Bloggers and publishers have been left in the cold after Google rolled out March 2024 Core Algorithm and subsequently Google Overview. To make matters worse, the company paid Reddit $60 million to use their data train it’s AI.They even went ahead to promote Reddit and forum sites to appear at the top of Google search results. Blogs which used to dominate Search Engine Results Page (SERP) were pushed to page 2, others don’t appear on Google completely.
With Google overview, visitors don’t have to click on individual site links to access information, they will get all the information on the overview—cool idea. This will certainly impact negatively on the traffic sent to publishers.
After the March 2024 Google algorithm, majority of publishers lost 70% to 90% of traffic to their sites. The lost traffic went to authority sites and forums which Google favors currently.
Already, a number of bloggers have stopped creating content as most of them relied heavily on Google for organic traffic. Others will leave in due course for failing to meet web hosting costs.
It seems Google has opted to work with big sites and forums—they don’t care on the plight of bloggers and independent publishers. This scenario puts small bloggers in an awkward position—which poses a question—what is the future of publishers?
From my point of view, majority of publishers will quit blogging and a number of them will turn to YouTube for content creation. Google will remain with a tiny number of publishers—even those publishers will get worked up and leave the space. Over time, the number of blogs will shrink and it will reach a point where no new bloggers will emerge—the internet will remain with garbage from AI
The trend is dangerous for AI.As you know, AI will be starved of data because at the moment it’s using data from publishers to show results. The end game is that, Google will have to pay publishers to churn out new content for AI.It will have to buy all the major forums and authority sites or pay them handsomely for them to hire guest posting experts to create new content. In the long run, it will become more expensive for Google’s AI system. Remember, to run AI, electricity is required, it requires staff and hosting space. There is also crawling budget.
At the moment, Google is focusing more on profits. They don’t care about publishers. The company will display ads on their overview page, hence preventing publishers from earning. Due to discouragement, publishers will wind up their businesses and focus elsewhere. Google will make huge profits for a couple of years. After 5-10 years, they will lack new data for AI. Visitors will often find wrong or outdated information on Google. They will shift their allegiance to other search engines and social media. Eventually, Google will be the ultimate loser.
For bloggers, if your content is about information, just quit. Informational content will be available on Google overview. You will get zero organic traffic from Google.
If you are intending to start a blog, create a niche blog on News. Such sites will survive AI because they constantly have new information.
