Google I/O 2023 - Above the fold real estate to be 100% AI generated

[DevMystic]

Not sure if everybody has seen this but some 12 or so hours ago, Google announced that in the near future, all above-the-fold results will be generated by AI.

This would include product placements of "Best X product", "Best X for Y" etc. Here are some screenshots:

Personally, If I believe that this will indeed happen, I can see only three possible avenues that will help me ensure a secure future income for my business:

- Pivot to a local all-in-one digital property consultant (WordPress, SEO, PPC, Social Media Marketing) for local businesses
- Steer away from written content and pivot into video content. Of course, all your efforts might be squashed once more by Youtube.
- Pivot into SaaS and finally push to production a couple of projects I have been playing around with.

What are your thoughts about this announcement and what steps are you taking to future-proof your business?

 

[Poplanu]

The only thing that matters is how much the clickthrough is going to drop for positions 1-3. If position #1 starts getting 20% clickthrough instead of 25%, you can still live with it.

Pushing content sites further into the longtail territory.

If you've been working with AI since it came out, you know its weaknesses and downsides. It literally can't pick out a "best" product for anything. Factual errors are unavoidable, and will keep being unavoidable for the foreseeable future.

The only people we'd lose from this are guys looking for a "quick click" and not thinking... but most of those would have gone to Amazon in the first place, and not googled for "best x".

The answer it gives for the national parks is pretty much useless, boilerplate text.

I would see sites like StackExchange losing from this, as AI can give basic answers quicker and faster. Sort of you know, like calculator sites lost from Google's inbuilt calculator. Coding sites, Excel sites, the list goes on.

Another point - asking AI to do anything at all except easy explanations, code, or semantic analysis is a major PITA at this point. My prompts are half a page long. Prompting multiple times, etc.

I don't see an average person getting better "information utility" from using a chatbot vs. using Google's search results. And especially, using Reddit search results on Google which we're all doing by now I assume.

 

[Éowyn]

YouTube has issues with fake invalid traffic and fake copyright strikes now. Many partnered creators are getting whole channels demonetized for invalid traffic to ads due to viewership spikes. This includes former vids. But when they make new accounts with new emails, those channels get demonetized too. Maybe through ip similar to Reddit bans or their Adsense accounts? Both site builders and YouTubers are in the storm, just different storms. So I guess it’s about what storms you’re willing to sail through.

 

[bernard]

Agreed, I don't even think it works for stuff like recipes, which was something people claim it would do.

 

[DevMystic]

Agreed, I don't even think it works for stuff like recipes, which was something people claim it would do.

I understand where you are coming from and I totally agree (banana crust pizza anyone?), however, we also need to remember that the current version of AI is and will be the worst version of AI we will have as mankind.

 

[bernard]

I understand where you are coming from and I totally agree (banana crust pizza anyone?), however, we also need to remember that the current version of AI is and will be the worst version of AI we will have as mankind.

Yes, but there's something more to it.

I don't trust the AI to give me a recipe and I don't want it either. I found that I associate food with more than just the ingredients. I do want to get an idea of what or who is recommending me this.

It doesn't have to be full on influencer, but I do associate food with people, and I do trust a person more than a bot or a "recipe site" for that reason.

 

[Darth]

Agreed, I don't even think it works for stuff like recipes, which was something people claim it would do.

Can confirm AI is excellent for recipes.

 

[Politico]

Been playin with ChatGPT lately and honestly it's useful, but I'm not that impressed. The inital hype was just that to me - hype. All of its answers sound like canned PR responses or generic textbook answers to things. It's like speaking to a glorified chat bot and I really think overall it's just a glorified search database that uses some prediction to sound and interact more naturally.

I think it'll be useful for basic responses to technical or generic informational queries ("when were the pyramids built and by who" or fix this code or "how do I" stackexchange type stuff), but for anything substantive you still need a human imo.

Basically my initial thoughts are we'll still need human generated content from experts/authorities for a while. It just still lacks the nuance and insight an expert would have in any given field.

 

[AuthorityChad]

The hype around AI is out of control.

It seems like everyone is talking about it but no one is actually doing anything with it other than spamming blog content that's lower quality than an indian writer and creating tools that have no real world use case.

