Great interview on #SEO and #AI synergy with @SEOdub. Be sure to also check the #EXCLUSIVE series on the nationally syndicated PriceofBusiness.com! More at #pobinsider. Questions on #articles? Email articles@usabusinessradio.net. USABusinessRadio.com

Google's @JohnMu has confirmed that AI Mode reporting will indeed come to Search Console - exactly what that means is not clear but the data will be in Search Console's performance reports soon - more details at seroundtable.com/google-ai-m…

The future of SEO as the future Google Search rolls out searchengineland.com/the-fut…

This is 100% accurate and aligned with a human-first approach. Business-aligned, marketing aligned. The days of SEO strategies based solely on keywords are dead.

1/? ☠️🎯:: Is Google coming ::🎯☠️ ☠️🎯:: for YOUR BUSINESS ? ::🎯☠️ Unless there's some massive legal shifts, the whole AIO (content and traffic theft) is here to stay. But that's not the same as Google actively coming for your business! And with AIO - that may well be what @Google are looking to do. An apparent leak (discovered by @tomcritchlow) showed a large list of potential AIO Aspects, including what appears functions/project names, and a few seem quite clear on their purpose. Here's an alpha-sorted list: AI List AI Topics AI Topics Layer 10 AIM Guided Narration (Fig) About This Image Air Airport AIO Allium Automat Bizmatch Clarifying Questions Create Explore Fact-checker Fantasy Sports Researcher Fig Slideshow Getting Things Done Golden Compass Health Highlight Home Energy Assistant Incentives Explorer Info Sleuth Learn About X Limelight Lsi MedExplainer Memora Motorcycles Neon Neural Chef Nitroboost:Create Opt-in Outfit Dreamer QTalk Shopping Smart Kitchen Spark Stargaze Stateful Journey Supercat Prototype Topic Map Visit Guide Web Guide Weekend Hub web_guide_flagship Found via @lilyraynyc >>> #SEO #Business #AI

Google's AI Overviews = theft 🚨 And Google just got smacked with a lawsuit by Chegg -- and it's utterly fantastic ⚖️ I'm a former commercial litigator turned online travel publisher -- here are my notes from reading the complaint (link in next tweet) 👇 (warning, this summary is long & took me all morning to put together -- if you're a publisher please take 10 minutes to actually read it & share it with others) 1) Chegg is represented by the Susman Godfrey firm -- which means they are not messing around. Susman has quite the reputation as savvy, hard-charging litigators 2) Importantly, the compliant is grounded in antitrust law (NOT copyright, as I initially expected). And, goodness, it's a real banger .... 3) The complaint says the "exchange of access for traffic is the fundamental bargain that has long supported the production of content for the open commercial Web." 🎯 4) It continues: "But in recent years, Google has begun to tie its participation in this bargain to another transaction to which Chegg and other publishers do not willingly consent. As a condition of indexing publisher content for search, Google now requires publishers to also supply that content for other uses that cannibalize or preempt search referrals." 5) Chegg talks not just about AI Overviews, but also references featured snippets 6) 🫶this part -- "Google’s foray into digital publishing is designed to make Google a destination, rather than a search origination point to other websites." 7) Even if Google provided a separate opt-out for AI Overviews, it wouldn't work - because Google's monopoly power creates a collective action problem 8) A lot of fantastic points about how Google unfairly leverages its monopoly power to bend the open web to Google's will 9) Paragraph 13 is chef's kiss 🫰... "Google’s conduct is already eroding incentives for Chegg and other publishers to produce such valuable and useful content. If not abated, this trajectory threatens to leave the public with an increasingly unrecognizable Internet experience, in which users never leave Google’s walled garden and receive only synthetic, error-ridden answers in response to their queries—a once robust but now hollowed-out information ecosystem of little use and unworthy of trust." 10) Search engines are supposed to be intermediaries between users and web publishers. The complaint quotes old-school Google saying "We may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our website as quickly as possible." 11) Search is a uniquely important channel for publishers. Other channels of traffic like social media can never replace search, because that traffic is not intentional 12) "Put simply, Google’s search monopoly gives it control over online distribution for digital publishers. Google uses that power to force digital publishers to give up their content. Google then itself acts as a publisher, either by republishing portions of other digital publishers’ content or by using GAI to summarize the content. The end result is that users increasingly consume other web publishers’ content on Google’s SERP, either in abridged or derivative form, which starves those publishers of traffic and revenue." 13) Chegg calls Google's strategy for publishers "embrace, absorb, extinguish" 14) Next is an entire fantastic section recounting the history of "Google’s Transformation from a Search Engine to Web Publisher" 15) Google appropriated publisher's content in 2 phases. Phase I it calls the 'republishing phase.' The complaint talks about featured like featured snippets & People Also Ask 16) Hilariously, paragraph 63 includes a screenshot of Sundar Pichai's mug inside a SERP for "who is google's ceo" 16) "Google refers to Featured Snippets, Top Stories, and People Also Ask as “search features.” But they are separate and distinct products from search results. This is Google acting as an answer engine—not a search engine." 17) Republishing is not automatically bad, but the problem is that Google forces it on publishers as a condition for appearing in Search (of which it has a monopoly) 18) "The decision to opt out of republishing by disallowing snippets or withholding Search Index Data is a Hobson’s choice. " 19) Phase II of Google's strategy to dominate online publishing centers around AI Overviews ("GAI") 20) Complaint notes that the non-monopolists like OpenAI and Perplexity have been forced to do licensing deals with many publishers, whereas Google has largely avoided this cost thanks to its search monopoly 21) Complaint walks through the differences between LLM pre-training and RAG (a point I've been trying to educate publishers on for months and months) 22) Next is a recap of Google's LLM product history: Bard, SGE, Gemini & AI Overviews 23) @rustybrick commentary is cited quite a bit (see footnotes on pages 40, 41) 24) The transition to AI Overviews "all but completes Google’s evolution from a “search engine” to an “answer engine” that publishes answers to user’s queries. Its formerly symbiotic and complementary relationship with publishers has now become overwhelmingly parasitic and competitive." 25) Google's own marketing language directly admits that the purpose of featured snippets & AI Overviews is to prevent users from clicking throughs to publishers 26) Next section talks about how Google's unauthorized use of publisher content for AI training 27) "Google has been intentionally vague in identifying the precise data sets used to train the LLMs underlying Gemini and AI Overviews" 28) "Google’s Terms of Service indicate that it uses all the information that it collects for search indexing to train its LLMs, including Chegg’s data. " 29) Google announced Google-Extended in Sept 2023, but blocking it doesn't change that Google trained on your content or that Google uses it for RAG 30) Next section: Google poses a "fundamental threat" to online publishing 👏👏 31) Lots of discussion on how AI Overviews directly compete with and seek to replace online publishers 32) Oh WOW - in paragraph 121, Sussman dug up a pretty damning admission in a 2023 Google DeepMind presentation: Google admits Generative AI in search would "reduce referrals to content providers hurting their ability to monetize" 33) Lots of outside observers recognize the risk AI Overviews present to publishers. Footnotes cite @timsoulo among others 34) AI Overviews increase "zero click" searches 35) AI Overviews will cause a downward spiral in publishing quality - as the incentive to create gets less, quality degrades, and the whole web suffers 36) Google has put publishers in an awful position - by publishing content, they feed the very AI beast that is consuming publishers alive 27) Next, the complaint walks through the actual legal claims -- which, IMHO, are quite strong 28) First - "reciprocal dealing," an antitrust concept which "occurs when a firm with market power refuses to sell product X to a customer unless that customer agrees to sell (or give) product Y to it. In this case, the product Google is selling to (and threatening to withhold from) digital publishers is Search Referral Traffic." 29) Second - "monopoly maintenance." Basically argues that Google's use of AI constitutes a form of "rent extraction" on publishers. 30) Google is using AI to illegally entrench its search monopoly 31) Third - "Unjust enrichment" - which basically means Google has unfairly benefited at the expense of publishers via wrongful conduct. 32) "The value of Google’s models and AI products is directly related to the quality of the works that it acquires to train them and ground their outputs." 33) Finally - a recital of the counts: I - Reciprocal Dealing in Violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act II - Reciprocal Dealing in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act III - Tortious Conduct in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act IV - Unlawful Monopoly Leveraging in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act V - Unlawful Monopolization in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act VI - Unlawful Attempted Monopolization in Violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act VII - Common Law Unjust Enrichment 34) Lastly, Chegg's request for relief is of course damages and attorney fees, but also for a permanent injunction preventing Google from engaging in unlawful conduct 35) Chegg demands a jury trial ***link to complaint in next tweet*** My overall takeaway? This is a truly fantastic complaint. The only thing I think it missed is Google's admission in a blog post in summer 2023 that robots(.)txt is not a sufficient consent mechanism in the AI age. But, other than that, they really did their homework and hammered a ton of points I've been railing about for years. If you are a publisher - please share so others see! 👏👏👏

