WEBVTT - AI Is Breaking Google

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<v Speaker 1>All Zone Media.

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

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<v Speaker 2>What Hey, You ever wonder who ruined Google? Well, the

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<v Speaker 2>answer is Prabagar Ragavan, Google's former head of ads, who

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<v Speaker 2>led a coup to run Google Search, which led to

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<v Speaker 2>websites to k Now, I'm not just recounting my own

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<v Speaker 2>work here. My source is Google Search. No, really really,

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<v Speaker 2>search who ruined Google on Google Search and it will

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<v Speaker 2>pop up with an AI generated summary of multiple articles

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<v Speaker 2>that cite a piece I wrote called the Man who

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<v Speaker 2>Killed Google Search? Why Because on May fourteenth, twenty twenty four,

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<v Speaker 2>Google decided, in their incredible wisdom to add generative artificial

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<v Speaker 2>intelligence to search results. These new AI generated results, dubbed

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

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<v Speaker 2>see on some pages with an aioverview, one generated by

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<v Speaker 2>scraping the text of other websites, so that Google can

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<v Speaker 2>answer your questions without you having to visit them and

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

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<v Speaker 2>also you may be thinking, isn't generate if AI the

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<v Speaker 2>thing that regularly gets things wrong and is kind of unreliable,

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<v Speaker 2>and everyone knows about that Google wouldn't do that right wrong.

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<v Speaker 2>McKinsey alumnus and Google CEO Sundar Pshai told The Verges

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<v Speaker 2>Nile Patel that he believes these results will actually help

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

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<v Speaker 2>help centralize the Web's information around these big publishers that

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<v Speaker 2>Google likes, all while creating less of a need for

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<v Speaker 2>anybody to visit the rest of the Internet as in

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<v Speaker 2>any of the other links, even if they're presented along

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<v Speaker 2>an AI generated summary. As Lauren Good of Wyatt said

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<v Speaker 2>in a recent piece about Google's new shift to AI,

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<v Speaker 2>by choosing when and where these overviews appear, Google is

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<v Speaker 2>essentially deciding what is or is not a complex question,

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<v Speaker 2>and then they're making a judgment on what kind of

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<v Speaker 2>web content should inform its summaries, as well as what

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

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<v Speaker 2>these articles are also predicated on one very, very very

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<v Speaker 2>silly assumption. And I really respect Lauren and Nile, but seriously,

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<v Speaker 2>you're making one major mistake. You're assuming that Google actually

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<v Speaker 2>cares about building and maintaining a good search engine. Though

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<v Speaker 2>it's been fixed since I wrote this script, you used

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<v Speaker 2>to as in a few days ago, be able to

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<v Speaker 2>ask Google if there was a country in Africa that

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<v Speaker 2>began with the letter K, and it would have resulted

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<v Speaker 2>in the generative result that says as of September twenty

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<v Speaker 2>twenty one, no African country begins with the letter K. However,

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<v Speaker 2>Kenya is the closest African country to starting with a

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<v Speaker 2>K sound with two citations a forum post from twenty

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<v Speaker 2>twenty one that quoted a hallucination from chat GPT and

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<v Speaker 2>a website titled countries that start with the letter K

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<v Speaker 2>with the very sentence beginning with Kenya. Google's generative search

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<v Speaker 2>results have also recently said that one could use Elmer's

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<v Speaker 2>glue to keep cheese from sliding off of a pizza,

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<v Speaker 2>or that a dog played in the NBA, or that

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<v Speaker 2>something called a squad plug is a device that helps

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<v Speaker 2>keep the glutes tight while squatting, rather than a joke

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<v Speaker 2>scraped from a Reddit post about a very very specific

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<v Speaker 2>kind of sex toy. Do not look it up. You

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<v Speaker 2>do not need to know. These results, by the way,

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<v Speaker 2>have already been taken care of because of the massive

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<v Speaker 2>shit storm that Google is dealing with from the very

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

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<v Speaker 2>very upsetting. And these results are a result of a

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<v Speaker 2>modified version of Google's Gemini Generative AI. They're equivalent of

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<v Speaker 2>chat GBT, generating answers based on the content of web pages.

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

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<v Speaker 2>random blogs, posts from Reddit, and it's just this vile

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<v Speaker 2>new strategy where and I'm quoting the new head of Search,

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

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<v Speaker 2>this is of course a really horrible idea for many

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

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<v Speaker 2>has this tendency to hallucinate, where it authoritatively states something

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<v Speaker 2>that just is not true, mostly because these models don't

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<v Speaker 2>actually know anything. General IVAI, like Gemini or chat GBT

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<v Speaker 2>or Anthropics Claude or metas Lama. They're all responding to

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<v Speaker 2>your queries by predicting what the most likely to be

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<v Speaker 2>correct answer is based on parameters that they learned in

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<v Speaker 2>their training data, which means that Google's AI powered search

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<v Speaker 2>is googling for you with absolutely no comprehension or intellectual

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<v Speaker 2>understanding or really any read of the content itself. As

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

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<v Speaker 2>all right. These phrases seem to make up what the

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<v Speaker 2>right answer could be based on mathematics, and these links

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<v Speaker 2>seem to include these phrases, So I guess that's fine,

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<v Speaker 2>which is why Google all briefly recommended that you eat

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<v Speaker 2>one rock a day because it was generating an answer

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<v Speaker 2>from the satirical newspaper The Onion. Google's response was to

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<v Speaker 2>tell the vergis Kylie Robison that these were generally very

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<v Speaker 2>uncommon queries that are not representative of most people's experience,

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<v Speaker 2>specifically responding to Robison's own query where Google told her

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<v Speaker 2>that the mammal with the most bones was a python

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<v Speaker 2>just to be clear of python is a reptile. They

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<v Speaker 2>do have bones though, fu fact. Now, as funny as

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<v Speaker 2>these results might be, Google's AI powered search is really

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<v Speaker 2>horrible for the Internet at large. By summarizing other people's

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<v Speaker 2>links to generate an answer, Google's effectively stolen the Internet,

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<v Speaker 2>picking and choosing what parts it deems worthy of showing you,

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<v Speaker 2>and then providing this kind of hackneyed, hallucination prone summary

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<v Speaker 2>of what they think the links mean. Google's already positioned

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<v Speaker 2>itself as a gatekeeper of the Internet. By the way,

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

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<v Speaker 2>important is the word that they used in the regional

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<v Speaker 2>paper to describe page rank, which was how they rank pages.

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<v Speaker 2>And the theoretical value exchange was that we get reliable,

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<v Speaker 2>safe results that actually answered our queries. But AI powered searches,

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<v Speaker 2>they kind of turned Google into a source of truth

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<v Speaker 2>and not a remotely reliable one. And they're using a

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<v Speaker 2>technology that is well known for getting things wrong. Now

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<v Speaker 2>you may think, well, surely Google would be both aware

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<v Speaker 2>of this and even if they even if they were

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<v Speaker 2>aware of it, they would they wouldn't put this hallucination

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<v Speaker 2>prone tech in deliberately. Right, Surely this must be some

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<v Speaker 2>kind of mistake. And you are wrong, because san Dar

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<v Speaker 2>Pashai told Nile Patel in an interview that happened earlier

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<v Speaker 2>last week that they're well aware of the problem of

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<v Speaker 2>hallucinations and that they were still unsolved and that they

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

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<v Speaker 2>completely correct, at which point the CEO of Google said

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<v Speaker 2>that large language models were good because of this, and

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<v Speaker 2>that in fact, it made them very creative, Sunda, what

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<v Speaker 2>the hell are you talking about, man, I don't need

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<v Speaker 2>Google to be creative. I need Google to answer my

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

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

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<v Speaker 2>it's extremely obvious how dangerous this strategy is. Generative. AI

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<v Speaker 2>could hallucinate I don't know how to deal with a

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<v Speaker 2>chemical fire or a mental health issue, or authoritatively misinform

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

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<v Speaker 2>which is an actual generitive result that Google has since

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<v Speaker 2>removed billions of people, regular non technical people, people that

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<v Speaker 2>don't live on social media in the swill and constantly

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<v Speaker 2>see the new news. They rely on Google every day

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<v Speaker 2>to answer questions. And they're going to assume that a

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<v Speaker 2>multi trillion dollar tech company would not turn the most

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<v Speaker 2>well trafficked source of information in the bloody world over

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<v Speaker 2>to an aid. And Peter kafk go Over, a business insider,

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

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<v Speaker 2>difference between being handed a map and being given directions

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<v Speaker 2>that will send your car barreling over a cliff. I

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

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<v Speaker 2>both for the Internet and for society at large. By

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<v Speaker 2>choosing what queries to summarize and what sites to pull from,

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<v Speaker 2>Google both centralizes and polarizes the world's information, all while

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<v Speaker 2>depriving actual publishers of traffic, the actual human beings creating

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<v Speaker 2>the things that inform their search engine. And it's horrible.

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<v Speaker 2>That alone is such a horrible problem. Now. Of course,

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<v Speaker 2>Sandar Pashai told nil A Patel, who just went, yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>sure mate, okay, no pushback, man. He told them, no,

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<v Speaker 2>this is actually good for the web because people will

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<v Speaker 2>get the answers and then they'll click through. Yeah. Let

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<v Speaker 2>me give you an example of how wrong you are, Sandar.

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<v Speaker 2>Look at social media. Look at when people see clickbait.

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<v Speaker 2>Do you think people go, oh, I should check the link.

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<v Speaker 2>This could be used to get engagement for my tweet. No,

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<v Speaker 2>they tweet the thing and get mad about it. I've

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

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<v Speaker 2>But still people are not going to be curious. They're

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<v Speaker 2>going to assume that Google Search is not full of nonsense,

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<v Speaker 2>that Google Search is not spitting out AI generated summaries

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<v Speaker 2>using hallucination pron AI I feel like and going crazy anyway,

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<v Speaker 2>while AI results cite their sources. It's just it's foolish

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<v Speaker 2>to believe that regular people are going to click through

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<v Speaker 2>to the results when Google itself has already answered the question,

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<v Speaker 2>especially on service driven queries that answer, say, whether a

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<v Speaker 2>food is safe or some sort of factual question. Publishers,

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<v Speaker 2>especially news outlets, already heavily dependent on Google Search traffic.