I think a lot of desperate people who missed out on the NFT wave are hoping to catch this one before the hype dies down.

 

[bernard]

I think a lot of desperate people who missed out on the NFT wave are hoping to catch this one before the hype dies down.

Twitter techfluencers are the worst.

 

[eliquid]

Yes, but there's something more to it.

I don't trust the AI to give me a recipe and I don't want it either. I found that I associate food with more than just the ingredients. I do want to get an idea of what or who is recommending me this.

It doesn't have to be full on influencer, but I do associate food with people, and I do trust a person more than a bot or a "recipe site" for that reason.

What are you going to do when Rachel Ray, Gorden Ramsey ( or insert your chef here ) start making AI recipes ( and not telling you its from AI ) and claiming it's YUM to make that money, but it's actually shit.

At some point, you are going to be eating AI food.

The hype around AI is out of control.

It seems like everyone is talking about it but no one is actually doing anything with it other than spamming blog content that's lower quality than an indian writer and creating tools that have no real world use case.

I think a lot of desperate people who missed out on the NFT wave are hoping to catch this one before the hype dies down.

If all you can think of is to use to write blog articles, then yes... you will always see it this way.

People are talking about it, because it's the trend now and trends make money.

The people doing cool things with it, know better than to tell the masses, which is why you are not hearing about it.

I think you are missing the forest, for the trees on this.

 

[Poplanu]

The people doing cool things with it, know better than to tell the masses, which is why you are not hearing about it.

C'mon give us at least something after that teaser, no details necessary, just to stimulate the imagination I'll start, fully automated python 1-click sites is the most advanced I've seen in the wild

 

[Biggy]

My though is that you need to pivot in something else. Sad what's happening. Especially that Google will actually steal your content from sites with AI. Like its their own.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I can see only three possible avenues that will help me ensure a secure future income for my business:

I like all of your ideas. Video is appealing but the real game in town is YouTube and it's still an algorithm controlled by Google. I feel like it's going to be far more stable and they're not going to allow themselves to be taken over by AI content (by not monetizing it and thus disincentivizing the lazy creation of it, which is happening now).

A SaaS is good. I have a script I created that anyone using Wordpress would find very useful and have considered creating a SaaS for it, but I'm not settled on it. A local agency would be a LOT of nonsense to deal with, in my opinion, until you removed yourself from operations and customer contact. Working with people who understand the industry is fine, but that's not who local business owners are.

I think the one, single, future-proof option out there is having an offering (product, service, course, whatever) where your customer acquisition is mainly powered by advertising. You can create funnels with video, with websites, with email, and all that. But at the end of the day, what's not going to disappear is tech companies making money through advertising. The big problem is having the war chest to get it going.

The only thing that matters is how much the clickthrough is going to drop for positions 1-3. If position #1 starts getting 20% clickthrough instead of 25%, you can still live with it.

I'd say (and I didn't watch the presentation) that it'll wholly depend on if that big ass AI box immediately loads and covers the entire above-the-fold or if it's a "click to engage" kind of thing that then pushes everything down. If I had to guess it'll depend on the type of query, and in some cases will start expanded like a featured snippet.

If it starts collapsed for most queries, that'll probably buy us time as people are disillusioned by how crappy the answers are and resist adopting it when it improves by GPT5 or whatever.

Pushing content sites further into the longtail territory.

I feel like the long-tail territory is what's most at risk. The more refined and exact a query gets, the more strict and laser-focused the answer becomes, which should be far more easier for an AI to grok than trying to comprehend more broader queries. It's a shame because Google has destroyed it's own ability to handle those types of queries. When Hummingbird came out, their natural language processing abilities were mind blowing. It's like they deleted all of that.

I don't see an average person getting better "information utility" from using a chatbot vs. using Google's search results.

The problem is Google's algorithm is a steaming pile of dog shit right now. I'm finding it to be frustratingly useless. I've said it before but no amount of query refinement helps, it just keep spitting out the same results for the general query. And they're crap because of EEAT. Some dunce's uncle knows how to install a patio and registered a business, so that DR 0.2 site now ranks #1 along with the next 50 positions being more of the same useless content. But hey, EEAT.

