Google's search dominance drops to a 15-year low, CNN, USA Today, and LA Times get hit by Google's site reputation abuse policy, Google CEO on future of links, AI making search quality worse, Screaming Frog now allows you to automate SEO, and more

0:03All right, everyone. Quick message from the Agency Owners Association.

0:30adding more value to the group. I will tell you that the price is continuing to increase. The good news is that there's no long-term commitment. So you can just learn more by going to marketingschool.io slash agency. Once again, that's marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more. And we hope to see you inside. Did you know that Google search engine share dropped to a 15-year low in the USA? So its share fell to 77%. Typically, it's 85 to 90%. being increased their share by 5 % to 13%. So things are changing. This tweet came from Kieran Flanagan, who is the HubSpot VP of marketing. He went to Zapier to become CMO, and now he's going back to HubSpot, by the way.

1:09Oh, cool. Which is interesting. And so Google's share has decreased. And what is this time period? This took a hit in April of this year. Just recently, they just lost five. And I'm assuming it's been gradual because that's too big of a share to just drop. It said it fell. I don't know over what time period it fell. I think this is over a certain time period, not just one month. Because it's funny, I've been looking at similar web data for Google. I've been tracking it for a while and I put a tweet out about this maybe a month or two ago. Google's traffic has been doing pretty well for their search engine.

1:45It hasn't been really declining much at all. But on the flip side, similar web showing that chat GPT is growing at a faster pace. but Google and Bing have been going at similar paces. So like if I look up at similar web, google.com, because you can end up seeing the traffic stats. It's number one. If you look at, where's the traffic? 83.5 billion. And March was up 84.8 billion. April was down 2 billion. And if I do similar web for Bing, the last time I checked, it was very similar stats. In terms of the growth rate? Oh no, on this. Yeah. April being is up 78 million. So being one from 1.4 to 1.5, Google went from 85 to 83.5.

2:41So they lost the market share in April. That's interesting. But compared to February, February, Bing went from 1.3 to 1.5. All right? So you're doing 0.2 divided by 1.3. That's 15 % growth. That's not bad. Google went from 83.5. They ended with 83.5. They're at 81.1 before, so 2.4. So Google grew 3 % when Bing grew, what did I say, 15 %? Yeah. Yeah, so Bing's growing at a much faster pace. But Google overall is still growing in traffic when you look at it over a long period of time. Speaking of Google, by the way, did you see the site reputation policy stuff where a bunch of these sections of their sites are getting torched?

3:27Like CNN, USA Today, LA Times, they all got hit by Google's site reputation abuse policy. So basically they have these coupon sections on their sites, like the affiliate sections. They've all been de-indexed, I believe, or hit really hard. And so Google is trying to clean up their search results. Because here's the thing, Like oftentimes I'll search for things. I actually end up going to Reddit to look for reviews there, which takes longer, but I feel like I can trust Reddit more. Right. So I find that, you know, for a lot of affiliate marketers out there, I think the game's going to change quite a bit now.

3:59So speaking of that, did you hear what the Google CEO said about the future of links and AI and search quality being worse? No. Okay. So this one, Search and Land, future of links. Unlike in previous statements where Sundar indicated that the search experience would evolve substantially, I'm terrible at reading, in the next 10 years. Substantially? Thank you. In the next 10 years, in the Bloomberg interview, he seemed to indicate that links to websites will continue to be an important part of Google search results. So they're pretty much saying that Google search results won't get worse. I mean, we'll still have links.

4:36And then when they talked about the search results getting worse, they're saying, anytime there's a lot of big change, you get good, you get bad, and then you've got to work on fixing and cleaning it up. They're just saying there's a lot of changes. They're recalibrating right now. Bingo, yes. That makes a lot of sense. It's going to get even worse, because did you know now, Screaming Frog now allows you to automate SEO? They do, I saw that. This tweet is from GoFishChris, this is Chris Long. Screaming Frog's OpenAI integration allows you to automate tons of basic SEO tasks. Just for everyone to know, Screaming Frog, back in the day when I used to use it, it's still a great tool, I just, Neil and I don't spend time crawling our sites anymore.

5:15But you use it to crawl your site, it's like the best crawler out there, right? But now, there's an open AI integration, and basically, you can have it automatically change your title tags, right? You can have it change your headers and things like that. So this guy shows how to do it. It's like a technical how-to, which I'm not going to read through right now. but if you're like a non-technical SEO and you're using Screaming Frog and you can do this at scale to optimize your site then why wouldn't you do it? Because this is stuff usually you would need to wait weeks for a developer to do. I'm with you but I would just have humans double check it to make sure it's actually making the right changes.

5:55Meta descriptions, alt text, category page text, structure data I'm pretty sure you can update portions of content too. It would be nice if they had the data that you had from what was the old SEO company that you had, the software? ClickFlow. ClickFlow, where you analyze the meta tags. Don't worry, it's coming back. Ah, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you feed that into Screaming Frog and then they're making meta tag changes based on that. So what we're doing internally right now is we've built stuff that will auto-optimize pages, right? But we also want to show the before and after to make it very clear.

