[Applause] I've never seen as much spam in Google's results so blatantly in top positions I've never seen so many big companies getting away with horrible lowquality content ranking prominently all you name it there's all kinds of issues and I've never also had so many people probably 20 to 30 people every day message me desperately because either their websites are being outranked by spam or AI content or their content is being scraped and plagiarized using AI [Applause] tool hi I'm Eric schwarzman author of the digital pivot and this is the earned media [Music] podcast my guest today is Lily Ray she is the VP of SEO strategy and research at amiv and I am pleased to have her with me on this podcast Lily welcome thank you so much for having me it's great to have you so I want to talk to you about uh what's going on with this um roll out that that Google has been rolling out and is still not done rolling out and it's said to be the biggest roll out in the history of the of the search engine what's going on is Google getting crushed by the same AI it's developing I think that Google is dealing with a lot of new challenges related to you know a rampant a rampant increase in AI generated content being proliferated around the internet this isn't fundamentally new for them in the sense that they've been developing algorithms and ranking systems aimed at reducing the visibility of spammy content and content that's autogenerated for SEO and things like this they've been doing that forever what's different now is that they have these you know people have at their disposal these tools that they can use like chat GPT and and Gemini and Claud to create content really quickly and easily at scale using AI so what we're seeing right now with the March core update among other things that Google seems to be updating and and targeting with this algorithm update it seems that Google is trying to take bold action against uh Mass autogenerated AI content that doesn't add a lot of value for Google searchers and to your point it's the longest Poe algorithm update we've had in Google's history because I think these are very complex problems to solve and they want to make sure they get it right so regarding you know the the quantity of AI generated content that has been uploaded since chat Bots have become widely available I mean is is there any sort of data hard data on sort of the number of new web pages that have been uploaded online since tools like chat GPT became available I don't have that number off the top of my head um I think that probably only Google would know because they have to crawl all this information I mean it's it's clear just anecdotally at least within the SEO space that I imagine the growth of content is exponential right now just because of how much faster these tools can create content and how much people are have been finding ways to scale these processes there's something within the SEO Community for example called programmatic SEO um which is essentially just like finding ways to automate the content creation and scale the content creation process very quickly um and using AI only increases the speed at which people can create new content So within the last year and a half a lot of people especially in the SEO space and content creation space have been um shouting from the mountaintops how to use tools like chat GPT to like create 10,000 articles in five minutes right and blast that to search engines like Google and bang and what Google and bang are doing now is neutralizing that type of content wow I mean it it seems like when you look at search results and you see a lot of things that are being shared on Twitter uh by people like yourself and others it seems like the spam spammers are winning the war at least so far yeah this happens in Cycles with Google um spammers might win temporarily doing certain things and then Google has to develop new algorithm updates to Target what they're doing um you know I think generally Google wins but the spammers keep trying and they try new methods and these tools are giving spammers new methods which is exactly what we're seeing but um you know people like myself who have been working in the SEO space for a really long time and probably most of us who have been working in the SEO space for at least 10 years have been affected by algorithm updates at one point or another or worse uh manual actions which is an actual slap on the wrist or penalty from Google um you start to learn that like you can only get away with so much before they catch on to you so for those of us that work on actual like Enterprise and real business clients with SEO we don't take a lot of these risks but I think a lot of people were very surprised that Google cracked down on mass AI autogenerated content because it was working for a while but like many tricks in the SEO space they they work until they don't and that's what we're seeing right now do we have any evidence that um Google search results are deteriorating that's a good question that everyone keeps asking right now um I can only provide what I'm seeing anecdotally and with very very small sample sizes in terms of the data that I look at uh nobody has anything close to the amount of data that Google actually has so you when you when you hear them speak I think they almost always say like our users like it you know things are fine it keeps getting better we keep improving the quality of results um a lot of times lately I feel that there's a really big personally I feel there's a really big disconnect between what like Sundar Pai their CEO will say about Google's