So maybe the low quality SERP results will help with the AI adoption, but Google has another battle which will be monetization through Adwords. And it's possibly more likely they start getting deeper and deeper into affiliate relationships, too.

Imagine they create their own affiliate network that every store signs up for (instead of the other way around) in order to be eligible for Google to send them boatloads of buyer intent traffic from AI snippets, but Google gets a cut. I see this as being pretty likely.

The hype around AI is out of control.

The hype is justified, in my opinion, but what weirds me out is how much the talk around it is emulating the talk around crypto back in the day, and still today but less so. We seem to only have die-hard evangelists or people brushing it off. There's not a lot of sensible talk in the middle. Just cultists and nay-sayers.

My though is that you need to pivot in something else. Sad what's happening. Especially that Google will actually steal your content from sites with AI. Like its their own.

Time will tell. I'd wager that most of us have sites earning us good incomes right now. What's been more devastating than any of this AI crap (and I suppose it's a consequence of) is the total destruction and shit show the general Google search algorithm has become as it leans so heavily into EEAT, in ways that are so retarded I'm assuming they're definitely using AI in the algorithms.

It's pretty wild, but possibly foreseeable, that the first thing AI is really going to wipe out is content creation and online publishing. Everyone always said it'd be truckers first, etc. I never paused long enough to consider that it would be created by and trained by nerds and trained on the material nerds were creating, and thus it would first eradicate the nerds.

 

[bernard]

The hype is justified, in my opinion, but what weirds me out is how much the talk around it is emulating the talk around crypto back in the day, and still today but less so. We seem to only have die-hard evangelists or people brushing it off. There's not a lot of sensible talk in the middle. Just cultists and nay-sayers.

I think a lot of people are using it and shutting up about it.

It's already by far my most used tool.

In this short while, I can already see the pittfalls though. You will become incompetent at coding or writing or anything really, if you keep relying on it. That either means the future is bleak for all of us, because it just won't matter if you try to do anything, or the future is bleak, because no one will think for themselves anymore.

In any case, my advice, get busy right now. It's now, not tomorrow, and there's a huge benefit, but let the hype artists spend time on Twitter and spend time doing instead.

 

[MrMedia]

I think a lot of people are using it and shutting up about it.

It's already by far my most used tool.

In this short while, I can already see the pittfalls though. You will become incompetent at coding or writing or anything really, if you keep relying on it. That either means the future is bleak for all of us, because it just won't matter if you try to do anything, or the future is bleak, because no one will think for themselves anymore.

In any case, my advice, get busy right now. It's now, not tomorrow, and there's a huge benefit, but let the hype artists spend time on Twitter and spend time doing instead.

How is it your most used tool? What do you actually use it for?

 

[bernard]

How is it your most used tool? What do you actually use it for?

Writing, coding, translating, researching.

Same as everyone else?

I can use it to create small specific tools and scripts that save a lot of time.

 

[DevMystic]

I think the one, single, future-proof option out there is having an offering (product, service, course, whatever) where your customer acquisition is mainly powered by advertising.

Precisely. I'm trying to gravitate more to ventures where I can quantify my ROI simply by calculating Cost of Services - CTC = My profit

How is it your most used tool? What do you actually use it for?

Coding at work. It's easier to tell Copilot now to create something for me and because I already have 15 years of experience, I can skim through the code and understand if that's something I need, approve, and solves my problem.

I would say 50% of the time I need to edit something, but it still helps semi-automating a lot of mundane tasks where there is a lot of repetition, with object declaration being the most usual subject.

In addition, as a language model, I ask it to beautify data. e.g. I had a list of snacks, dinners, and lunches that I would like to cook and asked it to divide them equally into 7 days.

Could I have done that in 5 minutes? Yeah! But it did it in 30 seconds.

 

[MrMedia]

Writing, coding, translating, researching.

Same as everyone else?

I can use it to create small specific tools and scripts that save a lot of time.

This is my problem with the hype machine around this.

It is all SO vague. Researching.... Researching what?

I use SEMRush for research - what do you use ChatGPT to research?