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<v Speaker 2>They're terrified that these summaries will further reduce traffic at

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<v Speaker 2>a time when social networks like Facebook, for example, are

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

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<v Speaker 2>Google search has already deteriorated drastically over the last few years,

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<v Speaker 2>and its results are plagued with AI generated spam and

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<v Speaker 2>search engine optimized nonsense. And these results overwhelm good, unique,

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<v Speaker 2>authoritative content to the point that major newspapers are put

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<v Speaker 2>out public service announcements like the Wall Street Journal, by

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<v Speaker 2>the way, about how to avoid scams in the very

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<v Speaker 2>first results you see on Google. Now, you'd think that

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<v Speaker 2>this deluge of bad press would make Google say, humh,

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<v Speaker 2>we should fix Google Search, we should make things better. No, No, no, no, no,

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<v Speaker 2>that's not what we do here at Google. No. Google

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<v Speaker 2>plugged in an already unreliable artificial intelligence into a product

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<v Speaker 2>that it's deliberately allowed to decay so that customers can

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<v Speaker 2>get quasi right answers from search results that Google itself

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<v Speaker 2>barely maintains the quality of. It's a sound a bit

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<v Speaker 2>frustrated because this is so strange. This is all so strange,

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<v Speaker 2>this multi trillion dollar company, with this search engine that

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<v Speaker 2>makes them tens of billions of dollars. They're just like,

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

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<v Speaker 2>And it sent their stock ups, so I guess it

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<v Speaker 2>doesn't bloody matter. But back to the regular results just

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<v Speaker 2>for a moment. Google claims that in its recent Core

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<v Speaker 2>update that they've helped reduce low quality and unhelpful content

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

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<v Speaker 2>search is still dominated by search engine optimized content full

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<v Speaker 2>of these links that are built to drive kickbacks to

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<v Speaker 2>publishers called affiliate links, as well as YouTube links and

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<v Speaker 2>Reddit links. And it's the very same content that informs

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<v Speaker 2>and by the way, misinforms Google's generative results Google Search.

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

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

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<v Speaker 2>question whether it even has any utility anymore. Searching for

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<v Speaker 2>best laptop, and I mean this from Las Vegas, Nevada,

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<v Speaker 2>beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada brings up this affiliate mine market

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<v Speaker 2>funded tech site, and then a link to best Buy,

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<v Speaker 2>then another affiliate funded site, then another link to best Buy,

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<v Speaker 2>then a series of questions you can click through which

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<v Speaker 2>say things like which brand of laptop is best? And

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<v Speaker 2>when I click through the first one, by the way,

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<v Speaker 2>it led me to a site called New Indian Express

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<v Speaker 2>Deals and it's just full of affiliate marketing links, no

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<v Speaker 2>real journalism of any kind. It's all. It could be

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

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<v Speaker 2>these links to MacBooks and then things like a Techno

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<v Speaker 2>megabook or the Honor Magic Book laptops that are not

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<v Speaker 2>available in America. Yeah, you know. One might imagine that

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<v Speaker 2>the point of a search company is that it searches

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<v Speaker 2>the web for you, surfacing things that you might find

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<v Speaker 2>interesting or informative that you might not find otherwise, highlighting

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<v Speaker 2>individual publishers that make great content that otherwise might get

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<v Speaker 2>lost in the churn of the Internet, which makes billions

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<v Speaker 2>and billions of pages so much to find the great

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

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<v Speaker 2>Yet the reality is that Google wants to highlight the

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<v Speaker 2>same companies and the same publishers doing the same thing

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<v Speaker 2>in the same way, because Google, at its core is

0:13:10.080 --> 0:13:14.280
<v Speaker 2>a fundamentally lazy company that does not care about its customers.

0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:17.280
<v Speaker 2>As it related in The Man Who Killed Google Search.

0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:19.720
<v Speaker 2>Google's revenue arms are the ones pulling the levers at

0:13:19.720 --> 0:13:23.000
<v Speaker 2>the company right now, and they demand more queries, as

0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:26.520
<v Speaker 2>in more searches on the platform, even if doing so

0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:30.120
<v Speaker 2>makes the platform so much worse, because when you optimize

0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.160
<v Speaker 2>a platform for people to spend more time on it

0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:36.679
<v Speaker 2>and click on things more, you're not actually resolving a

0:13:36.800 --> 0:13:40.120
<v Speaker 2>query or a problem. I know, more queries are what

0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.959
<v Speaker 2>they're looking for, but they're not talking about resolving queries.

0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.520
<v Speaker 2>They're just looking for more of them so that they

0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:48.880
<v Speaker 2>can show you more ads. But when you look at

0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:51.240
<v Speaker 2>the state of Google right now, the current state of Google,

0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:55.080
<v Speaker 2>you can see how these decisions have poisoned it. Google

0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.160
<v Speaker 2>Search moves around its menus things like shopping images, news,

0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.080
<v Speaker 2>and videos. Based on what you're searching for. It pumps

0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.600
<v Speaker 2>results full of sponsored content YouTube videos. By the way,

0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.040
<v Speaker 2>of course, they own youtubes. That's good for them. And

0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:10.560
<v Speaker 2>then these arbitrarily chosen forum results, and then it deliberately

0:14:10.559 --> 0:14:14.360
<v Speaker 2>offer scates what might be a paid for link. It's

0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:19.000
<v Speaker 2>just this chaotically disorganized, nakedly manipulated piece of crap, let's

0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:23.120
<v Speaker 2>be honest, and the search engine optimization industry is eating

0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.360
<v Speaker 2>it alive. And it really isn't clear whether Google lacks

0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:28.920
<v Speaker 2>the ability to fix it or just doesn't really care

0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:33.480
<v Speaker 2>that much yet. The sorry state of Google Search did

0:14:33.520 --> 0:14:36.120
<v Speaker 2>a little digging here might also be the result of

0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:40.000
<v Speaker 2>Google distancing itself from the same search optimization community that

0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:42.800
<v Speaker 2>I've been kind of harsh on. While SEO is a

0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:47.160
<v Speaker 2>field that's inarguably harmed Google search results, it's also worth

0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:49.720
<v Speaker 2>considering the outside of technical standards like how fast the

0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:51.320
<v Speaker 2>site loads or whether it has a site map of

0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:56.200
<v Speaker 2>its links. Google also kind of hides things from the

0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:59.000
<v Speaker 2>SEO community. They offer scate what good looks like for

0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:02.880
<v Speaker 2>fear that optimize, we'll use these standards to manipulate its results, which,

0:15:02.960 --> 0:15:06.320
<v Speaker 2>by the way, happens anyway. So what Google does is,

0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.360
<v Speaker 2>instead of saying what good would be and I've kind

0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.440
<v Speaker 2>of been wrong here, they vaguely say, yeah, you should

0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:14.000
<v Speaker 2>kind of do this, but I'm not going to tell

0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:18.000
<v Speaker 2>you exactly how. And then you get these people who

0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:22.800
<v Speaker 2>still manipulate anyway. It's so strange, this company worth trillions

0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:25.840
<v Speaker 2>of dollars. They act like a plucky startup, but only

0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:29.280
<v Speaker 2>when it comes to actual quality control. But nevertheless, I

0:15:29.320 --> 0:15:32.200
<v Speaker 2>was quite interested in search optimization. So why you've got

0:15:32.200 --> 0:15:35.520
<v Speaker 2>in Lily Rays, a fifteen year SEO veterrun, and she

0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:40.120
<v Speaker 2>told me a really worrying story. I think that Google's

0:15:40.160 --> 0:15:44.200
<v Speaker 2>kind of failing everybody. They're failing publishers, they're failing SEO people,

0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:57.600
<v Speaker 2>and they're failing you and me. All right, so you've

0:15:57.640 --> 0:16:00.760
<v Speaker 2>been in se over about fifteen years. But what actually

0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:05.400
<v Speaker 2>is search engine optimization for a very basic listener who's

0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:06.120
<v Speaker 2>never dealt with it.

0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:10.440
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, search engine optimization is the practice of trying to

0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:13.720
<v Speaker 1>make certain websites and the pages on those websites more

0:16:13.840 --> 0:16:17.800
<v Speaker 1>visible in search engines, by which I mean ranking in

0:16:17.840 --> 0:16:20.720
<v Speaker 1>the top positions on you know, Google Being or whatever

0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:24.040
<v Speaker 1>other search engine you're targeting. Because that's really where the

0:16:24.040 --> 0:16:25.960
<v Speaker 1>majority of people click on results.

0:16:27.200 --> 0:16:31.960
<v Speaker 2>Isn't that a little bit manipulative of Google and these things?

0:16:31.960 --> 0:16:32.000
<v Speaker 1>Is?

0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:33.880
<v Speaker 2>How is that a good thing?

0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.640
<v Speaker 1>So there's kind of a spectrum of approaches to SEO. There's,

0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.360
<v Speaker 1>first of all, Google's own guidance related to how to

0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:45.000
<v Speaker 1>do SEO in a way that I would argue is

0:16:45.040 --> 0:16:47.880
<v Speaker 1>actually great for the Internet. I think most of the

0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:50.680
<v Speaker 1>things that Google is recommending and that people like myself

0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:53.680
<v Speaker 1>who do SEO professionally day in and day out, what

0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:57.480
<v Speaker 1>we're doing is making websites more findable, more accessible, you know,

0:16:58.200 --> 0:17:01.720
<v Speaker 1>loading more quickly for people to find what they're looking for.

0:17:01.920 --> 0:17:03.880
<v Speaker 1>There's a lot of technical work that goes into that.

0:17:04.000 --> 0:17:06.200
<v Speaker 1>But of course there's a whole other end of the spectrum,

0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:08.400
<v Speaker 1>which is people trying to take advantage of the situation

0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:11.760
<v Speaker 1>and spam things and manipulate search engines. So it depends

0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:13.240
<v Speaker 1>which type of BESDEO you're talking about.

0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.879
<v Speaker 2>So there are white hat SEO people, it's not just

0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:21.600
<v Speaker 2>all absolutely absolutely, So what do you do for your job?

0:17:21.640 --> 0:17:24.639
<v Speaker 2>What is the thing you make your customers do well?