results and the direction that it's going with what I'm seeing personally but of course I'm an SEO of course I'm only working on a small number of sites um and of course what the SEO Community feels is not what's necessarily what what most users feel so I don't know the answer to that um I can only speak for my own experience which is somebody that lives and breathes the stuff every single day I've never in my 14 plus year career seen the the quality of search results as poor as they are right now I've never seen as much spam in Google's results so blatantly in top positions uh I've never seen so many big companies getting away with horrible lowquality content ranking prominently um oh you name it there's all kinds of issues and I've never also had so many people probably 20 to 30 people every day message me uh desperately because either their websites are being outranked by spam or AI content or their content is being scraped and plagiarized using AI tools so anecdotally it feels like the problem is much worse besides the prioritization of Form results what other major shifts are you seeing in the servs yeah this is something I think the one of the biggest shifts that's going to be very hard for Google to solve if it does it all is that a lot of the biggest Publishers on the internet I mean you name it any big publisher essentially uh is able are able to produce a lot of uh review and affiliate content whether that's produced internally or produced with the help of third party content creation companies who have some type of incentive you know whether it's linking to Amazon products or any type of affiliate agreement where the biggest Publishers on the Internet seem to be able to rank for a lot of these types of queries and it's things like best vacuum cleaners best pet food best dog insurance you know um and you'll see almost always it's the biggest players on the internet that get to rank for all this stuff and uh a lot of the times lately one of the biggest complaints that seos and a lot of users have is that for a long time google was promoting and still promotes this notion of what they call eat which stands for experience expertise Authority and trust and when you see uh a Sports Website able to rank for best cat food in 2024 it flies in the face of what Google says to do with eat like author authoritativeness um so that's been very frustrating and that's a problem that I think will be very hard for them to solve when um you see these uh publisher sites that run sponsored content a Ka native advertising um and those articles are maybe not completely AI generated or maybe not you know taken wholesale from a client and uploaded but word smithed a little and I mean you see like on Vogue you know 10 best women's shade hats for summer and they're all affiliate links and of course there's the disclosure that says you know this we are not influenced by this but we may make money off the off the link and that type of behavior is probably safe right because it is Vogue and they do cover fashion and someone has at least you know word smithed it I I guess the bigger risk would be you know just taking wholesale press releases and uploading them to your site which obviously a lot of or organizations do um but one thing you've noted and I've seen this kind of in your shares lately on Twitter is that it seems as the most of those um articles that are being moved by uh publishers are being done so at a subfolder that could be easily you know dismissed in the algorithm yeah great points um there's a spectrum of of this approach and how well it works for Publishers and we're seeing this is uh those of us that have worked in this space for these types of companies like my team and me we work with a lot of big Publishers we know that Publishers are desperate for new Revenue sources and this is a really big one for them you know working with sponsored content or even companies that provide thirdparty sponsored content um this is turning out to be very beneficial for them from an SEO perspective or it has for a while because if you look um for example the New York Times purchased wire cutter that was the first big clue and if you look right now at the organic visibility of the New York Times website over time looking primarily at what we call Evergreen content the things articles that rank throughout the year not like brand new news articles if you look p at evergrain content the wire cutter is by far the biggest driver of SEO traffic and visibility on the New York Times I'm speaking from thirdparty data I don't work there I don't have a first party data so I can't confirm that but as far as what I'm seeing from thirdparty tools the wire cutter was a really great investment for them because it's driving a lot of their SEO traffic so I think a lot of um Publishers started to do the same thing in the last few years which is why you'll see Bo having you know best tennis racket content or whatever there's a spectrum to your point so the companies that are doing this in-house like the New York Times bought wire cutters that's like an internal product and they're doing it in a way where we've always used the wire cutter as the gold standard because they have really good in-depth product reviews that are like very heavily tested by the people writing the Articles um or like Good Housekeeping these types of things a lot of Publishers have followed suit and now you're seeing a a lot of almost all of them produce content in this type of way where some I would say the wire cutter is the gold standard but on the other end of the spectrum we have uh