Isn't there some talk about the addition of an AI tab, part of Google Search Console that's going to tell you when you're appearing in AI snippets and stuff like that.
So when I mentioned the AI search last week about search max and and using AI in performance, I suspect they'll probably put it in on that. And again, that comes back to the how do you then tailor your content for it? But yes, it would be really interesting again, to see, okay, if you're showing there and whether that's actually helping you, because here's another thing. If you're searching for a solution on Google, do you always click the links that it shows you for your answer? Or when it comes up with the five snippets, do you go, oh yeah, that's answered it? Yeah, absolutely. I don't need to go to the source.
Yeah. It would be nice to know that your content was used in an AI snippet. And then you say, okay, so it was used this many times, which doesn't correspond to the number of visitors site. So you know for sure.
Number of eyes, number of impressions on it.
Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. And it's only a few days ago that we did the last one isn't it. Yeah. I just thought we had a bit of a hiatus. So let's, uh, let's try and get back onto an even keel. Plus, I'm. I've put another one in for Thursday. It's Monday to Monday today for anyone listening. So we're doing one on Monday. We'll do another one on Thursday because I'm not in the office following week. Um, possibly could do one while I'm on my travels. But um, it probably won't happen.
So on location.
On location. Yeah, absolutely. Live from the open, windy, be windy. It will be windy. Yeah. Um, have you brought some stuff to talk about? I have.
I've got some things, but considering the title of the last episode, um, I've tried to steer away from AI, although I'm reading my first point and, uh, it, but this one wasn't like one that I had researched. This was just a question I actually had, um, to do with AI, But.
You know, I did call the last episode well, partly in part, the last episode is called Cam Bores on about AI.
But.
It is like a current hot topic. So we should be talking about AI, and I'm happy to talk about AI. And in fact, I mentioned something to you earlier about AI. Well, I mentioned that first. Or is that what you wanted to talk about?
I can't actually remember what it was, but.
Okay, so basically what were you upstairs or were you.
I was up, I was.
Up, yeah, yeah. So on the BBC website, there was, there was an article that said, I'm, um, AI is helping me make money, but it wasn't what you thought it was. What it was, uh, a US based content person, somebody who writes content for businesses for a living, uh, is making good money rewriting the bilge that AI is creating. So you might get a company like us and we lazily, we would never do this, but lazily get AI to write all the copy for a website. Yeah. Client looks at it and goes, what's this nonsense? And then they go, oh, really, really sorry. That's only like Lorem ipsum. That's only holding text. It isn't. But but you know, it isn't holding text. And then, um, they bring this person in to sort of look at it and humanise it, I think is what we said. I thought that was interesting. Um, I didn't really think it warranted a story on the BBC website, but no doubt she got a good backlink off it. So yeah.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Actually. Well, that does tie in quite nicely to my question because I was thinking about it, especially from what we talked about last week. And I said, how should content be positioned going forward? That's my question. And in my head, and I don't have a particular answer for it, but it was more should content on pages be more contextual from a human point of view, or should we just set it up to be searched and crawled by AI? So we rank highly because we when we were talking about AI and how it searches its um, problem, solution, problem, solution. And you could probably set up a web page like that. But then I've put should web pages be going forward, just be broadened versions of FAQ sections?
Well, if we rewind slightly and I'm just. What you've said has made me try and think of a, a response, obviously. So this isn't something that I've sort of predetermined. So I could be way off here. But first of all, do we think that because AI answers questions and people have cottoned on to asking the search engine a question which might be quite wordy and only and then only being interested in the AI snippet, is that what they call it? Do they call it the AI snippet? So the snippet, you know, have people modified their search activity because they've learned that if they ask questions as opposed to maybe typing, um, I don't know. They might have a website, they might be an engineering company, they might have a website. It maybe doesn't generate any business. They've heard about SEO, so they want somebody in a place they live. Let's say they're in Coventry. So they go to Google and go SEO Coventry. That's fine.
Yeah.
That's what they would do. Some people still probably do that, but we're now saying that they would say my website, I'm an engineering company, by the way, doesn't generate business and it might be the SEO that's the problem. Well, is it the SEO that's the problem. They might type all that. Yeah. People have always done things like that. But I think maybe now.
I think.
So. It's like the, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah near me. Yeah. Kind of search. Yeah. It's just kind of.
I think more people search more elaborate questions specific to their case because they know that they're probably going to get an answer because you actually are like, you get multiple sources, you get it immediately, and you pretty much on the right lines with the answers that it gives you. Um, so I think more people do search like that.
And therefore, if we are producing content that is along the lines of if you've experienced yada, yada, yada, yes, this is what you might want to do about it, right? This is what to do about it. So would you say that over the last few years you've been, um, a very accomplished user of search engines? Are you good at finding what you need?