0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:28.520
<v Speaker 1>You know, companies come to us and they obviously want

0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:31.880
<v Speaker 1>to get more visibility, So we have to look at

0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.120
<v Speaker 1>all the different considerations and all the different factors that

0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:38.840
<v Speaker 1>influence how people are able to find that content. A

0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:40.919
<v Speaker 1>lot of it's technical, so literally a lot of our

0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.240
<v Speaker 1>work is like, you know, focusing on page speed, focusing

0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:48.760
<v Speaker 1>on overall accessibility. And you know, for example, if an

0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:50.960
<v Speaker 1>image is uploaded to a website and it doesn't have

0:17:51.440 --> 0:17:54.520
<v Speaker 1>image alt text, which is actually required for website accessibility,

0:17:54.640 --> 0:17:57.520
<v Speaker 1>search engines can't understand what's on that image traditionally, so

0:17:57.560 --> 0:17:58.920
<v Speaker 1>we have to go in there and kind of add

0:17:58.960 --> 0:18:02.360
<v Speaker 1>the right words in. So it's making that content more findable.

0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:04.400
<v Speaker 1>And again, a lot of that's technical, but a lot

0:18:04.400 --> 0:18:07.040
<v Speaker 1>of that is content oriented. So people might write a

0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:09.600
<v Speaker 1>certain article and in such a way that the way,

0:18:09.640 --> 0:18:11.240
<v Speaker 1>you know, when people go to Google and they're looking

0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:13.840
<v Speaker 1>for that article, they could never find it. So we're

0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.159
<v Speaker 1>helping companies to kind of structure their content in the

0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:17.919
<v Speaker 1>way where people can actually find what they're looking for.

0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.840
<v Speaker 2>So you say that there are these signals, how much

0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.440
<v Speaker 2>of that comes from the search engines themselves.

0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:29.959
<v Speaker 1>Well, you know, the SEO field, because search engines are

0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:31.840
<v Speaker 1>essentially a black box, and a lot of us are

0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:35.040
<v Speaker 1>working with you know, just third party data or working

0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:37.480
<v Speaker 1>the best we can with the analytics that Google any

0:18:37.480 --> 0:18:40.280
<v Speaker 1>other search engines give us. A lot of this is guesswork,

0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:42.240
<v Speaker 1>you know, we try to make informed guesses based on

0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:44.760
<v Speaker 1>the data itself, but Google and the search engines do

0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:46.280
<v Speaker 1>give us a lot of clues and a lot of

0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:48.840
<v Speaker 1>insights about what we should be focusing on, especially when

0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.440
<v Speaker 1>it comes to the technical thing, so you know, giving

0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.000
<v Speaker 1>us guidance about what we call like canonical tags. There

0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:56.720
<v Speaker 1>are different metadata that we have to add to a

0:18:56.760 --> 0:19:00.320
<v Speaker 1>website for them to really be able to parse crawl

0:19:00.359 --> 0:19:03.359
<v Speaker 1>through that website effectively. Those are direct signals that Google

0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:05.280
<v Speaker 1>gives us that we work with. But a lot of

0:19:05.320 --> 0:19:08.840
<v Speaker 1>it is kind of, you know, interpreting what we're seeing

0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:11.080
<v Speaker 1>as far as what the data shows and then making

0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:14.440
<v Speaker 1>informed guesses based on the history and on the analysis

0:19:14.480 --> 0:19:16.000
<v Speaker 1>that we do for different clients.

0:19:16.680 --> 0:19:20.040
<v Speaker 2>So based on how Google describes it, they're fairly communicative

0:19:20.280 --> 0:19:24.000
<v Speaker 2>with web developers and sorry, web content creators, it doesn't

0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:25.680
<v Speaker 2>actually sound like that is true.

0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:28.880
<v Speaker 1>I would say when it comes to the technical side

0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:31.280
<v Speaker 1>of things, Google's quite communicative. You know, it's really in

0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:35.240
<v Speaker 1>their best interest to have web you know, fast websites

0:19:35.280 --> 0:19:37.879
<v Speaker 1>websites that are accessible for users, websites that have a

0:19:37.880 --> 0:19:41.040
<v Speaker 1>great user experience. And Google does a lot of developer conferences,

0:19:41.119 --> 0:19:43.920
<v Speaker 1>a lot of communications on the technical side, and it's

0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:46.240
<v Speaker 1>quite easy to, you know, kind of get in touch

0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:48.320
<v Speaker 1>with them if you have a specific technical question, like

0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:52.960
<v Speaker 1>for example, John Vieler hosts Webmaster hangouts on Google often,

0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:55.280
<v Speaker 1>if not like several times per month where he answers

0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:57.879
<v Speaker 1>a lot of people's questions. So, yes, technically speaking, I

0:19:57.880 --> 0:19:59.600
<v Speaker 1>think they do provide a lot of guidance.

0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.840
<v Speaker 2>About content because it seems like content, the actual things

0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:06.880
<v Speaker 2>on the web page is the thing that actually matters here.

0:20:07.080 --> 0:20:09.520
<v Speaker 2>Does Google give any guidance?

0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.959
<v Speaker 1>They certainly do give guidance. They for example, they give

0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:17.600
<v Speaker 1>a lot of questionnaires that site owners can follow when

0:20:17.640 --> 0:20:20.960
<v Speaker 1>thinking about what Google considers helpful content. They also have

0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:23.280
<v Speaker 1>something called the Search Quality Radar Guidelines, which is a

0:20:23.320 --> 0:20:26.520
<v Speaker 1>document that you can find online. It's about maybe one

0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.480
<v Speaker 1>hundred and sixty plus pages, and that's specifically used to

0:20:29.560 --> 0:20:33.480
<v Speaker 1>inform Google's human Search Quality evaluator team as to what

0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:36.560
<v Speaker 1>good content or bad content kind of looks like. So

0:20:36.960 --> 0:20:39.160
<v Speaker 1>that's something that the SEO community looks at a lot

0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.360
<v Speaker 1>as well. But to your point, you know, getting into

0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.640
<v Speaker 1>granular questions about is this content good or bad for Google?

0:20:45.680 --> 0:20:49.399
<v Speaker 1>What does helpful content mean? That's become trickier in the

0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:54.000
<v Speaker 1>last few years because they can't tell us everything because

0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:56.440
<v Speaker 1>people spam everything that they can get their hands on.

0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.040
<v Speaker 2>Right, So it almost feels like a kind of battle. Yes, absolutely,

0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:06.960
<v Speaker 2>but to this to this level, to this point you say,

0:21:07.000 --> 0:21:09.879
<v Speaker 2>they give this this advice and they're vague on the

0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:13.600
<v Speaker 2>content but direct on the technical. So how has Google

0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:15.840
<v Speaker 2>search quality got so much worse?

0:21:15.880 --> 0:21:21.639
<v Speaker 1>Then? There's so many different factors at play, you know,

0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:25.240
<v Speaker 1>I think the reason why seos have a bad reputation

0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:27.639
<v Speaker 1>in general, And to your question earlier, you know, is

0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:29.800
<v Speaker 1>there such a thing as white hat seo. There's a

0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:33.120
<v Speaker 1>huge spectrum of approaches and beliefs within the SEO space.

0:21:33.800 --> 0:21:36.240
<v Speaker 1>For whatever reason, the people that spam Google the most

0:21:36.240 --> 0:21:38.399
<v Speaker 1>are the ones that have been kind of creating this

0:21:38.560 --> 0:21:41.520
<v Speaker 1>like the kind of the reputation that we have as

0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:43.919
<v Speaker 1>an industry lately. And I get that because they've been

0:21:43.960 --> 0:21:45.840
<v Speaker 1>quite successful. You know, a lot of people that are

0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:48.920
<v Speaker 1>spamming Google, especially with AI lately, have have really made

0:21:48.960 --> 0:21:50.600
<v Speaker 1>it into top positions, so they're getting a lot of

0:21:50.640 --> 0:21:53.720
<v Speaker 1>visibility with those tactics. But you know, there's a lot

0:21:53.720 --> 0:21:56.720
<v Speaker 1>of us that are doing work that again, it's like

0:21:56.840 --> 0:21:59.000
<v Speaker 1>kind of advised by search engines to do because it

0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:01.480
<v Speaker 1>really does make the Internet easier for everybody to use.

0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.000
<v Speaker 1>Uh So that's been a challenge lately. I think that

0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.920
<v Speaker 1>for whatever reason, you know, maybe because Google's shifted internally

0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:13.280
<v Speaker 1>so much of its focus to AI lately. Obviously there's

0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.399
<v Speaker 1>these big external challenges that Google's facing as a business lately,

0:22:17.680 --> 0:22:21.160
<v Speaker 1>maybe they're they're not haven't been as focused on search

0:22:21.200 --> 0:22:23.159
<v Speaker 1>quality for whatever reason. I don't actually have, you know,

0:22:23.240 --> 0:22:26.800
<v Speaker 1>any type of evidence of that other than what I'm seeing,

0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:31.800
<v Speaker 1>But I haven't seen as much spam and like SEO

0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:34.359
<v Speaker 1>manipulation as I've seen over the last year or so.

0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:36.800
<v Speaker 1>That being said, they're really cracking down on it in

0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.000
<v Speaker 1>the last few months, so sometimes it just takes them

0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:39.800
<v Speaker 1>a while to catch up.

0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:44.480
<v Speaker 2>Something you've said publicly recently is real business is all

0:22:44.520 --> 0:22:48.320
<v Speaker 2>being affected by the most recent Google updates? Can you

0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:50.160
<v Speaker 2>kind of get into that, like who are the people

0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:51.200
<v Speaker 2>being affected here?

