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Speaker 1: All Zone Media.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host ed Zichron.

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Speaker 2: What Hey, You ever wonder who ruined Google? Well, the

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Speaker 2: answer is Prabagar Ragavan, Google's former head of ads, who

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Speaker 2: led a coup to run Google Search, which led to

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Speaker 2: websites to k Now, I'm not just recounting my own

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Speaker 2: work here. My source is Google Search. No, really really,

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Speaker 2: search who ruined Google on Google Search and it will

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Speaker 2: pop up with an AI generated summary of multiple articles

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Speaker 2: that cite a piece I wrote called the Man who

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Speaker 2: Killed Google Search? Why Because on May fourteenth, twenty twenty four,

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Speaker 2: Google decided, in their incredible wisdom to add generative artificial

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Speaker 2: intelligence to search results. These new AI generated results, dubbed

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Speaker 2: Google's Search Generative ex Experience, replace the initial links you'll

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Speaker 2: see on some pages with an aioverview, one generated by

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Speaker 2: scraping the text of other websites, so that Google can

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Speaker 2: answer your questions without you having to visit them and

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Speaker 2: consequently give them any ad revenue. It's very strange, but

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Speaker 2: also you may be thinking, isn't generate if AI the

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Speaker 2: thing that regularly gets things wrong and is kind of unreliable,

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Speaker 2: and everyone knows about that Google wouldn't do that right wrong.

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Speaker 2: McKinsey alumnus and Google CEO Sundar Pshai told The Verges

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Speaker 2: Nile Patel that he believes these results will actually help

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Speaker 2: the Web. I'd argue otherwise, these generative results will only

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Speaker 2: help centralize the Web's information around these big publishers that

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Speaker 2: Google likes, all while creating less of a need for

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Speaker 2: anybody to visit the rest of the Internet as in

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Speaker 2: any of the other links, even if they're presented along

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Speaker 2: an AI generated summary. As Lauren Good of Wyatt said

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Speaker 2: in a recent piece about Google's new shift to AI,

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Speaker 2: by choosing when and where these overviews appear, Google is

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Speaker 2: essentially deciding what is or is not a complex question,

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Speaker 2: and then they're making a judgment on what kind of

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Speaker 2: web content should inform its summaries, as well as what

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Speaker 2: content you're actually going to see or learn from. Yet,

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Speaker 2: these articles are also predicated on one very, very very

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Speaker 2: silly assumption. And I really respect Lauren and Nile, but seriously,

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Speaker 2: you're making one major mistake. You're assuming that Google actually

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Speaker 2: cares about building and maintaining a good search engine. Though

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Speaker 2: it's been fixed since I wrote this script, you used

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Speaker 2: to as in a few days ago, be able to

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Speaker 2: ask Google if there was a country in Africa that

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Speaker 2: began with the letter K, and it would have resulted

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Speaker 2: in the generative result that says as of September twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty one, no African country begins with the letter K. However,

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Speaker 2: Kenya is the closest African country to starting with a

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Speaker 2: K sound with two citations a forum post from twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty one that quoted a hallucination from chat GPT and

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Speaker 2: a website titled countries that start with the letter K

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Speaker 2: with the very sentence beginning with Kenya. Google's generative search

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Speaker 2: results have also recently said that one could use Elmer's

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Speaker 2: glue to keep cheese from sliding off of a pizza,

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Speaker 2: or that a dog played in the NBA, or that

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Speaker 2: something called a squad plug is a device that helps

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Speaker 2: keep the glutes tight while squatting, rather than a joke

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Speaker 2: scraped from a Reddit post about a very very specific

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Speaker 2: kind of sex toy. Do not look it up. You

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Speaker 2: do not need to know. These results, by the way,

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Speaker 2: have already been taken care of because of the massive

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Speaker 2: shit storm that Google is dealing with from the very

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Speaker 2: obvious mistake they've made and will continue to make. It's

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Speaker 2: very upsetting. And these results are a result of a

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Speaker 2: modified version of Google's Gemini Generative AI. They're equivalent of

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Speaker 2: chat GBT, generating answers based on the content of web pages.

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Speaker 2: And these web pages can include everything. I'm talking news outlets,

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Speaker 2: random blogs, posts from Reddit, and it's just this vile

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Speaker 2: new strategy where and I'm quoting the new head of Search,

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Speaker 2: Liz Read, You're allowing Google to do the googling for you. Now,

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Speaker 2: this is of course a really horrible idea for many

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Speaker 2: many reasons. As I've mentioned repeatedly in the past, GENERAFAI

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Speaker 2: has this tendency to hallucinate, where it authoritatively states something

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Speaker 2: that just is not true, mostly because these models don't

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Speaker 2: actually know anything. General IVAI, like Gemini or chat GBT

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Speaker 2: or Anthropics Claude or metas Lama. They're all responding to

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Speaker 2: your queries by predicting what the most likely to be

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Speaker 2: correct answer is based on parameters that they learned in

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Speaker 2: their training data, which means that Google's AI powered search

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Speaker 2: is googling for you with absolutely no comprehension or intellectual

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Speaker 2: understanding or really any read of the content itself. As

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Speaker 2: a result, all it's able to do is say, okay, ah,

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Speaker 2: all right. These phrases seem to make up what the

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Speaker 2: right answer could be based on mathematics, and these links

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Speaker 2: seem to include these phrases, So I guess that's fine,

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Speaker 2: which is why Google all briefly recommended that you eat

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Speaker 2: one rock a day because it was generating an answer

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Speaker 2: from the satirical newspaper The Onion. Google's response was to

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Speaker 2: tell the vergis Kylie Robison that these were generally very

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Speaker 2: uncommon queries that are not representative of most people's experience,

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Speaker 2: specifically responding to Robison's own query where Google told her

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Speaker 2: that the mammal with the most bones was a python

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Speaker 2: just to be clear of python is a reptile. They

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Speaker 2: do have bones though, fu fact. Now, as funny as

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Speaker 2: these results might be, Google's AI powered search is really

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Speaker 2: horrible for the Internet at large. By summarizing other people's

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Speaker 2: links to generate an answer, Google's effectively stolen the Internet,

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Speaker 2: picking and choosing what parts it deems worthy of showing you,

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Speaker 2: and then providing this kind of hackneyed, hallucination prone summary

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Speaker 2: of what they think the links mean. Google's already positioned

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Speaker 2: itself as a gatekeeper of the Internet. By the way,

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Speaker 2: they're meant to be the steward of what's important. And

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Speaker 2: important is the word that they used in the regional

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Speaker 2: paper to describe page rank, which was how they rank pages.

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Speaker 2: And the theoretical value exchange was that we get reliable,

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Speaker 2: safe results that actually answered our queries. But AI powered searches,

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Speaker 2: they kind of turned Google into a source of truth

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Speaker 2: and not a remotely reliable one. And they're using a

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Speaker 2: technology that is well known for getting things wrong. Now

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Speaker 2: you may think, well, surely Google would be both aware

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Speaker 2: of this and even if they even if they were

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Speaker 2: aware of it, they would they wouldn't put this hallucination

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Speaker 2: prone tech in deliberately. Right, Surely this must be some

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Speaker 2: kind of mistake. And you are wrong, because san Dar

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Speaker 2: Pashai told Nile Patel in an interview that happened earlier

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Speaker 2: last week that they're well aware of the problem of

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Speaker 2: hallucinations and that they were still unsolved and that they

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Speaker 2: were an inherent feature of large language models. Sundar, You're

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Speaker 2: completely correct, at which point the CEO of Google said

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Speaker 2: that large language models were good because of this, and

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Speaker 2: that in fact, it made them very creative, Sunda, what

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Speaker 2: the hell are you talking about, man, I don't need

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Speaker 2: Google to be creative. I need Google to answer my

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Speaker 2: bloody question. When you say someone's being creative with the truth,

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Speaker 2: you're describing someone lying. Oh my god, I feel like anyway. Anyway,

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Speaker 2: it's extremely obvious how dangerous this strategy is. Generative. AI

