Episode 61Sep 27, 2024· 59:27

Renee Groskreutz on the Google Helpful Content Update Fallout

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About this episode

Welcome to another episode of Bloggy Friends. This episode was supposed to go live in June, but then life happened so I fell back on other episodes in the hopper, but now more than ever - since Google appears to be walking back some of their HCU issues that screwed small bloggers, I feel like this episode needs to be out there. This one is UNEDITED so forgive any audio issues or misspoken words. It was just such a…

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Full transcript

00:00

Welcome to the Bloggy Friends show!

00:07

Watch up my bloggy friends, famous Ashley Grant here and I just want to welcome you to the Bloggy Friends show.

00:29

We're so excited to have you join us on this journey of sharing our knowledge and experiences with you.

00:34

Whether you're a blogger, a content creator, or just someone who's interested in learning more about the digital world, we've got something for you.

00:40

So grab your notebook and a pen to take some notes or just sit back and take in all the amazing information and ideas we're about to share with you.

00:46

Let's get into it.

00:48

Yeah, so let's kind of just dive in and tell me a little bit about what it is you do, like what your blog is and how you got started on this crazy blogging journey.

00:59

Loaded question.

01:04

Yeah, I don't even know where to start on that.

01:07

So back in time to when Renee was a baby blogger.

01:11

Well, you know, I've always wanted to be a blogger for a very long time and long before I became a blogger.

01:18

My best friend and I wanted to create art and sell it, but it turned out that I was a really bad painter.

01:29

But we wanted to do all kinds of things.

01:32

Now, this was in adulthood.

01:33

I was probably in my late 20s when that came up, but I still have to say.

01:38

So we started blogs, too.

01:40

We thought we would blog back and forth on Blogspot.

01:44

I think it was and we made art and sold it.

01:49

I am technically an international selling artist, which is so stupid.

01:54

Are we allowed to cuss on here because I absolutely nonstop.

01:58

OK, good.

01:59

I'm fine with that.

02:00

Yeah.

02:01

We'll just put the end if we if we start dropping it.

02:04

You'll need that.

02:05

Yeah.

02:06

But anyway, so that was my first foray into blogging, but then what really happened for me is I joined my my ex business partner, founded a social media company, and I came in early and became a co-owner of that and was one of the first social media companies in Texas.

02:29

And one of the things that we quickly realized, besides the fact that we had no idea what we were doing, but we were five minutes ahead of everyone else.

02:37

So we had a general concept, right?

02:40

That's all you really need.

02:42

It used to be true.

02:43

And so one of the things that we realized early on was that you got to have something to share on social media and just sharing a meme is awesome.

02:55

And you might get a lot of lift, but it doesn't help you sell anything.

02:59

So we quickly discovered that small businesses needed to also blog because they needed content that drove people back to their website because the whole point was to drive, which is still the point of all things, really, when it comes to this conversation, is to drive traffic back to your website, whether it be so that you can make ad revenue or whether you can make money for your business, right?

03:24

For a micro or small local business, because I used to say small business, but I now understand that a small business might be Twitter, you know, because of what small businesses mean.

03:37

I mean, that's an exaggeration, but there are a lot of businesses that are considered small that I would consider to be massive.

03:44

So micro businesses, most local business, if you're an attorney, you own a micro business, right?

03:54

Financially speaking.

03:55

So anyway, I say that because it became an important distinction, but I realized that the clients needed to have blogs to point things back from social media because we couldn't just do social media for them because they didn't have anything to promote.

04:11

Well, whenever I figured all of that out, I fell madly in love with the concept of blogging.

04:17

And in college and in my whole life up until that point, I was a very shy person who never would speak in public.

04:27

I almost didn't, I almost felt speech in college because I never got through a single speech without vomiting, like literally.

04:37

And my, the speech teacher said, listen, I'm going to pass you because you're never going to get through this.

04:43

I really don't think this is something that you can do.

04:46

And it's just not fair for this to hold back your entire life over this one thing.

04:51

Not everybody does well at speaking in public.

04:53

It's just, you know, just not going to be, it's just not for you, but I have empathy.

04:57

So I'm going to pass you.

04:58

Mostly, please stop vomiting in my classroom.

05:02

And so anyway, but once I discovered blogging, you couldn't shut me up.

05:08

It was like this thing happened and I started telling everyone, literally everyone that I, everything I could, I had learned about it.

05:17

And then business, small business owners started coming to the office, be like, can you just talk to me about this?

05:22

And they bring a friend and then they bring a friend.

05:24

And the next thing I knew, I was teaching it at SMU and not typical course.

05:32

What are those free, you know, the continuing ed.

05:36

And so all of that just, and then I was on stages and I was talking about it everywhere.

05:41

But the thing was, I was talking about it from a business perspective, right, for small businesses.

05:48

But I wasn't doing it myself for like to be a blogger.

05:56

Right. So I couldn't, I had created this brand called I teach blogging because I needed something to point because Renee Girl Scroitz was not going to work.

06:06

You know, so I needed somewhere where people could, you know, ask me questions or book me to speak or whatever.

06:12

And so suddenly this whole thing was happening.

06:14

But what I really wanted to do was blog myself, but I needed to transition to a brand new style of blogging.

06:21

So I guess that's how I got here. Is that a good answer?

06:24

That's a fantastic answer.

06:26

And it kind of, it kind of makes me think of my own blogging journey because, you know, I started in media.

06:33

I was in the world of media. I was working in journalism magazines.

06:37

And then like my very first published piece was in the USF Oracle. And then I had my first paid piece in the Tampa Bay Times, like their little, they call it like a rag, like a like a tabloid almost, if you will.

06:52

But it wasn't. It was more like the, it was supposed to be the young hip version of the news.

