Google Just Changed Search Forever (Most Authors Aren’t Ready)

If you built your author business by gaming Google with SEO tricks or keyword stuffing, I think the next few years are going to be painful for you. But if you are actually working to become a real authority in your market, this might be the best thing that has happened online in a long time. Google changed everything last month, and if you're a smart author who wants to be on top of this major change, this video is for you. Hi, I'm Julie the Book Broad, founder of Book Launchers and your host here at BookLaunchers.tv. Book Launchers is your first choice for all things related to writing, publishing, and promoting a nonfiction book. Today, let's talk about why search is shifting away from keywords and moving towards authority, trust, and contextual understanding, and why this is great news for authors who are willing to do a little bit of consistent work. Because Google just made the biggest change to search we've seen in 20 years. And I'm going to make sure you understand what just happened and what you need to do about it today. So what changed? Well, if you head on over to Google's, you know, search page, you'll see the search box looks a little different. There's a few extra little icons, and in fact, while it still is a similar size and shape, it's changed a lot. And the big thing is also what people are starting to do in inside of that search. Where people used to go in and go, best self-publishing company, they are actually searching more like, I'm a business owner writing a nonfiction book to grow my authority. Should I self-publish or traditionally publish? Or suggest good publishers nearby. Or I'm a chiropractor and I wanna write a book. Where do I start? And even if people aren't quite adapting how they're searching in Google yet, they are going to. And no matter what, Google's first results are still their AI summarization and not their blue links. But even more than that, the search box is now ready for all kinds of media. And this is really cool. Here's just a really simple example. You can drop a picture in here and search by it. So now I just chose my book cover to do this for a simple example. And speaking of that, if you aren't doing this immediately for yourself to see what's coming up for your book and for yourself, well, I suggest you do that. Maybe after you've liked this video and subscribe to the channel, of course, but then head to Google and do that. And when you ask it about your book or ask it about the author of that book, what is coming up? And look at the sources it's drawing from, because you can see the sources by hovering over the little grayed-out bubble at the end of each section. But overall, this is a massive shift in search because Google's not just matching keywords, it's understanding intent, expertise, context, trustworthiness, and usefulness. And if you saw, as soon as I even dropped the book over in it before before I even asked it to do anything, it got to work guessing what I wanted. Search is not search anymore. It's an AI assistant. And for years, a lot of people thought the game online was write a book, find the keywords, use them in the KDP dashboard, write some keyword-rich articles for a website, get some backlinks, and wait for traffic. And maybe buy SMADs. In the glory days of SEO, that worked for a lot of people. The internet rewarded people who were good at gaming the system. But AI, well, they're a lot harder to fool because they're looking for patterns. And this is so important. What podcasts are you on? What videos are you creating? Do people reference your ideas? Do your reviews align with your positioning? Does your content ecosystem make sense? Are people talking about you? What are they saying? And is it consistent? Ultimately, this is why we created our Author Empire Map for our Author Empire Workshop this year. And why we've shifted our book marketing packages from the usual book marketing steps to be the author growth engine of your book. Because there's no magic button. I wish there was, but running ebook sales and Amazon ads isn't working anymore either. You need real authority, and that, my friend, is gonna take some time and consistent effort. But I am not sad about this. I'm actually happy, and I'll tell you why. Well, actually, let me share a little story. There's literally a company out there right now using our name, Book Launchers, on their website. Now it's weird if you land on the page and you know Book Launchers and our brand, you will not be fooled by them. But if you are not that familiar with our brand and you just heard that Book Launchers is a good company and you found this website, well, it would be easy to be fooled by it. But as you get into their whole funnel, that first landing page is a cover and it rolls into a totally different company. But anyways, we're in the process of issuing a cease and desist because of course we own the trademark for Book Launchers. But here's the interesting thing. Ultimately, you can potentially copy a name, you can copy keywords, you can even copy website language, which they did, but it's hard to fake real authority. We have spent years building trust, creating content, working with authors, publishing books, showing up consistently, and building an ecosystem. And because of that, large language models regularly recommend Book Launchers, and that did not happen overnight. So in this, there's bad news and there's good news. Of course, the bad news is this is harder. You can't fake authority long-term and it doesn't show up overnight. You have to actually become known for something and get people talking about it. The good news is that scam companies and fake experts have a much harder road. The people who were amazing at keyword stuffing and manipulative SEO tactics, their advantage is going to shrink now. And that makes me happy because there's scam companies like that other one showing up all the time, and they are good at the SEO game. But true authority now has a better chance to win. So what should authors do? What should you do? Well, here we go. Number 1, pick a clear position. This is not news if you've been here for a while. What do you want to be known for? If your positioning is vague, AI systems will struggle to understand you and recommend you. You need to say the same thing over and over again on a lot of different platforms. One tip we've learned is to make sure your bio says the same thing across all places. Don't have one one bio on Goodreads and a different one on Amazon and a different one on your website. They should all say the exact same thing. It's an important pattern. Two, build an ecosystem. One book, it's not enough, but that might feel like a lot to you right now, especially if you're still working on one. So think of it like this: your book is the foundation for all the things that you're going to build. Invest in creating a great book with compelling stories, strong frameworks, and from there you now have the content you need to build on it with YouTube videos, podcasts, newsletters, interviews, articles, and of course that creates social proof and real conversations. This is not about just having your name on the COVID This is about writing something big or small with a message that is more than regurgitated content that an AI could have turned out. This is about making yourself known for a position, an angle, and a message, 'cause your book is only one piece of this empire, but it's the foundation, the backbone, and that is what creates authority. Number 3, post consistently. This is where I even fall down. If you follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram, I'm not there every day. Now, this is not about posting consistently for 30 days and voilà, you're a trusted resource. No, this is consistently over quite a bit of time, posting a couple of times a week, and maybe in between you're doing a podcast interview or some other live appearance. Ideally, what I always recommend is do one thing, small or larger, every day. And if you do this, say, 5 days a week, and you do it most weeks, at the end of a year you've done somewhere between 200 and 250 things, and now you start to feel that authority growing. Number 4: Have a plan. Most authors throw content online randomly and hope something works, and that's not strategy. Now, there's 3 ways I can help you with strategy. One is the free way: get Self-Promote and Succeed. Of course, you can purchase it in any format wherever books are sold, but you can get it for free at selfpromoteandsucceed.com/audio. That's the audiobook version. It's the foundation of everything we do for authority building and book marketing at Book Launchers. Then there's also the assisted DIY path for $149, and that is getting our software Author Launch Kit. You can get that at authorlaunchkit.com. Inside the software, you'll find the ability to build out a 90-day plan, audit your LLM discoverability, plot a path to improve your discoverability, create content to post for social media, articles, newsletters, what to say to media, who to pitch for podcasts, media, influencers, and so much more. Of course, we also have our full service plan where we're executing for you, where we write the articles, pitch you for podcasts, work on your ebook sales, metadata, Amazon ads, and more. So if you want us to get working on your authority building for you, reach out booklaunchers.com/apply so we can set up a call. Whatever path you choose, you need a plan so you know what you're doing each day so you're building authority and momentum. I'm kind of excited because the old internet rewarded people who were good at gaming the algorithms. The next internet rewards people who consistently create value, build trust, and become useful. Yeah, it's more work, but I think that's a good thing because real authority should be hard to build. See you on the next video.