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Speaker 2: could hallucinate I don't know how to deal with a

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Speaker 2: chemical fire or a mental health issue, or authoritatively misinform

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Speaker 2: somebody that say, I don't know Barack Obama was a Muslim,

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Speaker 2: which is an actual generitive result that Google has since

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Speaker 2: removed billions of people, regular non technical people, people that

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Speaker 2: don't live on social media in the swill and constantly

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Speaker 2: see the new news. They rely on Google every day

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Speaker 2: to answer questions. And they're going to assume that a

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Speaker 2: multi trillion dollar tech company would not turn the most

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Speaker 2: well trafficked source of information in the bloody world over

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Speaker 2: to an aid. And Peter kafk go Over, a business insider,

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Speaker 2: actually put this really well. He said, it's like the

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Speaker 2: difference between being handed a map and being given directions

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Speaker 2: that will send your car barreling over a cliff. I

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Speaker 2: won't mince words, Google's AI powered searches a goddamn travesty,

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Speaker 2: both for the Internet and for society at large. By

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Speaker 2: choosing what queries to summarize and what sites to pull from,

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Speaker 2: Google both centralizes and polarizes the world's information, all while

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Speaker 2: depriving actual publishers of traffic, the actual human beings creating

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Speaker 2: the things that inform their search engine. And it's horrible.

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Speaker 2: That alone is such a horrible problem. Now. Of course,

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Speaker 2: Sandar Pashai told nil A Patel, who just went, yeah,

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Speaker 2: sure mate, okay, no pushback, man. He told them, no,

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Speaker 2: this is actually good for the web because people will

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Speaker 2: get the answers and then they'll click through. Yeah. Let

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Speaker 2: me give you an example of how wrong you are, Sandar.

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Speaker 2: Look at social media. Look at when people see clickbait.

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Speaker 2: Do you think people go, oh, I should check the link.

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Speaker 2: This could be used to get engagement for my tweet. No,

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Speaker 2: they tweet the thing and get mad about it. I've

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Speaker 2: done this within the last twenty four hours. I'm an idiot.

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Speaker 2: But still people are not going to be curious. They're

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Speaker 2: going to assume that Google Search is not full of nonsense,

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Speaker 2: that Google Search is not spitting out AI generated summaries

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Speaker 2: using hallucination pron AI I feel like and going crazy anyway,

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Speaker 2: while AI results cite their sources. It's just it's foolish

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Speaker 2: to believe that regular people are going to click through

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Speaker 2: to the results when Google itself has already answered the question,

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Speaker 2: especially on service driven queries that answer, say, whether a

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Speaker 2: food is safe or some sort of factual question. Publishers,

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Speaker 2: especially news outlets, already heavily dependent on Google Search traffic.

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Speaker 2: They're terrified that these summaries will further reduce traffic at

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Speaker 2: a time when social networks like Facebook, for example, are

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Speaker 2: no longer really sending them readers. And let's be honest,

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Speaker 2: Google search has already deteriorated drastically over the last few years,

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Speaker 2: and its results are plagued with AI generated spam and

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Speaker 2: search engine optimized nonsense. And these results overwhelm good, unique,

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Speaker 2: authoritative content to the point that major newspapers are put

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Speaker 2: out public service announcements like the Wall Street Journal, by

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Speaker 2: the way, about how to avoid scams in the very

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Speaker 2: first results you see on Google. Now, you'd think that

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Speaker 2: this deluge of bad press would make Google say, humh,

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Speaker 2: we should fix Google Search, we should make things better. No, No, no, no, no,

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Speaker 2: that's not what we do here at Google. No. Google

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Speaker 2: plugged in an already unreliable artificial intelligence into a product

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Speaker 2: that it's deliberately allowed to decay so that customers can

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Speaker 2: get quasi right answers from search results that Google itself

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Speaker 2: barely maintains the quality of. It's a sound a bit

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Speaker 2: frustrated because this is so strange. This is all so strange,

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Speaker 2: this multi trillion dollar company, with this search engine that

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Speaker 2: makes them tens of billions of dollars. They're just like,

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Speaker 2: you know, just put the II on it. They'll love it.

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Speaker 2: And it sent their stock ups, so I guess it

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Speaker 2: doesn't bloody matter. But back to the regular results just

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Speaker 2: for a moment. Google claims that in its recent Core

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Speaker 2: update that they've helped reduce low quality and unhelpful content

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Speaker 2: by forty five percent, and they're wrong. By the way,

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Speaker 2: search is still dominated by search engine optimized content full

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Speaker 2: of these links that are built to drive kickbacks to

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Speaker 2: publishers called affiliate links, as well as YouTube links and

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Speaker 2: Reddit links. And it's the very same content that informs

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Speaker 2: and by the way, misinforms Google's generative results Google Search.

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Speaker 2: It's just this lazy ugly product, and it lacks any nuance,

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Speaker 2: it doesn't have ingenuity, and quite frankly, I'm beginning to

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Speaker 2: question whether it even has any utility anymore. Searching for

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Speaker 2: best laptop, and I mean this from Las Vegas, Nevada,

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Speaker 2: beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada brings up this affiliate mine market

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Speaker 2: funded tech site, and then a link to best Buy,

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Speaker 2: then another affiliate funded site, then another link to best Buy,

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Speaker 2: then a series of questions you can click through which

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Speaker 2: say things like which brand of laptop is best? And

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Speaker 2: when I click through the first one, by the way,

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Speaker 2: it led me to a site called New Indian Express

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Speaker 2: Deals and it's just full of affiliate marketing links, no

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Speaker 2: real journalism of any kind. It's all. It could be

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Speaker 2: AI generated. I have no idea, and it's tongues of

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Speaker 2: these links to MacBooks and then things like a Techno

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Speaker 2: megabook or the Honor Magic Book laptops that are not

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Speaker 2: available in America. Yeah, you know. One might imagine that

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Speaker 2: the point of a search company is that it searches

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Speaker 2: the web for you, surfacing things that you might find

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Speaker 2: interesting or informative that you might not find otherwise, highlighting

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Speaker 2: individual publishers that make great content that otherwise might get

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Speaker 2: lost in the churn of the Internet, which makes billions

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Speaker 2: and billions of pages so much to find the great

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Speaker 2: morass of the Web. That's what Google is meant to be.

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Speaker 2: Yet the reality is that Google wants to highlight the

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Speaker 2: same companies and the same publishers doing the same thing

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Speaker 2: in the same way, because Google, at its core is

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Speaker 2: a fundamentally lazy company that does not care about its customers.

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Speaker 2: As it related in The Man Who Killed Google Search.

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Speaker 2: Google's revenue arms are the ones pulling the levers at

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Speaker 2: the company right now, and they demand more queries, as

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Speaker 2: in more searches on the platform, even if doing so

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Speaker 2: makes the platform so much worse, because when you optimize

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Speaker 2: a platform for people to spend more time on it

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Speaker 2: and click on things more, you're not actually resolving a

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Speaker 2: query or a problem. I know, more queries are what

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Speaker 2: they're looking for, but they're not talking about resolving queries.

