it comes to the non English versions of their site, I don't do a lot of work. We don't do non English SEO. So those, they have other people that work on those sites but, or those languages but I sometimes have to go in, I'll fix broken links. You know, there's certain things I can do that don't involve changing words on the page, that sort of thing. And whenever I do that, often Google's like this page isn't in English. Would you like us to translate it? And I always say no because it doesn't matter. But now Google in personalization has discovered that I visit these pages in these other languages and because I tell it not to translate it, I guess now Google thinks I speak Japanese, Dutch and German. If you're listening Google, I don't, I don't speak. My last name is Dutch. That's, that's the only Dutch I know is my last name. So. But then what I found, I did a search for and I have it bookmarked and stuff but for some reason I searched In Google for Google Search Console. I don't even know why I did that, but I did it and I found something interesting. The first result was Google Search Console and a link. And then they had four site links for the about page. And the first site link was their about page in English. And then the other three site links were for each Japanese, Dutch and German. And I've never seen search results in the past have language based personalization take place. So I don't know if this is a new thing that they're doing or it's just the first time they've attributed these other languages to me personally. And I, I guess I could ask some bilingual friends. We have some people I could ask and see if they see that. But I'd never seen it before in any ways. I, I found it kind of interesting.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah, it seems to be a pretty big coincidence. So I would think that that is some personalization. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, you just never know what's going to show up next. That's something I think. Did you take a screenshot of it?

[Scott Van Aken]

I do. I do have a screenshot. I could put it in the show.

[Ross Dunn]

Notes actually, I would actually share that with Barry Schwartz. You might be interested by that.

[Scott Van Aken]

Oh yeah, I'll definitely do Barry. If you're listening, you're probably not listening. If you're listening, I will send that to you and just share it with you. Maybe, maybe I'll give me a shout out on SE Roundtable. There you go.

[Ross Dunn]

Just mentioned it was. Yeah, we were talking about an SEO 101 and yeah, it's interesting. He's probably seen it before, but you just never know.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ross Dunn]

All right, now to some local SEO news. Google business profiles. The dumpster fire that it is is a very delicate area of optimization. So if you have a local business, have your own Google business profile. The suggestion is to avoid any major changes. And that's because profiles are being suspended for seemingly little reason for just innocent updates. Now the updates granted may be a little bit major. Sometimes it's the change of your business name, which is something that Google's a bit touchy about, especially these days. But it could be completely innocent. Like I say, you're literally doing the right thing. Doesn't matter. Suspensions are happening and it takes a month at this stage for those suspensions to be reviewed. If you, if you ask for that reviewal. Reviewal the heck, ask for it to be reviewed anyway. The suggestion is to stick to minor updates so that this is especially too true while you're building the trust of your profile. If it's a new one, you don't want to be messing things around a lot. Just do what you need to do and stick to the minor updates such as changing your, your hours. Don't you know, your phone numbers? Be careful with that. That's pretty major update. Just be careful. If you're doing it right, follow the right practices, you're okay. Changing categories can actually be considered a major update. All of this has been, you know, a lot of guesswork amongst the people that I was reading on this form, but just from their instinct and experience. You know, avoid changing categories if you can, but definitely keep your, your hours updated. What were some of the other things they suggested? You know, adding imagery, anything like that. That's no problem. All that stuff is great. Just be very careful with anything that seems significant to the running of the profile. Anyway, I'll give a link here you can check out. It'll be in our show notes. So do consider that if you're interested. And next up is our AI news. Google is testing an AI mode. This is now available in Google Labs. What have we got here, Scott?

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, so this is AI mode. Just everything we've been waiting for, I guess. I don't know if you've been accepted into the Google Search Labs experiment. I have not because Google doesn't like me and I did try and they said no. If you are, you will see this new tab within Google Search. It's just a little tab. I believe it's beside the search bar. Again, you click AI Mode and you're, you're basically chat GPT, I guess essentially Google's Robbie Stein, VP of Product, I feel like that should be VP of Products, plural. But VP of Product, he responded to some concerns. Oh, and I, I was trying to look it up because I thought his title was wrong and I think he was the former CEO of Yahoo because I kind of saw his name. I don't know if it's the same guy or not, but same name anyways. I'll have to check that because I'm curious. Not that it really matters. There's a question by Mike Futia. I don't know who that is. Random person, I guess I might. Hope you're listening. He said, how do you quell legitimate concerns from web publishers that you are scraping all their content and removing the incentive for users to click over to their sites? Robbie's response was the team is really focused on how we make it easy to click to sites. We have a lot more UI Updates coming that we showed in our announcement post. It's something we hear from users that they want and core to how we're building AI mode. Also, AI mode is going to respond to new types of questions, let people ask follow ups and explore different facets and ultimately create new opportunities for sites to rank. Okay. What I found interesting though and actually. Oh, I don't remember who wrote this article. Sorry Search engine land. Or maybe it was Barry on se Round table. My bad. I should have this note anyways. It's like this is something that was said before when AI Overview was being released that it would lead to more clicks. I question that that's true. In fact I'm pretty confident it's the exact opposite.

[Ross Dunn]

Especially because you probably heard my eye roll.

[Scott Van Aken]

I did hear it. Yeah, it's. It's burning my. I've got tinnitus now from that. Thank you. So and the problem is there's no real reporting on Google side about traffic coming from AI overviews. So there's no Search Console reporting. Like if they added that we would know and it would be great. And people, if the clicks are indeed higher, which I don't think they are but it would be visual, you could see it, it would be good. But the opposite is kind of true. Third party studies have actually shown evidence that click through rate from AI overviews is weak at best. So I don't know. What will AI Mode do? Who knows. I mean they're still in development and testing how they'll display those citations but if there's just like a whole bunch of content and a whole bunch of citations everywhere, I really don't see how it would lead to more clicks. In fact I think it would be less.