0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:54.800
<v Speaker 1>Yeah? I mean that's that's nothing new. I think, you know, Google,

0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:59.119
<v Speaker 1>Google creates these algorithm updates multiple times big ones at

0:22:59.200 --> 0:23:02.560
<v Speaker 1>least multiple times per year every year. And we've seen

0:23:02.680 --> 0:23:05.280
<v Speaker 1>a lot of companies get caught up in those algorithm

0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:08.080
<v Speaker 1>updates before. In most cases they're doing something that goes

0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:12.440
<v Speaker 1>against Google's SEO or spam guidelines. The difference now is

0:23:12.520 --> 0:23:14.600
<v Speaker 1>that there's a lot of these new types of algorithm

0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:17.920
<v Speaker 1>updates that Google is launching that are affecting a lot

0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:20.399
<v Speaker 1>in a lot of people in the publishing space, so

0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:24.720
<v Speaker 1>both large and small publishers, especially smaller publishers over the

0:23:24.760 --> 0:23:28.920
<v Speaker 1>last couple of years. And these are, for example, people

0:23:29.000 --> 0:23:32.560
<v Speaker 1>that might have built a business doing travel blogging, doing

0:23:32.680 --> 0:23:36.720
<v Speaker 1>recipe blogging, product reviews, and so if you do consider

0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:38.520
<v Speaker 1>those people at business, and I think they would because

0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:40.439
<v Speaker 1>they often have staff, they have people going to the

0:23:40.440 --> 0:23:44.840
<v Speaker 1>places writing the travel reviews. Things like this, Google's dramatically

0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:49.399
<v Speaker 1>reduce the visibility of how those sites appear on Google

0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:50.800
<v Speaker 1>and the amount of traffic that they're getting.

0:23:52.640 --> 0:23:55.919
<v Speaker 2>So when was the last major update to Google? Sometimes

0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:59.919
<v Speaker 2>in March right, or it's unclear when it actually started

0:24:00.040 --> 0:24:00.440
<v Speaker 2>and finish.

0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:03.000
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, the last major update I would say was the

0:24:03.000 --> 0:24:06.200
<v Speaker 1>March core update, which took forty five days to complete.

0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:08.639
<v Speaker 1>But that started in early March and then ended in April.

0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:10.920
<v Speaker 1>But there's been a few different aspects of that update

0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:13.399
<v Speaker 1>in new spam policies that they've introduced as well, So

0:24:13.440 --> 0:24:16.040
<v Speaker 1>we're actually still kind of in the middle of some

0:24:16.160 --> 0:24:17.200
<v Speaker 1>of that rollout happening.

0:24:19.080 --> 0:24:22.840
<v Speaker 2>Yet it's it's strange, though you and this is not

0:24:22.960 --> 0:24:25.960
<v Speaker 2>on you, This is on Google. You say there's technical things,

0:24:26.000 --> 0:24:28.800
<v Speaker 2>they say, there's quality things they say, but even recipe

0:24:28.840 --> 0:24:33.280
<v Speaker 2>sites look terrible. They're full of ads there they make

0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:35.560
<v Speaker 2>your phone so hot it burns you. Okay, maybe not

0:24:35.600 --> 0:24:38.800
<v Speaker 2>that hot, but it feels like Google doesn't actually seem

0:24:38.840 --> 0:24:42.160
<v Speaker 2>to be maintaining quality, and it seems like they almost

0:24:42.200 --> 0:24:45.840
<v Speaker 2>fight those who do. An SEO, just how do you

0:24:45.880 --> 0:24:47.959
<v Speaker 2>feel about your relationship with Google?

0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:52.359
<v Speaker 1>It's hard to say right now. I think, you know,

0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:54.600
<v Speaker 1>with something that's been very tricky for me is that

0:24:55.200 --> 0:24:57.359
<v Speaker 1>I have a bit of a I've built a bit

0:24:57.359 --> 0:24:59.080
<v Speaker 1>of a name for myself as the person that goes

0:24:59.119 --> 0:25:02.280
<v Speaker 1>around and and really echoes a lot of what they

0:25:02.320 --> 0:25:05.960
<v Speaker 1>recommend site owners do. That's been kind of my brand

0:25:06.000 --> 0:25:09.959
<v Speaker 1>for the last several years. Google has different, you know,

0:25:10.160 --> 0:25:13.080
<v Speaker 1>policies and things that they recommend to site owners that

0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:17.600
<v Speaker 1>I have found, I would say, up until twenty twenty three,

0:25:17.880 --> 0:25:20.600
<v Speaker 1>I've found those recommendations to be very consistent with the

0:25:20.640 --> 0:25:23.240
<v Speaker 1>work that we're doing for our clients. So it's very

0:25:23.240 --> 0:25:25.440
<v Speaker 1>easy for me to go say, yeah, what Google says

0:25:25.440 --> 0:25:28.000
<v Speaker 1>to do is what works right, And we've worked with

0:25:28.040 --> 0:25:30.639
<v Speaker 1>a lot of different companies and found those tactics and

0:25:30.680 --> 0:25:35.080
<v Speaker 1>those recommendations to be very effective. The last few months,

0:25:35.119 --> 0:25:38.960
<v Speaker 1>that's changed a bit for me. I'm not well, I'm

0:25:38.960 --> 0:25:41.560
<v Speaker 1>not you know, my personal relationship with them is I

0:25:41.600 --> 0:25:44.280
<v Speaker 1>want to be very careful to say, like, you know,

0:25:44.320 --> 0:25:46.359
<v Speaker 1>the people that I know that that work at Google,

0:25:46.400 --> 0:25:48.919
<v Speaker 1>and they you know, speak on behalf of Google, Like,

0:25:48.920 --> 0:25:50.920
<v Speaker 1>this has nothing to do with them, right, This has

0:25:50.960 --> 0:25:54.200
<v Speaker 1>to do with what's happening in the search results. And

0:25:54.840 --> 0:25:59.480
<v Speaker 1>you know when I see ai spam ranking above my

0:25:59.560 --> 0:26:03.400
<v Speaker 1>clients for what we call top stories, so that's you know,

0:26:03.480 --> 0:26:06.480
<v Speaker 1>the news features on Google for example, or I see

0:26:06.520 --> 0:26:09.920
<v Speaker 1>that in Google's new aioverviews is getting everything so many

0:26:09.920 --> 0:26:12.520
<v Speaker 1>different things wrong, and there's spam and there's malware in there,

0:26:12.560 --> 0:26:15.120
<v Speaker 1>like things like this. It's just it makes us as

0:26:15.240 --> 0:26:19.040
<v Speaker 1>seos look bad because we then have to go defend

0:26:19.040 --> 0:26:21.080
<v Speaker 1>those results to our clients and try to make sense

0:26:21.119 --> 0:26:24.080
<v Speaker 1>of them. And that's been really challenging, very frustrating for

0:26:24.119 --> 0:26:27.760
<v Speaker 1>me lately, because it's very hard to defend the quality

0:26:27.920 --> 0:26:30.679
<v Speaker 1>of the search results when the search results are in

0:26:30.720 --> 0:26:32.640
<v Speaker 1>a state of very poor quality.

0:26:33.880 --> 0:26:37.880
<v Speaker 2>So you and you said previously up until twenty twenty three,

0:26:38.119 --> 0:26:40.439
<v Speaker 2>was it what happened in twenty twenty four? Was it

0:26:40.440 --> 0:26:42.199
<v Speaker 2>the core up they or was there just something that

0:26:42.280 --> 0:26:43.600
<v Speaker 2>happened this year?

0:26:43.680 --> 0:26:47.639
<v Speaker 1>Writ large, I think that probably the biggest change that

0:26:47.720 --> 0:26:51.840
<v Speaker 1>happened was honestly chat GPT. That's there's one of many

0:26:51.880 --> 0:26:54.960
<v Speaker 1>big changes. But the you know, not only chat Gypt

0:26:55.080 --> 0:26:59.960
<v Speaker 1>but the different tools like it empowered spammers and sea

0:27:00.200 --> 0:27:02.840
<v Speaker 1>alike to find new ways to speed up what they

0:27:02.880 --> 0:27:05.919
<v Speaker 1>were doing and to create a lot of terrible content

0:27:05.960 --> 0:27:09.480
<v Speaker 1>at scale. And that worked extremely well for a year

0:27:09.520 --> 0:27:12.359
<v Speaker 1>because guess what, it takes Google and the other search

0:27:12.359 --> 0:27:14.760
<v Speaker 1>engines a while to kind of figure out what they're

0:27:14.760 --> 0:27:18.200
<v Speaker 1>doing to develop new algorithms and new spam policies that

0:27:19.440 --> 0:27:21.960
<v Speaker 1>you know, devalue or demote that type of content. But

0:27:22.040 --> 0:27:25.199
<v Speaker 1>there was about a year where that content was succeeding

0:27:25.359 --> 0:27:28.280
<v Speaker 1>extremely well. So towards the end of twenty twenty three,

0:27:28.320 --> 0:27:31.359
<v Speaker 1>you would see a ton of AI generated spam and

0:27:31.400 --> 0:27:35.120
<v Speaker 1>the search results and people using AI tools in new

0:27:35.119 --> 0:27:37.920
<v Speaker 1>and different ways to just accelerate whatever spamming they were doing.

0:27:38.720 --> 0:27:42.119
<v Speaker 2>Do you think Google actually has control of search or

0:27:42.119 --> 0:27:43.800
<v Speaker 2>has it just kind of got out of hand.

0:27:46.200 --> 0:27:48.760
<v Speaker 1>I think they you know, they had these new set

0:27:48.800 --> 0:27:52.080
<v Speaker 1>of updates beginning in March twenty twenty four where I

0:27:52.119 --> 0:27:55.399
<v Speaker 1>think that they made loud and clear that they're not

0:27:55.440 --> 0:27:58.560
<v Speaker 1>messing around. You know, they really cracked down on a

0:27:58.600 --> 0:28:00.639
<v Speaker 1>lot of sites that were doing a lot of different

0:28:00.720 --> 0:28:04.520
<v Speaker 1>SEO tactics and spam tactics. So I do think they're

0:28:04.600 --> 0:28:08.040
<v Speaker 1>getting controlled back. I do actually also think they kind

0:28:08.040 --> 0:28:10.840
<v Speaker 1>of overstepped in some areas and there's a lot of

0:28:10.840 --> 0:28:14.120
<v Speaker 1>collateral damage there as well, which I know they're working on.

0:28:14.440 --> 0:28:16.000
<v Speaker 1>And that's where you hear a lot of people saying,

0:28:16.040 --> 0:28:18.119
<v Speaker 1>you know, this destroyed my business because there were a

0:28:18.160 --> 0:28:19.679
<v Speaker 1>lot of people that just had no idea that they

0:28:19.680 --> 0:28:22.240
<v Speaker 1>were going to get caught up in that. So that's

0:28:22.280 --> 0:28:24.359
<v Speaker 1>on the search side. I think, you know, Google's proven

0:28:24.560 --> 0:28:27.160
<v Speaker 1>time and time again that they can eventually get ahead

0:28:27.160 --> 0:28:29.439
<v Speaker 1>of it. But I think they're presented with a lot

0:28:29.440 --> 0:28:32.800
<v Speaker 1>of new and different challenges right now on the AI side.