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Speaker 2: They're just looking for more of them so that they

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Speaker 2: can show you more ads. But when you look at

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Speaker 2: the state of Google right now, the current state of Google,

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Speaker 2: you can see how these decisions have poisoned it. Google

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Speaker 2: Search moves around its menus things like shopping images, news,

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Speaker 2: and videos. Based on what you're searching for. It pumps

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Speaker 2: results full of sponsored content YouTube videos. By the way,

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Speaker 2: of course, they own youtubes. That's good for them. And

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Speaker 2: then these arbitrarily chosen forum results, and then it deliberately

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Speaker 2: offer scates what might be a paid for link. It's

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Speaker 2: just this chaotically disorganized, nakedly manipulated piece of crap, let's

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Speaker 2: be honest, and the search engine optimization industry is eating

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Speaker 2: it alive. And it really isn't clear whether Google lacks

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Speaker 2: the ability to fix it or just doesn't really care

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Speaker 2: that much yet. The sorry state of Google Search did

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Speaker 2: a little digging here might also be the result of

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Speaker 2: Google distancing itself from the same search optimization community that

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Speaker 2: I've been kind of harsh on. While SEO is a

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Speaker 2: field that's inarguably harmed Google search results, it's also worth

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Speaker 2: considering the outside of technical standards like how fast the

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Speaker 2: site loads or whether it has a site map of

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Speaker 2: its links. Google also kind of hides things from the

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Speaker 2: SEO community. They offer scate what good looks like for

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Speaker 2: fear that optimize, we'll use these standards to manipulate its results, which,

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Speaker 2: by the way, happens anyway. So what Google does is,

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Speaker 2: instead of saying what good would be and I've kind

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Speaker 2: of been wrong here, they vaguely say, yeah, you should

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Speaker 2: kind of do this, but I'm not going to tell

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Speaker 2: you exactly how. And then you get these people who

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Speaker 2: still manipulate anyway. It's so strange, this company worth trillions

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Speaker 2: of dollars. They act like a plucky startup, but only

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Speaker 2: when it comes to actual quality control. But nevertheless, I

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Speaker 2: was quite interested in search optimization. So why you've got

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Speaker 2: in Lily Rays, a fifteen year SEO veterrun, and she

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Speaker 2: told me a really worrying story. I think that Google's

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Speaker 2: kind of failing everybody. They're failing publishers, they're failing SEO people,

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Speaker 2: and they're failing you and me. All right, so you've

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Speaker 2: been in se over about fifteen years. But what actually

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Speaker 2: is search engine optimization for a very basic listener who's

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Speaker 2: never dealt with it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, search engine optimization is the practice of trying to

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Speaker 1: make certain websites and the pages on those websites more

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Speaker 1: visible in search engines, by which I mean ranking in

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Speaker 1: the top positions on you know, Google Being or whatever

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Speaker 1: other search engine you're targeting. Because that's really where the

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Speaker 1: majority of people click on results.

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Speaker 2: Isn't that a little bit manipulative of Google and these things?

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Speaker 1: Is?

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Speaker 2: How is that a good thing?

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Speaker 1: So there's kind of a spectrum of approaches to SEO. There's,

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Speaker 1: first of all, Google's own guidance related to how to

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Speaker 1: do SEO in a way that I would argue is

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Speaker 1: actually great for the Internet. I think most of the

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Speaker 1: things that Google is recommending and that people like myself

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Speaker 1: who do SEO professionally day in and day out, what

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Speaker 1: we're doing is making websites more findable, more accessible, you know,

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Speaker 1: loading more quickly for people to find what they're looking for.

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Speaker 1: There's a lot of technical work that goes into that.

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Speaker 1: But of course there's a whole other end of the spectrum,

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Speaker 1: which is people trying to take advantage of the situation

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Speaker 1: and spam things and manipulate search engines. So it depends

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Speaker 1: which type of BESDEO you're talking about.

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Speaker 2: So there are white hat SEO people, it's not just

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Speaker 2: all absolutely absolutely, So what do you do for your job?

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Speaker 2: What is the thing you make your customers do well?

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Speaker 1: You know, companies come to us and they obviously want

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Speaker 1: to get more visibility, So we have to look at

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Speaker 1: all the different considerations and all the different factors that

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Speaker 1: influence how people are able to find that content. A

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Speaker 1: lot of it's technical, so literally a lot of our

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Speaker 1: work is like, you know, focusing on page speed, focusing

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Speaker 1: on overall accessibility. And you know, for example, if an

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Speaker 1: image is uploaded to a website and it doesn't have

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Speaker 1: image alt text, which is actually required for website accessibility,

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Speaker 1: search engines can't understand what's on that image traditionally, so

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Speaker 1: we have to go in there and kind of add

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Speaker 1: the right words in. So it's making that content more findable.

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Speaker 1: And again, a lot of that's technical, but a lot

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Speaker 1: of that is content oriented. So people might write a

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Speaker 1: certain article and in such a way that the way,

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Speaker 1: you know, when people go to Google and they're looking

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Speaker 1: for that article, they could never find it. So we're

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Speaker 1: helping companies to kind of structure their content in the

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Speaker 1: way where people can actually find what they're looking for.

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Speaker 2: So you say that there are these signals, how much

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Speaker 2: of that comes from the search engines themselves.

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Speaker 1: Well, you know, the SEO field, because search engines are

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Speaker 1: essentially a black box, and a lot of us are

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Speaker 1: working with you know, just third party data or working

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Speaker 1: the best we can with the analytics that Google any

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Speaker 1: other search engines give us. A lot of this is guesswork,

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Speaker 1: you know, we try to make informed guesses based on

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Speaker 1: the data itself, but Google and the search engines do

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Speaker 1: give us a lot of clues and a lot of

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Speaker 1: insights about what we should be focusing on, especially when

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Speaker 1: it comes to the technical thing, so you know, giving

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Speaker 1: us guidance about what we call like canonical tags. There

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Speaker 1: are different metadata that we have to add to a

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Speaker 1: website for them to really be able to parse crawl

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Speaker 1: through that website effectively. Those are direct signals that Google

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Speaker 1: gives us that we work with. But a lot of

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Speaker 1: it is kind of, you know, interpreting what we're seeing

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Speaker 1: as far as what the data shows and then making

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Speaker 1: informed guesses based on the history and on the analysis

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Speaker 1: that we do for different clients.

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Speaker 2: So based on how Google describes it, they're fairly communicative

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Speaker 2: with web developers and sorry, web content creators, it doesn't

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Speaker 2: actually sound like that is true.

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Speaker 1: I would say when it comes to the technical side

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Speaker 1: of things, Google's quite communicative. You know, it's really in

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Speaker 1: their best interest to have web you know, fast websites

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Speaker 1: websites that are accessible for users, websites that have a

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Speaker 1: great user experience. And Google does a lot of developer conferences,

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Speaker 1: a lot of communications on the technical side, and it's

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Speaker 1: quite easy to, you know, kind of get in touch

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Speaker 1: with them if you have a specific technical question, like

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Speaker 1: for example, John Vieler hosts Webmaster hangouts on Google often,

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Speaker 1: if not like several times per month where he answers

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Speaker 1: a lot of people's questions. So, yes, technically speaking, I

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Speaker 1: think they do provide a lot of guidance.

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Speaker 2: About content because it seems like content, the actual things

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Speaker 2: on the web page is the thing that actually matters here.

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Speaker 2: Does Google give any guidance?

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Speaker 1: They certainly do give guidance. They for example, they give

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Speaker 1: a lot of questionnaires that site owners can follow when

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Speaker 1: thinking about what Google considers helpful content. They also have

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Speaker 1: something called the Search Quality Radar Guidelines, which is a

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Speaker 1: document that you can find online. It's about maybe one

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Speaker 1: hundred and sixty plus pages, and that's specifically used to

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Speaker 1: inform Google's human Search Quality evaluator team as to what

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Speaker 1: good content or bad content kind of looks like. So

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Speaker 1: that's something that the SEO community looks at a lot

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Speaker 1: as well. But to your point, you know, getting into

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Speaker 1: granular questions about is this content good or bad for Google?

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Speaker 1: What does helpful content mean? That's become trickier in the

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Speaker 1: last few years because they can't tell us everything because

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Speaker 1: people spam everything that they can get their hands on.

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Speaker 2: Right, So it almost feels like a kind of battle. Yes, absolutely,

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Speaker 2: but to this to this level, to this point you say,

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Speaker 2: they give this this advice and they're vague on the

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Speaker 2: content but direct on the technical. So how has Google

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Speaker 2: search quality got so much worse?

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Speaker 1: Then? There's so many different factors at play, you know,

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Speaker 1: I think the reason why seos have a bad reputation

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Speaker 1: in general, And to your question earlier, you know, is

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Speaker 1: there such a thing as white hat seo. There's a

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Speaker 1: huge spectrum of approaches and beliefs within the SEO space.

