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The advice show for creators that tells it like it is. Host Stephanie Woodin takes calls from web creators grappling with the big questions: burnout, branding, revenue, and keeping up with AI and SEO changes. Each episode, an expert guest or fellow creator joins Stephanie to answer your questions with research-backed, practical advice you can put to work in your own business.
Brought to you by Raptive, the full-service creator media company that empowers creators to turn their passions into thriving, profitable brands.
Do you have a question? Record yourself on video or audio, or write it up and email it to ctrlaltask@raptive.com. Anonymous questions are welcome!
Adam:
How are we coping with Google betraying publishers and becoming the publishers themselves? We actually bought this toy.
Joanne:
Yes, there's a…
Adam:
It's a little stress toy, and it's a dumpster fire.
Joanne:
It's a dumpster fire. Because that's how it feels. It's just, it's so chaotic.
Stephanie:
Google has made some big moves lately. They're kind of doing the most. In 2024 they rolled out AI Overviews, which are those summaries that you see at the top of your search. And this past year they rolled out AI Mode, which is kind of like a chatbot experience for more complicated questions. Liz Reed, a Google VP recently said that this is the future of Google Search, a search that goes beyond information to intelligence, but all of that intelligence is built off of real content from real creators. And when creators websites aren't getting the clicks, that's a huge problem. So if that's the future of search, what can creators even do about it? One SEO expert said that this could mean a decimation of websites. Already creators are feeling that pinch. Today we're taking questions and with the help of our expert, getting real data-backed answers. I'm Stephanie Woodin and this is Ctrl Alt Ask, the creator advice show.
Hey, Paul.
Paul:
Hey Stephanie. How are you doing?
Stephanie:
Good. So good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us today. We're just going to jump right in because you're a busy guy. For everybody out there, I'm so excited to bring on Paul Bannister today as our expert guest. Paul, we're so happy you're here because you've definitely come on for a big existential episode and a big existential question from our creators.
So just to give you guys a little background on Paul, he serves as our chief strategy officer here at Raptive, and he's been working on these issues since 2006. But why I'm really, really happy to have Paul here today is he's really been working alongside Google for nearly two decades. So there's really no one who has more insights into the way creators have benefited from Google and also the challenges that they face than Paul. So without further ado, let's dive into the big questions today. And first I want to ask you, Paul, just on the lighter note of things, because this topic today is about AI, what is the most egregious mistake that AI has done to you lately?
Paul:
So it's funny, somebody asked me a similar question recently. How do you use AI in general? And my answer was I spend most of my time yelling at it because I'm annoyed at it giving me the wrong answer about something. On the one hand, it's great, it's helped me with a lot of things. But I feel like for me, what happens is when I get too far down the road with it is when it starts breaking down. To use the two sides of what I thought was pretty amazing, we're doing a little kitchen renovation and I actually asked ChatGPT to help me lay out a floor plan, and it really did a pretty amazing job. I did a little napkin sketch, I uploaded it, I turned it into a real drawing. I asked it to move stuff, it was doing great.
But the minute I was like, this is great, and then it said, I can turn this into a 3D rendering if you want. I'm like, that sounds amazing. So I hit yes, and it spits out this thing that is a total pile of garbage that is not at all related to the thing that it drew. And I was just like, oh my God. You can see how there's so much potential, but then also you can see how it breaks down at moments when you really need it.
Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. I'm right there with you on the house projects. Probably don't want to sign them up for HGTV.
Paul:
Right.
Stephanie:
Well, so with that, let's get into our creator question because it really is a great segue into what our creators are dealing with right now, and this one's a doozy. So let's watch.
Joanne:
I'm Joanne.
Adam:
And I'm Adam Gallagher.
Joanne:
Yep. And we are the couple behind Inspired Taste, which is a recipe blog, which predominantly serves like home cooks with easier recipes, doable, approachable style. We started in 2009, so we've been around a while and we've gone up and down as many times as you can think of as far as traffic and size. We've done it all.
More recently though, the way that Google is putting their AI products at the top of search, like the AI Overviews and then their AI Mode, it just feels totally different. This is totally different to algorithms that can rock our traffic or rock our business a bit.
