AI, Search, and the Travel Creator

Last year, Google rolled out something called “the helpful-content update” (HCU). It felt that too many websites were over-optimized for search and not run by real people providing real answers based on firsthand experience.

Instead, there were too many SEO farms pumping out bad content for search and ad revenue. Hence, the desire to put “helpful content” (such as online forums like Reddit) at the top of the search results. After all, who better to have firsthand experience than a person posting about something on a forum? (Or so the logic went.)

If you’ve used Google since last October, you’ve likely noticed this change.

I think it sucks. I mean, I don’t care about a forum thread from 2013. I don’t want to search for answers through years of comments and replies, many of which are very out of date. I think this HCU has made Google results far, far worse. I recently tried to find a gym in Munich and rather than just list gyms in Munich, I got Reddit threads that were very outdated.

While I think Google will eventually roll back some of these changes (they tend to roll back some changes after seeing how people react) because too many users are complaining about the quality of the results. Still, I think this is the first nail in the coffin for blogs, especially single-destination websites that don’t have a “clear expert” behind them. (These blogs were among the hardest hit in the update.)

We bloggers have always lived and died by the algorithm. Whether social media or search, we are at the mercy of these companies. But these recent Google changes were 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 gotten off easy compared to people who have had their websites go to zero.

Many bloggers have just stopped blogging and are now looking for “real” jobs. Only a few seem to have gotten anything from the new changes, most notably Rick Steves, who, because he has a forum, has actually seen his traffic go up.

For the last couple of years, I’ve begun thinking that the Age of Blogging was nearing a close. Google has been making changes that pushes real content down in search results thanks to its ads, embedded widgets, and partnership spam at the top of the search results. People are instead moving toward social platforms to find information; for example, TikTok’s search is really good.

And, as I mentioned in another post, while AI might not be ready for prime time yet, it’s coming along. Right now, it’s just spitting out terrible generic lists and content. I don’t think that creators have to worry about AI at all at the moment.

The biggest issue for creators is search.

Blogs were like the second iteration of the Internet after web forums and Geocities sites and, now, most users are shifting to short form video. While I don’t think blogs will go away completely, I don’t think they will be the source of information for people they once were. Google’s changes are only confirming this for me because if Google is looking at the future and saying “let’s downgrade this content” then one of the only visibility tools left for blogs is gone.

I think that if you’re a blogger, you need to figure out how to not only be a blogger really quick. That means you can still keep your blog, but you’re going to need to diversify not only how you reach people but how you make money.

What else can you do? Podcast? Video? Social media? Run events? Start a forum? (Forums are painful and hard to run though. I wouldn’t do it. I ran one for a bit and I’m glad we stopped.)

To thrive in this new era, you’re going to need to be even more of a brand and personality on social media. You’re not going to be able to have an anonymous destination website. You’re not going to be able to just rely on affiliate and ad revenue.

Even if Google reverses some of the changes, the writing is on the wall.

I think these shifts will see a lot of the older bloggers (i.e., those that have been doing this for 10+ years) shifting to other things. For example, my friend Matt from Expert Vagabond is now doing 360° video. Bloggers will continue blogging and updating as long as the revenue is there. But as traffic fades, I think a lot of OG bloggers will slowly update less and less as they either pivot to something else or just enter a new phase of life as the Age of Blogs comes to a close. (That’s just my theory at least.)

I don’t really know what that means for Google. If people produce less content because they know it won’t matter as it won’t get seen on search, what search results will Google have to show? What posts will their AI scrape (steal)?

I think people will still produce travel stories and tips, but they will scale back as they focus on other types of content and endeavors. Blogs will just be one (smaller) piece of the puzzle.

In the future, I think people will still reference blogs from creators and personalities they know and branded search will be bigger. After all, why comb through a bunch of garbage forum threads when you can just go to that blogger/creator’s website and see if they have information?

Or maybe you’ll start using Bing and DuckDuckGo more. (We’ve actually seen about a 40% jump in traffic from Bing recently.)

In the end, I don’t think blogs will disappear. They will be around the same way guidebooks will be around. Useful, still used, but not as popular as they used to be.