0:28:32.920 --> 0:28:36.119
<v Speaker 1>You know, I'm sure eventually they'll figure it out, or

0:28:36.119 --> 0:28:38.160
<v Speaker 1>this AI overview thing will get better over time. But

0:28:38.480 --> 0:28:42.320
<v Speaker 1>it's been quite interesting to see publicly this week, so

0:28:42.480 --> 0:28:47.320
<v Speaker 1>many examples of Google's new AI overviews getting information blatantly wrong.

0:28:49.160 --> 0:28:51.280
<v Speaker 2>I want to push back a little bit about the

0:28:51.320 --> 0:28:53.960
<v Speaker 2>control over search that Google has. The reason I asked

0:28:54.000 --> 0:28:58.480
<v Speaker 2>that is it's not been just chat GPT going back

0:28:58.520 --> 0:29:03.000
<v Speaker 2>to twenty twenty. Results have been bad for a long time,

0:29:03.680 --> 0:29:07.680
<v Speaker 2>and it feels that Google is fighting SEO, and SEO

0:29:07.800 --> 0:29:11.600
<v Speaker 2>I realized is a much wider umbrella because there's people

0:29:11.640 --> 0:29:13.680
<v Speaker 2>trying to do the web properly. There's people who were

0:29:13.720 --> 0:29:15.600
<v Speaker 2>just trying to mess with Google, and then there are

0:29:15.680 --> 0:29:18.560
<v Speaker 2>the people who just don't care and are spamming. It's

0:29:18.680 --> 0:29:21.479
<v Speaker 2>just it doesn't feel like they're able to make quick changes,

0:29:21.520 --> 0:29:24.400
<v Speaker 2>and I just don't understand it. It drives me insane, honestly.

0:29:24.560 --> 0:29:26.280
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Well, well, one of the other things that I

0:29:26.320 --> 0:29:29.000
<v Speaker 1>didn't mention that's been a big change to the quality

0:29:29.000 --> 0:29:30.560
<v Speaker 1>of search results, and one of the big complaints that

0:29:30.600 --> 0:29:35.440
<v Speaker 1>people are having is a lot of big sites with

0:29:36.000 --> 0:29:38.640
<v Speaker 1>a lot of authority on Google a lot of SEO history,

0:29:38.880 --> 0:29:41.160
<v Speaker 1>A lot of the big publishers that we all know,

0:29:41.400 --> 0:29:44.160
<v Speaker 1>you know, big brands that everybody's familiar with, found a

0:29:44.200 --> 0:29:46.520
<v Speaker 1>lot of SEO opportunities in the last couple of years

0:29:46.560 --> 0:29:49.800
<v Speaker 1>that have worked splendidly for them. So, for example, affiliate content.

0:29:50.320 --> 0:29:53.320
<v Speaker 1>You might have noticed that nearly every big publisher on

0:29:53.360 --> 0:29:56.000
<v Speaker 1>the Internet has ventured into product reviews in the last

0:29:56.040 --> 0:29:59.000
<v Speaker 1>couple of years, and that's because it's a huge money maker.

0:29:59.040 --> 0:30:00.959
<v Speaker 1>So one of the big complaints that people have is like,

0:30:01.360 --> 0:30:04.320
<v Speaker 1>it's not fair that X, y Z big publisher shows

0:30:04.400 --> 0:30:07.320
<v Speaker 1>up every time I'm typing best running shoes for women

0:30:07.400 --> 0:30:09.760
<v Speaker 1>or whatever the keyword is, and believe it or not,

0:30:10.560 --> 0:30:12.360
<v Speaker 1>you know this. I think this has been one of

0:30:12.400 --> 0:30:14.640
<v Speaker 1>the biggest complaints that people have had. But in the

0:30:14.680 --> 0:30:18.600
<v Speaker 1>last two or three months, Google is cracking down on

0:30:18.640 --> 0:30:20.440
<v Speaker 1>that in a very big way. I think it's just

0:30:20.480 --> 0:30:23.680
<v Speaker 1>taking them a long time to figure out specifically how

0:30:23.680 --> 0:30:24.200
<v Speaker 1>to target that.

0:30:25.360 --> 0:30:27.200
<v Speaker 2>Why do you think it takes them so long? They're

0:30:27.200 --> 0:30:31.000
<v Speaker 2>worth like two trillion, they surely they have the people.

0:30:31.440 --> 0:30:34.320
<v Speaker 1>I wonder the same things myself. Sometimes I'm not a

0:30:34.560 --> 0:30:37.480
<v Speaker 1>search ranking engineer, so I don't know why I also,

0:30:37.840 --> 0:30:39.320
<v Speaker 1>I think you know better than I do what's going

0:30:39.360 --> 0:30:42.240
<v Speaker 1>on internally at their company right now. I think there's

0:30:42.240 --> 0:30:45.160
<v Speaker 1>a lot of a lot of kind of pandemonium in

0:30:45.200 --> 0:30:47.280
<v Speaker 1>different ways. I don't know, but it seems that way.

0:30:47.920 --> 0:30:50.840
<v Speaker 2>But that being yeah, go on, you go on.

0:30:50.960 --> 0:30:53.600
<v Speaker 1>I was just gonna say, another reason why this is

0:30:53.600 --> 0:30:57.320
<v Speaker 1>so difficult for them to target is because not all

0:30:57.440 --> 0:31:00.800
<v Speaker 1>of this is easy to spot algorithmically. For example, if

0:31:00.800 --> 0:31:04.880
<v Speaker 1>a publisher decides to start working with third party contributors

0:31:05.440 --> 0:31:10.240
<v Speaker 1>who are contributing product review content, those relationships are not

0:31:10.280 --> 0:31:13.440
<v Speaker 1>always entirely clear to a point where an algorithm wouldn't

0:31:13.480 --> 0:31:17.480
<v Speaker 1>necessarily be able to figure that out. So Google has

0:31:17.520 --> 0:31:20.360
<v Speaker 1>to use a variety of different methods to demote that

0:31:20.480 --> 0:31:24.560
<v Speaker 1>content and learn about those business relationships, and you can't

0:31:24.560 --> 0:31:26.160
<v Speaker 1>just solve that all algorithmically.

0:31:27.360 --> 0:31:28.760
<v Speaker 2>Do you think they want to solve it?

0:31:30.720 --> 0:31:33.000
<v Speaker 1>I would imagine yeah, they want to do it algorithmically

0:31:33.040 --> 0:31:35.080
<v Speaker 1>instead of using their web spam team. But currently they're

0:31:35.120 --> 0:31:37.240
<v Speaker 1>using their web spam teams. So that's real human beings

0:31:37.280 --> 0:31:39.400
<v Speaker 1>that are sending out what they call manual actions or

0:31:39.440 --> 0:31:43.760
<v Speaker 1>penalties to sites that are engaged in different types of

0:31:43.760 --> 0:31:46.240
<v Speaker 1>spam policies, and they've created some new ones recently.

0:31:47.600 --> 0:31:49.840
<v Speaker 2>It just feels like they could I say this not

0:31:49.880 --> 0:31:53.240
<v Speaker 2>as an SEO expert, but it feels like they could

0:31:53.240 --> 0:31:55.760
<v Speaker 2>do very obvious things. They could go and go with

0:31:56.200 --> 0:31:59.280
<v Speaker 2>dot Meredith, who has the met who you read, Hello

0:31:59.560 --> 0:32:02.680
<v Speaker 2>House Read is whole thing around how Meredith has been

0:32:02.720 --> 0:32:06.960
<v Speaker 2>basically spamming affiliate marketing content that's not particularly well done,

0:32:07.080 --> 0:32:09.360
<v Speaker 2>and you've written about this as well. It feels that

0:32:09.400 --> 0:32:13.120
<v Speaker 2>they could just do something to them immediately that why

0:32:13.120 --> 0:32:16.280
<v Speaker 2>don't they take these fast actions because it doesn't seem

0:32:16.280 --> 0:32:17.360
<v Speaker 2>like they're doing much anyway.

0:32:17.800 --> 0:32:20.840
<v Speaker 1>Well, a lot of these publishers have content that a

0:32:20.880 --> 0:32:23.440
<v Speaker 1>lot of people really love, and you know, Google has

0:32:23.480 --> 0:32:27.800
<v Speaker 1>a lot of signals that indicate that these are, you know,

0:32:27.960 --> 0:32:30.760
<v Speaker 1>sites that produce extremely helpful content in a lot of

0:32:30.760 --> 0:32:34.400
<v Speaker 1>different categories. So it's not so easy to say this

0:32:34.480 --> 0:32:37.000
<v Speaker 1>category of the website is not okay by users, but

0:32:37.080 --> 0:32:39.760
<v Speaker 1>this one is. You know, it starts to become tricky

0:32:39.800 --> 0:32:42.280
<v Speaker 1>when they have to go after certain sections of a website.

0:32:42.480 --> 0:32:44.200
<v Speaker 1>You know, a lot of times with sites that are

0:32:44.200 --> 0:32:46.240
<v Speaker 1>just doing pure spam, it'll be the whole site that's

0:32:47.000 --> 0:32:50.120
<v Speaker 1>doing spam. But these are obviously not to mention these

0:32:50.120 --> 0:32:54.120
<v Speaker 1>are very very big brands. You can't you can't remove

0:32:54.360 --> 0:32:56.520
<v Speaker 1>a site from Google or demote a site from Google,

0:32:56.520 --> 0:32:58.400
<v Speaker 1>for if it's a brand that people are looking for

0:32:58.440 --> 0:33:01.240
<v Speaker 1>and a brand that people would expect to see, right,

0:33:01.320 --> 0:33:04.080
<v Speaker 1>because that may mean you can sort.