completely Reckless like subleasing that content to a third party or third party individuals like seos who will then post a an article on your site that says best tennis rackets in 2024 and that's purely affiliate links it's not it's not edited it's not reviewed by the the actual publisher that's the worst case scenario and that's what Google's going after so there's this really big spum and most Publishers kind of fall in the middle so I think and I think users are feeling frustrated with all of it so it's hard to say how far Google's going to go because it's hard to tell the New York Times the wire cutter is not good content it is great content you know so it's just a question one time I used a wire cutter article to buy a the best nail clippers and you know they look good but they weren't really I didn't think they were that great and also I used them once to buy a shaver and I didn't think it was that great either but obviously it's better than spam that's for sure yeah let me ask you something why do you think it is that Google is allowing YouTube users to upload tutorials on how to game search that is a wonderful question and one that I've actually asked Google myself um I think it's first of all it's free speech I mean you can't once you start to police whether or not something is promoting the spamming of Google it's like is all SEO content against YouTube's guidelines I think that's a really slippery slope but um it is really ironic to me that most of the spam tactics that are being promoted are being promoted on places like YouTube um a lot of them are also like private which I think is where spammers should probably be doing their having their conversations but um yeah they're they're two separate products they have their own uh guidelines for Content creation but YouTube is taking certain steps and has been taking certain steps similar to Google's over the years like um you know labeling dangerous content working with doctors to elevate highquality medical content um lately they banned or they said AI content needs to be labeled in certain ways so they have their own guidelines but I do find it endlessly ironic that the most prolific spammers of Google are YouTube celebrities hey um you know on that note uh um you know health related content um you mentioned that uh you know you've been monitoring a number of keywords that Mayo Clinic ranks for and that in some cases you wind up finding discussion and Form results you know sandwiched in the top three somewhere and um you know those Form results for keywords like kidney stone pain or bruising easily uh can show up for both quora and r it um and obviously those are just open user generated content platforms where people share their experiences and opinions but they're not healthc Care Professionals um why do you think it is that Google is allowing that type of content to rank so highly and um and do you think it's dangerous yes I think it's dangerous um I think that I mean this is a version of what they've said but they have gotten a lot of feedback over the years from users that they do enjoy that type of content Forum content um they've said this explicitly with some new product updates including discussions and forums you know we've get we've gotten a lot of feedback you know a lot of probably user signals that people like this type of content and so that's why they're doing it um do I think I think also like this is purely my own opinion but I think for whatever reason uh the systems that Google uses to identify when a keyword might be dangerous which are systems that they've had forever not forever but for a very long time it doesn't seem like those systems are preventing Google from showing discussions and forums I mean they're not I have thousands of examples um and what I was surprised to see is because I spoke with a journalist uh at Business Insider last couple of weeks about this I was expecting and I was also basing this off Danny Sullivan's response to one of my tweets about it where he said this is good feedback you know we're taking it internally um maybe Google will consider doing something like saying these are Forum results you know just like a warning to the user that maybe they're not 100% accurate something like that um so I was I was actually thinking okay maybe Google forgot to turn off the discussions and forums for medical keywords like people make mistakes maybe that happened I don't know but then they responded to the Business Insider article and said we feel good about these Forum results and we haven't found any any like data indicating that there's particularly dangerous information contained in the discussions and forums I was very surprised to see that I um was having dinner at a friend's house the other night and his daughter was there and she is a graduate student at Colombia so you know Highly Educated just starting uh The Graduate School there and um I was thinking about what we heard Mike King say at the uh SEO Meetup conference we were at when he said um his babysitter doesn't Google She searches it up um to implying that she consults other sources besides just Google and so I asked um Olivia hey do you search in places other than Google and she said well yeah I mean I go to Google but then I go to Tik Tok or Instagram to search for reviews and I said well what sort of reviews do you search for and she said well mostly like supplements workout routines Health advice uh that type of information and she said but I don't want somebody who's too polished or somebody who's like a mega influencer I want like a that was the word she used but my