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Speaker 1: For whatever reason, the people that spam Google the most

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Speaker 1: are the ones that have been kind of creating this

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Speaker 1: like the kind of the reputation that we have as

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Speaker 1: an industry lately. And I get that because they've been

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Speaker 1: quite successful. You know, a lot of people that are

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Speaker 1: spamming Google, especially with AI lately, have have really made

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Speaker 1: it into top positions, so they're getting a lot of

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Speaker 1: visibility with those tactics. But you know, there's a lot

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Speaker 1: of us that are doing work that again, it's like

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Speaker 1: kind of advised by search engines to do because it

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Speaker 1: really does make the Internet easier for everybody to use.

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Speaker 1: Uh So that's been a challenge lately. I think that

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Speaker 1: for whatever reason, you know, maybe because Google's shifted internally

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Speaker 1: so much of its focus to AI lately. Obviously there's

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Speaker 1: these big external challenges that Google's facing as a business lately,

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Speaker 1: maybe they're they're not haven't been as focused on search

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Speaker 1: quality for whatever reason. I don't actually have, you know,

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Speaker 1: any type of evidence of that other than what I'm seeing,

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Speaker 1: But I haven't seen as much spam and like SEO

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Speaker 1: manipulation as I've seen over the last year or so.

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Speaker 1: That being said, they're really cracking down on it in

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Speaker 1: the last few months, so sometimes it just takes them

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Speaker 1: a while to catch up.

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Speaker 2: Something you've said publicly recently is real business is all

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Speaker 2: being affected by the most recent Google updates? Can you

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Speaker 2: kind of get into that, like who are the people

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Speaker 2: being affected here?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean that's that's nothing new. I think, you know, Google,

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Speaker 1: Google creates these algorithm updates multiple times big ones at

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Speaker 1: least multiple times per year every year. And we've seen

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Speaker 1: a lot of companies get caught up in those algorithm

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Speaker 1: updates before. In most cases they're doing something that goes

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Speaker 1: against Google's SEO or spam guidelines. The difference now is

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Speaker 1: that there's a lot of these new types of algorithm

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Speaker 1: updates that Google is launching that are affecting a lot

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Speaker 1: in a lot of people in the publishing space, so

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Speaker 1: both large and small publishers, especially smaller publishers over the

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Speaker 1: last couple of years. And these are, for example, people

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Speaker 1: that might have built a business doing travel blogging, doing

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Speaker 1: recipe blogging, product reviews, and so if you do consider

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Speaker 1: those people at business, and I think they would because

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Speaker 1: they often have staff, they have people going to the

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Speaker 1: places writing the travel reviews. Things like this, Google's dramatically

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Speaker 1: reduce the visibility of how those sites appear on Google

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Speaker 1: and the amount of traffic that they're getting.

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Speaker 2: So when was the last major update to Google? Sometimes

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Speaker 2: in March right, or it's unclear when it actually started

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Speaker 2: and finish.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the last major update I would say was the

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Speaker 1: March core update, which took forty five days to complete.

431
00:24:06,240 --> 00:24:08,639
Speaker 1: But that started in early March and then ended in April.

432
00:24:08,760 --> 00:24:10,920
Speaker 1: But there's been a few different aspects of that update

433
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:13,399
Speaker 1: in new spam policies that they've introduced as well, So

434
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:16,040
Speaker 1: we're actually still kind of in the middle of some

435
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:17,200
Speaker 1: of that rollout happening.

436
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 2: Yet it's it's strange, though you and this is not

437
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:25,960
Speaker 2: on you, This is on Google. You say there's technical things,

438
00:24:26,000 --> 00:24:28,800
Speaker 2: they say, there's quality things they say, but even recipe

439
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 2: sites look terrible. They're full of ads there they make

440
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:35,560
Speaker 2: your phone so hot it burns you. Okay, maybe not

441
00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:38,800
Speaker 2: that hot, but it feels like Google doesn't actually seem

442
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:42,160
Speaker 2: to be maintaining quality, and it seems like they almost

443
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:45,840
Speaker 2: fight those who do. An SEO, just how do you

444
00:24:45,880 --> 00:24:47,959
Speaker 2: feel about your relationship with Google?

445
00:24:50,480 --> 00:24:52,359
Speaker 1: It's hard to say right now. I think, you know,

446
00:24:52,560 --> 00:24:54,600
Speaker 1: with something that's been very tricky for me is that

447
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 1: I have a bit of a I've built a bit

448
00:24:57,359 --> 00:24:59,080
Speaker 1: of a name for myself as the person that goes

449
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:02,280
Speaker 1: around and and really echoes a lot of what they

450
00:25:02,320 --> 00:25:05,960
Speaker 1: recommend site owners do. That's been kind of my brand

451
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:09,959
Speaker 1: for the last several years. Google has different, you know,

452
00:25:10,160 --> 00:25:13,080
Speaker 1: policies and things that they recommend to site owners that

453
00:25:13,440 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: I have found, I would say, up until twenty twenty three,

454
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:20,600
Speaker 1: I've found those recommendations to be very consistent with the

455
00:25:20,640 --> 00:25:23,240
Speaker 1: work that we're doing for our clients. So it's very

456
00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 1: easy for me to go say, yeah, what Google says

457
00:25:25,440 --> 00:25:28,000
Speaker 1: to do is what works right, And we've worked with

458
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,639
Speaker 1: a lot of different companies and found those tactics and

459
00:25:30,680 --> 00:25:35,080
Speaker 1: those recommendations to be very effective. The last few months,

460
00:25:35,119 --> 00:25:38,960
Speaker 1: that's changed a bit for me. I'm not well, I'm

461
00:25:38,960 --> 00:25:41,560
Speaker 1: not you know, my personal relationship with them is I

462
00:25:41,600 --> 00:25:44,280
Speaker 1: want to be very careful to say, like, you know,

463
00:25:44,320 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: the people that I know that that work at Google,

464
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:48,919
Speaker 1: and they you know, speak on behalf of Google, Like,

465
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:50,920
Speaker 1: this has nothing to do with them, right, This has

466
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:54,200
Speaker 1: to do with what's happening in the search results. And

467
00:25:54,840 --> 00:25:59,480
Speaker 1: you know when I see ai spam ranking above my

468
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 1: clients for what we call top stories, so that's you know,

469
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:06,480
Speaker 1: the news features on Google for example, or I see

470
00:26:06,520 --> 00:26:09,920
Speaker 1: that in Google's new aioverviews is getting everything so many

471
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:12,520
Speaker 1: different things wrong, and there's spam and there's malware in there,

472
00:26:12,560 --> 00:26:15,120
Speaker 1: like things like this. It's just it makes us as

473
00:26:15,240 --> 00:26:19,040
Speaker 1: seos look bad because we then have to go defend

474
00:26:19,040 --> 00:26:21,080
Speaker 1: those results to our clients and try to make sense

475
00:26:21,119 --> 00:26:24,080
Speaker 1: of them. And that's been really challenging, very frustrating for

476
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 1: me lately, because it's very hard to defend the quality

477
00:26:27,920 --> 00:26:30,679
Speaker 1: of the search results when the search results are in

478
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:32,640
Speaker 1: a state of very poor quality.

479
00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:37,880
Speaker 2: So you and you said previously up until twenty twenty three,

480
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:40,439
Speaker 2: was it what happened in twenty twenty four? Was it

481
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:42,199
Speaker 2: the core up they or was there just something that

482
00:26:42,280 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 2: happened this year?

483
00:26:43,680 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 1: Writ large, I think that probably the biggest change that

484
00:26:47,720 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: happened was honestly chat GPT. That's there's one of many

485
00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:54,960
Speaker 1: big changes. But the you know, not only chat Gypt

486
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:59,960
Speaker 1: but the different tools like it empowered spammers and sea

487
00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:02,840
Speaker 1: alike to find new ways to speed up what they

488
00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 1: were doing and to create a lot of terrible content

489
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:09,480
Speaker 1: at scale. And that worked extremely well for a year

490
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:12,359
Speaker 1: because guess what, it takes Google and the other search

491
00:27:12,359 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: engines a while to kind of figure out what they're

492
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:18,200
Speaker 1: doing to develop new algorithms and new spam policies that

493
00:27:19,440 --> 00:27:21,960
Speaker 1: you know, devalue or demote that type of content. But

494
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,199
Speaker 1: there was about a year where that content was succeeding

495
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,280
Speaker 1: extremely well. So towards the end of twenty twenty three,

496
00:27:28,320 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 1: you would see a ton of AI generated spam and

497
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:35,120
Speaker 1: the search results and people using AI tools in new

498
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:37,920
Speaker 1: and different ways to just accelerate whatever spamming they were doing.

