Do you remember, not that long ago,
When you would Google something you wanted to know, and nothing relevant would come up.
How frustrating that was.
I used to think of my job as ‘creating the missing parts of the internet.’
I would spot a topic that wasn’t covered very well (or at all) and create the missing content to fill the gaps…
I always said that I never chose a niche, the niches chose me.
It was always through searching for something I’m interested in, and being dissatisfied with the results, that I saw a gap to fill.
Or a niche, if you will!
For example, when looking to buy a new trampoline, I might have wondered if a round one or a square one is the best.
I’d search Google, and nothing would come up.
And I’d think… hmmm… people like me need to know this.
As someone who’s owned several trampolines over the years, goes to a trampoline fitness class each week and has kids in trampoline lessons, I’d say that I know more than the average person about bouncy polypropylene.
I’m not an expert, it’s not my life-long passion, but I know enough to help others.
So, I’d make a trampoline website and cover everything that wasn’t answered.
I was providing a helpful service and was rewarded for it well enough that it was worth spending four to eight hours on each article.
Then, along came AI.
Suddenly, the missing gaps in the internet were filled, as people could create content in minutes, rather than hours.
But, as we know, the content was usually low-quality, inaccurate and not helpful.
In 2024, Google doesn’t need bloggers to fill the content gaps.
It has its own tools like Gemini that people can use to get better answers to the questions that aren’t covered on the internet.
It also has the problem of the web massively expanding in size very, very quickly.
Crawling all of that trash content is expensive.
So what’s the solution…?
Google needs to drop a huge chunk of webpages from the index completely. And fast.
Which ones?
The pages that were made to fill the keyword gaps, of course.
And all the mass-produced AI articles.
So, there disappears from the index, my carefully crafted ‘square vs round trampolines’ guide.
It doesn’t matter about the research I did by asking the trampoline coaches and the pictures of me demonstrating different jumps are worthless.
And there goes the spammy one-click AI content.
Well, some of it.
Of course, the system isn’t perfect.
So spam sites still exist. And good businesses get killed.
It’s sickening to think that small businesses can be wiped out on the whim of one person taking seconds to glance at a website and clicking ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to apply a manual penalty that deindexes the site.
Many of these small businesses like yours and mine followed Google’s rules to the letter, but then the rules changed.
So, what can we do?
- Whinge and cry
- Say fuck you to Google and pivot
Wanna guess which one I’m doing?
Here are my traffic sources from yesterday for my travel site…
If Google doesn’t need me, I don’t need them either.
Byeeee, bitches.
I’ve completed this Facebook course and this email course and I’m following the exact blueprints for success.
I’m ready.
And if you’re not a quitter either, stick around, because I’ll be sharing what works for me.
We got this.
– NSL