interpretation of that was she wanted someone unpolished who was sort of off the cuff giving a personal human authentic account of their experience using these these products right yeah and so if that is the case if if people do want human accounts um a video right at least until deep fakes I guess become as common as chat GPT is arguably more credible and more authentic than a comment in a form um but do do you think it could be that the reason Google's doing this is because they don't have a Tik Tok and they don't have an Instagram and they need some way to provide review content and those guys are willing to give it to them yeah that's really really great questions and observations I think I think you're absolutely right that um and what she was saying about wanting like a more human experience I think that's a trend that's very vasive especially with younger Generations right now uh like validating the search with real human experiences and yes I think that Google elevating Forum content um ironically to your point like we don't know who the redditor is so it's definitely not the most authentic experience of a redditor giving you medical advice um but a lot of people do still you know it's Anonymous as well so people some people actually like that because they feel like they can share more on Reddit um but yeah Google doesn't Google actually does have a version of Tik Tok it's YouTube shorts that they're they are um pushing in the results they they actually now have a new dedicated filter within Google search to take you directly to YouTube shorts and they've been experimenting over the last year or two with like different ways of displaying what they call perspective content so social media Tik Tok YouTube shorts um blogs things like this um but I do think you you raised a very good point which in general is yes um the opposite of boring AI cont content is human content real human content which is why younger people like Tik Tok so much and which is why younger people keep making that comment which is I don't want it to be an influencer I don't want them to be paid I just want them to be an authentic person telling me their experience and I want to see what they look like and I want to see what the way they're saying it because people want authenticity so I think um yeah Google's probably trying to do a version of that by elevating Forum content because even though it's not the actual person saying it it's still real people having real conversations so I didn't ask her this question because I got pulled away by my stepmother who wanted to leave the table she like we gotta go we gotta go she was tired but I wanted to also ask her about like chat GPT because you know when I was at the conference um I I went to lunch with uh a couple people and Alita soless was actually using Chachi PT to search for something like in her hand as we were walking around and what I wanted to ask Olivia was well when would you search Chat GPT what would you I know how I use it I tend to use it to refine my query or to to figure out what to search for if I don't know what something's called I can upload an image and I can ask a question or I can just say hey what is there a way to say this but how do you think people are using chat GPT for search well most people aren't it's still I in the scheme of things it's still a small community of like Innovative tech people I think predominantly using chat GPT but um yeah that that's that depends on the person I think uh a lot of people who have used chat GPT and co-pilot and things like this find it to be more helpful for their day-to-day searches um there was a really interesting article that uh atrus did a couple weeks ago about I replaced Google with perplexity doai which is another AI product for a whole week just to see what my experience was and it was like very positive it was like that was actually a really great experience which is kind of alarming but um I you know like you said I think I have certain use cases for when I use Ai and it's not always like I still use Google all the time so I think it's for me it's a different type of tool and product but like I wouldn't use chat GPT to say um best place to have dinner tonight in the meat packing District like I would I wouldn't do that because I'm like I don't care what chat whatever chat GPT is pulling from it's not but you probably wouldn't use Google for that one either no I would but I would use I yeah because Google's a starting point like I'm not going to go on Tik Tok and find my meat packing District restaurant I don't do that I'm a older Millennial that's not how I do my searches but no I mean Google houses all the data from users from all over the place so whether I end up on Google Maps or Yelp or Trip Advisor that's still how I make my decisions usually but Google's the starting point right it houses all the world's information so even if but I'm also a Savvy user I know how to modify my searches I know how to look for certain things from certain websites or whatever it is so uh the average person will probably have a more enjoyable experience with chat GPT right now but the average person also probably doesn't realize how many flaws there are in the answers so when I you know used used search I would say when I was Olivia's age and I was using search I regarded search results as impartial and unbiased I regarded the algorithm as capable of surfacing results that truly were the best and I knew that they were selling ads against those and I regarded the paid ads as something that obviously were a little more suspect but the organic ads