Yes.
And have you done that by having quite wordy, sometimes convoluted search terms, for example?
Yes. Over the past year I'd say more so. But what I also tend to do is on ChatGPT, uh, there are other AI bots out there, but um, for something like that, I'll generally kind of, if I'm, if it's something quite complex, I'll use that as like my search in itself, if I'm wanting to understand a certain topic, but, um, usually it will be something quite complex. I'll put it into the search bar, or a lot longer than just a three or four keyword search.
I would say that I've for quite some time been quite good at finding things using search engines because I, you know, I put a lot of thought into what I'm asking the search engine for, and then I'll drill in as a result of that. And I might use modifiers as well that, you know, like some of the search modifiers that you can use that are generally not widely used, but it seems that, you know, you've always been able to interrogate search engines more intelligently, if that's the right word, or certainly more comprehensively than, than, than a lot of people have been doing. But I think maybe they've been they've just kind of cottoned on, you know, and, and they'll be using like, I know that, um, a lot of people now, they'll just press the little microphone and then just ask the question. Yeah. Well, that's, you know, trying to type on a, on a small keypad isn't ideal. Um, and so that may be restricted the length of searches. But now, you know, that hasn't been for some time. That isn't a restriction.
No. Well, that's why I do wonder if web pages will change now. So we'll we'll a website page be. Instead of just being descriptive about the topic and informative. Will we have to change it to kind of cover every single basis of. So when you were talking about like SEO in Coventry for, um, let's say an engineering business, will we have to cover that and then SEO in Coventry for a manufacturing business and cover every single, um, case type. Yeah. With solution problem, solution problem. Or can you rely on the general. Here's the information about what SEO is. Here's how it impacts businesses in general. Um, and I don't know, I think, well.
Surely the, the answer would be cover all bases. I think it's probably fair to say that we have for a long time written content that is, um, very easy to consume. It's, it is Written, uh, in a conversational style that tries to speak to the people who are hopefully consuming it in a, in a way that, um, is, uh, you know, approachable and, and comprehensive as well in its response. Yeah, maybe, you know, because we've been quite successful over the years at generating new business purely by being found by people using search engines, you know, how impacted are we going to be by? I don't know, ultimately, it's all very well that AI can give you the snippet and give you the answer, but AI can't actually do what you need, what you're looking for. No. You know, AI can't actually repair the gearbox in your car. You're still ultimately going to have to click to somebody's website, give them a ring and say, my gearbox is knackered. Can you fix.
It? Yes. So you're either solution or service still has to be really on point on the page that the user is eventually directed to. But that was my that was my question of the week.
Okay.
I'd say.
Okay.
My next one's a lot nicer.
Okay, go on then.
Short and sweet.
Oh, go.
On. Location ads in Microsoft ads or formerly Bing ads. And now they're being tested highlighted in green.
Are they?
Yeah.
On a Bing search results page.
Yeah yeah yeah. So it's got like a nice green back to it.
Oh, you mean like the like the Google one used to be kind of a pinky off white color. Yeah, yeah. Just whereas they've tried to make their ads not look like ads. Yes. You're saying Bing are making their ads look more like ads?
Well, for the location ones. Yeah. Which I thought was actually quite interesting because it could be useful to help promote, obviously local businesses or just location based businesses. Um, and that's just one to watch. So if people aren't using it and it does stand out, then it's certainly something that I'd say get on and test and, you know, see if it does make a difference in click through rates, calls, contacts, anything like that. And yeah, I thought that was a nice.
How did you stumble across that?
That one came through. I'm not sure. I'm not sure whether I clicked through. So there's a couple of sites that I'll I'll use for industry news. I'm not sure if that one came through on the newsletter or if I saw that when I was on the site and, uh, it popped up and, um, and I was like, oh, that's, that's actually quite interesting because they don't always roll out to every account. So some of the accounts that we've got, sometimes I might see something within an ad, sometimes it might just be it's not on there, but I've seen it on a newsletter and it'll say, oh, the beta testing something at the moment.
Okay. So okay, so that's basically a pretty color on a search results page. And, and that's, that's that excited you.
Yeah. It does.
You need to get out.
I do need to get out more if that's if that's the highlight of my, uh, my points today.
Okay. I'm gonna just bring something up that's sort of, um, AI related kind of is a, I know I'm going on about it, so. Well, it kind of is, right? It's definitely AI related. So recently I was in France. Yeah. And the reason for being there was to help a former boss of mine who now lives in France celebrate a wedding anniversary. Um, he is the chairman of a large network of agencies. Okay. It's, um, a huge network of agencies, very successful organisation. And we were approached some time ago about potentially becoming part of BBN, which we were very excited about. And, um, just to be polite about it, we were effectively blocked from joining by one of the existing agencies purely based on geography.