06:57

And so that was my very first paid piece.

06:59

And then I got a internship, a paid internship for a local magazine because of that and ultimately ended up at at Channel 10's affiliate Metro Mix.

07:10

And that's how I kind of got into the world of blogging because I had never written for web.

07:14

I had always been a newspaper. So dating myself, it's like, you know, we're talking like 2009 is whenever I finally got a blog, I guess.

07:22

So hold on. Let me ask you a question.

07:24

Back up for just a second. So your first career, what did you go to college or what did you learn to do?

07:31

Okay. I was in the magazine journalism field. Mass Communication. Okay, perfect.

07:36

So see, that is so perfect. And that makes so much sense. All the things you're saying.

07:40

I come from manufacturing. I bought fuel for a living, you know.

07:46

So I have no experience in any of this. That's the great thing about blogging though, isn't it?

07:51

Like, it's not so cool that all walks of life can do it. But yeah, just what you were saying about the how you started working in for businesses, like telling them about blogging.

08:01

That's kind of where I've been since 2014 is I've been blogging for businesses. I've been ghost blogging, if you will, helping them drive traffic to their own websites.

08:10

But I'm in your same boat. I want to. It's funny. I want to start a food blog and you have a food blog.

08:16

And so, so yeah, that's kind of you want to start a food blog now right now in 2024. Yes. Oh, God bless you.

08:24

And that's that's kind of what got Nadia and I Nadia we had on the show recently. We were talking about SOPs.

08:30

That's what got her and I talking about you is I was telling her like, yeah, I want to start a food blog.

08:35

She's like, oh, my God, you have to talk to my friend, Renee. And I was like, okay, I'm down. I'd love to chat about that.

08:42

So you and I had a private conversation last week where you were telling me that basically Google has kind of screwed bloggers.

08:50

And I kind of wanted to talk to you about that and find out all your thoughts on all the things. Well, yeah.

08:56

Okay. So here's the thing. I don't know how much time we have for this, but I literally set aside the rest of my day.

09:03

So how long do we have? Because that'll inform how long I talk or what I probably go 45 minutes to an hour. Okay. Okay. Cool. Great.

09:15

The rapid fire readers judges version. Okay, great. Ask me questions and I'll give you answers.

09:22

I think that would be the best way to. Okay. Where did when's your food blog launch? When did my food blog launch?

09:29

Okay. I bought the site. It was a tiny little baby site that I think had less than 100 posts.

09:36

If I can remember, I wish I could write this down in 2018. Okay. And did it come quickly? No. Okay. No. Not at it again.

09:46

Likely. So I bought the blog and immediately had no idea what I was doing. And so I started creating content centered around trying all kinds of things.

10:01

I was trying, you know, affiliate content. I was trying recipes and it was going nowhere.

10:10

As a matter of fact, there's a lot of anger about it because they had obviously falsified the information because it didn't even have as much traffic as they promised that it had.

10:20

So I was almost starting from nothing and everything was total shit that I had bought.

10:26

And so, but I had this brand now with a stupid ass name, but I bought it and here it is.

10:33

And now it's my the center of my life, but my work life and my personal life.

10:41

But I had to find my way as to what was going to be my topic.

10:46

And one of the things that it had on it was a lot of FAQ style content.

10:51

So I leaned heavily into that because when I bought this blog, my intention was to stop being the face of everything.

11:01

I didn't, I wanted to build an invisible because I have a dream that I still have, even if it's unrealistic today because of Google.

11:08

But my dream was to buy this blog, launch it to profit and then buy another one, launch it to profit and have 10 websites that were bringing in various sources of revenue.

11:21

But what happened was it took me three years to make anything to make even $50 a day. I think it took me about three years.

11:32

And then once it skyrocketed, it skyrocketed. Now, this, this sounds terrible and I don't mean for it to, but COVID was also the best thing that ever happened to food blogging.

11:46

And it launched it dramatically. And I just don't think without another tragedy such as that, where everybody's forced to be at home cooking again, will a food blog ever launch to that scale that quickly again?

12:01

Because everyone had to have all the answers, right? Because it was hard to get food, not hard to get food, but hard to get certain things like things you're used to getting and everybody was having to cook.

12:12

And so a lot of new people that don't normally cook had a lot of questions about cooking.

12:17

Back then, the biggest challenge that you had to answer those questions or getting the click, I should say, was a featured snippet, which was quite controversial at the time.

12:30

And now, of course, AI just answers all the questions.

12:34

Right? So, yeah.

12:38

Does that answer the question?

12:40

How did it get started? Okay. Yeah. So, so COVID kind of made it blow up.

12:45

And then absolutely. And then Google kind of killed it. So tell me a little bit about how that, what that means.

12:53

Okay, great. So we had built it up to like almost for sake of conversation, a million page views a month.

13:02

And yeah, I know it would it would bounce. But that was the height.

13:10

And we're also extremely food event and food holiday centric as far as traffic goes as well, which is great.

13:22

That was by design. I did a lot of things that were by design, which have paid off in some ways and made my life absolute hell and others.

13:29

And we can come back to that. But on January 2nd of 2023, I woke up and came to the computer just like I do every day to look at the analytics.

13:40

And there was a cliff. And I don't just mean a little bit of cliff. I mean a deep dive cliff.

13:48

And at first I was like, okay, that's normal. It's normal because again, I said it's holiday centric. Right.

13:55

So Christmas and New Year's Eve is big for us. New Year's Eve is a really big spike up.

14:01

But this was an abnormally large spike down. And of course, I just thought, well, maybe it's because the spike is so high now because we have so much traffic that January 2nd, the last thing anybody wants to do is deal with food.

14:18

So I would just keep an eye on it. But the problem is it never came back. To this day, it's never come back. And what happened was a few things happened.