499
00:27:38,720 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 2: Do you think Google actually has control of search or

500
00:27:42,119 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 2: has it just kind of got out of hand.

501
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:48,760
Speaker 1: I think they you know, they had these new set

502
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 1: of updates beginning in March twenty twenty four where I

503
00:27:52,119 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: think that they made loud and clear that they're not

504
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:58,560
Speaker 1: messing around. You know, they really cracked down on a

505
00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:00,639
Speaker 1: lot of sites that were doing a lot of different

506
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:04,520
Speaker 1: SEO tactics and spam tactics. So I do think they're

507
00:28:04,600 --> 00:28:08,040
Speaker 1: getting controlled back. I do actually also think they kind

508
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:10,840
Speaker 1: of overstepped in some areas and there's a lot of

509
00:28:10,840 --> 00:28:14,120
Speaker 1: collateral damage there as well, which I know they're working on.

510
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:16,000
Speaker 1: And that's where you hear a lot of people saying,

511
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 1: you know, this destroyed my business because there were a

512
00:28:18,160 --> 00:28:19,679
Speaker 1: lot of people that just had no idea that they

513
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:22,240
Speaker 1: were going to get caught up in that. So that's

514
00:28:22,280 --> 00:28:24,359
Speaker 1: on the search side. I think, you know, Google's proven

515
00:28:24,560 --> 00:28:27,160
Speaker 1: time and time again that they can eventually get ahead

516
00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:29,439
Speaker 1: of it. But I think they're presented with a lot

517
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: of new and different challenges right now on the AI side.

518
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure eventually they'll figure it out, or

519
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:38,160
Speaker 1: this AI overview thing will get better over time. But

520
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:42,320
Speaker 1: it's been quite interesting to see publicly this week, so

521
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 1: many examples of Google's new AI overviews getting information blatantly wrong.

522
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:51,280
Speaker 2: I want to push back a little bit about the

523
00:28:51,320 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 2: control over search that Google has. The reason I asked

524
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 2: that is it's not been just chat GPT going back

525
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:03,000
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty. Results have been bad for a long time,

526
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:07,680
Speaker 2: and it feels that Google is fighting SEO, and SEO

527
00:29:07,800 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 2: I realized is a much wider umbrella because there's people

528
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:13,680
Speaker 2: trying to do the web properly. There's people who were

529
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:15,600
Speaker 2: just trying to mess with Google, and then there are

530
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:18,560
Speaker 2: the people who just don't care and are spamming. It's

531
00:29:18,680 --> 00:29:21,479
Speaker 2: just it doesn't feel like they're able to make quick changes,

532
00:29:21,520 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 2: and I just don't understand it. It drives me insane, honestly.

533
00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:26,280
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, well, one of the other things that I

534
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:29,000
Speaker 1: didn't mention that's been a big change to the quality

535
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: of search results, and one of the big complaints that

536
00:29:30,600 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 1: people are having is a lot of big sites with

537
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 1: a lot of authority on Google a lot of SEO history,

538
00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,160
Speaker 1: A lot of the big publishers that we all know,

539
00:29:41,400 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 1: you know, big brands that everybody's familiar with, found a

540
00:29:44,200 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: lot of SEO opportunities in the last couple of years

541
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:49,800
Speaker 1: that have worked splendidly for them. So, for example, affiliate content.

542
00:29:50,320 --> 00:29:53,320
Speaker 1: You might have noticed that nearly every big publisher on

543
00:29:53,360 --> 00:29:56,000
Speaker 1: the Internet has ventured into product reviews in the last

544
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:59,000
Speaker 1: couple of years, and that's because it's a huge money maker.

545
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:00,959
Speaker 1: So one of the big complaints that people have is like,

546
00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: it's not fair that X, y Z big publisher shows

547
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:07,320
Speaker 1: up every time I'm typing best running shoes for women

548
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:09,760
Speaker 1: or whatever the keyword is, and believe it or not,

549
00:30:10,560 --> 00:30:12,360
Speaker 1: you know this. I think this has been one of

550
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:14,640
Speaker 1: the biggest complaints that people have had. But in the

551
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:18,600
Speaker 1: last two or three months, Google is cracking down on

552
00:30:18,640 --> 00:30:20,440
Speaker 1: that in a very big way. I think it's just

553
00:30:20,480 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 1: taking them a long time to figure out specifically how

554
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:24,200
Speaker 1: to target that.

555
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 2: Why do you think it takes them so long? They're

556
00:30:27,200 --> 00:30:31,000
Speaker 2: worth like two trillion, they surely they have the people.

557
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,320
Speaker 1: I wonder the same things myself. Sometimes I'm not a

558
00:30:34,560 --> 00:30:37,480
Speaker 1: search ranking engineer, so I don't know why I also,

559
00:30:37,840 --> 00:30:39,320
Speaker 1: I think you know better than I do what's going

560
00:30:39,360 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: on internally at their company right now. I think there's

561
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of kind of pandemonium in

562
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:47,280
Speaker 1: different ways. I don't know, but it seems that way.

563
00:30:47,920 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 2: But that being yeah, go on, you go on.

564
00:30:50,960 --> 00:30:53,600
Speaker 1: I was just gonna say, another reason why this is

565
00:30:53,600 --> 00:30:57,320
Speaker 1: so difficult for them to target is because not all

566
00:30:57,440 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 1: of this is easy to spot algorithmically. For example, if

567
00:31:00,800 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 1: a publisher decides to start working with third party contributors

568
00:31:05,440 --> 00:31:10,240
Speaker 1: who are contributing product review content, those relationships are not

569
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: always entirely clear to a point where an algorithm wouldn't

570
00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 1: necessarily be able to figure that out. So Google has

571
00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:20,360
Speaker 1: to use a variety of different methods to demote that

572
00:31:20,480 --> 00:31:24,560
Speaker 1: content and learn about those business relationships, and you can't

573
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:26,160
Speaker 1: just solve that all algorithmically.

574
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:28,760
Speaker 2: Do you think they want to solve it?

575
00:31:30,720 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 1: I would imagine yeah, they want to do it algorithmically

576
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,080
Speaker 1: instead of using their web spam team. But currently they're

577
00:31:35,120 --> 00:31:37,240
Speaker 1: using their web spam teams. So that's real human beings

578
00:31:37,280 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 1: that are sending out what they call manual actions or

579
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:43,760
Speaker 1: penalties to sites that are engaged in different types of

580
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,240
Speaker 1: spam policies, and they've created some new ones recently.

581
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 2: It just feels like they could I say this not

582
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,240
Speaker 2: as an SEO expert, but it feels like they could

583
00:31:53,240 --> 00:31:55,760
Speaker 2: do very obvious things. They could go and go with

584
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 2: dot Meredith, who has the met who you read, Hello

585
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:02,680
Speaker 2: House Read is whole thing around how Meredith has been

586
00:32:02,720 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 2: basically spamming affiliate marketing content that's not particularly well done,

587
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 2: and you've written about this as well. It feels that

588
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 2: they could just do something to them immediately that why

589
00:32:13,120 --> 00:32:16,280
Speaker 2: don't they take these fast actions because it doesn't seem

590
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:17,360
Speaker 2: like they're doing much anyway.

591
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of these publishers have content that a

592
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 1: lot of people really love, and you know, Google has

593
00:32:23,480 --> 00:32:27,800
Speaker 1: a lot of signals that indicate that these are, you know,

594
00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 1: sites that produce extremely helpful content in a lot of

595
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,400
Speaker 1: different categories. So it's not so easy to say this

596
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 1: category of the website is not okay by users, but

597
00:32:37,080 --> 00:32:39,760
Speaker 1: this one is. You know, it starts to become tricky

598
00:32:39,800 --> 00:32:42,280
Speaker 1: when they have to go after certain sections of a website.