Right.
If you can figure out what's going on there. Um, and that came up in the conversation. And the point was made that agencies are not other agencies are not our biggest threat, our biggest threat is AI. And you know, we needn't be worried about agency. Agency B I mean, we're in conversation with a local agency in Aberdeen based agency who are more at the higher end brand design than we are, but they don't do the tech and some of the stuff that we do, you know, about collaborating, working together. And, you know, it's, it's, you know, nice conversation. Um, I hope it does work out quite nicely for them and us. I'm sure it will. And you know, I would be always more inclined to collaborate with other agencies, share information with other agencies and so on, rather than just see them as a sort of blunt threat.
Yes.
Just because they kind of do what we kind of do. Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I don't see that whereas the technology that's coming through, you know, even if you discount the hype and there's plenty of it, uh, around AI, the technology is, is almost certainly a bigger threat than any other agency, I think. Do you think I'm right? Do you think that's true?
I think I think there is this misunderstanding or misconception that other agencies are just everyone else just get the same exact client you're after, or take your business or, or anything like that. And I do think, you know, like you might be able to leverage other skills from other agencies that you just don't offer or, or maybe you can learn from them for things that you do offer and vice versa. Um, I think there is an element of human touch because I think one of my concerns would be that going forward with AI and, and agencies would, would be that will people try and undercut the service that's offered? So say, for example, copywriting, if they can offer that for a much cheaper service in the end, client just says, yeah, that's fine, that'll do. And it's cheap. Um, you know, that eventually could be a be a real problem. And that could just be a one man band who's running everything on AI, you know, AI. You could use AI for scripts within ads, but it's like we said last week, you need that contextual approach to optimising to just ad planning. But it is possible probably to do just AI based alone. Um, so yeah, I do think collaboration is important.
Yeah, sure. And I, I, it's, you know, it's irksome when you miss out on a piece of work to another agency. So we are in competition, but not to the extent that we would be. Um, I don't know, uh, you know, overly concerned because if we are not the right agency for a job, you know, if another agency is a better fit and that might be because they're cheaper, or it might be because their skill set is more aligned with what the client wants, or their track record is in a certain area of business, and they're a better fit and all that. That's, that's all fine. Um, but I think I, you know, broadly speaking, you know, I don't, I don't really feel, um, that, you know, I don't, I don't think if I was in the situation and another agency was trying to join a network of agencies, global network that I was part of, I'd like to think that I wouldn't have taken the approach that this other agency took, i.e. stopping us from joining. Yeah, I don't we were we were absolutely no threat to them. And I didn't really see.
Why they would.
No, I didn't and, you know, and, and it was, um, yeah, but it was just interesting that it came up in conversation and, but, but the way it came up was that like, I think essentially the network had had another similar situation with, with an agency which was looking to join and another and an existing agency had said, oh, I'm not really happy about that, you know, and it would it was sort of like, you know, it was discussed about like how that was kind of irksome Anyway, yeah. Um, it was, uh, yeah, just something to sort of muse over. And it's not just, I mean, obviously this is Digital Marketing From The Coalface, but so we're talking about some of the stuff that's going on and happening to us. But you know, it's in any line of business, you know, if you're an engineering company and you're trying to win a piece of work and you're going head to head with Acme Engineering down the road, then, you know, I can understand that that it is a competitive world out there. But, um, I think it's, um, yeah, I think businesses, maybe whatever discipline they're in, you know, coming together to discuss like the impending threats from, from AI is probably a better use of your time than, than sort of chewing your fingernails and thinking, how can we outdo that other agency? Can we do it cheaper? Can we do it faster? Yeah, let's outsource it to somewhere that charges, that pays peanuts to its people sort of thing.
Well, if you think about it as well, maybe our industry could learn from other industries because if you think about the trade industry, like, you know, there's more than one plumber, um, in, you know. Well, especially in here in our town. And, um, it's not as if like those guys will say, oh, you know, I'm the best. I'm not, I'm not going to work on anything that they're working on or I don't want them to get any work. A lot of those guys pass trade around to each other as well. That's right. Um, and it's more kind of cohesive as a, as a, as an industry. Yeah. So just because we're digital, why shouldn't that be?