[Ross Dunn]

But there's a reason why they're not including that data in Search Console. They're afraid.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, absolutely they are.

[Ross Dunn]

Or very, very least they just don't want another headache which would be everyone freaking out at them. Yeah, it's. It's not good. I mean I was just, you know even just using your phone and asking a question of it using voice, you'll never get ever a link to easily click. It's just the answer. You might look below it and you can go down there and find it. But the answer is provided. Yeah. And not always correctly but it's provided so. And it's often read to you. And how often is that being done versus people doing a search on and actually seeing a search result? Yeah, you have to wonder. I mean all these things are changing and we only have a Small glimpse of the pie. It might be far more than we ever know. All I know for sure is that a lot of people are finding they're losing traffic and it's going to be getting worse as the year goes on, I believe. So it's why we're focused on ensuring that we do everything possible to ensure our clients are showing up in the top, in AI overviews, in any kind of AI search. And it is not easy and it's very important. You have great content and your site is not stagnant. If you really want to succeed in a really competitive market, you also have to look at media. YouTube and LinkedIn are really good places. YouTube in particular is really, really good.

[Scott Van Aken]

We talked about that.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. And I think it's something that I'll be preaching this whole year because it's very clear that the results are there. It's another Google property. It's logical because it has a lot of different ways that the content can be shared, from clips to the translated text to universal search results and also through the AI. So it's pretty awesome. And I think it's going to make the bar higher for, for clients and that's going to be tricky. It's going to get a lot harder for people to maintain a top ranking if they're not on top of everything. Not all doom and gloom. I mean, it means too, that if you put that effort in, you are going to stand out because not everyone wants to.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah. You'll be rewarded for it.

[Ross Dunn]

Yep. AI search engines often make up citations and answers. This is a study from Columbia Journalism Review. AI chatbots and search engines often provide wrong answers and make up article citations. The study focused on how tools access present or present, I should say, and cite information from news publishers. The study performed a total of 1600 queries. It randomly selected 10 articles from 20 publishers. They then selected digital excerpts from these articles to formulate their queries, deliberately choosing excerpts that would return the original source within the first three results if searched in a traditional search engine. Their focus was to assess how well chatbots could identify article headlines, original publishers, dates and URLs based on the excerpts and the findings. Take it away, Scott.

[Scott Van Aken]

All right, accuracy issues. So overall, chatbots provided incorrect answers to more than 60% of the queries. For instance, Perpex Perplexity had a 37% incorrect response rate, while Grok3 was much higher at 94%.

[Ross Dunn]

Go, Elon.

[Scott Van Aken]

He's awesome, isn't he? 94%. I'm just biting my tongue right now. Confidence in Incorrect answers. Premium models often provided confidently incorrect answers more than free versions, raising concerns about the user's ability to discern accurate information. Disregarding crawler preferences, many chatbots bypassed robot exclusion protocols, leading to potential misuse of content from publishers who had explicitly blocked access. There are fabricated citations. Chatbots frequently fabricated links and cited syndicated or incorrectly attributed articles, undermining the integrity of the original sources.

[Ross Dunn]

AI is making fake news.

[Scott Van Aken]

It's all fake AI news. It's. It's Skynet. It's coming. Inaccurate attribution. Even when chatbots identified articles correctly, they often failed to provide accurate URLs affecting publishers, traffic and visibility. Overall, the study indicated that collectively, the chatbots produced incorrect answers to more than 60% of all queries tested across. I think there were eight different models that they checked, so that's encouraging.

[Ross Dunn]

The future is bright.

[Scott Van Aken]

Isn't that great? Yeah. So if anyone tells you AI is awesome. Yes. But you gotta be careful.

[Ross Dunn]

Yeah. And there's going to be a lot of those for the next while, for years to come. I think even with all the advances, it's going to be some pretty shocking discoveries of how bad certain aspects of it are that we didn't realize.

[Scott Van Aken]

I want to point something out about that piece as well, since it's about AI. The are. The study was really long and I was just like impatient and so I skimmed it and then AI basically created that entire write up for me.

[Ross Dunn]

Nice.

[Scott Van Aken]

So if you don't like it, it's not me. If you liked it, I lied and AI didn't do it.

[Ross Dunn]

Did you use Harpa?

[Scott Van Aken]

No, I just used Team GPT.

[Ross Dunn]

Oh, I know.

[Scott Van Aken]

I forget about Harpa. But anyways, it's on your.

[Ross Dunn]

Literally on your browser.

[Scott Van Aken]

I know, I'm getting there. I'm getting there.

[Ross Dunn]

I'm always hassling our friend Scott here to advance.

[Scott Van Aken]

I'm a slow adopter sometimes and I don't know why that is, but it's okay.

[Ross Dunn]

It makes you a very steady employee and very good at what you do.

[Scott Van Aken]

Yeah, I come around.

[Ross Dunn]

I always do this. Show some claw marks as I work away at it. Yeah, as you tear yourself away from things. Well, on behalf of myself, Ross Dunn, CEO of Stepforth Web Marketing, and my company, Senior SEO Scott Van Ak, thank you for joining us today. Remember, we have a Show Notes newsletter you can sign up [e-mail] and please, if you have feedback about it and you want to suggest any changes or best ways we can improve it, let me know. I would love to hear that you can post it on our Facebook page by searching SEO101podcast on Facebook. Have a great week and remember to tune into future episodes, which air every week on W.

[Scott Van Aken]

Thank you for listening everybody.

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[Ross Dunn]

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