Adam:
We're starting to see AI Mode or AI Overview stuff, graduating into search. You'll say Inspired Taste humus recipe, Inspired Taste potato salad and you actually start to see the most troubling is the default response being here is the full recipe from Inspired Taste.
Joanne:
It's our recipe and they're providing it above us on a branded search. I mean that person Googled Inspired Taste potato salad, like of all the searches in the land, why would that not be a clear request to come to Inspired Taste?
Stephanie:
Sometimes it's a recipe with their brand literally in the AI Overview. And then other times it's what we like to call a Frankenstein recipe, which is their recipe mashed together with other online recipes to create this new recipe that's never even been tested. So either way it's a problem because they're not getting the credit or the clicks.
Adam:
And there's only one word that I use and I don't know if I'm going to get in trouble, but for Joanne to say it, but it's plagiarism. They're using our name. They're using our recipes. And they know that human connection is what drives their bottom line, but the trade was supposed to be, they featured us and we get clicks. And we need clicks.
Stephanie:
They talk about it like a relationship. I mean, for years it was good. They made content and Google gave them a platform. But with this rollout, the relationship has definitely soured.
Adam:
It really was a slap in the face for Google, who's supposed to be the responsible gatekeeper, do this and just turn their back. When we helped build Google, not Inspired Taste, the ecosystem, everyone. That was true betrayal. We're in a toxic relationship, the worst.
Joanne:
This is such a bad relationship and it's really defeating. It's hard to know how to think about the future. So our question is, is it time to break up with Google? And if so, what does that mean?
Stephanie:
Wow. So they obviously have some big feelings. Adam and Joanne, thank you guys so much by the way, for the question. What do you think when you hear that, Paul? I mean just kind of first reaction. I think they're really articulating what so many creators are going through, right?
Paul:
It's a real challenge and pain point for people. I think that on the one hand, we've all seen this story before. Facebook used to drive lots of traffic, that's gone effectively to zero. Pinterest used to drive a lot more traffic, that's gone down pretty significantly. All the platforms have gone through this story, but Google has been sort the common thread-throughout, but where Google, they are the ones that stuck with it over time. And so I think a little bit, that's why it feels from them more like betrayal because of the fact that it is that they have been there for so long. And so it's this kind of weird scenario where it's like we've seen the story, but this isn't the player we were expecting in the story this time around.
Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean I think that is such a good point because the playing field has changed and creators aren't really sure what power they have if they have any anymore and it used to feel mutually beneficial and now it's really not. We're kind of framing this like it's a toxic relationship now. But I feel like it didn't always work that way. There was a honeymoon period with Google and creators. If people listening don't really know. Can you briefly explain maybe what that honeymoon period and the good years looked like and then how maybe we started to see that turn into what we're doing in that toxic space now?
Paul:
A honeymoon period is almost too small of a term in some regards. It is been years and years and years where Google has been the good actor and Google has been the one that drove traffic and Google was the one that cleaned things up in a positive way, that helped. I mean from 2000 to 2020 probably Google spent a lot of time really trying to make sure those search results were great and that rewarded great content. And so that meant that over that decade, people who were making really good content and investing in building in their audience saw positive gains and returns because as Google got rid of the junk the cream rose to the top and that was a great thing
That's continued from until probably 2023, which is when I think people started seeing Google starting flailing around a little bit. And part of that was driven by real reasons. Again, the rise of AI generated content was a negative directly for Google because it impacted search results and bad content was appearing in places it shouldn't. So they wanted to get rid of that. But there were all of these unintended consequences and collateral damage that came from those changes where people who were making good content started getting hurt. And now we're certainly seeing it in different verticals where, as Google does roll out the AI Overviews, AI Mode features more and more heavily. People see more and more and bigger issues.
I mean, Adam and Joanne's point, in some ways it is a great example of the problem, but it's actually quite small. Food sites so far as a vertical from the data we have have not been that heavily impacted in aggregate from the AI changes, its coming, we should not expect that it won't. Whereas other verticals like travel and personal finance and things like that have been hit much, much, much harder by those changes, and you can kind of see that in the data. So it's been this very kind of verticalized rollout.