Well, here's an example. We have an opportunity, uh, with a company based down in Sheffield and it came in, I think via organic search might have been paid, I can't remember. But anyway, and they gave us a list of the things that they want us to do. Copy the brand guidelines list. Here's, here's the stuff we want to buy. And two of the items on that list PR and 3D renders. We don't do them. No. And there's one or two other things they'd mentioned in the document around about scale and one thing and another. So I was like, you know, I would only ever take this, this, this approach. I went back to them and said, it is something that we are going to be talking about after the podcast or at some point after the podcast. Um, you know, I just basically said to them, look, you mentioned scale. We're a small agency. There's twelve of us. Um, and I said, you also mentioned, um, PR, we don't do PR and 3D renders. We don't do 3D renders. Now we can partner with preferred partners for, we've got a preferred partner for PR work, and we've got a preferred partner for doing 3D renders, but we can't do it. Yeah. And if that's, you know, you said in the document you're really looking for a single source single point of delivering all this. So maybe we're not the right guys for you. Yeah, they came back and it's quite I always find it quite surprising. You know, it's like, um, you know, you know, thanks for your honesty. It's like, why would you be anything?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's a nonsense in business, you know, being dishonest is ridiculous. But I guess plenty of people are. Um, thanks for your honesty. Uh, understand that you need to outsource these couple of things, but we really still like you to come down and pitch. Yeah. So I've said yes, I will. Um, yeah, that's another story. But anyway, um, so you know, that that comes down to the fact that, you know, what these kind of, you know, loosely connected what we're talking about. Because what we're going to have to do in that situation is bring in another agency who can do the bits that we can't do, and we will work collaboratively. And, and, you know, that's that's to me, I don't know, I, it's just I've always liked working like that. It just kind of makes sense.
It does, it does. Um, there's no need to make it complicated. And that's what collaboration is. So yeah, I agree.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, interestingly, this is a subject which I was going to mention last time and I didn't, and it's now become more relevant. Recently we got fibre to the premises or if you work in it premises, but if you do work in it and you do say premises, um jump in the sea or something. Um right. So basically FttP fibre to the premises, i.e. you know, fibre all the way to the actual building. Yeah. Um and what they do is like when we've bought it and we got it here and then I, you know, to my surprise, we got offered it at the house. So we're kind of rural. Didn't expect to get it for quite some time yet. And we got this message through saying it's now available to you. Um, and what they do is they advertise the different packages and different speeds. So me being me, I just decided, yeah, the fastest. So they offer the nine hundred service, which is nine hundred down, one ten up. So which is lightning fast. It's fantastic. Nearly a gig down, which is brilliant. But in the small print it actually says, you know, minimum speed guaranteed is about four seventy. So kind of half what they advertise. This is back to the stuff we were talking about, about SaaS companies, like saying it's twenty quid a month if you pay twelve months in advance. Yeah. Okay. So it's not twenty quid a month then. Um, what, what is it in tech? Because it's a bit like the SaaS thing, you know, why would you say it's forty five quid a month, which it is with this company for nine hundred megabits per second, and then immediately underneath it say we only guarantee for seventy or fifty or whatever it is.
Yeah, it's the night. And the worst thing is because I'm going through something similar with mine, um, trying to get it to the house and um, they'll say it's nine hundred, which is an average for the UK maybe or the average for England. And then you compare in obviously really dense, densely populated areas where of course they're going to get nine hundred because the infrastructure is already there. Yeah. Um so for rural areas, why not just have another one. Like no one's going to complain if, if they turn around and said four hundred and fifty, uh, down, um, let's say eighty up and you go, okay, that's it. There's no hidden, there's no hidden. Um, uh, I don't know.
Because they kind of know as well because they've set that number, the four seventy, because that is about what we get.
Yeah. Oh they know. They know, they know.
Um, as you might remember, when we had it installed, it worked blisteringly fast and really well, and then suddenly stopped working. And we were without any broadband because by then the copper had been turned off. It's still there, but it's been turned off. Um, for ten, eleven, maybe twelve days. Absolutely none. So we use phone tethering. I've got a mobile router I use when I go away. So we weren't absolutely stuck. But the, the service we were paying for just disappeared. Yeah. Um, there was all kinds of wrangling about it. And in the end they sort of did something but didn't actually do anything, I don't think. And it started working again anyway this morning off again. Yeah. So I've now got no um fibre to the premises. Superfast broadband at home again. Now to be fair Zen who I use for broadband or they're the only company I would ever use. Um they've been great. They've taken ownership of it. Speaking to Openreach Openreach it's the problem. And when I went out for lunch today, the Openreach guy who installed it was driving up the hill and he wound his window down. Everything okay now? Is it all fixed? It went off again this morning.
What are you saying?