6:23And we also want people to be able to accept on their own so it doesn't just change things automatically. And then they can also revert to changes too. Yeah, that's cool. On a side note, speaking of Google and SEO, did you see what they're doing with streaming audiences? No. Google introduced a plan to rethink programmatic TV by having advertised centralized their streaming ad buys through its web-based focus demand side platform. Oh, it's like Google Ads for programmatic. Bingo, so DV360. So pretty much if you want to buy ads on Disney, you can buy them through Google. And I think it's a smart move because there's a lot of monopolistic issues with these public-traded companies.

7:00And it's funny, you see like Snap and Pinterest and Reddit, They're small, they generate some ad revenue and about tons. In an ideal world, if Google was allowed, I bet you they would just be like, Pinterest, you've done well enough, we're going to buy you. Reddit, we're going to buy you. X, we're going to buy you. And they keep going on and on because they can just take their whole advertiser base and be like, boom, pop it on all these audiences and they would generate way more revenue per click than what X or Pinterest or any of these guys do in arbitration on that end. And the problem right now is they can't buy anything because the M &A market, the FTC cracks down on big tech, right?

7:33So you just can't buy anything right now. But they have the cash. Yeah, they have the cash. They would for sure buy it if they could. But the FTC would stop them. They're cheap acquisitions for them. In general, they're like, wait, you charge half the amount per click that we would get? Cool, we'll buy you your 15 times, 20 times profit? No problem. When we buy you, it'll end up becoming 10 times profit just because we're getting double per click and those make the math work out better. Reddit market cap, 8.4 billion. Snap market cap, what is it? Snap is$26 billion. And then the market cap for Pinterest, you said?

8:05Yeah, it's less than$30. $29,$29. So all very affordable. Warren Buffett could buy them if he wants. Google did a$70 billion buyback. Did they? I think it was$70. Google

8:22$70 billion Alphabet issues, first dividend and$70 billion buyback. But in that$70 billion, instead of buying back their stock. They could have bought Pinterest, Snap, Reddit, and still had money left over. But they're like FTC, so we might as well just do this buyback. It'll benefit us for the long term, and then when it cools down a little bit, we'll just go buy these things. So whatever government does disrupt, these companies figure out a way. The other thing, just going back to your thing here, this demand-side platform, DV360, is when you think about television, it's becoming less of a black box, but it's been a black box for a very long time.

8:58It's like, how do you get these ads on these What is this? Disney, you said? What else did you say? Streaming, connected TV. Yeah, connected TV, right? It's become less complex over the years, but it's still a little like people aren't as comfortable. It's not as easy as just going into Google Ads and Meta, and this is going to make it even easier. So I think that's a good thing. It is. And you know what? I bet you Google gets a cut for driving placement, and Google's like, oh, cool. We don't have to do anything other than sell it to our existing advertisers. It's almost pure profit for them. Yep.

9:31If you're looking to hire additional marketers for your team, there's no better place to look than, well, hiring nearshore, hiring offshore. And we found that we've hired amazing creative people. We've hired amazing people that can help with execution on the marketing side. Whatever it is that you're looking for exactly, we are helping with that. We have recruiters from our side. All you have to do is go to marketingschool.io slash hire. Once again, it's marketingschool.io slash hire. fill out the information in terms of what you need, and then we'll have our recruiters reach out to you to help you with the placement.

10:03And it should be great for you at the end of the day because you're going to save a lot of money and you're going to get the help that you need. So you're going to get help from a cost standpoint and also an execution standpoint as well. So again, marketingschool.io slash hire, and we'll see you inside. Did you hear about the AI tool infecting the media industry? No. Okay. So remember when Sports Illustrated got in trouble for fake writers? Yeah. So this tool is called AdVon. That's A-D-V-O-N. It's the AI powered content monster infecting the media industry. So basically it's got its tendrils in other surprisingly prominent publications.

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12:52So what's going on over here?

12:57Okay. A few years back, a writer in developing countries started doing contract work for a company called Advan Commerce, getting a few pennies per word to write online product reviews. But the writer, who like other Advan sources interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity, recalls that the gig's responsibility soon shifted. Instead of writing, they were now tasked with polishing drafts generated using an AI system the company was developing, internally dubbed Mel. They started using AI for content generation, the former Advan worker told us, and paid even less than what they were paying before.

13:27So like pennies, it's even less now. The former writer was asked to leave detailed notes on Mel's work, feedback they believed to use to fine-tune the AI, which would eventually replace their role entirely. And soon after, we were released from our positions as writers. So, we first heard of Advan last year after staff at Gannett. So Gannett has USA Today and all these publications. Notice product reviews getting published on the website of USA Today with bylines that didn't seem to correspond to real people. The articles were stilted and formulaic, leading to the writer's union to accuse them of being shoddy AI.