 

[bernard]

Researching.... Researching what?

Topics, keywords, outlines, coding methods etc.

Just instead of Google often.

 

[MrMedia]

Either I am full retard mode or everyone has some secret way to use this. All I see are vague mentions how its a game changer etc. I am sure some people are using it like ninjas but I strongly believe most people are talking absolute bollocks about how they use this.

Just AI it bro.

 

[Boy]

Either I am full retard mode or everyone has some secret way to use this. All I see are vague mentions how its a game changer etc. I am sure some people are using it like ninjas but I strongly believe most people are talking absolute bollocks about how they use this.

Just AI it bro.

I just started getting really jiggy with ChatGPT a few weeks ago. Some of the things I've used it for

• Setting up a sitewide redirect from a subdomain to a new domain, but I needed it to redirect to every page and subfolder so olddomain.com/this-page would go to newdomain.com/this-page. My Google-fu wasn't coming up with anything, but gpt spit out the correct code.
• Taking a list of 100 keywords, removing redundant keywords, and grouping them into clusters.
• Rewriting product descriptions for ~20 products I created that were similar enough that 90% of the descriptions didn't need to be changed. "here's all this information, the only thing that changed is the flavor." Nutritional information is the same, but now it's grape instead of strawberry.
• 30-day email drip opt-in for mah audience. I wanted to set one of these up months ago, but brainstorming was brutal. "I want to set up a 30-day challenge for my site about X. Could you give me an idea for something new to do every day for 30 days?" Boom, perfect for beginners.
• Had it create a hex color scheme for a new site

https://twitter.com/x/status/1626843074495225856

It's not doing anything groundbreaking, it's just able to do it faster if you know how to tell it what you want it to do. Like having an instant VA.

 

[MrMedia]

I just started getting really jiggy with ChatGPT a few weeks ago. Some of the things I've used it for

• Setting up a sitewide redirect from a subdomain to a new domain, but I needed it to redirect to every page and subfolder so olddomain.com/this-page would go to newdomain.com/this-page. My Google-fu wasn't coming up with anything, but gpt spit out the correct code.
• Taking a list of 100 keywords, removing redundant keywords, and grouping them into clusters.
• Rewriting product descriptions for ~20 products I created that were similar enough that 90% of the descriptions didn't need to be changed. "here's all this information, the only thing that changed is the flavor." Nutritional information is the same, but now it's grape instead of strawberry.
• 30-day email drip opt-in for mah audience. I wanted to set one of these up months ago, but brainstorming was brutal. "I want to set up a 30-day challenge for my site about X. Could you give me an idea for something new to do every day for 30 days?" Boom, perfect for beginners.
• Had it create a hex color scheme for a new site

https://twitter.com/x/status/1626843074495225856

It's not doing anything groundbreaking, it's just able to do it faster if you know how to tell it what you want it to do. Like having an instant VA.

Thank you dude. Now it starts to make sense.

 

[bernard]

Here's an example:

Either I am full retard mode or everyone has some secret way to use this. All I see are vague mentions how its a game changer etc. I am sure some people are using it like ninjas but I strongly believe most people are talking absolute bollocks about how they use this.

Just AI it bro.

Translate to Spanish.

Google Translate

O estoy completamente retrasado o todos tienen alguna forma secreta de usar esto. Todo lo que veo son menciones vagas de cómo es un cambio de juego, etc. Estoy seguro de que algunas personas lo están usando como ninjas, pero creo firmemente que la mayoría de la gente está diciendo tonterías absolutas sobre cómo lo usan.

Solo AI, hermano.

ChatGPT4 with the following prompt:

"Translate to Spanish. Keep context over word-for-word accuracy, while keeping personal tone the same. Rewrite extensively if necessary to achieve this"

O bien estoy completamente perdido, o todo el mundo tiene algún método secreto para usar esto. Todo lo que veo son menciones ambiguas de cómo esto es un cambio de juego, etc. Estoy seguro de que algunas personas lo están usando como verdaderos ninjas, pero estoy convencido de que la mayoría de las personas están hablando absolutas tonterías sobre cómo lo utilizan.