599
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:44,200
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of times with sites that are

600
00:32:44,200 --> 00:32:46,240
Speaker 1: just doing pure spam, it'll be the whole site that's

601
00:32:47,000 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 1: doing spam. But these are obviously not to mention these

602
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: are very very big brands. You can't you can't remove

603
00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: a site from Google or demote a site from Google,

604
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:58,400
Speaker 1: for if it's a brand that people are looking for

605
00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:01,240
Speaker 1: and a brand that people would expect to see, right,

606
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: because that may mean you can sort.

607
00:33:03,840 --> 00:33:06,920
Speaker 2: Of well, it's kind of I think what I'm what

608
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,360
Speaker 2: I'm getting at is what they judge is good for

609
00:33:09,440 --> 00:33:12,720
Speaker 2: the Internet doesn't necessarily seem so because there's a self

610
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 2: fulfilling prophecy there there is, Oh, this is popular with

611
00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 2: a bunch of people. Well maybe it's popular because Google

612
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:21,640
Speaker 2: made it popular. Maybe it's not. Actually it's just an

613
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,520
Speaker 2: algorithmic choice. But I'll get I'll get onto something a

614
00:33:25,560 --> 00:33:29,240
Speaker 2: little more direct, which is, how do you feel about AI.

615
00:33:29,080 --> 00:33:32,440
Speaker 1: Search, like Google's new AI overviews?

616
00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:36,240
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, sge Yes, that's generative experience.

617
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:40,080
Speaker 1: It's like, obviously we're in a big transition moment where

618
00:33:40,200 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 1: you know, speaking about it now is not reflective of

619
00:33:42,640 --> 00:33:44,280
Speaker 1: what it's going to look like in six months. So

620
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 1: I always want to be cognizant of like this thing

621
00:33:47,400 --> 00:33:50,440
Speaker 1: changes every single day. My biggest issue with it, so

622
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:52,800
Speaker 1: first of all, Google made it public, you know, a

623
00:33:52,840 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 1: week ago, at Google Io, and myself and many others

624
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:58,640
Speaker 1: have been experimenting with it in Google Labs for a

625
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 1: year before that, and in theory, you know, with AI,

626
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:05,920
Speaker 1: it should be improving and learning and getting better every day, right.

627
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:10,800
Speaker 1: For a year, myself and many others were raising flags

628
00:34:10,800 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 1: about quality issues and also the fact that we just

629
00:34:13,480 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: didn't feel like it often provided that much of an

630
00:34:16,080 --> 00:34:19,080
Speaker 1: improvement to the existing search results. For example, Google already

631
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:21,560
Speaker 1: had featured snippets, so if they want to take a

632
00:34:23,440 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 1: paragraph or a snippet from somebody's website and display that

633
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:28,520
Speaker 1: directly in the search results, there was already a mechanism

634
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:32,000
Speaker 1: for that. So for the past year, you know, I've

635
00:34:32,080 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: raised a million different examples of when it got things wrong.

636
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:37,680
Speaker 1: When I think it was, you know, responding to some

637
00:34:37,719 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: type of super controversial question in a weird way, whatever

638
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:43,600
Speaker 1: it was. And when they launched it, you know, literally

639
00:34:43,680 --> 00:34:45,160
Speaker 1: I can tell you because I spent my whole life

640
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:47,759
Speaker 1: at SEO conferences. Most of us were like, there's no

641
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: way they can launch this thing in its current form,

642
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:53,319
Speaker 1: like it's just so not ready, right, And they did,

643
00:34:53,760 --> 00:34:57,040
Speaker 1: And here we are a week later, and nearly every

644
00:34:57,160 --> 00:34:59,320
Speaker 1: you know, social media site has tons of examples of

645
00:34:59,360 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: people wanting to it off, the tons of examples of

646
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 1: it getting things wrong. So you know, I want to

647
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:07,200
Speaker 1: be cognizant and respectful the fact that it will change,

648
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 1: it will get better. I'm just quite surprised that they

649
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 1: launched it in its current form when they did.

650
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 2: One last question And don't take this the wrong way,

651
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 2: but why do you think they'll improve, because the last

652
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:22,320
Speaker 2: few years have shown that they've got worse.

653
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:28,360
Speaker 1: Well, in theory, these AI lm should learn and improve

654
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:31,360
Speaker 1: and get better and get retrained all the time. I'm

655
00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 1: going off with that optimistic idea. But at the same time,

656
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:38,399
Speaker 1: it's like we're doing, you know, offloading this work onto

657
00:35:38,440 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: Google searchers and relying on them to provide feedback and

658
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:43,319
Speaker 1: everything is I guess it doesn't necessarily mean it's going

659
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:45,399
Speaker 1: to go in the right direction. So it's a good point.

660
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:46,040
Speaker 1: It's hard to say.

661
00:35:47,040 --> 00:35:50,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just it feels almost like the AI side

662
00:35:50,120 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 2: is getting away from what search is meant to do,

663
00:35:52,320 --> 00:35:55,480
Speaker 2: because search is meant to help you find useful things,

664
00:35:55,760 --> 00:35:58,280
Speaker 2: and this doesn't even seem to be capable of helping

665
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:01,040
Speaker 2: you find the right answer, let alone a good link.

666
00:36:01,360 --> 00:36:04,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think The main issue that I currently have

667
00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: with it is that once I know that it's twenty

668
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:08,840
Speaker 1: or ten percent wrong or whatever whatever the number is,

669
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,680
Speaker 1: we don't know the actual percentage of wrong answers. You know,

670
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:15,120
Speaker 1: based on how many we've already seen in the last week,

671
00:36:15,160 --> 00:36:19,279
Speaker 1: it's quite a lot. So when people know that this

672
00:36:19,400 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: thing has a tendency to be wrong, will they trust it? Right?

673
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:26,080
Speaker 1: And what does that do for trust and Google overall?

674
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:28,520
Speaker 1: Because with featured snippets, at least you can say, Okay,

675
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:30,760
Speaker 1: this comes from this website, you can blame that website

676
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 1: because they pull that data verbatim. When they're showing a

677
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:35,000
Speaker 1: featured snippet with.

678
00:36:35,040 --> 00:36:35,760
Speaker 2: Air or reviews.

679
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:38,240
Speaker 1: It's like there's a tendency that one of these sentences

680
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:40,520
Speaker 1: is completely wrong, and it's pulled from an eleven year

681
00:36:40,520 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 1: old Breddit threat that was making a joke, and we

682
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 1: just don't know which sentence it is right.

683
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:50,560
Speaker 2: Right. It just it feels like they're almost moving against

684
00:36:50,560 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 2: the Internet. It's just a very very depressing thing to watch.

685
00:36:53,800 --> 00:36:56,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I mean I think I would have

686
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:01,680
Speaker 1: expected this thing to be more fact, more evidence based

687
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:04,560
Speaker 1: in its rollout. I would have expected it to show

688
00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: for far fewer queries where getting things wrong is extremely dangerous.

689
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:14,480
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, I like, our industry now is

690
00:37:14,520 --> 00:37:17,200
Speaker 1: digging into the data and we're finding that it seems

691
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:19,640
Speaker 1: like health is actually one of the categories where AI

692
00:37:19,680 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: already is triggered the most health topics.

693
00:37:22,760 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 2: That's genuinely scary. But okay, actual lost question here, What

694
00:37:27,960 --> 00:37:30,440
Speaker 2: is the thing that Google could change to get better?

695
00:37:32,400 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 1: Huh? I mean, I would imagine they're they're working on

696
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 1: a lot of the feedback that they've gotten in the

697
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 1: last week with the AI over reviews and finding a

698
00:37:40,480 --> 00:37:43,319
Speaker 1: lot of examples where it gets things wrong. And if

699
00:37:43,360 --> 00:37:46,439
Speaker 1: they're going to continue with aio reviews, I would hope

700
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:48,880
Speaker 1: that they dramatically improve the product as quickly as possible.