Right, I'm gonna phone blah blah blah, leave it with me sort of thing. There is already a case created. But one of the things that happened in amongst all that, which I thought was quite funny when Zen contacted me just before to say that, right, we just need to know when you'll be available. And that is in mornings or afternoons. It's like eight to one or one till five. Yeah. And you have to be available if you're not there when the engineering engineer calls, there's an automatic ninety pound fine. Yeah. It's like, wait a minute.
Yeah. It's on.
Your service has failed again. Yeah. But you're telling me about a ninety quid. Fine. Yeah. Which which will be incurred if for some reason I get called away. Yeah. And I am an on call emergency responder. As you know, if I get called away and I can't be there when the engineering comes, you're automatically going to charge me ninety quid. Yeah. Can I automatically charge them ninety quid every time the service drops?
Maybe should should be able to.
Well why not?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. All right. So they've done it probably because people like book them and then bugger off. You're not there when they arrive and all that sort of thing. So there's a reason for it. Whether they actually, you know, impose the ninety quid fine when they've provided such dreadful service, I don't know.
Well I've got the same and I've had this. Yeah. I've not even got copper to. There was no copper in it at all. To the house. Yeah. Nothing. Nothing. Um so they're doing the same. I've had the same notice and um even for um heating and electricity. So um I've had OVO and they've cancelled on me twice said organised a third one which was finally done today. And they'd also said forty pounds if you're not there, but they already owe me eighty quid because they cancelled twice.
Oh. So they are giving you forty quid. Well they.
Cancelled. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. So um but I'm yet to see that, but I'm pretty sure if I owe them money it would be, uh, people knocking at the door. But to go back to your original point, why did they do it? And I think this was what we were talking about earlier, some of when we were talking about some of my favorite, like podcasts and things is it's sometimes a title or a message, like a video thumbnail might look like clickbait, but I think some of the ones that I like the most are ones where I know that I'm going to get an answer or a certain angle on a topic with these companies when they offer, you know, something like that. It's so far from the truth. It's clickbait where you are ultimately then disappointed by the final outcome product service. And you've got to question why they do it. And is it just to get more traffic on the website because it's easier for people? Yeah, because people don't want to go around searching for eight different broadband providers and they go, oh, yep, that one looks good. Oh yeah, it looks cheap enough. And then they just settle. I don't know, I think it probably is that and they play on our.
And you know, most people probably don't even understand what they're getting anyway. They don't understand what they're buying.
Yeah.
You know it's you know. Yeah. I'm getting nine hundred. Yeah. Nine hundred. What. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. Well it's nine hundred so it must be good. It's a big number isn't it.
Yeah, exactly. And they'll put like little fireworks around it and super fast and you know, and.
It is, it's blisteringly.
Fast. It will fantastic.
It really is good. Yeah. It's just that we've been really unlucky, and the damn thing's broken down two or three times now.
I think, if I'm not mistaken as well, like you can have a much larger download, but it depends on the latency and the ping depends on actually how fast that is as well. So that's right.
Um yeah.
Yeah. But that is a frustrating one that people do that because imagine if we do imagine if we actually did that as a, some sort of service or um, I don't know if it was like so many blog posts that you were going to write and then in small print, just put, you're actually only going to get an email subject title because that's just the average for what people expect.
Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, we should, we should definitely investigate that. Yeah. Um, but it was the same, uh, you know, technology seems to be particularly prone to this because if you think back to when electric cars started coming out. Yeah. You know, it's got a four hundred mile range. Small, small writing, probably two hundred and fifty. Yeah. What was that about? Yeah. What what what did it mean? Yeah. Because all it did was totally confuse people. Some people would have bought cars based on, oh, now I've got this big journey, which I do quite regularly. That's three hundred and eighty miles. So the four hundred. That'll work. That'll work. Yeah. Yeah. Like when they were never going to get that. Yeah. And so people were ultimately going to be really, really disappointed. Remember on LBC, Ian Dale um he was very public about it because he bought an Audi, I think it was an A5 e-tron or something like that lovely car. And uh, he actually got Audi to take it back because it turned into just a monumental pain because number one, he hadn't fully understood about charging it and the fact it will, you know, to get even an eighty percent charge. He needed to plug it in for forty minutes in a service station, and that's when he can get on the charge point. And there might be a thirty minute queue or an hour long queue to get on. But the real problem he had was the range was nothing like what was advertised. And he does guest speaking things and all sorts. And so he found himself, um, there was something he was talking about if he'd gone in his previous car, which was an internal combustion engine, remember them? Uh, he, he would have um, been home in three or four hours from this thing he went to. And, and as it turned out in the e-tron, it took him about eight or nine hours. Wow. Something like that. And, you know, he couldn't find charging when he did find charging, it was slow charging. Just just a but the main issue was that they'd lied about the range on it in the first place. But then, you know, what they try and do is they try and explain, oh no, but but no, if you read it what it.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's that reasonable. I don't think that's reasonable.