Simplemente déjalo en manos de la IA, amigo.

I don't speak spanish, so someone else will have to judge which is better. I've found that translations get better the second time, if you add something like this prompt:

Is this the best contextual translation possible? Rewrite to make it as spanish sounding and authentic as possible

Quizá estoy más perdido que un pulpo en un garaje, o es que todo el mundo tiene algún truco secreto para manejar esto. Lo único que veo son referencias difusas acerca de cómo esto es un "partido cambiante", y demás. No dudo que haya quien lo domina como si fuera un ninja, pero estoy más que seguro que la mayoría habla sin tener ni idea, soltando sandeces sobre cómo lo usan.

Simplemente déjalo en manos de la inteligencia artificial, colega.

We'll let someone who understands spanish decide, but you see how the text changed significantly in the second go around? This is extremely useful for translations, because you no longer get the basic word for word, or partial sentence translations from machine tools like Google Translate, but you get a full contextual, cultural translation.

I can ask ChatGPT what is up with the second translation:

What did you change, write a list of changes and considerations in your translations

Sure, I'd be happy to explain the changes made in the second translation for the sake of making it sound more authentic and native to Spanish speakers:

1. "O bien estoy completamente perdido" changed to "Quizá estoy más perdido que un pulpo en un garaje": The initial phrase is a direct translation from English that could be understood by Spanish speakers, but the revised phrase is a Spanish idiom which carries a more colorful, personal tone. It literally means "Maybe I'm more lost than an octopus in a garage" and is commonly used in Spain to express confusion or bewilderment.
2. "método secreto" changed to "truco secreto": Both "método" and "truco" can be translated as "trick" or "method," but "truco" feels more informal and natural in this context.
3. "cambio de juego" changed to "partido cambiante": While "cambio de juego" could be a literal translation of "game changer," it doesn't carry the same connotation in Spanish. "Partido cambiante" is a more metaphorical way to refer to something that significantly alters the current situation or "game."
4. "ninjas" remained the same: The term "ninja" is widely understood across cultures due to global popular culture.
5. "hablando absolutas tonterías" changed to "habla sin tener ni idea, soltando sandeces": The first phrase is a more direct translation of "talking absolute bollocks," but the revised phrase carries a more informal, colloquial tone. It literally means "talking without having any idea, spouting nonsense."
6. "Simplemente déjalo en manos de la IA, amigo" changed to "Simplemente déjalo en manos de la inteligencia artificial, colega": The phrase "amigo" (friend) was changed to "colega" (mate), which is a more informal term and commonly used in Spain. "IA" was spelled out as "inteligencia artificial" for clarity, as not all Spanish speakers may be familiar with the abbreviation.

These changes are aimed to make the text sound more natural, informal, and culturally resonant with Spanish speakers, especially those from Spain, given the use of idioms and colloquial language specific to that region.

Consider that if you have a successful ad campaign in your own language and you want to expand it across the globe? You just reduced your cost to zero while no longer having to wait around for translators to finish.

 

[Poplanu]

I feel like the long-tail territory is what's most at risk. The more refined and exact a query gets, the more strict and laser-focused the answer becomes, which should be far more easier for an AI to grok than trying to comprehend more broader queries. It's a shame because Google has destroyed it's own ability to handle those types of queries. When Hummingbird came out, their natural language processing abilities were mind blowing. It's like they deleted all of that.

Yeah I should have been more specific - I meant longtail queries that require more nuance, up-to-date experience. An answer that also has a "why" included, e.g. "this is x" + "and here is why it is that way". More specific, granular product and use-case-related queries, going deeper into brands and all that.

Totally with you on the basic all Q&A evergreen longtails that can be answered in a simple way. That's where it is bound to excel.

Consider that if you have a successful ad campaign in your own language and you want to expand it across the globe? You just reduced your cost to zero while no longer having to wait around for translators to finish.

Yeah people talk about it being a game-changer for SEO, but I don't know how much of the translation industry this thing wiped out. More than 50% for sure. You'll still need someone to read through it & double-check for important documents, but everything else? Man. Fast, accurate & free. That's longer-term though, right now the translators will just be using it to speed up their work.