were to me seen as you know the the most uh trustworthy do you think people still feel that way I think that's a behavior and that's a perspective that has been kind of subconsciously drilled into most people over the years like I agree with you and that's why I work in SEO because I believe in the things that you say said to be true that's why I like this profession or have liked this profession um I think things are changing a bit right now but again I can only speak for the tech world that I'm a part of and our perspectives I'm not talking to a middle-aged mother in Alabama about how she feels about Google I don't know um most people I think have Google as their default browser and the default search Behavior so they just use what what they have um but you hear anecdotally a lot more people a lot of a lot of people saying people are shifting to Bing they're shifting to other search engines they're starting with Tik Tok they're starting with Reddit they're going all these different places so I think we're seeing the beginning of a sea change and I think that's also um that's also echoed by the fact that Google's senior leadership it continues to be on record about everything being on fire and it's a big red alert and they feel threats from every direction right now regarding site reputation abuse we talked a little bit about it when we talked about um Native advertising and sponsored content um do you think uh a a a publisher who um has a Performance Marketing Division and writes content uh that's in line with their topical whatever they cover um but is motivated by affiliate links do you see that as site reputation abuse uh the answer to this is in I hope I think it's in Google's documentation because they do provide about five or six very specific examples of what they mean by site reputation abuse and you really have to read carefully what they mean so just off the top of my head some examples they give are like if you are a medical website with an article about best casinos in 2024 that's site reputation abuse um but if you have if you're a medical site and you have an article about best workout supplements 2024 and the people that work at that medical site were involved in the creation of that content that's not site reputation abuse so it's very nuanced um but I also am very reluctant to give any type of confident answer to this question because it hasn't happened yet for all we know Google does nothing and or for all we know they send thousands of manual actions and every publisher on the whole internet is penalized we just don't know and we're not going to know until May 5th so I keep telling people over and over I'm doing the best I can going off of the documentation that they have and the warnings that they gave us but literally nobody in the whole world knows I've heard some theories unsubstantiated theories that perhaps the reason um search results have deteriorated is because Google is getting ready to replace the concept of citation indexing with some AI brainchild scheme that's going to improve their results um what are your thoughts on that um maybe in 10 years that'll be true but or five years I mean AI moves really quickly but with the current roll out of sge and the current beta version and the quality of the search results and the fact that sge needs high quality content to provide good answers I think that sounds extremely ambitious and unrealistic right now um but do I think that's the direction they're going yeah probably I think that probably search in five or 10 years will look a whole lot like mostly sge type answers but I go back and forth on this because at the same time people want websites like if you think about a lot of the time not all the time but a lot of the time there's certain websites people are looking for that they want and that's what they use Google to do they use Google to get there um and sge can't replace everything so yeah I think it's going to be I don't I don't know if this is why Google's um right now right now why they're having as many search quality issues and spam problems I don't think it's it's like we're we're letting this happen because we're building this AI thing I think that it's more that so many internal resources are focused on AI at Google right now as this red alert thing that we keep hearing about that maybe it's they've taken their eye off the price can you talk a little bit about this rart thing yeah I that's literally the word that they used a couple was it like a year ago it was the Google Red Alert um it uh of course I can't find it on Google it's Google um there was it was a code red code red um and that was chat GPT essentially chat GPT created a code red for Google because this is an existential threat to Google's business model they've had big existential threats in the past like Amazon is an exist essal threat to Google shopping Tik Tok is an existential threat to YouTube and younger people looking for this type of content and it's true that a lot of younger people start their searches on Tik Tok or enhance their searches with Tik Tok these are competitors that they've had for a long time chat GPT is different because it's a fundamental threat to search it's the way that people search and it it's so impressive that it definitely makes you think that it makes you realize that you're probably going to have a better experience asking chat GPT all kinds of questions you used to rely on Google for so that's where the code red came from and you continue to to this day including yesterday you'll see articles about how Google's effectively saying internally we