701
00:37:50,760 --> 00:37:52,440
Speaker 1: That's on the AI front. I mean, if if you

702
00:37:52,440 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: want to be if you want to.

703
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 2: Completely in general with search, Yeah, with.

704
00:37:56,680 --> 00:38:08,240
Speaker 1: With search, I think that they should reassess this notion

705
00:38:08,360 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: of helpful content because I think that they've inadvertently caused

706
00:38:14,160 --> 00:38:17,480
Speaker 1: a lot of sites that are truly producing helpful, experience

707
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: driven content to lose a lot of visibility in the

708
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:23,480
Speaker 1: last year or so, and a lot of like you know,

709
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:26,360
Speaker 1: we're still seeing a lot of big brands seemingly able

710
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:28,640
Speaker 1: to show up for every possible query, and we're not

711
00:38:28,719 --> 00:38:32,200
Speaker 1: hearing enough from small publishers. We're not giving small publishers

712
00:38:32,440 --> 00:38:35,600
Speaker 1: enough of a chance for their content to compete, and

713
00:38:35,640 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: they're kind of At this point, Google's just seems to

714
00:38:37,640 --> 00:38:40,480
Speaker 1: be blasting Reddit everywhere for everything, maybe as a solution

715
00:38:40,600 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 1: to that, because yeah, you get a lot of firsthand

716
00:38:43,000 --> 00:38:45,280
Speaker 1: experience from Reddit, but I'm not sure that putting Reddit

717
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: in top positions for so many different queries is a

718
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 1: solution either. So personally, I'd like to see a broader

719
00:38:51,600 --> 00:39:04,680
Speaker 1: diversity of the types of websites that are able to compete.

720
00:39:05,760 --> 00:39:08,359
Speaker 2: The problem, it seems, is that this multi trillion dollar

721
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:11,760
Speaker 2: tech company, one that has a monopoly over the Internet's information,

722
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 2: is somehow we can we can power us when faced

723
00:39:14,480 --> 00:39:18,240
Speaker 2: with people that create websites specifically to trick it, Google,

724
00:39:18,280 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 2: a company that sells to militaries and governments and professional

725
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,719
Speaker 2: sports leagues that makes tens of billions of dollars a

726
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:28,359
Speaker 2: quarter and employs nearly two hundred thousand people, is incapable

727
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:32,040
Speaker 2: of thwarting a hodgepodge industry full of nakedly craven bad actors,

728
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,960
Speaker 2: or they just un willing to intervene because it Google

729
00:39:35,960 --> 00:39:38,720
Speaker 2: doesn't really care about anything other than how many times

730
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 2: people search and how many ads they see, And they

731
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 2: don't really mind if maybe this big mess of crap

732
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:50,000
Speaker 2: makes the whole thing worse. This problem, it's been going

733
00:39:50,040 --> 00:39:53,279
Speaker 2: on for years, and I feel crazy every time I

734
00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 2: talk about Google Search as a product and has a

735
00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:59,839
Speaker 2: business that's such an incredibly profitable and ubiquitous product can

736
00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 2: be it's so utterly shoddy and regularly unfit for the task,

737
00:40:03,560 --> 00:40:06,440
Speaker 2: I feel insane. I feel crazy when I see article

738
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 2: after article about Sandhar Pushai and Google talking about the

739
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,959
Speaker 2: remarkable success of Google, yet never the fact that they've

740
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:18,640
Speaker 2: done so much to damage this search engine, and they've

741
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:23,240
Speaker 2: so blatantly destroyed their core product. And what really upsets

742
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:27,080
Speaker 2: me is the sheer contempt that Google seems to have

743
00:40:27,200 --> 00:40:31,840
Speaker 2: for its customers. Google Search is awful. It's a terrible,

744
00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:35,960
Speaker 2: unreliable product, and now they've made it even less reliable

745
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:40,279
Speaker 2: with the introduction of Generatifai. And yet sun Dar Pushai,

746
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:44,360
Speaker 2: the CEO of Google, can stride into interviews all piss

747
00:40:44,360 --> 00:40:48,040
Speaker 2: and vinegar and ramble about how evalues independent sources and

748
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:51,680
Speaker 2: more authentic voices as his service continually fails the surface

749
00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 2: unique interesting or useful content. Nil Patel of The Verge

750
00:40:56,120 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 2: got a lot of credit for giving Peshai a tough interview,

751
00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:02,600
Speaker 2: but I'm gonna be bloody honest, paper Tiger. It's just

752
00:41:02,640 --> 00:41:05,800
Speaker 2: another opportunity for a Google executive to vaguely suggest that

753
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,880
Speaker 2: they care about search without really being held accountable. The

754
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 2: question is, sun Dar, why is Google so bad? Now?

755
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:15,839
Speaker 2: And he will give you some vague pr spiel. Show

756
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:19,040
Speaker 2: him results. Nille did show him Chromebook results. The thing

757
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:21,080
Speaker 2: to do would be come with a few results and

758
00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:23,279
Speaker 2: show him in front of him and say why is

759
00:41:23,320 --> 00:41:27,359
Speaker 2: this so bad? Why? Sun Dar? And if you can

760
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 2: get him to say on the record, actually, I think

761
00:41:29,600 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 2: it's good. That says everything. What it says is he's

762
00:41:33,280 --> 00:41:35,439
Speaker 2: a liar and he doesn't really care. But I guess

763
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:39,680
Speaker 2: the interview did that anyway. Look, the problem, other than

764
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:41,600
Speaker 2: the fact that Google should be broken up and that

765
00:41:41,680 --> 00:41:44,560
Speaker 2: search should be a public utility or a nonprofit, is

766
00:41:44,560 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 2: that the media seems to continually lack the ability to

767
00:41:46,960 --> 00:41:49,839
Speaker 2: simplify the problem. Google Search is bad, and it's been

768
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:52,520
Speaker 2: bad for a while. Results are worse. They're full of

769
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,480
Speaker 2: spam and low quality content. Google does a terrible job

770
00:41:55,480 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 2: of maintaining the content on Google Search, and it's now

771
00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:02,000
Speaker 2: introduced an AI to search through these results. That makes

772
00:42:02,040 --> 00:42:04,920
Speaker 2: things worse by generating answers based on search results from

773
00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 2: a search engine that's rotting in real time, and then

774
00:42:08,320 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 2: it hallucinates the results. Anyway, Eh God, I apologize them

775
00:42:14,360 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 2: getting a little bit head up, but this whole thing

776
00:42:17,239 --> 00:42:20,319
Speaker 2: just it kills me. It makes me feel a little

777
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 2: bit nuts because if any of us, anyone listening to this,

778
00:42:24,120 --> 00:42:26,239
Speaker 2: went into our jobs and our trousers were down and

779
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:28,920
Speaker 2: our our bits were out, and we were walking in,

780
00:42:28,960 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 2: and we go in and we half do our job

781
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 2: and the job's terribly done, would we get fired? We

782
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 2: get fired. I think we'd get fired, maybe if the

783
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:39,040
Speaker 2: crap work we did made money, but we'd still be

784
00:42:39,080 --> 00:42:41,759
Speaker 2: in trouble for our willies hanging out. And that's the thing.

785
00:42:42,880 --> 00:42:45,520
Speaker 2: None of these tech executives, even when faced with the media,

786
00:42:45,600 --> 00:42:49,880
Speaker 2: seemed to actually be held accountable. And Google acts without integrity,

787
00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 2: and they just act with this stunning contempt for their customers.