14:29

One of them was we had a competitor. And I won't say who, just because it's rude in my opinion to call people out.

14:37

But we had a competitor that launched a whole bunch of traffic between Christmas and a whole bunch of articles between Christmas and New Year's. And they had a much higher domain authority than us.

14:50

And I noticed that I had never seen this competitor before in my life before January 2nd.

14:57

And when I looked at what they had published, they had obviously gone through our site map and gone article by article by article and republished the same essential type of content, the same kind of list post as us because this was all roundups.

15:13

There was bringing us the most of the traffic and they had taken all of our roundup ideas and just gone straight down the list and published like a hundred articles between Christmas and New Year's. And so they outranked us.

15:27

So I thought at first, I thought that I just had a competitor problem. And you know, that's that's fair in the world of blogging. It sucked. And I of course hate them now. But but it was fair. Right.

15:43

And they had a higher authority. They had some really strong powerful backlinks to them as a general brand. And so what are you going to do? Right. And I was like, well, all we can do is keep going and see if we can publish faster, more different stuff.

16:02

And so that was where I headed. But then in time, I came to realize what had happened was that we had been hit by the helpful content update that had rolled out on December 22. But I didn't know that because of the Christmas and New Year's a bump.

16:17

Wow. So tell us a little bit about what exactly the helpful content update.

16:23

Well, it's basically what it sounds like. In a way, it is Google saying your content on your own summarizing, of course, but your content on your website is not helpful enough.

16:40

And you have enough of your content that is not helpful enough that we have put a helpful content update classifier on your website. And until you improve the content, then you will have this classifier, which pushes down the rank of your content in Google.

17:01

And if it doesn't disappear your site necessarily because you might still have some content that's helpful or considered helpful. So you're not going to be completely disappeared.

17:11

But for example, and in food blogging, this is a really important consideration. If you're in the recipe carousel in the recipe carousel shows the generally speaking, they play around with it sometimes.

17:24

And then most of the time, it shows the first three recipes in the recipe carousel. So in order to see more recipes, there's at least nine in there. But in order to see them, you have to hit a little show more button.

17:38

Well, most people aren't going to do that. They're just going to click on one of those three. So I used to be within that top three for so many articles, and now I am in place like five, six or seven.

17:51

So you get a horrific push down. And when you say it that way, but it is horrific as far as traffic goes. Right. Yes. Yes. And that makes complete sense. Because what is it they say? If you want to hide a dead body, put it on the second page of Google.

18:03

Okay, right. I wasn't even the second page. I was just in the second row. You know, or I still am. But the problem with that HCU is that they don't tell you that you've been hit by the HCU. They just give you some guidelines that try to help you figure it out. And they don't tell you which articles gave you the HCU classifier.

18:27

So in my case, I have currently published somewhere in the neighborhood of 3150 articles.

18:33

So just a few.

18:35

Right. So, how does one decide which articles have caused this problem?

18:43

There is no way. What do you do. So what are you doing now. What are you doing now to deal with the situation.

18:50

So, the first thing I did, because I used to have a large team. And so the first thing I did was get everyone working on the competition problem and we updated all of our, our roundup post because I thought that was the problem.

19:07

But, oh, and here's the thing too. Let me let me step back. I said I was going to come back to this but to help explain some of this.

19:15

So, my theory on blogging, because I had a lot of time to establish a theory before I actually started doing it. Most people kind of fall into it because they have a passion. I went into it from the reverse.

19:28

So my theory on blogging when I analyzed and looked around, I realized that a lot of bloggers may have a lot of content, but maybe 10 pieces of content out of 1000 bring them 80% of their traffic.

19:45

And then if something happens to one of those 10, then it's really hard to recover, because it was based upon virality or, or they had some amazing Pinterest pen and it did well for a long period of time, or they were in first place with that one article or those

20:02

two articles, and then the rank changes, and suddenly all of the traffic is gone. Right.

20:10

So my theory on blogging was, I don't want to be a one hit wonder, I want to figure out how to design a blog, where the traffic is spread across many many many posts which is why I have 3100 articles right.

20:25

And that worked that served me so well because on an average month, even at the height, the most traffic an article might have gotten was 3000 page views out of a million or 900,000 or 800,000 pages.

20:42

Because even if you think about where it's at now like a few hundred thousand pages.

20:59

What I didn't consider was something like the helpful content update, because now if you look at it like my average article on average has around 40 pages per article, I think.

21:14

I classify it when I'm tracking stuff by 1000 to 500 500 to 100 100 to, so the average is under 100 page views. So, and that's what I wanted. But when you're trying to figure out which article is your problem article it makes it almost impossible to analyze.

21:33

So, that is a big flaw in my whole theory that I never considered.

21:39

So, because at the time I mean it seemed like the more content the better, but now you get hit with this imaginary well okay not imaginary mystery.

21:50

Some mystery illness hits your blog and you aren't told why you're just told the symptoms and not how to actually fix it.

21:59

Wow.

22:01

That sucks.

22:03

It does, it's very difficult to deal with. So, the first plan of attack was okay I'm going to tackle the competitor problem which was, I had seen that my competitors had taken on my roundup posts and I thought well, how can I thinking about the helpful content update, make these

22:18

roundup posts more helpful. So, my wife and I always sit down we came up with a plan.

22:24

And then we went back to the team and we disseminated that information to the team. And so we spent six months working on that. And nothing happened.

22:34

Didn't change a damn thing for us.

22:38

And so we were like, wow, so let me reanalyze that. So then I started digging deeper and looking into learning more about the helpful content update.

22:49

And I don't think many sites so far have recovered, as best as I can tell from all of the experts that I follow which I follow a lot of them now.

23:00

And I follow Google very closely and directly.