need to move faster we're not moving fast enough they said that yesterday where where did they say that CNBC Google search boss warns employees of new operating reality urges them to move faster and we'll um include these uh links in the show notes for the uh for the podcast if anybody wants to read them I'll make sure they're they're there so thanks for digging that up um in terms of the existential uh threat from Amazon um you know Alita at at her keynote talked a little bit about um how the search experience is changing for e-commerce related results and you can force these results if you want to try at home by just putting the word by in front of sneakers or wine or headphones or what it is and and you'll get um not just the paid shopping Carousel at the top of the screen but also about Midway down you'll get this um organic product snippet grid uh that has star ratings and pricing and then if you select any of those products in the Grid on the right hand side you'll actually get a product detail page right there in Google search you don't even have to transit to the e-commerce website and one thing I did notice in um in those product detail snippets on the right hand side or I don't know what else to call it um it has a list of of e-commerce retailers who sell that product and it looks to me like the manufacturer is always ranked number one in there which could actually put brands in the cat seat for DTC against resellers we'll see about that I mean that could be easily changed um I don't think Google is levying a commission now for this sale but God God already knows I mean if they drive enough traffic they certainly could um you work with a lot of e-commerce uh uh clients and I wonder uh from just from a strategic standpoint how you're looking at this and how this sort of figures into your game plan for your clients yeah well we have a dedicated Ecommerce team that is focused on staying on top of the latest greatest developments with Google shopping and Google merchant center because it's mostly structured data related as well as uh shopping feeds so it's really about optimizing those things frankly I used to do e-commerce SEO for like seven or eight years pretty much every single day but I don't focus on it as much lately so it's mostly the team that's doing it but I I know for a fact our team has like all these internal resources about all the best ways to optimize your merchant center Feats and your structured data to get all the possible enhanced which I think lends itself to who gets to rank the best is who's leveraging all those enhancements and of course other factors like who has the best SEO experience who has best website experience and everything like that um but yeah it's it's uh you have to be part of Google's Google shopping at this point to be able to compete with what they're building and if you go to Google shopping tab at this point it does look a whole lot like Amazon so this is like I think separate from the things we've talked about so far but it is one of the big missions Google right now is to increase Google shopping usage and to compete with the fact that a lot of people just go directly to Amazon to start their search Google's trying to get them to stay on Google to start their search um I talked about this a couple years ago there there was an ad campaign at one point maybe two years ago in New York City where you walk around New York and it was like a picture of a model wearing shoes and then it said it was like a Google search bar it said shop shoes on Google Shop hats on Google shop that was the whole ad it was just telling you that you can shop on Google it was like interesting they're really trying to divert that traffic back from Amazon um so yeah whole other animal but uh Merchant centered feeds instruction data is really where it's at right now well I mean the way it could be connected is you know 75% of the revenue obviously coming from uh you know from advertising and if the search Marketplace fragments and that's 75 come 72 or 69 or 68 they've got to pick up that Revenue somewhere else yes and so you know diversifying into these other areas and and trying to you know generate revenue from them makes a lot of sense I can tell you I you know I'm old enough to have signed up for Gmail when it was free and I enjoyed a free account for decades and just recently maybe in the last month or so I got an email from Google saying hey you know what you the size of the storage in your G email is just too much if you want to keep it you have to start paying and voila you know they're generating 30 bucks a month for me there so that's sort of a a new Revenue stream so it could be sort of a broad attempt to diversify their revenue across these other businesses that you up to now have been lost leaders but they've got to start generating money now I think you're right I'm seeing the same thing and uh there was an article circulating two weeks ago about Google even considering charging for some of its new AI product products which was very interesting especially if that includes sge because that would be the first time in history of Google that any version of its search results are paid I'm paying for Gemini you're not paying for Gemini no this was different this was like uh like they didn't actually say which AI products this included but they're considering charging for like a suite of AI tools and the article made it sound like it included sge so that's organic search results which would be unprecedented um hey we haven't talked about that so just tell us what is your prognosis for the future what is sge