AI, Search and Travel Creator

Last year, Google rolled out what it called the “helpful content update.” The company felt that many websites were over-optimized for search and not run by real people providing real answers based on first-hand experiences.

Instead, there were too many SEO farms pumping out bad content to generate search and ad revenue. Hence the desire to put “helpful content” (such as online forums like Reddit) at the top of search results. After all, who better to have first-hand experience than someone posting something on a forum? (Or so the logic went.)

If you’ve been using Google since last October, you’ve probably noticed this change.

I think it’s bad. I mean I don’t care about the forum topic from 2013. I don’t want to search for answers through years of comments and replies, many of which are now very old. I think this HCU has made Google results much worse. I recently tried to find a gym in Munich and instead of just listing gyms in MunichI got Reddit threads that were really old.

While I think Google will eventually back down. some These changes (they tend to roll back some changes after seeing people’s reactions) are because many users complain about the quality of the results. However, I think this is the first nail in the coffin for blogs, especially single-site sites that do not have a clear “expert” behind them. (These blogs were among the hardest hit by the update.)

Bloggers have lived and died at the mercy of algorithms throughout history. Whether it’s social media or search engines, we’re at the mercy of these companies. But these recent changes by Google are some of the most extreme I’ve seen in my 16 years on the internet. Our search traffic is down 50% — and I feel like I’ve had an easier time than the people whose websites are empty of content.

Many bloggers have stopped blogging and are now looking for “real” jobs. Only a few seem to have benefited from the new changes, most notably Rick Steves, who has actually seen an increase in traffic to his blog because he has a forum.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve come to believe that the era of blogging is coming to an end. Google has been making changes that push real content down the search results with its ads, embedded widgets, and spam from partner companies at the top of search results. Instead, people are turning to social platforms to find information; for example, Searching on TikTok is very good..

and, As I mentioned in another postWhile AI may not be ready to hit the scene yet, it is on its way. Right now, AI is only providing lists and generic, poor content. I don’t think creators need to worry about AI at all right now.

The biggest problem creatives face is research.

Blogs were the second version of the internet after web forums and Geocities, and now most users are moving to short videos. While I don’t think blogs will ever go away, I don’t think they will ever be the source of information for people that they once were. The changes that Google has made just confirm this to me, because if Google is looking into the future and saying “let’s downgrade this content”, then one of the only remaining visibility tools for blogs is gone.

I think if you are a blogger, you need to know how not to only Become a blogger very quickly. This means that you can still keep your blog going, but you will need to diversify not only how you reach people but also how you make money.

What else could you do? Podcast? Video? Social media? Organize events? Start a forum? (Although running forums is painful and difficult. I wouldn’t do that. I ran a forum for a while and I’m glad we stopped.)

To succeed in this new era, you will need to have a more distinctive brand and personality on social media. You will not be able to create an anonymous website. You will not be able to rely solely on affiliate and advertising revenue.

Even if Google rolls back some of the changes, it will still be clear.

I think these shifts will make a lot of older bloggers (those who have been doing this for 10+ years) move on to other things. For example, my friend Matt from Homeless Expert He now makes 360 degree videos. Bloggers will continue to blog and update as long as the revenue is there. But as the traffic dries up, I suspect that many of the original bloggers will gradually become less and less numerous as they move on to something else or enter a new phase of life as the blogging era comes to an end. (That’s just my theory at least.)

I don’t really know what this means for Google. If people produce less content because they know it won’t matter because it won’t show up in search, what search results will Google have to show? What posts will AI scrape (steal)?

I think people will continue to produce. Travel Stories and TipsBut they will scale back their activity as they focus on other types of content and projects. Blogs will be just one (smaller) piece of the puzzle.

In the future, I think people will still rely on blogs written by creators and people they know, and brand research will be even greater. After all, why search through a bunch of useless forum threads when you can just go to the blogger/creator’s website and see if they have information?

Or maybe you’ll start using Bing and DuckDuckGo more. (We’ve actually seen a 40% increase in traffic from Bing recently.)

Ultimately, I don’t think blogs will go away. They will continue to exist in the same way. There will be guidebooks onUseful, still used, but not as popular as it once was.