13:58When Gannett blamed the strange articles on AdVon, we started digging. We soon found AdVon had been running a similar operation at the magazine Sports Illustrated, publishing product reviews using bylines of fake writers and fictional blah, blah, blah. And eventually the Sports Illustrated CEO got fired, and then I think Sports Illustrated is just gone completely now. So it's basically on a lot of these different sites, and it just goes to show you again, the example here is crappy AI doesn't work. It does not work. if you're going to use AI, use it with AI combined with a human and take the time to make it amazing versus just using AI.

14:32Yeah, look, if you're responsible for these publications, you're putting your job at risk if you're using stuff like this. I think for the next five years at least, you should have a human in the loop. There should be some type of mechanism to spot check things, to undo things as well. Because what you don't want is you don't want to sign up for something like this. You're tied into an annual contract and then you get screwed at the end of the day for making a stupid mistake like this. I bet you in the next Super Bowl or maybe even Olympics, because the Olympics is coming up soon, someone is going to use AI for their ad and just make it pure AI.

15:05Yeah. Generated. Speaking of ad, you want to talk about the Apple backlash? By the way, did you buy the new iPad? I ordered a new iPad. I did too. Did you get the nanotech screen? No. So I read up on the, see, you fool. You should have asked me. I looked it up. I was like, should I get the nanotech screen? And then I read the reviews. It's like, you shouldn't get the nanotech. Why? because it's actually good for if you're doing professional work or whatever, but it's not as bright. It's actually worse than the normal screen. I'm going to go cancel my nano. Because I'm assuming you can cancel it.

15:37You can cancel it, right? I'm just going to cancel it. Thank you very much for that, by the way. It saved you$200. More? Because you have to have one terabyte to get the nano text screen. Oh, that's right,$400. Yeah, I prefer the smallest storage because whoever uses 256 or 250-something gigabyte. I do 512 to be safe. I mainly use my iPad for movies. You've got me this phone. My last one was 512. This one's only 256. I always get notices that I'm out of space. Dude, 256, never get notices that I'm out of space. Because you have all your files on iCloud. No, I have photos on iCloud or on your phone.

16:14I have no idea. Probably on iCloud. It's probably on iCloud. I don't have that many photos in general. Yes, but with the Apple ad, dude, it's so funny. People gave so much crap to Apple about their iPad ad. And then Tim Cook apologized. I'm like, man, what did you apologize for? For ruining some pianos and guitars? He was trying to make a point with the ad that you can get all these things inside an iPad. And no matter what people say about it, if you want to buy that nanotech device or screen type, it sold out so fast that now to get it delivered it's mid-June when it comes out oh is it really for the screen yes oh I didn't know that so even though people are talking crap about the ad it still did really well and they're placing a lot of orders because when I first checked you could get it right then and there and then it just switched automatically really quickly to early June then mid-June and I haven't checked since then do you know about the Apple leasing program where I told you about this where you can sell back your old iPad and stuff and they give you money So basically, if you lease a nice car, every two, three years you just return and get a new one.

17:19So it's the same deal with Apple. So for example, one of our mutual friends, he has that$7 ,000 computer from Apple. So you can lease that and pay that over a three-year time span. So you're paying$100 a month or something like that. Then at the end of it, you can either buy it or you can sell it back to Apple. Or you can just say, hey, let's send this back and give me the new one. And you can just keep repeating the cycle. So you always have a new computer or the newest one. And you can do that for your business too. So we used to just lease a bunch of Macs for people. Because we want them to have the newest thing.

17:51Because the worst is, I remember working at this ad, it's when I worked at Wpromote when I was like 24, 25 years old. They gave me the crappiest Mac in the world. It was clearly dated and I didn't even want to use it. Yeah, that sucks. But they're a great company. It's no knock on them. They didn't know about the leasing thing. Wpromote sold too. Yeah, they did great. Yeah, I think it was ZMC, I think, bottom. It was private equity, ZMC or TZP. I forgot which one. But either way, yeah. All right, so that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io slash agency if you want to grow your agency faster.

18:29And yeah. Make sure you go there. Next time you do a call, let me know. Join the call. Oh, there you go. Join it. Once we get to around 50-ish paying members or so, we're going to do the call with Neil. And yeah, it's going to be a good time. Catch you later. We're pretty close to that already, right? We're at 39. Yeah, so join. We'd love to do it. And I can break down all the stuff that we're doing to grow. And we're growing fast. To give you an idea, we'll go from start of this year, 750 employees. My guess is we'll end the year with 1 ,200. Yep. And we're going to keep, guys, we're continuing to jack up the price too.

19:00So it was$149 a month. Now it's$199 a month. And it's going to keep going up depending on the value that we add to it. So join now and catch you later. Bye. that was uh one hour and 18 minutes