and where do you think it's headed so sge stands for search generative experience um also known as an AI overview it's it's something that Google announced as a beta test in um Google IO last year in May and leading up to that point a lot of us knew it was coming it's basically Google's public response to chat GPT and generative AI tools because Google has it's it's had since before chat GPT existed it's had the technology to be able to do this type of thing just like taking a bunch of documents and summarizing it with AI so I think they had a lot of Market pressure to release something and that's what they did and it's been in beta this whole time it's only live for a very very small subset of users I want to say in the UK and us maybe maybe other countries but it's very small um but some of us like me have had it enabled in as a beta test on my version of Google for the whole year so whenever I search if it's available I see it and it's Hit or Miss uh Google has only ever said publicly to my knowledge people like it and it's great it's a great Improvement to search uh I've seen a lot of examples of it going arai uh dangerous results bammy results unhelpful results inaccurate result you name it and you know they'll say well yeah you're in the beta test of course you're going to see problems but my concern is it's been over a year and it doesn't feel it is better I'll give them credit it's much better but it's not perfect it's not anywhere near perfect I don't think it ever will be perfect um I found I find inaccuracies every day in sge and and in order for someone to see it they have to be in the beta uh currently most of the time yes but did just start uh they did just launch a limited public test for some users so theoretically any Google Searcher again in I think it's just UK US it might be other countries too but um you know I've definitely been hearing from people in the UK that they're seeing it uh we've only heard some little we haven't I haven't heard or seen it in the wild or seen anybody seeing it in the wild but uh Barry shorts from search engine Round Table collected a few responses from people who had it enabled um without opting in because you don't opt in it just shows up on your Google and they went to Google's like support forums and they were like hey I'm a college student I really need to turn this thing off because I don't want to be held accountable for misinformation and lies coming from AI products and they can't turn it off um I I want to wrap it up with a final question but before I do um what's going on with you I know you're keynoting at ton of conferences on the road all the time so where can people hear you next in the in the next few months yeah I'm actually starting a bit of another tour um we've been doing a lot of SEO tours the past couple years so um I'm starting here in New York City at the knowledge graft conference that's going to be May 8th I want to say and that'll be very nerdy I'm on a panel there uh then I go to May uh Madrid Spain I'm going to Madrid to do a there that'll be in Spanish mozcon in Seattle in early June and Then followed by uh about five or seven speaking engagements in Europe throughout June and July well for those people who want to catch you in June or July what what would be the the best ones good question um used to write off their holiday I'm speaking twice in Berlin um once in Croatia once in bolognia Italy called we make future I think that that conference just from the pictures that I'm seeing I haven't spoken there before but I think that's one of these like big almost like tedex type conferences so that might be cool if you want to go to bolognia I've never been to bolognia looking forward to that um and is supposed to be great my niece actually got a master's in world history there oh cool at the bolognia University beautiful sounds nice maybe let me let me know if she has any recommendations okay well so um just to wrap it up uh you know the big the big question uh do you think Google is going to be able to reinvent themselves in the age of AI yes do I think um Google's too big and too powerful and has too much history and they they've been the at the Forefront of this technology since day one I think they're just trying to get their act together right now because I think that the chat GPT was a threat that they didn't necessarily anticipate but yes I think I think they will I think they'll continue to impress the world with what they can do in Broad Strokes what we what do you think will be required to do that uh hopefully fixing the quality of search results which is how they make their money um and really really really uh improving sge if that's the route that they choose to take because right now it has a a lot I think it has left a lot to be desired but um yeah I think like sge is better the better that the search results are so those two things go together um and that's how Google makes most of its money and that's where people have the most trust in Google so I hope that they can get back on track do they have the leadership to pull it off I don't know at this moment I I don't know enough about the inner workings there I've never worked there but there's a lot of articles with a lot of strong opinions on that topic I don't know enough all right we'll include some of those links in the show notes Lily Ray thanks for taking the time I appreciate it you're welcome you're welcome [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] for more on how you can earn influence through earn media get the digital pivot audiobook at digital pivot book.com [Music]