Latest on PoB - @SEOdub shares What Is “Human First” SEO? thedailyblaze.com/what-is-hu… More news at PriceofBusiness.com #pobinsider @KevinPriceLive @DarshDavis @dc_ksh

Today we released the December 2024 spam update. It may take up to 1 week to complete, and we'll post on the Google Search Status Dashboard when the rollout is done: status.search.google.com/inc…

💡 Boost organic leads with SEO! Say goodbye to costly PPC & hello to optimized content, targeted keywords, & performance tracking. 🚀 Check out our blog for B2B SEO strategies to turn your site into a lead-gen machine! 🔗 csp.agency/blog/seo-tips-for… #SEO #LeadGen

Google tries to destroy SEO with the HCU then builds SEO into GSC.

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ChatGPT's search market share seroundtable.com/chatgpt-sea…

This isn’t really anything new, but Google has gone way beyond keywords and basic optimization techniques. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, focus on a human first approach that centers on business goals, marketing, and making authentic human connections that drive revenue.

🚀 AI is transforming the SEO game, but should you be excited or nervous? (Spoiler: maybe a little of both!) In our latest blog, we dive into how AI is reshaping the SEO landscape—from Google’s AI-driven algorithms to powerful content tools like GPT.  csp.agency/blog/how-ai-is-sh…

Every SEO strategy we develop is driven by our clients’ unique business goals and target audience. Because at the end of the day, traffic means little if it’s not moving the needle where it counts. SEO should work for your business, not just for visibility. #SEO  #CSPAgency

Get ready for more movement.

When it comes to blending SEO with Account-Based Marketing (ABM), it all starts with alignment—from company goals to persona mapping. Aligning your SEO and content strategy with your ABM priorities means ensuring your content speaks to the real needs of your target audience.

🌄 Outdoor brands, here’s the challenge: your audience is constantly shifting. How do you adapt? Go beyond basic demographics—dig into what drives them. Is it brand loyalty, authenticity, or information? That’s where true connection happens. #OutdoorMarketing #KnowYourAudience