Google's Core Update Explained: What Changed & What It Means for Your Business

Hello Ben, how are you? Superb. That is not going to be my intro. Welcome back to the podcast, Ben.

Welcome back to the podcast. We'll leave that in. Yeah, you will leave that in. Welcome back to the podcast.

We've got Ben and Jodie founding and managing directors in Ben's version class. It's so smart. You feel it? Super smart.

You're right. It's what we did before. Super dumb. Yeah.

I know that we've got a lot of topics we want to handle today being the core update that Google put out a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago feels ages ago in digital land, but we know that there's a lot of businesses who rely on us for this type of information. So it's still very relevant to talk about. Yep.

What's been the biggest impact that you have seen being the SEO guy and what do we need to do about it? So the update started 21st of May, rolled out for about two weeks. Watched it vigorously, went through all the data, looked at all the different websites that were. kind of like monitor some of the large players and see what they're doing and see how things are moving, who's winning, who's losing and what's having that effect.

One of the biggest things that we saw in the update, I have my laptop in front of me here for some notes, but kind of two main things. One was information gain. So websites that were putting out content that had a lack there of information gain to Google didn't do really well. So they were, I don't want say penalized but the idea around information gain is that if I have a website and I'm talking around a subject matter and I'm an example yeah uh I'm talking about a particular subject matter Google is going to assess that subject matter of context that you're talking about and go are you providing anything new that people don't know so this is kind of the caveat of where AI is a problem when people are using AI for writing content at the moment is businesses, individuals, freelancers, you name it, they come along, they're going, I need to write about a particular subject matter.

And they use AI to do that. And AI will go online, do its research, meaning that it's doing research on already known information, and will rewrite what it knows about information and then provide that. The problem with that is there is no net new information gain. There is, it's I don't want to say it's spinning content but it's somewhat recycling content so all the information is already known and we're just then grabbing that information and rewriting that information in your format Google is very clever and AI models I say Google more so in this is getting really clever understanding do I know this or do I not know this and it favored companies that would provide net new information.

So I going to write about a particular topic I use an example I going to write about real estate I in real estate and I going to be writing an article around insert subject matter, whatever it is. But in that article, I'm going to provide first party data, my own point of view, my own information based on years of experience. Actual experiences you've had with clients. And that is the differentiator.

And that is where the net new information gain was kind of scrutinized and what they were using. Gosh, this is so much more relevant, I think, than anybody even realizes because the conversations that I have in my role in the agency are with new leads that come in and we're scoping strategy and discussing where they're at in their marketing. And how many people say to me, yeah, but quote unquote, I can just use Claude to spin up a blog. Yes, you and every other real estate agent around, right?

So my question to the real estate person I'm talking to, so what then for is to kind of differentiate your content to anybody else's for Google, also, spoiler alert, your user. So where is that net in your information? And I always say to people, there's no problem with AI. It's not a problem using AI.

It used to be, oh, you guys aren't using AI, are you? And it's now you're using AI, right? Yeah. It's changed.

Yes. But how you use it is what matters. So are you talking about the seller whose house that you were at at an open home on the weekend and referencing a particular piece of interesting information that other owners in the area will understand that will impact the ability to sell their house for a particular price? Because AI can't do that.

And that's that human nuance that is going to have that net new angle, but equally be so valuable to the user. Well, the prime point to what you just said is exactly AI can't do that until it can, but it can only do that when it gets provided new information. So you want to be the source of new information. But it doesn't know what it doesn't know.

Right. So if you can become that moat of information gain, that is where you win. So if you can go, OK, I know there's this topic or this subject matter. There is going to need to be information gain around this to fill in the gaps of insert X, Y, Z.

if you can be that first port of information to be the information gain for that then you get started in AI and you improve your search visibility so that is the benefit of the net new information gain so to the business owners who are watching it who might be an electrician own an e-com be running a daycare would you say that the best way to start with that is to leverage your personal experience leverage your daily interactions leverage your reviews your testimonies, the conversation, because my personal vested interest in marketing, as we all know, is always going to be social media.

And I will often talk on social media about, I had this conversation with this client I was talking to my team Would you say that that would be the best place to start Because otherwise to me it feels like it could be overwhelming because people will be like I don know what I don know That why I use AI Yeah but when you in your own business you do know what you know right And it's just one of those things that you don't always convey it. Yes, so true. So when you're trying to sell through mediums, so when you're going, okay, I'm going to be writing for my website, you actually switch lens.

You always switch out of going, oh, I've got to put my sales hat on. What do people want to hear? They actually just want to hear the way that you normally talk, the way that you normally are interacting with people about you might be um an accountant and when somebody comes up and has a talk about the business you give them that information that hey yeah look we should structure it this way because i've done it this way before and it worked for xyz great that's your sound bite that's your information gain not i'm an accountant in brisbane i'm going to be able to help you do x like they're not looking for that they're looking for that rawness that authenticity, that...

Your experience. Your experience, exactly. So sometimes that's hard to do when you're trying to write that and convey that through Medium. That's obviously what we do with our clients that we work with now is it's being able to extract the uniqueness, extract the unique selling points, extract the differentiators and then convey that through their experience and being able to put that forward and find that information getting at.

So that was a very big aspect of the core update. I think we forget how much we know as well about our own industry and our own services and our own business. And like, you know, when you start out, even just at Digital Nomads, you start out having this amount of knowledge. And to you, that's 100% of what you know.

And then a year later, 100% of what you know is two or three or four times what you knew a year ago. And you actually forget how much you've learned. And it's so important for us to remember that we are the authority in our space, whether it is hairdressing, plumbing, whatever that looks like. That information isn't necessarily a given.

So when you are leveraging your experiences and you are helping people and bringing value, it makes it easier to sell. But as you say, with the new Google core update, it's also going to position you stronger in AI and on Google. Yeah. And we can see that.

So with that knock on effect, the core update hit two very key areas. One is directories. So directories got hammered because, again, there's not really any net new information. It's just aggregation of companies.

So that's one part. There wasn't a great deal of benefit. So small businesses actually won quite nicely out of this core update because they removed a lot of the listings for, I think I had a statistic somewhere here. You're talking like yellow pages?

Yeah, so one of the major directories that we had, Near Me terms dropped 75% of Near Me, declined in the first 48 hours. So 75 of their Near Me terms declined in the first two days of the core update that was massive how does that help small businesses though because someone got to win so if somebody loses gotcha who wins so if you been it wasn a directory lost to another directory the directory lost to small business right so i won't name names of the individual but uh majority of directories you know the largest directory the majority of them had very large losses in that area and the winners were the people picking up those terms so for instance the terms of looking for a plumber near me or a carpenter near me or an accountant near me or a real estate agent near me cafe near me those were very largely dominated by large aggregation directories they lost a lot of that because there was no net new information gain and the local businesses um not just from a net new information gain but from the algorithm also did very very well from that so a lot of small business wins do you know what i love about every time we have a discussion about some sort of an algorithm update or a core update the businesses that wins i'll say i'm going to say almost irrespective of industry is almost always the ones who have been consistently and continually and constantly putting out high quality content that is personal yeah using ai or not using ai but leveraging their experiences right in this update because that's what we do and a lot of the other a-tier agencies that we know i say a-tier agencies just larger agencies a A lot of the ones that we know as well and I think are great also did great.

And the consistency is that we've all been putting out great content, leveraging our experiences within the agency, and that goes to every business. Every time we have this conversation, the conclusion is the person who wins is the person who's been consistently putting out content that is real to them and for their audience.