Hot take: SEO is dead, content farms are done, almost no one will leave Google/Bing to read more than what it generates.<p>Thank you content writers for your service training LLMs. Here's 10 amazing ways to find a new career in a LLM world.
I don't know if I'm against this. If it means that websites will return to having less noise on their pages so that I get to the information I want faster, I don't care.<p>The way Google shaped SEO meant that many websites have tons of text just to prove that they are the authority.<p>Googling for like a Jerusalem Bug bite risk or Black Widow bite risk makes you end up some local pest control website telling you will get a fever (former) or die (latter) from the bite. Of course, they want to sell you services, so they build their SEO stating that they are the authority. They are not. And this is the problem with the web. There is no authority of information.
The issue is getting people to click on your website, why would any one do that if the entire content is already extracted by the ai, which directly gave it to the user?
All this will do is amplify the rise of paid spam for product promotions.<p>What is the best network monitoring tool? Oh wow, Bard says it is, “NetShark”.<p>I will formulate my own thoughts on this in the next 6 months. If serious damage is about to happen (to SEOs) then I fully expect huge swings in traffic for a lot of sites, which is easy to monitor.<p>Google also said they are rolling out another helpful content update soon. I wonder how much they have integrated LLMs into the search updates for processing text for sentiment and maybe even accuracy.
I'm pretty happy with Kagi's results since they down-rank sites with loads of ads and tracking scripts. It feels like the era for ad-funded information is ending and only paid services will be able to provide a useful noosphere.<p>(this isn't a sponsored comment. I'm just a machinist who likes good search results)
From the article:<p>> "The two areas where we see automated writing tools for SEO purposes having an advantage will be ... 2) <i>generating content that is not watermarked by Google as synthetic content</i>."<p>Wow. They're basically saying that AI tools will lets SEOers generate content that isn't detected as "synthetic content" by Google, even though it clearly is synthetic. It's surprising to see the SEO industry acknowledge this so directly. Whether the generated content is useful or not, I'm now even more ready for the world where 90% of my queries can be answered on search engines directly since it's just cutting out the middleman.
I see mention in the article of content creation. But are search engines working on task-related personal assistants?<p>For one example, If I want to take a holiday, could an assistant work out the best dates (based upon preferences of availability, cost etc), and research the best airfares (excluding that particular airline I hate) and find a hotel room with the features I want, and throw in a few sightseeing activities which appeal to my personal tastes, then summarise it up into a travel itinerary for me to approve. Then, upon approval it proceeds to book (and pay for?) all the things.
Keywords (tokens) <i>are</i> the very basis for LLM but they no longer need to be spoonfed or gamed, they are extracted from the text, so in an objective and naive sense the content becomes ever more of a king.<p>Ofcourse what the search decides to surface to the user and eventually link to is another story altogether. "Learning" from one site and promoting another more lucrative one is entirely possible, if somewhat evil.
Edit: forget about clicks, it's about typeins now.<p>People always said to build a brand. I think today that is most important than ever.<p>I just read documentation pages nowadays. Rarely do I click on a tutorial article.<p>The news, I get from my usual sites. Entertainment, from streaming.<p>And with the flood of AI generated books, this really could be the return of the blog.<p>Long live blogs!
Google results quality should be community tested to deface the monster hidden there. Nowadays most search results in Google are easily identified as a failure.<p>I wonder which results we will obtain when we look for specific recipes with these changes. Or, comparison of hardware.
It's not hard to embed links in the generated answer as demonstrated by Bing Chat. Under the hood, it still uses Bing Search as a first-step filter. So you still want to very much rank high on search results. SEO will not change much in that sense.
Sigmund's nephew would like to have a word with you <a href="https://search.brave.com/search?q=edward+bernays+propaganda" rel="nofollow">https://search.brave.com/search?q=edward+bernays+propaganda</a>
I think we should call it GEO - GPT Engine Optimization. :)<p>Furthermore, the article lack of how to tackle those shifts with depth analysis.
For example: How can one put their info to be presented by a GPT/GPT-plugins.
So if this is coming to proper google.com and the search, what is Google Bard then? I guess it is something like a disguised alpha release in order to gather data?
Oh great, yet another way for Google to return junk pages I didn't ask for because "I think you meant xyz." No I did not. I meant exactly the keywords I asked for you stupid bozo bot.<p>It's already impossible to search for web pages that contain the actual keywords I asked for; it used to be that you could surround your keywords with double-quote marks but that stopped working some time ago.<p>There's a market for a dumb search engine that just finds literal keywords and doesn't use AI. Of course it won't be very useful for selling ads.