Is "SEO" dead?

Politico said:
Just thought I'd share this here:

Important bits:

"CEO Sundar Pichai tells WIRED that Google’s new, more powerful Gemini chatbot is an experiment in offering users a way to get things done without a search engine. It’s also a direct shot at ChatGPT."

"Pichai is also experimenting with a new vision for what Google offers—not replacing search, not yet, but building an alternative to see what sticks. “This is how we’ve always approached search, in the sense that as search evolved, as mobile came in and user interactions changed, we adapted to it,” Pichai says, speaking with WIRED ahead of the Gemini launch."

"The company said just a few weeks ago that it doesn’t anticipate a “lightswitch moment” when the generative search experience fully replaces Google Search as we know it. But Google plans to push “the boundaries of what’s possible,” and to think about “which use cases are helpful” and “have the right balance of latency, quality, and factuality,”

"Pichai says that Google is focused right now on getting the generative AI experience right, but that he is “open to possibilities around both” paid and ad-supported generative AI experiences."

Make of that what you will.

Sauce: https://www.wired.com/story/google-prepares-for-a-future-where-search-isnt-king/
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It doesn't look like content marketing would be a good play for businesses in the future. Maybe they'll go with ad supported and we can survive, by paying Google. Hopefully.
 
BakerStreet said:
It doesn't look like content marketing would be a good play for businesses in the future. Maybe they'll go with ad supported and we can survive, by paying Google. Hopefully.
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I think true content marketing will always be an effective tactic for a business.

But content marketing isn't just writing articles for search engine traffic...

it's about pushing out "content" (news, tv sitcoms, podcasts, short/long video, movies, documentaries, twitter threads, advertorials, blah blah blah - there's unlimited types of content) through different mediums (social media, search engines, radio stations, podcasts, irl meetups, conferences, print media, blah blah blah 0 there's unlimited types of mediums) so that you can direct someone's attention and turn that attention into money - through ads or affiliate links or branding or selling your own product, whatever.

Content marketing is as old as business itself, just wasn't a term we used until the mid-2000s I think.

But it's definitely not just SEO.
 
Politico said:
Just thought I'd share this here:

Important bits:

"CEO Sundar Pichai tells WIRED that Google’s new, more powerful Gemini chatbot is an experiment in offering users a way to get things done without a search engine. It’s also a direct shot at ChatGPT."

"Pichai is also experimenting with a new vision for what Google offers—not replacing search, not yet, but building an alternative to see what sticks. “This is how we’ve always approached search, in the sense that as search evolved, as mobile came in and user interactions changed, we adapted to it,” Pichai says, speaking with WIRED ahead of the Gemini launch."

"The company said just a few weeks ago that it doesn’t anticipate a “lightswitch moment” when the generative search experience fully replaces Google Search as we know it. But Google plans to push “the boundaries of what’s possible,” and to think about “which use cases are helpful” and “have the right balance of latency, quality, and factuality,”

"Pichai says that Google is focused right now on getting the generative AI experience right, but that he is “open to possibilities around both” paid and ad-supported generative AI experiences."

Make of that what you will.

Sauce: https://www.wired.com/story/google-prepares-for-a-future-where-search-isnt-king/
Click to expand...
I was going to say it shouldn't matter as they return a lot of information from the web so you just have to make sure your presence there is really strong but the new Gemini outright refuses (even if I demand it searches Google) to do this query now saying it's just a large language model and doesn't know me, whereas Bing still does it. Lame!
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Just a few notes:
  • Perplexity.ai I think is the closest to the future of search (most utility so far)
  • The upgraded ($20/mo) Gemini Ultra 1.0 is much more impressive than the free Gemini version, but it currently doesn't seem capable of browsing web and visiting exact URLs as ChatGPT + Bing integration (Bing.com or ChatGPT Plus). There are some instances where Gemini shines, however, many tasks (esp web search) GPT4 is still better (despite Google's claim that Gemini advance beats GPT4 in certain areas)
  • I think Gemini will get there, in terms of integration with web, etc.
HOWEVER, regardless, I don't think Google will fully replace a traditional search experience with a purely chat experience because of ad revenue Google receives from Google Display network. So ultimately, I don't think Google would likely ditch traditional search due to both user habits and ad revenue. More a hybrid approach.
 
