As a rough rule, search traffic is down 25% YoY for 3 years in a row. imo, here's why: 1) Google AIOs drive little traffic 2) Google is shoving more ads into everything 3) Users are bailing to LLMs, the pie keeps shrinking I don't see this stopping. Proceed accordingly.

If I ever get to speak with whoever came up with EEAT at Google, I'll tell them 3 things: 1) I admire the aspiration of EEAT. Terrible fucking acronym though. I feel like a toddler at the dentist every time I say it. EEEEEEEEat.

This is the little shit that scammed me out of $60. Isn't it adorable? Don't be fooled! If you see this cute cow on Instagram, you're about to be scammed (most likely). Want to see how the scam works in detail? Link below.

I have one goal for 2026. Only one KPI. - - - Do people that I respect like my shit? That's it. Every other metric can fuck off. And no, I'm not measuring any of this. Gonna read the tea leaves.

Absolutely pro move by the OpenAI comms team: announcing a security incident the night before Thanksgiving. Someone got into Mixpanel and grabbed a bunch of OpenAI user data (names, emails, geo, org info, etc). Sounds like OpenAI already booted Mixpanel out of production. lol

how many email marketing campaigns just got postponed by 24 hours?

A lot of the GEO/AEO agency work has become a sanitized label for Reddit astroturfing.

A Reddit mod has spent years tearing down the coding bootcamp space, relentlessly attacking the leading bootcamp: Codesmith. This is, by far, the most fucked up thing I've seen on Reddit: larslofgren.com/codesmith-re...

Easiest way to know I'll have to overall a WordPress site? # of plugins. Less than 10: Things are tight. Nothing to worry about. 10-20: Some loose ends to deal with. 20+: Buckle up.

Investigative research is just like product development. Once you stop getting surprised by stuff, it's time to build and ship.

An idiot going nowhere and a true pro going long is often indecipherable for years at a time.

Amazing, just got my first fake DMCA takedown. Holy shit are these things easy to abuse.

I gotta admit it, when you start with really high quality content and ask an AI tool to create content based on it (headlines, promotional emails, social posts, etc), that AI content gets exceptionally good. It's all about having that quality base though. No base = AI slop

No black color for the Apple 17 Pro. da fuq First time in a decade I'm not immediately buying the new one

So far, the Google monopoly ruling appears toothless to me. If I was a Google exec, I'd be celebrating right now. Some reporting requirements, need to build a syndication service and offer it at cost, and no more exclusivity contracts. Pretty easy to check all those off.

I take enormous delight in writing a take down piece on a shady company and then ranking for their brand term in google. Just saw a new one pop. Hit #3 for vendafly. I cackle like an idiot every time this happens.

One of the most frustrating parts of this AI hype cycle is how it completely sucks the air out of the room for any other type of content.

There's a non-zero chance that Reddit gobbles up high-intent search demand, then ChatGPT, etc grab everything else. Leaving Google with fuck all

Dead giveaway for AI content: "Why X Matters". AI tools love that god damn phrase.

I never thought I'd think wistfully of featured snippets, like a long lost childhood toy

Sigh... the #1 rank for "calendly alternatives" is an exact match .org domain. It's also the top listed resource in the AIO. -DR of 16 -An extremely low effort 1 page website -No affiliate links My bet is they're selling placements on the page to some of the vendors.

So is Google's AI push killing the open web? I'm already seeing it first hand. I know of multiple sites (DRs of 90+ and 1 is a top 100 domain) that are slashing content budgets. Blogs are on life support. They've decided to ride the decline. Everyone is starting to move on.

So about those HCU sites getting a bump in the current Google algo update... Can confirm. If you're wondering if I did anything to site: I unpublished about 30% of the site when it was first hit and then haven't touched it in 9 months. So not much.

I'm about to show you how to save 75 CENTS per month on your Medium subscription. Let's ignore any questions about why someone would have a Medium subscription in the first place. 1. Go to you billing and then choose to cancel. 2. You'll get a 15% discount for 3 months. BAM. You're welcome.

I may have gotten another affiliate scammer banned. And there's a Medium affiliate scam loophole that's wide open for getting page 1 rankings in Google. Anyone can do it. larslofgren.com/medium-affil...

Since everyone is abusing the fuck out of brand mentions and social upvotes, links might become the best signal of quality again. The irony.

I'll start getting optimistic about Google algo updates when Google stops forcing their teams to roll them out during major holidays.

Someone tipped me off about a sketchy corner of the internet selling dodgy Windows keys via Reddit and Google. So what did I do? I bought one. Then I mapped how these sites get their traffic. So did the Windows key work or not? Read on: larslofgren.com/windows-key-...

There's a VC that I really respect. He had some of the most authentic, high-signal content in all of tech. You can tell he's gone all in with AI content. Content volume is way up. Are there still good insights? Sure. But the magic is gone.

The single biggest competitive advantage in SEO is a leadership team that's committed to SEO. Much rarer than you'd expect.

Turns out all I needed to break my Twitter addiction was one solid Nazi salute. Logged in once to look up a work item, haven't scrolled through my feed at all since. Guess I'm ride or die on the butterfly now.

Google doesn't have a monopoly because of search, Chrome, or default search deals. It has a monopoly because of YouTube. If I'm a creator that specializes in long form content and I get whacked by Google, where can I go? There's only one answer: YouTube.

The traffic on my HCU-tagged site is now growing 35% MoM. That growth is coming from BING. I feel like I’m doing an Ironman on a fixed speed bike. I may not be in first place, but I’m also… not last.

I'm not surprised by another Google algo update for Dec. For 3 years now, a bulk of updates launched in Q4, it's been a mess since 2022. Seems like there was a big shift in operating cadence starting in 2022. Internal goals became more important than search quality.

Posting on a new social network without a following is always a humbling experience. HELLO VOID

Been using Bing, Brave, and Kagi lately. 3 things stand out to me. -Not having to think about ads in Kagi is amazing. - Feels like all the other search teams just copy Google’s bullshit. -I do miss Featured Snippets. But I can’t get those in Google anymore either

New rule for identifying a HCU site: Bing traffic outpaces Google traffic. I'm dead serious, this just happened on my site HR Advice. This is also the first time I've ever had Bing drive more traffic than Google, in like 20 years of building websites.

I should have looked more closely at the "best cbd gummies" search results. For me, 2 rankings point to a hacked University of Pittsburgh that goes to a fake Dr Phil website. 100% affiliate spam. 2 other pages 404 for me. So 40% of that SERP is completely fucked. WTF Google?

I gotta admit, the SERP for "best CBD gummies" looks way healthier right now

Any bets on which LLM is the first to get the "deep fry turkey frozen or thawed" answer wrong and get someone killed?

A podcast host asked me if I had a lead magnet. I said "fuck no, if people want to get on my newsletter, they'll find my newsletter." In my career, I've hawked more lead magnets than I can remember. Felt freeing to opt the fuck out of the promotional madness.

Robocalls might be a great corollary to AI. Massive efficiency gains that were abused for spam. And now... we all just ignore unknown calls. Or avoid the phone entirely. Went from answering 100% of calls as a kid to maybe 1% now.

ChatGPT or any other AI tool may beat Google on search simply because they don't have the same infrastructure baggage. It'll mostly work from day 1 instead of Google spending years trying to unfuck the Sept 2023 update.

For any that missed it, this post of mine went viral: larslofgren.com/forbes-marke...

Typos are now a sign of valuable content. They show it's been written by a real person. The flaws are now the sign of value. Artisanal content. Ethically sourced, of course. Instead of farm-to-table, we'll call it fingers-to-eyes content.