No. It's because you're not keeping it in the you know the right conditions. You're two degrees lower than when we tested it. And that's really going to knock off one hundred and fifty miles. Mhm. Um yeah.
That's because you've kind of got a car, haven't you. You've got a car which I quite fancy. You've got the hybrid.
Yeah. Yeah. That's a.
Self-charging hybrid as well.
A Toyota Corolla. Yeah.
So it's the world's most popular car.
Yeah. It honestly is so good. Yeah. So so good. Um, and I probably wouldn't transition for those exact reasons at the moment. The ranges I think look quite good at the moment. But you're still knock around a hundred miles off of what they advertise and think, right. That's probably what I'm gonna get.
Why should we have to do that? Yeah. Why is it not the other way around? You will get on a full charge if you've got the heater on, you've electric seat and the stereo, you'll get two hundred and fifty miles. If you're prepared to cut back on those luxuries, you might get three hundred and fifty miles. Yeah. Would we prefer that? Would we, would they sell more? Because this is this is ultimately down to marketing.
I know, I.
Know it's the marketing department that have said, well, what can we not just say, what if we said this? And the engineers were like, oh, well, yeah, if you if you turn everything off and drive really carefully on a flat, smooth road, you might get that good. We'll put that down then.
Is it because realism doesn't sell?
Yeah, probably.
Is. Is that the matter of fact and the selling you the dream of, you know, you can do four hundred odd miles and realistically just you just can't.
So, I mean, we're in the same situation in politics. I mean, Stam has been criticised because apparently I don't remember this, but apparently he was very honest when he came in. It was all kind of doom and gloom, you know? And instead of like just telling a pack of lies and saying everything's going to be fine and we're not going to increase tax. Yeah. Um, but there's another, there's another area which, you know, which, which, which, um, you know, is, is, is obviously really ripe for ripe for discussion. Maybe not now, but you know, it's the same in politics. It's just this whole we seem to be, I mean, I don't know what does post-truth mean? Is that what they mean? Like, do we live in an age where truth is sort of like, you know, it's like select selective. It's kind of like whatever you decide it is. And there's no real driving, you know, there's no real need to be honest. I don't know.
Say what people want to hear and then just, uh, actually reveal the truth afterwards.
A lot of this comes from marketing, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's marketing. It's marketing. People that have created this situation where, you know, are better know what you thought that meant. No, it didn't mean that. Yeah. It meant something completely different that you could never figure out just by reading it.
We know what will engage them. And then if we if we present it like that, then you, you know, you're going to hit your sales targets.
Yeah.
Which is a shame.
So what else have you got?
I have, oh.
I've got something.
Oh yeah. I've got two more.
Two more. Oh both of them.
The Google Search Console has released. So they did a base for quite a while ago and they released um a little insights tab under performance. Um which is, is quite good, like this week. Oh really. Yeah. And it's not, but I think they've been testing the beta for, for a bit. Yeah. Right. Um so essentially what they do, I've not actually seen the tab yet, but I've seen screenshots of it.
Oh, we haven't seen it in our any of our search consoles yet. It hasn't quite rolled out.
No. And I did the audit. I noted it the other day as well, which wasn't there, but to be honest. So there's two things for this. One, it's an insights tab that shows things like total clicks, total impressions. You can see digestible and meaningful data straight away.
Okay, a bit like you can with clicky.
Yes. Whereas I think for someone like myself, I just prefer to go in and, you know, go quite granular with like, I like to look at other things. But if you may be unfamiliar with Google Search Console, and you just want a quick overview about how your website's doing, maybe certain pages, I think it's brilliant because, you know, it's more accessible because I think a lot of people will jump on these platforms and go, oh, I don't know what I'm doing. Whereas, you know, jump on insights. Oh, I can see that web page is doing really well or that one's not doing so good. Yeah. Um, I think yeah, so it's quite good for that. So I would recommend people jump on.
And in a more broader sense, if you want some insights about how your website's performing in search, what's working, what's broken, and you know where your traffic comes from, what pages are being looked at the most, etc., then the completely one hundred percent free Google Search Console is a must. And I say that because we still regularly speak to potential customers and we say like, well, we're going to come and have a chat with you. We're going to look at, look at the market, look at your competitors, look at, look at your website. And it'd be really good if we could fire up the Google Search Console while we're there so we can look at what's happening. And they're like, what's that?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They don't know what it is. And that's fair enough. That's not a criticism. But you know, I'm putting it out there. Google Search Console, make sure if you're certainly if you're working in marketing and if you run a business and you're involved in the business development marketing side of your business, make sure you've got access to Google Search Console.