23:04

I don't have a recovery story that I know of in all my communities, and all of the Twitter, all of the experts that I know that I have talked to privately and publicly. I don't know of a recovery story.

23:19

And I think part of that is because it is still a fairly new aspect to Google. And so I don't think they have run the classifier enough times, this is just my theory, to have any recoveries because it hasn't been long enough for anybody to actually make enough impact on their content in theory to recover yet.

23:41

And the unfortunate thing about what you're saying is, since this helpful content update hammer came down, what we're seeing now is a lot of the search results are Reddit, they're Quora, they're Pinterest, they're AI written crap.

23:58

And it's like, okay, so what does a blogger today do to compete? Do you have any thoughts on that?

24:07

Right. Okay. So,

24:12

have you heard of Spencer Hawes from Niche Pursuit?

24:16

Yes, love him.

24:18

Okay, he just released a post and a YouTube video. And he said I would recommend not starting a blog in 2024, unless you meet the certain criteria, right?

24:31

So,

24:33

I think

24:35

I was just on Twitter responding before this call.

24:41

What we consider good content

24:45

as a community of bloggers,

24:47

if we, if,

24:49

and here's the other thing, and I think this is so important to consider,

24:54

as bloggers, we're all hooked on this Google traffic, right?

24:58

And we think of Google, when we think of traffic to a website, we think Google.

25:03

But there are lots of other ways to get traffic.

25:08

It just turned out that learning SEO was a skill.

25:13

And if you could master that skill, which I did at that time, I had definitely mastered that skill.

25:19

And if you could master that skill, then you could create content that would rank.

25:25

And Google's not wrong with the point of what they're trying to make.

25:30

I think Google has a lot of other problems on top of it, but they're not wrong about the helpful content update.

25:35

And this is what I just said earlier, is that

25:40

to make helpful content in my mind, and in the mind of most bloggers that are in this as a business, not a hobby,

25:48

I have a very dear friend who, my best friend that I used to paint with, she runs a blog now about American Girl dolls,

25:55

and she has no interest in making money.

25:58

And therefore it's done pretty well for her.

26:03

But if you're in this as a business, you think to yourself, this is my business, therefore I must make a profit.

26:10

And therefore I must figure out how to make content that ranks on Google.

26:15

And in our minds, that means that we made content that's helpful because it helped us rank.

26:22

But what Google's saying, because if we called someone right now, we called my mom or your mom or my sister-in-law or someone,

26:30

and we said, hey, I just have a quick question for you. What is your biggest complaint about the internet?

26:35

You know what people would say? There's too many damn ads on a recipe article.

26:40

It would go straight to food, it would go straight to recipe articles, and it would go straight to that point of I have to scroll forever

26:48

before I get to the recipe, and I go like, yeah, but you know, there's that jump to recipe button.

26:53

Yeah, well, I can't read it because I'm old and it's tiny.

26:55

And I'm like, well, that's true because I want you to scroll so that you get more ads,

26:58

so that you get more ad impressions, so that you make more money.

27:01

Once I need to write all the words, then we start going into justifying why.

27:05

But at the end, the customer for Google is that reader, and Google wants that reader to be happy, and the reader is unhappy.

27:17

And our customer in our mind is Google.

27:20

And we know that because machine learning is what it is, that in order for us to ever rank an article,

27:30

we have to follow the skyscraper method, which was in that phrase was created by Brian Dean, I believe, and of Backwinkle.

27:40

And that was when the internet really changed, if you think about it,

27:44

because he said if you follow this skyscraper method of doing this with these keywords and these paragraphs with these headlines,

27:50

and you analyze the front page, and then you see what all the articles are about, and then you say, OK, well, this article is ranking in first place,

27:59

but it doesn't have the headline that the third article did, and this one in second place doesn't have the one that the one in first place did.

28:06

So if I just make an article that is crazy long, that has all of these headlines, then Google will think I know the most about this topic,

28:16

and therefore I will have the best chance of ranking in first place.

28:19

So in our minds, that is creating the best piece of content, the most helpful piece of content, because we covered all of the things.

28:28

But what do we all do when we open an article?

28:31

We immediately scroll past the introduction.

28:34

We immediately start scrolling down to find the one headline that we were really interested in, right?

28:41

And we ignore the rest.

28:45

Well, now that we have machine learning in play from Google, and Google has machine learning,

28:51

we know from the Google lawsuit that they can tell that the reader is doing that.

28:56

And so therefore it's not the best, most helpful piece of content if you scroll through about a whole bunch of it, right?

29:03

Or that you hit the back button really fast.

29:06

So it's become a very complicated problem.

29:09

And the better the technology at Google gets, the more complicated the problem gets, because we keep trying to find a way to solve it.

29:17

As a blogger, the reader is just trying to survive the moment, and Google is trying to figure out how to stay relevant.

29:24

Right.

29:25

And so I don't think it's that anybody is wrong.

29:29

It's just at the same time, if we started creating short recipe articles, for example, if you want to be a food blogger,

29:38

if we started creating short recipes, what are the odds that it would ever rank in reality, no matter what Google says?

29:48

Yeah. That's a question I've been toying with for a while is like, you know, if I am going to actually go through with this, how am I going to compete?

29:56

And that's a question I haven't figured out the answer to yet, but it is something that I'm working on.

30:01

I've sort of been keeping an eye on some of the other bloggers that I follow.

30:05

Like, I know I can't remember how you say his name, but John from Fat Stacks Blog.

30:11

Oh, yeah.

30:12

Dyckville?

30:13

Whatever it is.

30:15

But yeah, he posted something yesterday in his newsletter basically saying like the pay to play is coming back in a big way because nobody can rank on Google anymore.

30:28

So now we're all paying for ads to try to get traffic.