0:33:03.840 --> 0:33:06.920
<v Speaker 2>Of well, it's kind of I think what I'm what

0:33:06.960 --> 0:33:09.360
<v Speaker 2>I'm getting at is what they judge is good for

0:33:09.440 --> 0:33:12.720
<v Speaker 2>the Internet doesn't necessarily seem so because there's a self

0:33:12.720 --> 0:33:15.800
<v Speaker 2>fulfilling prophecy there there is, Oh, this is popular with

0:33:15.800 --> 0:33:18.120
<v Speaker 2>a bunch of people. Well maybe it's popular because Google

0:33:18.120 --> 0:33:21.640
<v Speaker 2>made it popular. Maybe it's not. Actually it's just an

0:33:21.680 --> 0:33:25.520
<v Speaker 2>algorithmic choice. But I'll get I'll get onto something a

0:33:25.560 --> 0:33:29.240
<v Speaker 2>little more direct, which is, how do you feel about AI.

0:33:29.080 --> 0:33:32.440
<v Speaker 1>Search, like Google's new AI overviews?

0:33:32.800 --> 0:33:36.240
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, sge Yes, that's generative experience.

0:33:36.960 --> 0:33:40.080
<v Speaker 1>It's like, obviously we're in a big transition moment where

0:33:40.200 --> 0:33:42.640
<v Speaker 1>you know, speaking about it now is not reflective of

0:33:42.640 --> 0:33:44.280
<v Speaker 1>what it's going to look like in six months. So

0:33:44.280 --> 0:33:47.280
<v Speaker 1>I always want to be cognizant of like this thing

0:33:47.400 --> 0:33:50.440
<v Speaker 1>changes every single day. My biggest issue with it, so

0:33:50.440 --> 0:33:52.800
<v Speaker 1>first of all, Google made it public, you know, a

0:33:52.840 --> 0:33:56.440
<v Speaker 1>week ago, at Google Io, and myself and many others

0:33:56.480 --> 0:33:58.640
<v Speaker 1>have been experimenting with it in Google Labs for a

0:33:58.720 --> 0:34:02.240
<v Speaker 1>year before that, and in theory, you know, with AI,

0:34:02.400 --> 0:34:05.920
<v Speaker 1>it should be improving and learning and getting better every day, right.

0:34:07.080 --> 0:34:10.800
<v Speaker 1>For a year, myself and many others were raising flags

0:34:10.800 --> 0:34:13.440
<v Speaker 1>about quality issues and also the fact that we just

0:34:13.480 --> 0:34:16.080
<v Speaker 1>didn't feel like it often provided that much of an

0:34:16.080 --> 0:34:19.080
<v Speaker 1>improvement to the existing search results. For example, Google already

0:34:19.120 --> 0:34:21.560
<v Speaker 1>had featured snippets, so if they want to take a

0:34:23.440 --> 0:34:26.080
<v Speaker 1>paragraph or a snippet from somebody's website and display that

0:34:26.120 --> 0:34:28.520
<v Speaker 1>directly in the search results, there was already a mechanism

0:34:28.560 --> 0:34:32.000
<v Speaker 1>for that. So for the past year, you know, I've

0:34:32.080 --> 0:34:35.040
<v Speaker 1>raised a million different examples of when it got things wrong.

0:34:35.160 --> 0:34:37.680
<v Speaker 1>When I think it was, you know, responding to some

0:34:37.719 --> 0:34:40.480
<v Speaker 1>type of super controversial question in a weird way, whatever

0:34:40.520 --> 0:34:43.600
<v Speaker 1>it was. And when they launched it, you know, literally

0:34:43.680 --> 0:34:45.160
<v Speaker 1>I can tell you because I spent my whole life

0:34:45.160 --> 0:34:47.759
<v Speaker 1>at SEO conferences. Most of us were like, there's no

0:34:47.840 --> 0:34:49.680
<v Speaker 1>way they can launch this thing in its current form,

0:34:49.840 --> 0:34:53.319
<v Speaker 1>like it's just so not ready, right, And they did,

0:34:53.760 --> 0:34:57.040
<v Speaker 1>And here we are a week later, and nearly every

0:34:57.160 --> 0:34:59.320
<v Speaker 1>you know, social media site has tons of examples of

0:34:59.360 --> 0:35:02.120
<v Speaker 1>people wanting to it off, the tons of examples of

0:35:02.200 --> 0:35:04.960
<v Speaker 1>it getting things wrong. So you know, I want to

0:35:05.000 --> 0:35:07.200
<v Speaker 1>be cognizant and respectful the fact that it will change,

0:35:07.239 --> 0:35:09.480
<v Speaker 1>it will get better. I'm just quite surprised that they

0:35:09.520 --> 0:35:11.440
<v Speaker 1>launched it in its current form when they did.

0:35:13.000 --> 0:35:15.719
<v Speaker 2>One last question And don't take this the wrong way,

0:35:15.719 --> 0:35:19.680
<v Speaker 2>but why do you think they'll improve, because the last

0:35:19.680 --> 0:35:22.320
<v Speaker 2>few years have shown that they've got worse.

0:35:23.960 --> 0:35:28.360
<v Speaker 1>Well, in theory, these AI lm should learn and improve

0:35:28.360 --> 0:35:31.360
<v Speaker 1>and get better and get retrained all the time. I'm

0:35:31.400 --> 0:35:35.359
<v Speaker 1>going off with that optimistic idea. But at the same time,

0:35:35.400 --> 0:35:38.399
<v Speaker 1>it's like we're doing, you know, offloading this work onto

0:35:38.440 --> 0:35:40.960
<v Speaker 1>Google searchers and relying on them to provide feedback and

0:35:41.000 --> 0:35:43.319
<v Speaker 1>everything is I guess it doesn't necessarily mean it's going

0:35:43.360 --> 0:35:45.399
<v Speaker 1>to go in the right direction. So it's a good point.

0:35:45.440 --> 0:35:46.040
<v Speaker 1>It's hard to say.

0:35:47.040 --> 0:35:50.040
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's just it feels almost like the AI side

0:35:50.120 --> 0:35:52.040
<v Speaker 2>is getting away from what search is meant to do,

0:35:52.320 --> 0:35:55.480
<v Speaker 2>because search is meant to help you find useful things,

0:35:55.760 --> 0:35:58.280
<v Speaker 2>and this doesn't even seem to be capable of helping

0:35:58.320 --> 0:36:01.040
<v Speaker 2>you find the right answer, let alone a good link.

0:36:01.360 --> 0:36:04.400
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I think The main issue that I currently have

0:36:04.480 --> 0:36:06.600
<v Speaker 1>with it is that once I know that it's twenty

0:36:06.760 --> 0:36:08.840
<v Speaker 1>or ten percent wrong or whatever whatever the number is,

0:36:08.880 --> 0:36:12.680
<v Speaker 1>we don't know the actual percentage of wrong answers. You know,

0:36:13.120 --> 0:36:15.120
<v Speaker 1>based on how many we've already seen in the last week,

0:36:15.160 --> 0:36:19.279
<v Speaker 1>it's quite a lot. So when people know that this

0:36:19.400 --> 0:36:23.680
<v Speaker 1>thing has a tendency to be wrong, will they trust it? Right?

0:36:23.760 --> 0:36:26.080
<v Speaker 1>And what does that do for trust and Google overall?

0:36:26.200 --> 0:36:28.520
<v Speaker 1>Because with featured snippets, at least you can say, Okay,

0:36:28.560 --> 0:36:30.760
<v Speaker 1>this comes from this website, you can blame that website

0:36:30.960 --> 0:36:33.600
<v Speaker 1>because they pull that data verbatim. When they're showing a

0:36:33.640 --> 0:36:35.000
<v Speaker 1>featured snippet with.

0:36:35.040 --> 0:36:35.760
<v Speaker 2>Air or reviews.

0:36:35.800 --> 0:36:38.240
<v Speaker 1>It's like there's a tendency that one of these sentences

0:36:38.320 --> 0:36:40.520
<v Speaker 1>is completely wrong, and it's pulled from an eleven year

0:36:40.520 --> 0:36:42.840
<v Speaker 1>old Breddit threat that was making a joke, and we

0:36:42.920 --> 0:36:44.680
<v Speaker 1>just don't know which sentence it is right.

0:36:46.239 --> 0:36:50.560
<v Speaker 2>Right. It just it feels like they're almost moving against

0:36:50.560 --> 0:36:53.600
<v Speaker 2>the Internet. It's just a very very depressing thing to watch.

0:36:53.800 --> 0:36:56.799
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I agree. I mean I think I would have

0:36:56.880 --> 0:37:01.680
<v Speaker 1>expected this thing to be more fact, more evidence based

0:37:02.480 --> 0:37:04.560
<v Speaker 1>in its rollout. I would have expected it to show

0:37:04.600 --> 0:37:09.719
<v Speaker 1>for far fewer queries where getting things wrong is extremely dangerous.

0:37:11.840 --> 0:37:14.480
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, I mean, I like, our industry now is

0:37:14.520 --> 0:37:17.200
<v Speaker 1>digging into the data and we're finding that it seems

0:37:17.239 --> 0:37:19.640
<v Speaker 1>like health is actually one of the categories where AI

0:37:19.680 --> 0:37:22.600
<v Speaker 1>already is triggered the most health topics.

0:37:22.760 --> 0:37:27.799
<v Speaker 2>That's genuinely scary. But okay, actual lost question here, What

0:37:27.960 --> 0:37:30.440
<v Speaker 2>is the thing that Google could change to get better?

0:37:32.400 --> 0:37:37.080
<v Speaker 1>Huh? I mean, I would imagine they're they're working on

0:37:37.160 --> 0:37:38.480
<v Speaker 1>a lot of the feedback that they've gotten in the

0:37:38.560 --> 0:37:40.480
<v Speaker 1>last week with the AI over reviews and finding a

0:37:40.480 --> 0:37:43.319
<v Speaker 1>lot of examples where it gets things wrong. And if

0:37:43.360 --> 0:37:46.439
<v Speaker 1>they're going to continue with aio reviews, I would hope

0:37:46.440 --> 0:37:48.880
<v Speaker 1>that they dramatically improve the product as quickly as possible.

0:37:50.760 --> 0:37:52.440
<v Speaker 1>That's on the AI front. I mean, if if you

0:37:52.440 --> 0:37:53.239
<v Speaker 1>want to be if you want to.

0:37:53.320 --> 0:37:57.000
<v Speaker 2>Completely in general with search, Yeah, with.