Stephanie:
Right. So when you say the changes, are you saying AI Overview specifically? And take me through maybe for... Because this is great that we're talking about maybe non-food as well. Take me through what that would look like for a travel site being hit with an AI Overview and what that could look like for not only the user experience but then the creator as well.
Paul:
Yeah. So we have data, it's not our data, it's from Similarweb that's specific to news as a good vertical. And it shows that when AI Overview is rolled out, I forget the exact date, you see a huge increase in what's called zero click search, which is when somebody goes to Google, but they don't click out. And that's been happening. We'll talk more about zero click search in a minute, but that never goes up and traffic to new sites goes down and you can see the line where AI Overview launches. So it's like while there are other features that matter, like AI mode and other things that are having an impact, the single most impactful feature so far is AI Overviews.
I will say though there is I think a lot of room for hope and optimism. Certainly the road will be bumpy right now. But other things we've seen is that in certain verticals we've seen some early data points that creators who pivoted to create a different sort of content within that vertical started winning more. But this is the beginning of seeing some green shoots that there may be ways to get ahead of the system here if you're smart about the way you make content.
Stephanie:
Does Google have their party of how and why they're doing this? This is helpful for the user, I've heard that.
Paul:
Yeah. If you ask any person at Google, they will say it's all about the users.
Stephanie:
Right.
Paul:
I think that the reality is that these days, more and more, it's all about the shareholders. And Google is facing what shareholders believe to be an existential threat that it has never faced before, which is OpenAI will kill them unless they get their act together quickly. And so whether things are good for users or bad for users or mediocre or whatever, Google has to push hard on AI, it has to act like it's doing lots of things regardless of whether or not it's a good idea, while also not blowing up its existing business. They've done a very good job of that so far in terms of saying they're doing all these AI things, but actually still just making tons and tons of money from search, which is where they make all their money and trying to figure out how-
Stephanie:
Yeah. Bread and butter.
Paul:
Exactly. How do you thread the gap between the search world and the future AI world that we don't know what looks like yet?
Stephanie:
Yeah. Well, when we're thinking about content creators, because, of course, like I said, content creators care about what users, how they're interfacing with their content. Is there anything that they can think about when they're building out the user experience for their sites?
Paul:
I think that... It's almost one of the most important questions, I think, is that, and to some level I think we'll gloss on the surface here because there's so much deep stuff to go into.
Stephanie:
Yeah, we could really dig in. I mean, how many episodes do we have, Paul?
Paul:
Exactly. Exactly. I think that one big thing is not assuming that you know your audience and not assuming that you own audience. Because to some level, for most people, you don't own your audience. Your audience, if you get a lot of search traffic, Google owns your audience and Google giveth and Google taketh, for sure, regardless of all these changes and whatever going on right now specifically. And what that means in my opinion is that you got to treat every person to your site as if they're a rare and unique butterfly that you need to take very special care of. And how do you turn those people... There's a mentality of if I get a user to come to my site, there's a way of thinking about it that it's like, how do I extract the most value out of them today? And I think that's been effective for a long time. And I think we have to change our thinking to, how do I make this person love me so they want to come back time and time and time again? And think less about today and more about the longer term. So I think that's a really kind of important thing, is not assuming that you own your audience and making the most of every single person that comes to your site for the future.
Stephanie:
I think that's such a good way of thinking about it. If you think about magazines from the early 2000s, late '90s, mid to late '80s, they had such dedicated readership. And I kind of think about our creators in that vein that they are brands with very loyal audiences who subscribed every month, got it delivered, couldn't wait to crack it open. It's like creators maybe should think about their audience in that same way. These people want to subscribe to you. If they love their content, they want to continue to receive it, and they're your community.
Paul:
Yeah. Just one other thing to add. When a person shows up to your site, you want to get them to sign it for your email newsletter and you want to get them to read the piece of content all the way through, and you want get them to save the piece of content. You want to get them to remember your brand. You want to get them to click to something else. You have all these different goals that feed into the user experience. And I think the collective we, and what I would say to an individual as well is make compromises and make hard choices and say, what do I really want? What's really the most valuable thing, even if again, I lose a little bit today that's going to build my brand, build my connection with this person over time? And how do you make those hard choices? And not try to throw everything against the wall and see what sticks, kind of approach.