30:31

And then the goal is get them on an email list as quickly as possible so we can still get the traffic, still get the people listening to us, seeing what we're saying.

30:39

But yeah, I can't help but wonder what's going to happen next because I know I've seen it with my clients that traffic is tanking everywhere.

30:48

I've seen two businesses close that I was writing for because of traffic just taking a nosedive.

30:55

And I don't know how everybody's going to recover.

30:57

And I know you had mentioned some SEO expert that what was it?

31:02

A thousand blogs that she was following or doing stuff with and only one of those thousand had recovered.

31:07

What was her name?

31:08

Lily?

31:09

Lily Ray.

31:10

And not that one did not recover.

31:12

That one recovered 20 percent of what was lost.

31:15

Oh, oh my goodness.

31:17

Yeah, we're all in trouble.

31:19

Yeah, really.

31:20

I mean, this is the ultimate question of what to do with this because I'll give you an example.

31:28

Something that just happened.

31:31

And let me find it.

31:33

Just happened.

31:34

Okay, here we go.

31:35

Let me give it pull that for this call.

31:38

There was a blog called House Fresh, who I guess I don't even know what they blog about.

31:45

Doesn't even matter.

31:46

I think they blog about their fresh nerves and shit like that.

31:51

So they released a blog about how Google is killing independent sites like ours.

31:57

Okay.

31:58

They created a blog post about it really in depth, really, really good.

32:02

Got the attention of Google yesterday when they released it.

32:05

Funny thing.

32:06

Today, they are in third position for their blog post title because now SEO experts have

32:14

since then written since yesterday afternoon, written some response posts, posts talking

32:20

about it.

32:21

So like Search Engine Land wrote a blog post about their posts talking about why it is

32:26

this way.

32:28

Right.

32:30

So they are in third place in Google about their own story.

32:35

And at first you think to yourself, how the hell did that happen?

32:39

That's terrible.

32:41

Right.

32:42

But the truth is people like me want to know what the SEO experts have to say about what

32:51

these people said.

32:53

Search Engine Land is one of the biggest experts on this topic of SEO in Google.

33:00

So, of course, everybody today is reading what Search Engine Land has to say about House

33:06

Fresh's post about ranking on Google.

33:10

So, of course, now Search Engine Land is outranking House Fresh even though the Search Engine

33:17

Land article is about House Fresh.

33:19

I know this is very meta, but it kind of makes the point that we have to understand that

33:26

authority doesn't come from just out of the blue.

33:29

Search Engine Land is an authority on the topic of the search engine.

33:34

Right.

33:36

So when they publish their post about it, of course, it's going to be the top post,

33:41

even if it's about you, you know.

33:44

And it's very difficult to overcome that.

33:49

So how do we overcome it?

33:50

What do we do?

33:51

Do we just tuck tail and create a new business?

33:56

I think it definitely changes.

33:59

Well, you brought up the Reddit problem, which we know is a problem.

34:07

Especially with all the spam in it.

34:11

Yeah.

34:12

Yeah, that's true.

34:15

But we're also ignoring all the good answers, too, because that doesn't fit our narrative.

34:23

Right.

34:24

So the UGC thing, which is user generated content, Google is ranking user generated

34:33

content because people trust it more than they trust the bloggers because people now

34:38

understand that affiliate bloggers are trying to write about a product so that you click

34:43

on the link to buy the product so that we can make some money.

34:45

Right.

34:47

People understand this.

34:48

So to answer your question of what do we do about it?

34:52

I don't know.

34:53

First of all, I have no good news.

34:55

And I told you that when we were going to talk.

34:57

I have no good news.

34:58

I have no good advice.

35:00

I keep asking everyone else the same question and asking people.

35:04

I'm starting to ask a different question.

35:06

How do creators make money in 2025?

35:10

Because see, here's the thing.

35:12

They just quietly launched SGE last weekend around the Super Bowl on Safari mobile, you

35:22

know, an iPhone mobile devices.

35:24

So now I have all of these articles that are like how to reheat tamales or something.

35:30

Well, nobody ever needs to click through an article anymore, because if you pick up your

35:34

iPhone, do you have an iPhone?

35:36

I have a droid.

35:38

Okay.

35:39

So you already had it.

35:41

SGE, right?

35:42

So if you Google how to reheat tamales, you don't really need to click through an article.

35:50

Right.

35:51

Because the answer is in the snippet, basically.

35:53

That's right.

35:55

So I've also started seeing that, well, it's not even a snippet.

36:01

You can't even call it a snippet.

36:03

I wouldn't call it a snippet at this point.

36:05

A snippet was the old snippet where it was just a little bit and then it had the dot,

36:09

dot, dot, and you had to click through to find the answer.

36:11

Right.

36:12

Now you literally get the answer.

36:14

Yeah.

36:15

So let's say oven roasted potatoes or broccoli.

36:22

Okay.

36:24

It didn't click through.

36:25

It did not give me an SGE for that particular recipe.

36:29

And if you had asked me six months ago, I would have told you that recipes are safe.

36:33

But about 50% of the time that I now Google a recipe on my iPhone, I get a recipe from the AI and the SGE answer.

36:43

And SGE, just in case somebody knows what that stands for, is search generative experience,

36:48

which is essentially AI answering the question in a very thoughtful and thorough way with pictures.

36:55

Now, if we came back, can we mark a calendar date?

36:59

I believe that if we come and had this conversation on the February 21st, 2025, we would then say with thoughtful answers, with video curated to meet me.

37:13

Yeah.

37:14

And I got to say, I feel like that's coming because I mean, I spoke to someone yesterday and he's trying to create a meal plan.

37:21

And he literally said his favorite place to go to get recipes now is ChatGPT.