Yeah.
And what about the sorry. Go on.
No, I was going to say, the way I look at it is if you're in a business and you have a group of people in a room and you ask someone about how the website's performing, Why wouldn't you go also? Also, go straight to the source and ask Google. And that's essentially what it is. So an insights tab will tell you those insights. Yeah.
Okay. Um, one thing that we don't look at very often is the Bing equivalent of that because there is, I can't remember, do they call it the search console as well? I can't remember.
No.
Um, one thing I was going to ask though, aside from the Bing thing is, isn't there's some talk about the addition of an AI tab or an AI part of Google Search Console that's going to tell you, you know, when you're appearing in, in AI snippets and stuff like that.
Yeah. I haven't seen, um, in my recent updates, but I think it will be. So when I mentioned the AI search, um, last week about search max and, uh, and using AI in performance, I suspect they'll probably put it in on that. And again, that comes back to the. How do you then tailor your content for it?
It's all right. Just give me a second. That's all. I'm bringing my car back.
You need a little segment there. Yeah.
The this podcast is brought to you by Alan's Kavala. Alan is literally the nicest man in the world. Yeah, he does a caravan and he's brilliant at it.
And brilliant haggis.
Brilliant haggis because he's actually a butcher. Oh it's raining playing golf tonight. It's pouring down great.
Nothing like a challenge.
I know.
Um but yes. So insights tab. Um. Yeah, it would be really interesting again to see if you're showing there and whether that's actually helping you. Because what if here's another thing. If you're searching for a solution on Google, do you always click the links that it shows you for your answer or when it comes up with the five snippets, do you go? Because a lot of the time, sometimes I'll just go, oh yeah, that's answered it. Yeah, absolutely. I don't need to go to the source. Yeah. So that is another. And again.
So it would be nice to know that your content was used in an AI snippet.
Yeah.
You know, and then you say, okay, so it was used this many times, which doesn't correspond to.
The number of.
Sites or you know, for sure.
Number of eyes, number of impressions on it. Um, yeah, definitely. Okay. The final one June thirtieth. So, but it will take three weeks or can take around three weeks is Google's core update to the their algorithm and system.
Oh, this is interesting because this coincides with us doing a website restructure, which I'm going to talk about briefly.
It does. So I think the first things first, um they don't always let you know kind of what goes on. They just, they have a really good analogy, which I'm probably gonna butcher. Um, and, and funnily enough, in my notes, I actually didn't write down the full analogy. I just have put films analogy. So essentially, if you create a list of your top films in twenty fifteen and you revisit that in twenty nineteen. There will be new films that come in and you may reorder your list, but it doesn't necessarily mean your original list was bad or that you analysed it wrong or incorrectly. It's just there might be new ways of analysing and new contenders, let's say. Okay, so for our context, they've said basically, don't panic if you're especially over the next three weeks, if your website performance drops according to Google, okay. Um, it might just be them kind of reorganising reanalysing and it may go back up. So that's, that's something to note.
Nearly always when there's core updates, you get that wobble. Yeah. And sometimes just holding your, holding your nerve for a couple of weeks and everything's back to how it should be.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And I think if you, if you're quite consistent with how you structure your website and the content on there, you've got nothing to fear in that sense. Um.
So they said what the core update was trying to root out because quite often car updates are about trying to foil people who are trying to scam, who are trying to trick you into ranking their website. You know, for example, in the past, like if you bought a load of shitty backlinks and Google then figured out how to figure out that they were backlinks coming from a private blog network or somewhere, you'd get hammered for that and all they were trying to do with that update. I think it was Penguin that did that, wasn't it? There was also like the thin content update. So they're basically like, you know, trying to get people that were churning out content that didn't even make sense. If you read it, it was done by machines even worse than AI. Yeah, it would, but you'd get all this content on your website so you could embed links in it and you would rank better. And they figured out how to figure out how to understand people that were doing that and therefore penalised them. So it's like always about trying to improve the result. Wow. That's good. Thunder and lightning.
Yeah. That is good.
Improve the, um, the Serp. The search engine results pages by stopping people who are trying to switch. As they say here in Scotland.
So, so so what they have said and it is, it is rather broad. They said there's broad changes to the algorithms and systems, but they. What they've changed is how the systems assess content overall, which is a. It's so vague. So they did release um this about twenty questions where they say, if you're really unsure about your performance, if it's dropped, you can have a look at these questions and just ensure you're on the right lines. So I'd recommend people like I don't have those questions to hand, but I'd recommend you, you kind of go and look at those and just, you know, see if, if you're on the right lines. Um, but they also then said in the same kind of statement, there's nothing to fix. So for people, um, and there's nothing to fix on your website after these core updates, um, in short, what's helpful is write content for people not to rank in search engines. Yeah. Which obviously most businesses will, I think try and do. But that brings me back to my original point, my original question.
