AI, Search, and the Travel Creator

Last year, Google launched something called a “Helpful Content Update” (HCU). It felt that many websites were over-optimized for search and not run by real people providing real answers based on their first-hand experience.

Instead, there were too many SEO farms churning out poor quality content to generate search and advertising revenue. Hence the desire to push “useful content” (such as online forums like Reddit) to the top of search results. After all, who better to get first-hand experience with than a person posting something on a forum? (Or at least that was the logic.)

If you’ve been using Google since October of last year, you’ve probably noticed this change.

I think it’s crap. I mean, I’m not interested in a forum thread from 2013. I don’t want to search for answers in years of comments and replies, many of which are very outdated. I think this HCU has made Google’s results much worse. I recently tried to search for a gym in Munich and instead of just listing gyms in Munich, I was shown Reddit threads that were very outdated.

Although I think Google will eventually back down some These changes (they tend to undo some changes after seeing how people react) are due to too many users complaining about the quality of the results. Still, I think this is the first nail in the coffin for blogs, especially single-target websites that don’t have a “clear expert” behind them. (These blogs were among the most affected by the update.)

Bloggers have always lived and died by algorithms. Whether it’s social media or search engines, we’re at the mercy of these companies. But these recent changes by Google have been some of the most extreme I’ve seen in the sixteen years I’ve been working online. Our search traffic is down 50%, and I feel like I’ve come out on top compared to other people who’ve seen their websites reduced to zero.

Many bloggers have stopped blogging and are now looking for “real” jobs. Only a few seem to have benefited from the new changes, notably Rick Steves, who, thanks to having a forum, has seen his traffic increase.

Over the past few years, I’ve begun to think that the era of blogging was coming to an end. Google has been making changes that push real content down in the search results thanks to their ads, built-in widgets, and association spam at the top of search results. Instead, people are moving to social platforms to find information; for example, TikTok search is really good.

And, as I mentioned in another post, while AI may not be ready for its big moment yet, it is moving forward. Right now, it’s just generating terrible generic lists and content. I don’t think creators need to worry about AI at all right now.

The biggest problem for creators is search.

Blogs were like the second iteration of the internet after web forums and Geocities sites and now most users are moving to short-form videos. While I don’t think blogs will go away completely, I don’t think they will ever go back to being the source of information for people like they once were. Google’s changes only confirm this for me because if Google is looking into the future and saying “we’re going to downgrade this content” then one of the only remaining visibility tools for blogs is gone.

I think if you’re a blogger, you need to figure out how not to… only You can become a blogger very quickly. That means you can continue to maintain your blog, but you will need to diversify not only the way you reach people, but also the way you make money.

What else can you do? Podcasts? Videos? Social media? Host events? Create a forum? (Forums are a chore and hard to manage. I wouldn’t do it. I ran one for a while and I’m glad we stopped.)

To thrive in this new era, you’ll need to be an even more prominent brand and personality on social media. You won’t be able to have an anonymous destination website. You won’t be able to rely solely on advertising and affiliate revenue.

Even if Google rolls back some of the changes, the future is yet to come.

I think these changes will cause a lot of older bloggers (i.e. those who have been doing this for 10+ years) to move on to other things. For example, my friend Matt from Expert vagabond Now he’s making 360° videos. Bloggers will continue to write and update their blogs as long as there’s revenue. But as traffic declines, I think many of the original bloggers will update less and less, either because they’re moving on to something else or simply entering a new phase of life as the Blogging Age comes to an end (at least, that’s just my theory).

I’m not sure what that means for Google. If people produce less content because they know it won’t matter because it won’t be seen in searches, what search results will Google have to show? What publications will its artificial intelligence steal?

I think people will still produce travel stories and tips, but they will do so less and will focus on other types of content and activities. Blogging will just be one (smaller) piece of the puzzle.

In the future, I think people will continue to refer to blogs of creators and personalities they know, and brand searches will become more prevalent. After all, why sift through a bunch of junk forum threads when you can just go to that blogger or creator’s website and see if they have information?

Or maybe you start using Bing and DuckDuckGo more (in fact, we’ve seen about a 40% increase in traffic from Bing recently).

In the end, I don’t think blogs will disappear. They will still exist, just like tourist guides will: useful, still in use, but not as popular as they once were.