37:27

He will start ChatGPT for recipes instead of going to all recipes or whatever your favorite cooking site is.

37:35

He now just goes to what he calls Chef at GPT.

37:38

And the scary thing is, and I've watched a lot of video content about it, is people are testing these recipes and some of them are actually really good.

37:46

Like I watch RachelovesLife on YouTube and she was trying to get the perfect cookie recipe.

37:54

And she said that the recipe that it gave her for a chocolate chip cookie was actually better than most of the recipes that she's tried on other websites.

38:02

And that's terrifying because you know as well as I do that all these recipes are being curated from people like you and I who actually test these recipes.

38:13

Yeah, or buy them.

38:17

And so I feel like we're re-entering the wild wild west of vlogging and I don't know who's going to come out on top and who's going to survive and who's just going to have to go get a real job.

38:27

And I pray to God I don't have to go get a real job.

38:31

Dude, I don't even know what real job I qualify for anymore.

38:33

I've been doing this for so long.

38:36

Yeah, because I think that's a real question because it's like what I mean I'm really spending some time asking myself what kind of job would I get?

38:46

I honestly don't know.

38:49

Same. Same. I don't know.

38:51

I'm proud and unemployable.

38:53

Well, I have a partner with Nodja on a podcast called We Are Not Safe for Work so I'm literally branding myself to be unemployable.

39:03

Yes.

39:06

Yeah, trust me the irony has not escaped me.

39:09

I don't have any good answers. Do you have any answers?

39:12

What do you think vlogging looks like a year from now?

39:15

I think it's going to turn a lot more into storytelling and on one hand that's really good because it's going to be a lot more real authentic stories.

39:24

On the other hand, these systems are getting better at sounding like humans and so AI is going to start storytelling too.

39:35

And so I don't actually know. I don't know where we're going with this.

39:39

I don't know what to expect.

39:42

I know that got to save our acorns.

39:47

I mean, storytelling is actually I left out one of the complaints with recipe bloggers.

39:54

I don't need to know how your grandmother invented this recipe.

39:57

I just want to know how to make the damn cookies.

40:00

Right. That's true. That's true.

40:02

I love watching a video on it, in which case while you're making it telling me that story, I'm okay with that.

40:08

But I do agree with you that if I'm reading an article, I don't want to know about how your grandfather used to go out and plow the fields.

40:16

And then he'd come back and was ready for supper and it had to be the perfect, you know, pulled pork or whatever.

40:23

I agree with you completely on that.

40:26

I think what will be left is education and entertainment.

40:37

I think that's what will be left. And education is confusing and cloudy because what do we need to be educated on?

40:48

I think is the real question that we need to be asking ourselves, too, because the truth is.

40:56

Chat GPT will make a personal feed plan for you now today that is good and trustworthy and there's no need creativity by the way.

41:07

Let me say entertainment is also creativity.

41:12

So I'll give you a perfect example because this goes back to I'm sorry I'm jumping around a little bit, but I know time is limited.

41:21

My wife was looking up recipes for St. Patrick's Day using chat GPT just to see what would happen.

41:26

And some of them seem so amazing and awesome.

41:29

But if you don't test them, then you don't know if they're amazing or awesome, but they're super creative.

41:34

Right. So there might be a point for recipe bloggers to say I got this recipe from AI and I tested it and it turned out great or it turned out terrible.

41:45

But then don't tell me if it turned out terrible.

41:47

Just tell me when it turns out great because otherwise you're wasting my time.

41:50

And I think that's the other thing, too, is that we had to do all of this stuff for Google going back to backlinko because that was what Google needed at that time.

42:01

And now Google has gotten so good that maybe almost if we could all just wipe it all off and start fresh.

42:09

We'd be better served.

42:11

And that's obviously not going to happen.

42:16

But entertainment can be also creativity.

42:21

I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Yeah.

42:23

Yeah. And I mean, the thing is, it's like, you know, when when you get trained in how to write something and you get very good at writing it the way that Google wanted it before.

42:34

Now that they're changing the playbook, it's like, how do you how do you keep up with what they're saying?

42:42

You know what I mean?

42:43

And, you know, yes, but here's something they've never changed the playbook.

42:48

They just keep getting better at enforcing the rules.

42:51

If you think about it, Google has always said they want the content to be helpful to the reader.

42:56

It's just that they had a very difficult time of discerning what that meant.

43:03

Right. Because when when they started Google, the only thing they had was PageRank, right, which was backlinks.

43:09

And so then, of course, people learn how to manipulate backlinks.

43:13

And Google was working on how to bring in other factors to their algorithm.

43:17

So the rules have always been the desire of Google has always been the same.

43:24

It's just that they weren't able to they didn't have good enough tools to improve how they refined what showed up on the blue links in the first page.

43:33

I guess I'm just I guess I'm just concerned that now now that they do have these AI programs, all these answers that are being generated in a Google search.

43:43

Like you said, you don't even have to click through anymore to get your full answer.

43:47

And so it's like and the worst part is in some of the cases, whenever they're giving these, you know, AI generated answers, they're not attributing the original source.

43:56

And so not only am I not getting the click through, I'm not even getting the credit.

44:01

So it's like. What do we do?

44:06

I know that I know we're not so hush and like, you know, if you're if you're making a drinking game of this, please don't, because you will end up, you know, with alcohol poisoning.

44:15

But I just I don't know.

44:19

I'm nervous about where things are going with logging.

44:22

I I don't think it's going to be enough to be a blogger anymore in twenty twenty four and beyond.

44:27

I think you have to be if you're not prepared to be a multifaceted content creator doing the podcast and doing and doing the YouTube and doing the social media, then you're going to get left behind.

44:41

I feel like we have to if we are going to keep up, have to be more than just bloggers.