Stephanie:
I think that's really good advice because I think right now there's a lot of creators who feel like they're throwing spaghetti against the wall and don't know exactly which way to turn. I mean, how long has SEO been the biggest strategy and the biggest tactical thing that creators knew that they could do? And now it feels like the rules of the game have changed. I've spoken to some creators anecdotally, I work with creators every day, who've spent maybe 50%, maybe more of their time focused on SEO. So I'm curious, is there anything else or should they still be prioritizing SEO?
Paul:
That's a hard question. I think that you can't not prioritize SEO for the time being. But I do think maybe focusing on it in a different way is valuable. Something I've been talking about for years and you've been talking about and others have been talking about is the importance of your brand. And I think that, in a funny way, brand is also a very fluffy big word that has a lot of meanings, and we're not all talking about the same thing sometimes.
Stephanie:
It started to get thrown around almost too much.
Paul:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. For me, to make it super tangible, I think, a lot of the time it's focus on your social. Not because social will get you a lot of traffic, but because social is the way to truly engage in a more one-on-one basis with people and find who loves you and get them to care about you and think about you. Because I will say when we look at our data, the sites that are doing that continue to do the best year after year after year and are the least impacted, not never impacted, but the least impacted by search changes are the sites with big social. Because having a big social often means you have a big brand, which is a great input into Google's algorithm, one of the strongest inputs. And so not only will you rank well in search, but people just, as Adam and Joanne mentioned, people search Inspired Taste because they like their recipes there.
That's almost the ultimate incarnation of brand is when the person knows your name and it's even better when they go straight to your website, but they type you into Google because they want to go there. That's a really, really good thing. And so I do think focusing on your brand and tangibly focusing on your social is pretty important.
Stephanie:
Yeah, that's a great point. And one maybe I didn't think you would say, because it is interesting, like you said, it doesn't increase traffic necessarily, but it is something, it's familiarity driving, it's engaging, it's community driving. So I think that's a great point. And it's weird, it's like with Adam and Joanne, I felt so bad because I'm like, wow, people know you enough to put Inspired Taste in a search for you and then it's spitting out Frankenstein recipes, which is a really big bummer for creators.
Paul:
For sure.
Stephanie:
So thinking about that, there is a lot of fear, and I could sense the fear that they had. I mean, I think I quoted this previously, but as a decimation of websites, I know that seems like a really strong word. But there's been those terms thrown around, extinction level event, all of that. Do you agree with that assessment when we think about the fear that creators are feeling right now?
Paul:
So I'll say a backwards looking thing and a forwards looking thing. I think the answer is no and I'm optimistic. I think that... So, one, this has played out, forgetting about AI, this problem has played out in many verticals over the last 15 years with this concept of zero click search. I don't know exactly the first place that it happened, but it used to be that if you wanted to get the weather, you had to go to Weather.com or AccuWeather or some other service like that. And then one day Google started putting the weather in search that crushed traffic to weather sites and weather apps. It happened again with sports scores. It happened again with stock prices. It happened again and again and again and again in all different verticals. And yet Weather.com and AccuWeather still exists and ESPN still exists and plenty of great large and small content creators live in these other verticals that have had this exact same problem pass through over the years. And so a little bit, I think that's the backwards looking view.
I think the forwards looking view is that I think the future of the web is bright. I think it may be it will look different and it will be a bumpy road to get from where we are today to the future. But I think it will be even higher quality. It'll be even better. It'll be people who really understand and are connected to their audience and people who are really passionate about content creation on the one side. On the other side, users and people who are really connected and passionate about creators. And so I think that's where we're going to and I think that's a better place. But again, it's certainly going to be bumpy on the way there.
Stephanie:
Yeah, and I'm curious, what does that split kind of look like? In five years do you think that when people go to type in Inspired Taste chocolate chip cookies, are they going to still be getting spit out Frankenstein, or do you think Google is going to have to course correct this? And what will it take really for Google to kind of figure this out?