What Google have always been saying, write for people, not for search engines. You know what I mean? They've always done that. I mean, that's not new.
I know, I know, and this is the thing. I wonder if they think I actually wrote my question. Should you write content to um be picked up by AI or should you just write it for the end user? Before I even read this, uh, core update, and I wonder if they're cottoning on to the fact that maybe people are starting to try and structure their sites to be picked up by AI snippets. Yeah. Um, which is really interesting. So it's a, it's a tough one.
But if the AI snippets are useful and they often are, I wouldn't say they always are. If the AI snippets are useful, they are only generated by stealing if you like other useful content. So if you're producing that other useful content and you're not signing up to the Cloudflare, yeah, you know, pay per crawl model, which we talked about in the last podcast, then it's not a surprise if your content appears in the AI snippet, because it was written to answer questions and be helpful anyway.
Exactly. So I'm not sure how they've kind of changed their assessment evaluation, but we'll see.
Okay. So does this. My last subject was like, we did a restructure on our website after we migrated our website from the Joomla open source content management system to Hubspot's Content Hub, we initially kept a lot of. The website web page addresses, the URLs, the Uniform Resource locators, the URLs. We kept them the same, um, in order to see if simply using, uh, a hosted SaaS content management system had any positive impact, whether it did or it didn't, I was pretty inconclusive. Nothing much seemed to change when we moved it, but not surprising because a lot of the content was the same. The web page addresses were the same, it was just sat on a different system, which in theory should have been faster and everything else than the site we were running. But nothing much changed. But what we finished up with was a kind of messy structure. You were doing something. That's right. When we decided to put the six seaters on our calls to action on our home page. It was pretty obvious that we had an issue with the site structure. Yes. So we've effectively renamed with the correct three oh one exercise. We renamed every single page on the website, but the website now has a beautiful structure with everything where it should be with the correct URL slash services slash this slash da da da da. Um, are we going to be a bit stymied in terms of seeing how we've been impacted on that, given that we as it turns out, we've done it right in the middle of a Google Core update.
No. And because, um, again, through my research on this, apparently Google will, they'll keep a copy of every, every single page that you've ever had anyway. Um, but when they analyse a page, the, I think it's the last twenty, uh, changes. Um, I don't know whether that's specifically to the web page or just the URL in general. Okay. It's the last twenty pages that they, um, take into consideration when, um, when, when kind of ranking and, and crawling, which actually I think is really interesting because then they've got a really good log of how, how, you know, you're not just changing it for the, and it's like, oh, here's this version is completely different to this version. Whereas hopefully, and this is the reason for our exercise as well, is that they'll go, okay, I can see where they were going with this, but they've actually made it more relevant. And, you know, that's what I think will be taken into consideration.
Okay. I'm personally happy to take, um, a bit of a hit in the short term, which I think is all we might experience for the long term benefit of having order where there previously wasn't much order. We yeah, we had, you know, web page names, web page addresses, URLs, they were all over the place. And now it feels like when we add more stuff, it'll be very simple to slot it into the right place. And you know, we even did it. We have some pages that, um, rank really well for searches that do generate business for us. And we've done it with them as well. And, and yeah, the enquiries keep coming in and everything seems to be okay. Yeah. Again, another thing about this time of year is, you know, kids are on holiday. Well, they are in Scotland. I think they are in England as well now just about to be. So it's holiday time and it just is a kind of um it's usually there's usually a bit of turmoil. Yeah. Through sort of late June, July, August. Um but we'll see.
It's a good time to do things probably.
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. It's like um political parties chucking out bad news story when there's something big happens.
Yeah.
I don't know, like the Chancellor of the Exchequer crying in the Commons or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure how I felt about that on a human level. I really, uh, I really felt for her as a, as a person. I'm sure she's lovely. Um, it was a very odd situation though. It was, it was very strange.
It feels like a fly on the wall in a room that you shouldn't be in.
Yeah.
You see stuff like that.
Yeah. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. I, um, haven't really got much else to talk about. I said to Leslie, this will be a really short one. I lied. It's now forty five minutes and we've still been rambling on. We've covered a lot of subjects, so I'm not sure how I'm going to what I'm going to call this one. But, um, you've been listening to Digital Marketing From The Coalface with me, Dave and Cam and Leslie behind the scenes. And, um, we'll keep pumping this stuff out because stuff happens every day. Yeah. When you're at the coalface of digital marketing every day.