44:48

And that that's a very scary reality for some people because they've gotten so used to being behind their computer and just writing content.

44:54

And yeah, I don't know where things are going.

44:57

But an interesting ride to be on.

45:00

I just I feel bad for people like you and I who are getting impacted negatively by the changes.

45:08

Oh, yeah. The negative impact is horrendous.

45:11

I mean, I've let go of my entire team.

45:13

My wife got a job full time.

45:16

And yeah, I mean, this is this is change the course of my life, not for the better.

45:25

And it's changed the course for because I had I had a full time team and my wife worked with me in the business.

45:33

And we also had a team of freelancers as well.

45:38

And all of that's gone.

45:40

It's all gone.

45:42

And I don't see any way to ever go back to what I was before with this business model.

45:51

I don't see a way.

45:52

I don't see this possible.

45:55

I don't even if he started doing paid traffic.

45:59

I've tried paid traffic.

46:01

Oh, you have.

46:02

Oh, wow.

46:03

Yeah. Yeah.

46:04

That's important to know.

46:06

Yeah. I've tried paid traffic.

46:08

My newsletter is almost got 30,000 people on it.

46:13

Well, Google, yeah, that's a hit that too.

46:16

With the with the Gmail updates of the spam tag.

46:20

Well, I don't think that didn't really seem to impact me that much.

46:24

I don't know.

46:26

Well, that's a good at least.

46:28

That's good to hear because one of the clients that I write for their their email marketing platform.

46:34

And so we're we're trying to scramble to figure out how is this update going to impact, you know, our clients that are sending emails every day?

46:43

Well, I mean, if you want to list the problems, make sure you put the cookies in there.

46:48

Yeah.

46:49

But even those are being eliminated soon.

46:51

Well, that's what I mean.

46:53

The cookies are going away and that's going to be a problem.

46:56

They're expecting that to be huge impact on ad dollars.

46:59

Right.

47:01

And to that point, you know, an interesting thing that I've noticed is that my RPM from Google is hold on.

47:13

Let me do the math.

47:19

Is about 40 percent less than my RPM from Pinterest this year.

47:26

Now, what that means, sorry, but it doesn't understand a minute in simple terms is that for a visit from Penn from Google is worth about 40 percent less money than a visit from Pinterest or content traffic from Pinterest is worth 40 percent more money than content from Google.

47:45

I think that's interesting.

47:48

And that is a few people talk about it. Most people don't talk about money, so it's kind of getting lost in the conversation. But I think that's very interesting.

47:59

And I don't know why that's happening, but I think it's worth paying attention to.

48:04

You know, I'll tell you too.

48:06

I have one life conspiracy theory in life. I love reading about conspiracy theories, but I don't adhere to any of them.

48:13

I just think they're interesting.

48:15

I mean, it's dangerous rabbit hole these days, but so I don't really go down it.

48:20

But I have one life conspiracy theory, and it is this. It is Google's algorithm.

48:25

As we all know, if you if you go in and learn about the algorithm, you will start to know that it is made up of many different pieces.

48:32

Now you've got spam brain, HCU, you know, all these pieces.

48:36

So it's a complicated mess. And they've also brought in AI to the story, which has been there for a long time, but now it's a bigger part of the story.

48:45

Right. So my theory is this. All the reason all of this shit is going so terrible with Reddit and the mess with the carousel and just everything that keeps happening.

48:57

And Google keeps saying we're working on it. We're working on it.

48:59

They'll release these messages usually on Twitter where they're like, we are aware of this problem and we're going to make it better.

49:06

And I think all of that is true because AI has taken over and Google can't figure out how to get.

49:12

So I think Google has lost control of search.

49:16

Yeah. And I think I think it's going to pave the way for a new search.

49:19

I think that we're coming to the days very rapidly that Google will not be the king of search.

49:26

And I don't know what's going to take its place because, you know, as most people know, current AI can't even seem to handle.

49:36

If you give it a link, it freaks out. It like starts hallucinating.

49:40

So I think I think it'll be interesting to see how the rest of this year plays out and beyond.

49:45

And I just feel like it's like we all need to figure out our backup plan.

49:51

And we need more than just, you know, a plan B. We need like all the way down to plan M, even though for my leverage fans, you know, the artisan dies in plan M.

50:00

But I love the show leverage. I don't know if you've ever seen it.

50:05

Oh, yes. Yes. I did love it. I haven't seen the show in a long time. Yeah.

50:09

Yeah, it's one of my favorites. But I feel like I feel like we're all going to have to figure out more plans and more more backups,

50:17

because I don't see it changing anytime soon, at least not for the sake of the blogger.

50:25

And like I said, I feel like it's it's really becoming a thing where we're all going to have to be more capacitive creators if we want to survive the game.

50:32

Well, yeah. OK. So with that said, all that sadness and negativity, which is all very true, and it's so much worse than we have time to talk about.

50:43

I just started a new blog. So I feel so strongly that in the long run, and I'm talking a 10 year run,

50:55

that I think blogging will still be a thing, maybe not to the level that it ever was.

51:02

I don't think that'll ever happen again. But I could be wrong, but that's just my feelings.

51:08

I think that what everybody that wants to be in this game needs to consider it.

51:13

First of all, not everybody needs to be in this game. And here's what I mean by that.

51:17

People are busy. People have kids. People have jobs. They have lives.

51:24

This is not easy. This is not an easy life.

51:28

This is some hard ass shit that you're going to do and it's going to be miserable and it's going to take all of your time and it's going to suck your soul dry.

51:37

Every time I get on stage to talk about blogging, the first thing I tell everybody is,

51:44

I want to tell you now to leave the room because you don't want to start a blog. Do not do this.