788
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 2: I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Suned up

789
00:42:56,719 --> 00:42:59,760
Speaker 2: a shite is a goddamn management concern, a former McKinsey

790
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:03,080
Speaker 2: free with little interest in providing users with any kind

791
00:43:03,120 --> 00:43:06,760
Speaker 2: of usable service, and his cronies people like Probagara, Ragavan

792
00:43:06,840 --> 00:43:10,520
Speaker 2: and Liz Read. By the way, Probagara has been upgraded

793
00:43:10,520 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 2: to head of a bunch of things now and Liz

794
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 2: Read is now the head of Search. It's so good

795
00:43:14,719 --> 00:43:17,000
Speaker 2: he picked his successor, and it's so good that this

796
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:20,880
Speaker 2: person loves Ai. And these people they've continually helped Google

797
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:24,840
Speaker 2: put out bad software, all in pursuit of perpetual growth.

798
00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:29,120
Speaker 2: And I believe they're part of a larger problem in

799
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,760
Speaker 2: the tech industry. Tech firms are no longer building things

800
00:43:32,800 --> 00:43:36,520
Speaker 2: for customers. Big tech and honestly, far too many startups.

801
00:43:36,680 --> 00:43:39,920
Speaker 2: They're creating these products that are more like symbolic capital

802
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,239
Speaker 2: for investors so that they can place bets on them

803
00:43:42,239 --> 00:43:46,120
Speaker 2: and say, ah, maybe red war here, no, maybe black

804
00:43:46,120 --> 00:43:49,319
Speaker 2: this time, maybe double zero, And these things they only

805
00:43:49,360 --> 00:43:52,520
Speaker 2: exist to express meteoric growth ten x, twenty x, thirty

806
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 2: x returns things that sound satisfying for people to chirp

807
00:43:56,000 --> 00:44:00,280
Speaker 2: on CNBC without ever actually really having to provide the service.

808
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:05,800
Speaker 2: They're discussing I'm not to be honest, it's breaking my arm.

809
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 2: As I said in my last episode, I'm not a pessimist.

810
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 2: I'm more of a broken heared romantic. There was a time,

811
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,680
Speaker 2: and it wasn't super long ago, that tech was exciting

812
00:44:15,719 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 2: and fun and interesting. When things came out that subtly

813
00:44:18,239 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 2: or revertedly, they changed our lives, They made things better,

814
00:44:21,120 --> 00:44:23,680
Speaker 2: they maybe connected us, or they made our time on

815
00:44:23,719 --> 00:44:27,200
Speaker 2: our own better and more substantive, and things felt like

816
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:30,520
Speaker 2: they were progressing. Yet it feels like so much of

817
00:44:30,560 --> 00:44:33,960
Speaker 2: today's tech industry is focused on shipping products that nobody

818
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:37,319
Speaker 2: asked for to fix problems that don't exist, all while

819
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 2: demanding applause for a future that they've yet to make

820
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 2: a reality. Cryptocurrency, the metaverse, now generative AI. They're all

821
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,640
Speaker 2: trends that built this kind of pseudo religious movement to

822
00:44:47,680 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 2: carry water for products that didn't do what they said.

823
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:52,600
Speaker 2: They would guilt tripping those that said otherwise for not

824
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 2: being optimistic enough about an industry there's continually failed to

825
00:44:56,600 --> 00:45:01,600
Speaker 2: give us hope for the future, and it's disgraceful. It's disgraceful.

826
00:45:01,920 --> 00:45:05,880
Speaker 2: Look at Facebook from my last episodes. Look at that website,

827
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 2: that multi billion dollar website. Look how bad it is.

828
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,840
Speaker 2: Look how full it's of AI, spam and junk it is.

829
00:45:12,920 --> 00:45:15,760
Speaker 2: Look how unsafe it is. Look at Google right now.

830
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:19,879
Speaker 2: Google Search is falling. Apart of the seams. It kind

831
00:45:19,880 --> 00:45:22,360
Speaker 2: of works and sometimes it does, don't get me wrong,

832
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 2: but for the most part you just can't trust it

833
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:27,799
Speaker 2: any more. And that was before they plugged generative AI

834
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 2: into it. Now the world's probably the world's most profitable

835
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:35,759
Speaker 2: tech product is just languishing. It's so much worse. And

836
00:45:35,760 --> 00:45:38,120
Speaker 2: what's crazy is I don't even know how they're gonna

837
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,960
Speaker 2: make money from it because these AI results they don't

838
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 2: seem to connect to ads or anything. They don't seem

839
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:46,400
Speaker 2: to make Google money. But because Sandha Peshei needs to

840
00:45:46,440 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 2: convince Wall Street that Google will grow forever, well, you

841
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:53,000
Speaker 2: gotta put AI in it, man, You gotta make the

842
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:58,040
Speaker 2: AI happen. Except regular people using this, they're gonna get misinformed.

843
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:01,719
Speaker 2: Someone's gonna die. And I really sound dramatic, I know,

844
00:46:01,960 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 2: but they are because people use Google Search and rely

845
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,799
Speaker 2: on Google Search. They rely on Google Search to give

846
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:10,960
Speaker 2: them real answers to real queries. And we can laugh

847
00:46:10,960 --> 00:46:12,640
Speaker 2: about the fact it said that someone had to eat

848
00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:14,440
Speaker 2: a rock a day. But what if they're trying to

849
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 2: put out a chemical fire. What if they're depressed then

850
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,960
Speaker 2: they ask Google something and Google tells them, I don't know,

851
00:46:22,000 --> 00:46:25,760
Speaker 2: some sort of weird CBD treatment because Google got poisoned

852
00:46:25,760 --> 00:46:27,879
Speaker 2: by an AI spam result. There is, by the way,

853
00:46:27,880 --> 00:46:30,040
Speaker 2: a fake result about Google telling someone to jump off

854
00:46:30,040 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 2: the gong Gate Bridge. It's very fake, done for for it.

855
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:36,919
Speaker 2: But seriously, though, something like that's going to happen. And yeah,

856
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:39,400
Speaker 2: I'm sure someone will say, oh, it's just an edge case.

857
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,040
Speaker 2: I don't give a crap an edge case where someone

858
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:46,760
Speaker 2: dies or is harmed or is misinformed. That's not worth it.

859
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 2: It's not worth it. And these companies must learn. And

860
00:46:51,360 --> 00:46:54,080
Speaker 2: I think what's going to happen is far simpler. I

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00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:56,000
Speaker 2: think they believe that people are just going to keep

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00:46:56,120 --> 00:46:59,000
Speaker 2: using it because they have these horrible monopolies. I think

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00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 2: at some point people are just not going to use

864
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:04,960
Speaker 2: search at all. I think that is the actual end

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00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,400
Speaker 2: result here. I think you see open AI create search

866
00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 2: engine and it kind of is worse than this. I

867
00:47:11,640 --> 00:47:13,719
Speaker 2: think you're going to see a proliferation of this tech

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00:47:13,960 --> 00:47:17,080
Speaker 2: as people desperately try and catch up with Google and

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00:47:17,120 --> 00:47:21,480
Speaker 2: it's so distressing, it's so insulting to customers, turns my

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00:47:21,520 --> 00:47:26,320
Speaker 2: bloody stomach. I realized this wasn't a very positive podcast,

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00:47:26,360 --> 00:47:29,439
Speaker 2: but hope it filled in the gaps for you. Thanks

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00:47:29,480 --> 00:47:39,960
Speaker 2: for listening, Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The

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00:47:40,080 --> 00:47:43,320
Speaker 2: editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Metasowski.

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00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:45,440
Speaker 2: You can check out more of his music and audio

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00:47:45,480 --> 00:47:48,680
Speaker 2: projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T.

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00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:49,279
Speaker 1: T O.

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00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:53,759
Speaker 2: S O w Ski dot com. You can email me

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00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:56,399
Speaker 2: at easy at Better Offline dot com or visit Better

879
00:47:56,440 --> 00:47:58,879
Speaker 2: Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course,

880
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 2: my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat

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00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:04,719
Speaker 2: dot Where's youread dot at to visit the discord, and

882
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,440
Speaker 2: go to our slash Better Offline to check out I'll Reddit.

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00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,480
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a

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00:48:11,480 --> 00:48:14,600
Speaker 2: production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,

885
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 2: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

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00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:21,080
Speaker 2: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

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00:48:21,080 --> 00:48:22,040
Speaker 2: your podcasts.