#3: AI didn't write this, I promise
Google has enacted months of back-to-back changes that are bamboozling news publishers and recent AI revelations have left the situation even more unclear
No sooner after Facebook accelerated its marginalising of sports publishers (see newsletter #2), Google’s multiple - and I do mean multiple - core updates in September, October and November have sent news site traffic into an even broader state of flux.
What with the spectre of AI hanging over content production and how Google will look to rank this going forward, it’s left some publishers in precarious situations.
But let’s back up a bit.
Where do publishers get Google traffic from?
Google News:
Users accessing the news tab via searching for a particular term. But akin to a large media organisation investing in journalism, it’s very rarely seen these days.
Google Top Stories:
The carousel of news content found at the top of a specific keyword search, which publishers compete to be included in.
This is the moneymaker. It’s where all the big boys hang out. And there’s often suggestions that the big boys deal directly with Google to look the door and keep everyone else out. That’s unverified, but it has definitely become much more difficult to break into Top Stories than it was even 3-5 years ago.
Google Organic Search:
People searching for a specific item, in a news case when a match kicks off, or where could it be watched on TV. This is what you might call the ‘dirty’ side of SEO, shaping content around exactly whatever a user is looking for - even if in some cases it’s only tangentially related to your website.
Google Discover:
Available via Android devices, a curated list of news items based on a user’s specific interests. A complete basket case for publishers, there seems to be little rhyme nor reason as to what, and when, traffic comes via this source.
There are various algorithms at play that operate behind what ranks for each of these specific areas, but it’s generally perceived that they all complement each other in various ways.
Google has run like this pretty consistently for the past few years, making updates to its algorithm a few times every year.
OK, but what’s a Google Core Update?
Google used to publicly update its algorithm twice a year, and quietly make tweaks to it for the rest of it. This usually means some sites are ranked higher, and some are ranked lower. There are multiple signals that Google uses in order to recalibrate its algorithm.
But the run of changes three months in a row is unprecedented, and it has had a seismic impact on how it delivers news, content and e-commerce to the World Wide Web.
Respected SEO experts such as Barry Adams and Lily Ray are monitoring the space and the fallout of what Google has attempted to change, and it’s clear that many publishers have been hit hard.
Drop-offs are marked, and it would appear that, particularly in the news space, Google has done what it does on occasion - reverts to the tried-and-tested publishers that dominate your market. For the UK see the BBC, Sky Sports, the Guardian and other newspaper groups.
So what the hell happened, and what can publishers do about it?
Google impact for publishers
Google will tell you that you just need to keep doing ‘the right things’ but the lines are being blurred over what these things are.
As far as Google is concerned, it’s obvious - be a good boy or girl, eat your greens, and we’ll give you dessert.
Google want you to follow their E-E-A-T guidelines in terms of how authoritative your content is, and you’ll eventually be rewarded with that sweet, sweet traffic.
But there’s copious evidence to suggest it’s not as simple as that. There’s a consensus that domain age - ie, how long your site has been around for - is a massive ranking factor, as well as who is linking to you for what you are producing.
But just this week, an inevitable ghost entered the machine that could explain how Google’s current volatility will likely continue.
Do Editors Dream of Robot Peeps?
On 26 November emerged quite the thread from a supposed SEO expert:
Everyone was pretty clear that AI would dramatically impact the content and publishing industry, but the above is an outright admittance from a seasoned SEO that AI is being used to usurp Google’s content algorithms.
The full thread of what exactly the user is doing can be found here. What is happening may have more of an impact on e-commerce, but in 2023 we’ve got SEO’s openly boasting about how they are using AI writing in order to flood Google and make SEO gains.
Numerous SEOs called out the behaviour as unethical and against the general ethos of SEO. Remember, US publication The Verge produced a piece at the beginning of November entitled ‘the people who ruined the internet’, targeted specifically at those who have made SEO their life work.
This led to a vicious defence of the art of SEO within the community, and so the timing of something like this - a site brazenly admitting stealing traffic and revenue from others using malformed AI content - wasn’t welcome.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
SI.com becomes AI.com
Sports Illustrated, one of the most fabled institutions in American publishing, was caught as part of an expose by Futurism in using AI tools to product commercial content on their platform.
The impact of this incursion, on such a fabled brand, has sent the internet in two camps; those that feel cheated by SI’s actions (trending older), and those that don’t really see the problem (those trending younger).
The fact that it was AI will likely curtail the news approaches of other brands into this space in the short term, even as the technology rapidly improves. It’s just bad PR.
But both of these events are clear lines in the sand. If you thought AI wasn’t ready to form the foundation of content produced in a newsroom, think again.
Tie this all together please, I’m busy!
Well, Google’s frantic tweaking might be a response to the fact that their algorithms simply aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with the influx of AI garbage coming their way.
That could lead to the search engine upping its game in terms of updates, to keep track of a rapidly changing environment. Because at the moment, it would appear that it is slow on the uptake as to how the internet can be flooded by AI.
As the above shows, the number of pages that Google needs to index has exponentially grown. There are multiple factors that feed into this and there are also multiple Google crawlers that determine when and how your website pages are indexed, but more pages is, generally, not a good thing.
2023 has been the year of AI so far courtesy of ChatGPT, and so the capabilities of AI in numerous industries has entered the mainstream. If there are shortcuts to be made in terms of creativity, the tech world will find them. And so AI as a content tool is simply at the point of no return.
But, it’s arguably a surprise that Google might be behind the 8-ball in terms of how it can track this, and that should be a worry for every publisher around.
And it’s happened sooner than some publishers might have been expecting.