51:49

Do not do this. Do not do this. Now, I'm going to be quiet while everybody leaves.

51:55

If you're still here, I'll keep talking about it, but I'm telling you now, don't do this.

52:00

Because it's unreliable, it's fickle, and you got to have money in the bank.

52:07

A lot of it. At least enough to live for a couple of years because it's just awful and unpredictable.

52:15

But I love it so much that I am starting more brands, more blogs. I'm doing more of it.

52:23

And I don't know if I'll ever make a damn dollar, but the one thing that I'm doing different is that I am figuring out.

52:29

I'm going with what I love the most. Because I chose food because I thought it would make the most amount of money.

52:37

Now, I love food, but I don't cook for shit. And so, it's true.

52:45

But I thought food would make me a lot of money, and it did make me a lot of money in a short amount of time.

52:53

But next blogs are going to be things I really care about personally that I could talk about forever.

53:00

And theorize on, have long conversations, and if people were to ask me, you know, what does Renee care about, it would be those things.

53:09

Because blogging no longer... you have to be part of the blog. Your person has to be part of the brand.

53:18

So, if you are known for food, and everyone in your life knows that you just love food, and you're constantly reading about it and studying it,

53:26

and your bedside is filled with cookbooks, and all you ever do is read about it, you're probably the right person to start a food blog.

53:35

Now, even then, I'd highly recommend not doing a food blog because it's saturated, but you're probably the right person.

53:44

Whatever it is you are just so deeply passionate about is how you're going to find the most amount of success.

53:51

I met someone this year... well, no, I'm sorry, last year, October.

53:57

They came... two German scientists came to our house last year for a vacation. We had never met them before.

54:05

And they came because my sister and their friends with my sister-in-law, and they wanted to come to Texas. I live in Texas.

54:11

And so, we were like, I don't know why on earth you want to come to Texas, but whatever, we'll host you guys.

54:16

So, they came and didn't know anything about these people. I was like, I don't know what's happening. Whatever.

54:21

I'm just agreeing because I'm a good wife, and that's that.

54:25

But they are German physicists, and Beata has been working on this same theory her entire life.

54:40

She started in college. She learned about this thing called the neutrino, and she wanted to know what is a neutrino way.

54:46

And then it sparked conversations about this concept of this little tiny particle.

54:53

And so, in order to learn what a neutrino weighs, they had... she had to figure out how to test the weight of a neutrino.

55:01

And in order to test the weight of a neutrino, you have to build all of this equipment that's never been built or considered or thought of before.

55:09

So, she is like, I think, two years from retirement, her and her husband, who met at the beginning in college and started this project together.

55:18

And it's been funded internationally across decades.

55:23

And so, step one was to figure out how to do it.

55:28

Step two was to build the equipment, and that took like 20 years.

55:33

And then they are starting the test now, and the test will end right as she retires.

55:41

And she has spent her entire life as a scientist on this one thing. One thing.

55:49

And she was here, and we were talking about note-taking, and she was telling us about this project, and she was showing us videos of how some equipment was moved through Europe to get to her lab and just all this stuff.

56:02

And so, we spent this week together, and one day we were just puzzling, working on a jigsaw puzzle together, and I said, I have a question for you.

56:12

If there was one thing in science that you could know, but it wasn't about the neutrino, what would you want to know?

56:19

And she was like, but she's like, she sat there for a long time, and she said, I can't answer that because the only thing in the world I want to know is how much does a neutrino weigh.

56:29

That kind of passion is what you need when you're a blogger now.

56:34

But I'm in big trouble because my ADHD can't handle that.

56:37

Yeah, I know. But you got to burn so deeply for your topic, or I would say don't freaking do it.

56:47

Well, you've definitely given me a lot to think about, and now I got to figure out my next plan, and my plan B and all through M.

56:55

Where can people find you online if they want to learn more about you, Renee?

57:00

CookingChew.com.

57:03

Ah, the food blog was not mentioned until now.

57:07

Yeah.

57:09

All right, and you say you also have a podcast, the Not Safe for Work podcast?

57:12

Yeah, we are Not Safe for Work.

57:15

We are, and it's with Nanja.

57:18

And then I literally just launched Reneeinspired.com, R-E-N-E-E, inspired.com.

57:25

That's awesome.

57:26

We'll definitely leave all the links to those in the show notes, and hopefully AI won't take away podcasting from me because that is one thing that I really do enjoy.

57:35

I like having the conversations with people, and I know that now there are AI-generated podcasts, but that's for a completely different episode.

57:42

Yeah, I love podcasting.

57:45

Well, if nothing else, hopefully we'll find some way to still be online in some capacity.

57:50

And I just, I do want to thank you for sitting here and talking with me today, even though, like you said, it has been kind of a Debbie Downer kind of an episode.

57:57

But I think it's a real talk that people need to hear because it's not going away.

58:01

And if we're not preparing and figuring things out, then we're just all going to get left in the dust.

58:07

And I don't want to see that happen to any of us.

58:09

So we'll see what happens next.

58:13

Yeah, I'll bring you back on it.

58:16

2025, and we'll see if any of our predictions of what we currently think is going to happen actually comes to fruition.

58:22

How about that?

58:23

Yeah. And listen, people can tweet me, and we can continue the conversation if they want because I'm always up for talking about it because it's nothing but misery.

58:33

So misery loves company.

58:35

And misery loves company.

58:36

Yeah.

58:38

Well, until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.

58:42

I love it.

58:44

Okay.

58:45

I'm going to stop recording.

58:47

Okay.

58:51

Well, my bloggy friends, I hope you enjoyed all the insights our guests had to share with you.

58:54

To get the show notes for this and all episodes, go over to famousashleygrant.com backslash podcast.

59:00

And until next time, may your page views be high and your bounce rate below.

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