Google is not what it used to be. The quality of search results has dropped. Artificial Intelligence (AI), Google Ads and sponsored websites dominate the top of the search results page. By the time you find a useful result, you’ve probably scrolled half a page at least.
This is no accident. This is what the internet is calling “enshittification”.
It’s Google applying perverse incentives to maximise income instead of user experience. And it’s the internet coming to grips with a zombie apocalypse of AI content.
This digital decay has spread far beyond Google.
How does this affect my business?
The way people find your digital brand has changed.
The strategies that worked a few months ago, may no longer be effective. You simply cannot compete with AI content farms and sponsored content on established media sites like Forbes beating you to the top of Google results.
People want people
Trust for Google search is low. You probably already find yourself skipping AI and promoted content at the very top of Google search results.
Smart searchers looking for information might add “Reddit” to the end of search terms to try and find posts by real people.
Or they might skip Google altogether and search in a forum specific to the info they’re looking for.
We want humans solving our human problems.
Quality over rankings
Business is built on quality content. But quality content is not the same as ranking on Google.
Low-quality but high-ranking content can damage trust for a brand.
Maybe, if you know what you’re doing, you could get ChatGPT to pump out content that keeps you at the top of Google results and collects a lot of clicks. But what happens when your users arrive on your website?
They find junk, unreadable content that doesn’t solve their problems. That does not lead to anything good.
Simple solutions
Luckily, the simple solutions are the same as we’ve been saying for years. It’s not computer science.
“Create an experience your users enjoy, and the rewards will follow.”
Do
- Deliver gold in your content as quickly as possible
- Create quality content, even if it doesn’t rank well on Google
- Understand where your traffic comes from
- Post your content in a variety of places
- Encourage your users to review and talk about your business or products
- Keep creating content that matters to your customers
- Reward your users for visiting
Don’t
- Tease value
- Trick users
- Fail to deliver
- Publish unedited AI content
Technical solutions
The black art of search engine optimisation (SEO) has changed alongside Google..
It is easy to overly optimise content into oblivion and forget all the other reasons people visit your website.
We are at the whim of algorithms. SEO is evolving into algorithm optimisation (AO).
Diversify your traffic sources
Different platforms push content based on different reasons.
Diversify traffic sources, and publish content across different platforms.
Track other search engines
While Google is still the top bot in web search, users are increasingly turning to other search engines such as Microsoft’s much-hated Bing, or private search engines like DuckDuckGo and Brave.
Configure your reporting tools to track traffic (and ideally keywords) from some of these sources.
Use your data
Now you’ve been collecting information, how do you use it?
High-traffic sources are where your customers are at. Don’t burn energy trying to lift your Facebook traffic if 90% of your users are arriving directly from your Instagram bio.
Share your own content in those places, and encourage your customers and community to do the same.
And keep on top of it – what works today might not work next year!
Have you noticed a difference in the traffic coming to your website from Google? Get in contact and tell us what’s failing you.