0:37:56.680 --> 0:38:08.240
<v Speaker 1>With search, I think that they should reassess this notion

0:38:08.360 --> 0:38:14.000
<v Speaker 1>of helpful content because I think that they've inadvertently caused

0:38:14.160 --> 0:38:17.480
<v Speaker 1>a lot of sites that are truly producing helpful, experience

0:38:17.560 --> 0:38:19.520
<v Speaker 1>driven content to lose a lot of visibility in the

0:38:19.600 --> 0:38:23.480
<v Speaker 1>last year or so, and a lot of like you know,

0:38:23.520 --> 0:38:26.360
<v Speaker 1>we're still seeing a lot of big brands seemingly able

0:38:26.400 --> 0:38:28.640
<v Speaker 1>to show up for every possible query, and we're not

0:38:28.719 --> 0:38:32.200
<v Speaker 1>hearing enough from small publishers. We're not giving small publishers

0:38:32.440 --> 0:38:35.600
<v Speaker 1>enough of a chance for their content to compete, and

0:38:35.640 --> 0:38:37.640
<v Speaker 1>they're kind of At this point, Google's just seems to

0:38:37.640 --> 0:38:40.480
<v Speaker 1>be blasting Reddit everywhere for everything, maybe as a solution

0:38:40.600 --> 0:38:43.000
<v Speaker 1>to that, because yeah, you get a lot of firsthand

0:38:43.000 --> 0:38:45.280
<v Speaker 1>experience from Reddit, but I'm not sure that putting Reddit

0:38:45.520 --> 0:38:47.799
<v Speaker 1>in top positions for so many different queries is a

0:38:47.800 --> 0:38:51.560
<v Speaker 1>solution either. So personally, I'd like to see a broader

0:38:51.600 --> 0:39:04.680
<v Speaker 1>diversity of the types of websites that are able to compete.

0:39:05.760 --> 0:39:08.359
<v Speaker 2>The problem, it seems, is that this multi trillion dollar

0:39:08.400 --> 0:39:11.760
<v Speaker 2>tech company, one that has a monopoly over the Internet's information,

0:39:12.120 --> 0:39:14.480
<v Speaker 2>is somehow we can we can power us when faced

0:39:14.480 --> 0:39:18.240
<v Speaker 2>with people that create websites specifically to trick it, Google,

0:39:18.280 --> 0:39:21.560
<v Speaker 2>a company that sells to militaries and governments and professional

0:39:21.600 --> 0:39:24.719
<v Speaker 2>sports leagues that makes tens of billions of dollars a

0:39:24.800 --> 0:39:28.359
<v Speaker 2>quarter and employs nearly two hundred thousand people, is incapable

0:39:28.480 --> 0:39:32.040
<v Speaker 2>of thwarting a hodgepodge industry full of nakedly craven bad actors,

0:39:32.960 --> 0:39:35.960
<v Speaker 2>or they just un willing to intervene because it Google

0:39:35.960 --> 0:39:38.720
<v Speaker 2>doesn't really care about anything other than how many times

0:39:38.719 --> 0:39:42.239
<v Speaker 2>people search and how many ads they see, And they

0:39:42.239 --> 0:39:45.600
<v Speaker 2>don't really mind if maybe this big mess of crap

0:39:45.880 --> 0:39:50.000
<v Speaker 2>makes the whole thing worse. This problem, it's been going

0:39:50.040 --> 0:39:53.279
<v Speaker 2>on for years, and I feel crazy every time I

0:39:53.360 --> 0:39:55.440
<v Speaker 2>talk about Google Search as a product and has a

0:39:55.480 --> 0:39:59.839
<v Speaker 2>business that's such an incredibly profitable and ubiquitous product can

0:39:59.880 --> 0:40:03.200
<v Speaker 2>be it's so utterly shoddy and regularly unfit for the task,

0:40:03.560 --> 0:40:06.440
<v Speaker 2>I feel insane. I feel crazy when I see article

0:40:06.480 --> 0:40:10.200
<v Speaker 2>after article about Sandhar Pushai and Google talking about the

0:40:10.239 --> 0:40:13.959
<v Speaker 2>remarkable success of Google, yet never the fact that they've

0:40:14.000 --> 0:40:18.640
<v Speaker 2>done so much to damage this search engine, and they've

0:40:18.640 --> 0:40:23.240
<v Speaker 2>so blatantly destroyed their core product. And what really upsets

0:40:23.280 --> 0:40:27.080
<v Speaker 2>me is the sheer contempt that Google seems to have

0:40:27.200 --> 0:40:31.840
<v Speaker 2>for its customers. Google Search is awful. It's a terrible,

0:40:31.960 --> 0:40:35.960
<v Speaker 2>unreliable product, and now they've made it even less reliable

0:40:36.120 --> 0:40:40.279
<v Speaker 2>with the introduction of Generatifai. And yet sun Dar Pushai,

0:40:40.400 --> 0:40:44.360
<v Speaker 2>the CEO of Google, can stride into interviews all piss

0:40:44.360 --> 0:40:48.040
<v Speaker 2>and vinegar and ramble about how evalues independent sources and

0:40:48.080 --> 0:40:51.680
<v Speaker 2>more authentic voices as his service continually fails the surface

0:40:51.800 --> 0:40:56.080
<v Speaker 2>unique interesting or useful content. Nil Patel of The Verge

0:40:56.120 --> 0:40:58.960
<v Speaker 2>got a lot of credit for giving Peshai a tough interview,

0:40:59.080 --> 0:41:02.600
<v Speaker 2>but I'm gonna be bloody honest, paper Tiger. It's just

0:41:02.640 --> 0:41:05.800
<v Speaker 2>another opportunity for a Google executive to vaguely suggest that

0:41:05.840 --> 0:41:08.880
<v Speaker 2>they care about search without really being held accountable. The

0:41:09.000 --> 0:41:12.560
<v Speaker 2>question is, sun Dar, why is Google so bad? Now?

0:41:12.640 --> 0:41:15.839
<v Speaker 2>And he will give you some vague pr spiel. Show

0:41:15.920 --> 0:41:19.040
<v Speaker 2>him results. Nille did show him Chromebook results. The thing

0:41:19.080 --> 0:41:21.080
<v Speaker 2>to do would be come with a few results and

0:41:21.160 --> 0:41:23.279
<v Speaker 2>show him in front of him and say why is

0:41:23.320 --> 0:41:27.359
<v Speaker 2>this so bad? Why? Sun Dar? And if you can

0:41:27.400 --> 0:41:29.560
<v Speaker 2>get him to say on the record, actually, I think

0:41:29.600 --> 0:41:33.279
<v Speaker 2>it's good. That says everything. What it says is he's

0:41:33.280 --> 0:41:35.439
<v Speaker 2>a liar and he doesn't really care. But I guess

0:41:35.480 --> 0:41:39.680
<v Speaker 2>the interview did that anyway. Look, the problem, other than

0:41:39.760 --> 0:41:41.600
<v Speaker 2>the fact that Google should be broken up and that

0:41:41.680 --> 0:41:44.560
<v Speaker 2>search should be a public utility or a nonprofit, is

0:41:44.560 --> 0:41:46.960
<v Speaker 2>that the media seems to continually lack the ability to

0:41:46.960 --> 0:41:49.839
<v Speaker 2>simplify the problem. Google Search is bad, and it's been

0:41:49.920 --> 0:41:52.520
<v Speaker 2>bad for a while. Results are worse. They're full of

0:41:52.560 --> 0:41:55.480
<v Speaker 2>spam and low quality content. Google does a terrible job

0:41:55.480 --> 0:41:58.160
<v Speaker 2>of maintaining the content on Google Search, and it's now

0:41:58.200 --> 0:42:02.000
<v Speaker 2>introduced an AI to search through these results. That makes

0:42:02.040 --> 0:42:04.920
<v Speaker 2>things worse by generating answers based on search results from

0:42:04.920 --> 0:42:08.279
<v Speaker 2>a search engine that's rotting in real time, and then

0:42:08.320 --> 0:42:14.279
<v Speaker 2>it hallucinates the results. Anyway, Eh God, I apologize them

0:42:14.360 --> 0:42:17.040
<v Speaker 2>getting a little bit head up, but this whole thing

0:42:17.239 --> 0:42:20.319
<v Speaker 2>just it kills me. It makes me feel a little

0:42:20.360 --> 0:42:24.040
<v Speaker 2>bit nuts because if any of us, anyone listening to this,

0:42:24.120 --> 0:42:26.239
<v Speaker 2>went into our jobs and our trousers were down and

0:42:26.280 --> 0:42:28.920
<v Speaker 2>our our bits were out, and we were walking in,

0:42:28.960 --> 0:42:30.719
<v Speaker 2>and we go in and we half do our job

0:42:30.760 --> 0:42:34.000
<v Speaker 2>and the job's terribly done, would we get fired? We

0:42:34.160 --> 0:42:36.799
<v Speaker 2>get fired. I think we'd get fired, maybe if the

0:42:36.840 --> 0:42:39.040
<v Speaker 2>crap work we did made money, but we'd still be

0:42:39.080 --> 0:42:41.759
<v Speaker 2>in trouble for our willies hanging out. And that's the thing.

0:42:42.880 --> 0:42:45.520
<v Speaker 2>None of these tech executives, even when faced with the media,

0:42:45.600 --> 0:42:49.880
<v Speaker 2>seemed to actually be held accountable. And Google acts without integrity,

0:42:50.000 --> 0:42:53.440
<v Speaker 2>and they just act with this stunning contempt for their customers.

0:42:53.560 --> 0:42:56.680
<v Speaker 2>I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Suned up

0:42:56.719 --> 0:42:59.760
<v Speaker 2>a shite is a goddamn management concern, a former McKinsey

0:42:59.800 --> 0:43:03.080
<v Speaker 2>free with little interest in providing users with any kind

0:43:03.120 --> 0:43:06.760
<v Speaker 2>of usable service, and his cronies people like Probagara, Ragavan

0:43:06.840 --> 0:43:10.520
<v Speaker 2>and Liz Read. By the way, Probagara has been upgraded

0:43:10.520 --> 0:43:12.600
<v Speaker 2>to head of a bunch of things now and Liz

0:43:12.640 --> 0:43:14.640
<v Speaker 2>Read is now the head of Search. It's so good

0:43:14.719 --> 0:43:17.000
<v Speaker 2>he picked his successor, and it's so good that this

0:43:17.040 --> 0:43:20.880
<v Speaker 2>person loves Ai. And these people they've continually helped Google

0:43:20.880 --> 0:43:24.840
<v Speaker 2>put out bad software, all in pursuit of perpetual growth.