As a google advertiser for the last 7 years I imagine ads are the toughest part of the puzzle for G.

Displacing organic results for AI-driven answers? No problem! Easy.

BUT….what about the advertisers!?!? They sure don’t want SEM to be dead too!

How do we marry AI answers + ads?

I believe that UX scenario (and how to keep maximum ad revenue) is about one of the most important reasons they haven’t rolled things out more aggressively. Will be interesting to see how they do it. Anybody got insight here?
 
socialpatterns said:
I don't think Google will fully replace a traditional search experience with a purely chat experience because of ad revenue Google receives from Google Display network.
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Someone else shred this article:
https://www.mariehaynes.com/our-industry-is-changing/

In it, she argues that Google is moving from the display ad business to the cloud computing business. I didn’t check the stats, but I guess Google made $162.45B in search ads, $32.78B in display ads, and $29.24B in video ads. Apparently, they make $8B in cloud computing. Her thesis is that the display ads revenue is going to plummet and the cloud computing is going to skyrocket as people need computing time for their super specific GPT. It is an interesting thesis.

I am actually curious how they will continue to train AI if people stop generating content. All of the LLMs are trained on the content we have built for them. But what is the incentive for WebMD or Investopedia to keep cranking out new information if Google or Microsoft don’t send traffic their way? Why will the local plumber write an article about the newest air source heat pump technology if they won’t get traffic from it?
 
mikey3times said:
people stop generating content
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There are thousands of video content being created daily. And it's on YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, and Twitter. Why do you people keep putting your heads in the sand like that doesn't exist?

How are they able to automatically generate Closed Captions for those videos? because they have the tech too.

These is why you guys are going to get clobbered cause you guys refused to see non-text based content as serious.

Enough is enough. This is a chart from SEMRush, I believe, that shows you the type of content CONSUMERS prefer:

GBK1GPF.jpeg

SEO is not dead - it's text based content that's boring to consumer that is dead. Ain't nobody trying to read all that crap -except for people with too much time on their hands.

SEO has included video for a long long long time, if you guys refuse to see - it is on you.

You guys are dinosaurs that refuse to acknowledge you got hit with a meteor and refuse to die. Meanwhile the world has evolved to video -hence TikTok becoming the #1 website displacing Google. If that one thing doesn't tell you what time it is nothing will.

You guys are like the phonebook guys that said the internet is a waste of time and a fad. When was the last time anyone see a phonebook, let alone opened one up? Maybe a grandma here and there. But that's not where the majority of the audience or next generation is going.

Evolve or perish - no one is coming to save you.
 
Oddly enough, this dinosaur has a YouTube Premium account and I use it all the time for podcasts, news, how-tos, and entertainment during chores/commuting/etc.
 
CCarter said:
These is why you guys are going to get clobbered cause you guys refused to see non-text based content as serious.
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Another element of this that I don't see talked about much is the current state of the education system, at least here in the United States.

More and more kids are coming through the school systems unable to actually read and understand anything resembling long-form written content. This isn't even getting into the attention span issue; they just can't read as well, on average, and it gets worse each year.

This isn't something that happened just because of the pandemic either. They were having these changes leading into 2019, and while the pandemic may have accelerated it somewhat, it just is what it is at this point.

If your audience can't read, then other forms of media are a must.
 
JesseEddleman said:
If your audience can't read, then other forms of media are a must.
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Damn you're right no one mentions this but it's legitimately the most solid reason to stop focusing on trying to rank plain long-form written content in Google. Not to mention it's the least likely format to keep a user engaged on site and not hitting the back button. And other than links we all know user metrics is really the way Google judges a page - it literally had to admit it fakes it's understanding of a web document through user signals (incoming links being the biggest "user signal" they have).
 
Politico said:
Damn you're right no one mentions this but it's legitimately the most solid reason to stop focusing on trying to rank plain long-form written content in Google. Not to mention it's the least likely format to keep a user engaged on site and not hitting the back button. And other than links we all know user metrics is really the way Google judges a page - it literally had to admit it fakes it's understanding of a web document through user signals (incoming links being the biggest "user signal" they have).
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That's a really smart point - we've been investing a lot in seeing how 'not terrible' we can get AI generated video 'summary' versions of our content on some test sites - does it improve rankings/dwell time/do people even watch them etc.
 
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