Paul:
Yeah, I think that Google... AI is getting better and better. So I think it will do a better job. So I think Frankenstein things will become less and less and less. I think Google plagiarizing and stealing things, it's going to take court cases that play out over years and potentially regulatory action and serious blocking of content theft and things like that, which are hard, but are happening in pieces. And actually I just saw some data yesterday, I think, that Google is starting to put more links into AI Mode. Google makes all of its money from people clicking on ads. And so Google has over the last 25 years trained people to click buttons because that's how they make money.
In a future world, if people don't click buttons, I don't know how Google Search, which is their core business, does as well as it does today. And so they have to get back to a world where people are clicking buttons because they need that. If people just become more and more accustomed to reading and getting answers, they're going to click less in general and that is very bad for Google's core business. And so again, with this AI Mode change, I think we're beginning to see the start of that, where I think links will come back into fashion because Google needs it. But I also think that people want that. People, they want the quick answer but then they want to dive deeper, and both things can be good.
Stephanie:
Yeah. And I was going to say with the holidays coming up, I mean it's conversations I have with our creators, but also with my friends when you're thinking about planning a Thanksgiving menu and you get an AI Overview, you can't really bake a Turkey off of just reading an AI Overview. It's kind of like a TikTok. I wouldn't really want to bake a Turkey off a TikTok tutorial. I need to click on a website and read how to do it step by step. So I think there will always hopefully, like you said, be this hunger for that, pun intended, and they can hopefully realize that that's part of the user experience that's positive.
So the big question now is, as we've come to, you've shed so much light on what creators are facing, and I think though you have shed some positivities, which I'm really happy to hear, but Adam and Joanne did ask, should we break up with Google? Things are toxic or should we stay in a situation-ship? As the kids say these days, which I heard is it's complicated status on Facebook. But do you think creators should or should they just become less reliant as you mentioned? And what would that even look like to break up with Google?
Paul:
Yeah. On the first point, if you watch Mad Men, there's a great scene where-
Stephanie:
Love it.
Paul:
... Don Draper is in an elevator with a junior [inaudible 00:24:00] agency or somebody, I can't even remember who it was anymore. And the junior person says, "I feel bad for you to Don Draper." And Don Draper just looks straight ahead and says, "I don't think about you at all."
Stephanie:
Yes. This is the best line in TV history.
Paul:
Exactly. One of my favorites.
Stephanie:
It's so good.
Paul:
I think a little bit, I feel like that here. Where we empower Google by talking about them now and by thinking about them all the time and focusing so much on that. I'm a little bit like, and easier said than done, but focusing on your audience and your brand and your social and what you are about and what makes you tick and what you are passionate about, that feels like where we should all be focusing. Google should be secondary. And so I don't know whether it's a situation-ship or what the heck you'd call it, but it's like I think if we focus on ourselves and our audience and what we care about, I think we will get to a better place and think less about Google. I think that's a better outcome for all of us.
Stephanie:
I think that's good advice in life and Google. Focus on yourself. If you're having a toxic relationship, improve yourself and the rest will come.
Paul:
Yeah, yeah. There you go. Exactly. It is just like a relationship, you're totally right.
Stephanie:
I love it. Well, I have to tell you that when I was talking to Adam, he actually called you the creator Avenger. And so I actually brought, and we all talked, and we think that you're Iron Man because you're so smart. So this is Paul the creator Avenger everybody. But he's really advocating for creators and having these conversations every day. So we're so appreciative that you came on and just shed a little light on this really big, big question, and I think there's some great takeaways. So thank you so much for doing this today.
Paul:
Yeah, absolutely.
Stephanie:
We're excited for people to hear what you have to say.
Paul:
Cool. Thanks very much. It's great being here. Great to chat.
Stephanie:
For more information on everything we talked about today, you can check out the show notes or visit our website, raptive.com/CtrlAltAsk. And if you have a question or an episode idea, email us at CtrlAltAsk@Raptive.com. That's C-T-R-L AltAsk@Raptive.com.