0:43:26.360 --> 0:43:29.120
<v Speaker 2>And I believe they're part of a larger problem in

0:43:29.160 --> 0:43:32.760
<v Speaker 2>the tech industry. Tech firms are no longer building things

0:43:32.800 --> 0:43:36.520
<v Speaker 2>for customers. Big tech and honestly, far too many startups.

0:43:36.680 --> 0:43:39.920
<v Speaker 2>They're creating these products that are more like symbolic capital

0:43:39.920 --> 0:43:42.239
<v Speaker 2>for investors so that they can place bets on them

0:43:42.239 --> 0:43:46.120
<v Speaker 2>and say, ah, maybe red war here, no, maybe black

0:43:46.120 --> 0:43:49.319
<v Speaker 2>this time, maybe double zero, And these things they only

0:43:49.360 --> 0:43:52.520
<v Speaker 2>exist to express meteoric growth ten x, twenty x, thirty

0:43:52.640 --> 0:43:56.000
<v Speaker 2>x returns things that sound satisfying for people to chirp

0:43:56.000 --> 0:44:00.280
<v Speaker 2>on CNBC without ever actually really having to provide the service.

0:44:00.280 --> 0:44:05.800
<v Speaker 2>They're discussing I'm not to be honest, it's breaking my arm.

0:44:06.040 --> 0:44:08.560
<v Speaker 2>As I said in my last episode, I'm not a pessimist.

0:44:09.000 --> 0:44:12.600
<v Speaker 2>I'm more of a broken heared romantic. There was a time,

0:44:12.680 --> 0:44:15.680
<v Speaker 2>and it wasn't super long ago, that tech was exciting

0:44:15.719 --> 0:44:18.160
<v Speaker 2>and fun and interesting. When things came out that subtly

0:44:18.239 --> 0:44:21.080
<v Speaker 2>or revertedly, they changed our lives, They made things better,

0:44:21.120 --> 0:44:23.680
<v Speaker 2>they maybe connected us, or they made our time on

0:44:23.719 --> 0:44:27.200
<v Speaker 2>our own better and more substantive, and things felt like

0:44:27.239 --> 0:44:30.520
<v Speaker 2>they were progressing. Yet it feels like so much of

0:44:30.560 --> 0:44:33.960
<v Speaker 2>today's tech industry is focused on shipping products that nobody

0:44:33.960 --> 0:44:37.319
<v Speaker 2>asked for to fix problems that don't exist, all while

0:44:37.360 --> 0:44:39.920
<v Speaker 2>demanding applause for a future that they've yet to make

0:44:39.960 --> 0:44:44.640
<v Speaker 2>a reality. Cryptocurrency, the metaverse, now generative AI. They're all

0:44:44.680 --> 0:44:47.640
<v Speaker 2>trends that built this kind of pseudo religious movement to

0:44:47.680 --> 0:44:49.799
<v Speaker 2>carry water for products that didn't do what they said.

0:44:49.840 --> 0:44:52.600
<v Speaker 2>They would guilt tripping those that said otherwise for not

0:44:52.640 --> 0:44:56.560
<v Speaker 2>being optimistic enough about an industry there's continually failed to

0:44:56.600 --> 0:45:01.600
<v Speaker 2>give us hope for the future, and it's disgraceful. It's disgraceful.

0:45:01.920 --> 0:45:05.880
<v Speaker 2>Look at Facebook from my last episodes. Look at that website,

0:45:06.239 --> 0:45:09.920
<v Speaker 2>that multi billion dollar website. Look how bad it is.

0:45:09.960 --> 0:45:12.840
<v Speaker 2>Look how full it's of AI, spam and junk it is.

0:45:12.920 --> 0:45:15.760
<v Speaker 2>Look how unsafe it is. Look at Google right now.

0:45:16.480 --> 0:45:19.879
<v Speaker 2>Google Search is falling. Apart of the seams. It kind

0:45:19.880 --> 0:45:22.360
<v Speaker 2>of works and sometimes it does, don't get me wrong,

0:45:22.640 --> 0:45:25.120
<v Speaker 2>but for the most part you just can't trust it

0:45:25.160 --> 0:45:27.799
<v Speaker 2>any more. And that was before they plugged generative AI

0:45:27.920 --> 0:45:31.960
<v Speaker 2>into it. Now the world's probably the world's most profitable

0:45:32.000 --> 0:45:35.759
<v Speaker 2>tech product is just languishing. It's so much worse. And

0:45:35.760 --> 0:45:38.120
<v Speaker 2>what's crazy is I don't even know how they're gonna

0:45:38.120 --> 0:45:40.960
<v Speaker 2>make money from it because these AI results they don't

0:45:41.000 --> 0:45:43.640
<v Speaker 2>seem to connect to ads or anything. They don't seem

0:45:43.680 --> 0:45:46.400
<v Speaker 2>to make Google money. But because Sandha Peshei needs to

0:45:46.440 --> 0:45:50.719
<v Speaker 2>convince Wall Street that Google will grow forever, well, you

0:45:50.800 --> 0:45:53.000
<v Speaker 2>gotta put AI in it, man, You gotta make the

0:45:53.040 --> 0:45:58.040
<v Speaker 2>AI happen. Except regular people using this, they're gonna get misinformed.

0:45:58.200 --> 0:46:01.719
<v Speaker 2>Someone's gonna die. And I really sound dramatic, I know,

0:46:01.960 --> 0:46:05.239
<v Speaker 2>but they are because people use Google Search and rely

0:46:05.360 --> 0:46:07.799
<v Speaker 2>on Google Search. They rely on Google Search to give

0:46:07.800 --> 0:46:10.960
<v Speaker 2>them real answers to real queries. And we can laugh

0:46:10.960 --> 0:46:12.640
<v Speaker 2>about the fact it said that someone had to eat

0:46:12.680 --> 0:46:14.440
<v Speaker 2>a rock a day. But what if they're trying to

0:46:14.440 --> 0:46:17.480
<v Speaker 2>put out a chemical fire. What if they're depressed then

0:46:17.520 --> 0:46:20.960
<v Speaker 2>they ask Google something and Google tells them, I don't know,

0:46:22.000 --> 0:46:25.760
<v Speaker 2>some sort of weird CBD treatment because Google got poisoned

0:46:25.760 --> 0:46:27.879
<v Speaker 2>by an AI spam result. There is, by the way,

0:46:27.880 --> 0:46:30.040
<v Speaker 2>a fake result about Google telling someone to jump off

0:46:30.040 --> 0:46:32.160
<v Speaker 2>the gong Gate Bridge. It's very fake, done for for it.

0:46:33.120 --> 0:46:36.919
<v Speaker 2>But seriously, though, something like that's going to happen. And yeah,

0:46:36.960 --> 0:46:39.400
<v Speaker 2>I'm sure someone will say, oh, it's just an edge case.

0:46:39.760 --> 0:46:42.040
<v Speaker 2>I don't give a crap an edge case where someone

0:46:42.120 --> 0:46:46.760
<v Speaker 2>dies or is harmed or is misinformed. That's not worth it.

0:46:46.760 --> 0:46:51.319
<v Speaker 2>It's not worth it. And these companies must learn. And

0:46:51.360 --> 0:46:54.080
<v Speaker 2>I think what's going to happen is far simpler. I

0:46:54.080 --> 0:46:56.000
<v Speaker 2>think they believe that people are just going to keep

0:46:56.120 --> 0:46:59.000
<v Speaker 2>using it because they have these horrible monopolies. I think

0:46:59.080 --> 0:47:01.480
<v Speaker 2>at some point people are just not going to use

0:47:01.520 --> 0:47:04.960
<v Speaker 2>search at all. I think that is the actual end

0:47:05.040 --> 0:47:08.400
<v Speaker 2>result here. I think you see open AI create search

0:47:08.440 --> 0:47:11.640
<v Speaker 2>engine and it kind of is worse than this. I

0:47:11.640 --> 0:47:13.719
<v Speaker 2>think you're going to see a proliferation of this tech

0:47:13.960 --> 0:47:17.080
<v Speaker 2>as people desperately try and catch up with Google and

0:47:17.120 --> 0:47:21.480
<v Speaker 2>it's so distressing, it's so insulting to customers, turns my

0:47:21.520 --> 0:47:26.320
<v Speaker 2>bloody stomach. I realized this wasn't a very positive podcast,

0:47:26.360 --> 0:47:29.439
<v Speaker 2>but hope it filled in the gaps for you. Thanks

0:47:29.480 --> 0:47:39.960
<v Speaker 2>for listening, Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The

0:47:40.080 --> 0:47:43.320
<v Speaker 2>editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Metasowski.

0:47:43.600 --> 0:47:45.440
<v Speaker 2>You can check out more of his music and audio

0:47:45.480 --> 0:47:48.680
<v Speaker 2>projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T.

0:47:48.680 --> 0:47:49.279
<v Speaker 1>T O.

0:47:49.520 --> 0:47:53.759
<v Speaker 2>S O w Ski dot com. You can email me

0:47:53.800 --> 0:47:56.399
<v Speaker 2>at easy at Better Offline dot com or visit Better

0:47:56.440 --> 0:47:58.879
<v Speaker 2>Offline dot com to find more podcast links and of course,

0:47:58.920 --> 0:48:02.040
<v Speaker 2>my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat

0:48:02.040 --> 0:48:04.719
<v Speaker 2>dot Where's youread dot at to visit the discord, and

0:48:04.760 --> 0:48:07.440
<v Speaker 2>go to our slash Better Offline to check out I'll Reddit.

0:48:08.200 --> 0:48:11.480
<v Speaker 2>Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a

0:48:11.480 --> 0:48:14.600
<v Speaker 2>production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media,

0:48:14.719 --> 0:48:18.040
<v Speaker 2>visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out

0:48:18.080 --> 0:48:21.080
<v Speaker 2>on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

0:48:21.080 --> 0:48:22.040
<v Speaker 2>your podcasts.