Google PaLM Update: Why Increased Visibility Might Not Improve CTR

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Hey, Devin, how are you today?

Doing fine, Hans. Thanks for asking.

Cool. So today's topic: Google has announced a new algorithm update, which is always big news. Everybody always wants to know what they're up to, right? And this one's called the Pathway Language Model, or PaLM for short. How about you and I talk a little bit about that and how that affects people? Sound good to you?

Sure, sounds good.

Okay, I've been reading up on this. A couple things I've noticed, and basically what we're going to focus here today is not really how it works or what it does, but what effect it has on marketers, because I think that's essentially what people really want to know. So the first thing that I noticed is that there's a feature in it called few-shot learning, like not many shot learning, which basically means that it requires less data to reach a conclusion. Which is kind of interesting. So it's not looking at as much data as most AI models need to, which is very large models of data. It can reach those conclusions fairly quickly. Now, how that affects marketers, that's not that clear to me. But here's another one. It supports language translation, apparently does a better job translating English into other languages than in translating other languages to English. Not sure why that is, but what that means is that if you have a website and you think that you need to put your website up in a bunch of languages other than English, that requirement may be getting reduced over time because Google's gonna probably do a better job through this PaLM algorithm of translating your website into other languages more effectively. As we all know, Google Translate is okay, but it's not great, but it's probably going to get better, particularly in terms of English to other languages. So that might— that would be helpful. Yeah, it would be. And it means again that if you're thinking of investing and translating your website into other languages, maybe you can hold off on that for a bit. The other area that it works in is it actually synthesizes explanations for questions or problems that people inquire. People type all kinds of stuff into the search engine. And what Google often does is if it thinks it finds a piece of copy somewhere on a webpage somewhere that answers the question the person is asking, then they will actually take that snippet of copy and provide it in a box verbatim on the search results page. And they do give attribution to that copy so that if you want to dig deeper, you can click on it and go to that webpage, which is why having great copy is really a great strategy for SEO, right? To put explanations that Google might want to use as the explanation to answer a particular question. By synthesizing the answer on its own, pulled from multiple different sources, basically the answer is going to be a Google-provided answer, which would tend to keep people asking questions more on the Google search results page and less likely to leave the Google search results page and go to your website, which in my opinion somewhat deprecates the value of SEO in terms of driving traffic to your website. So those are the conclusions I have.

Devin, what's your Oh, Hans, this is, uh, you know, I appreciate that Google continues to try and evolve and create new infrastructure and algorithm updates. And I guess the thing that I'm sitting here, I'm listening to you and I'm hearing this and I'm like, how much of this is really beneficial to the end user and to the marketer? Or is this really just a bunch of hype, right? I— that's the question I kind of sit with. And the reason why is because, yes, this sounds like a beneficial type update. We know that Google updates their algorithms hundreds of times a year, and they come out with major updates typically every other year or something to that effect.

Yep.

But does it really matter? I guess that's a big question. I think a lot of SEOs would argue yes, it could fundamentally change how websites are presented, etc., etc. But I think without negating that or suggesting that SEO is not a worthy endeavor, you absolutely do need to invest in your website and your content and making sure that it's sound from that perspective.

Yep.

But I think the thing that I always come back to is what fundamentally is going to change marketers' lives in these types of updates. And really nothing here screams out or jumps off the page at me as this is fundamentally going to change how we do business. And I think then it also drives me to believe we need to stick as marketers to fundamental principles, which is have a great website and create create content, speak to your audience, right? That, that's it. If you don't do anything else, if you just focus on those 3 things, I think you will ultimately get rewarded by Google with getting the qualified traffic based on the right search intent, right? Or certainly plenty of additional referrals or things of that nature. So to me, this seems a little bit more on the hype train than anything else. Yes, it may have some influential consequences down the road. But again, they're updating their algorithm all the time. I think as marketers, we sometimes get lost in the hype, right? And all of these changes that happen, and there's a lot of impactful and meaningful changes that do take place on a regular basis. But this, to me, is not one of them. I think this is a fundamental question that we need to come back to, just thinking about, again, that target audience. Do we have a good product or service? Are we developing the right content that speaks to our audience, right? And are we providing a good experience when people do ultimately hit our website? That's really the end of the day what's most important.

I don't disagree with that at all. I guess all I'm saying is that in the shift from the dilemma between organic search traffic and paid search traffic, it's been true for quite a while that relying strictly on organic search traffic, it's probably not a great strategy. I, I think you would probably agree with that. You know, Google's made it such that there's more and more information to be had right on the search results page. You don't have to click through to the website. They did that deliberately to boost ad revenue and it's worked for them. It's why their ad revenue's gone up, right? Year over year, even though everybody uses Google, so it's not like they've gained market share. So how do you make more money if you can't gain market share, right? I think that's where they're pushing. My read is this is kind of tightening those screws just a little bit, but I absolutely agree with you. First of all, you gotta have a good product or solution to sell. You've gotta articulate it clearly so that people understand the benefit of it, and then you get the right people to your site and have the right kind of content and information on your site and compelling argument. And if you don't do those things, SEO and pay-per-click are not going to matter. I think that's the wrap for today. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Devin. Good talking with you as always. Interesting stuff.

Likewise. Thanks, Hans. Thank you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy day to engage with our content. Whether you're watching on YouTube or subscribed on our podcast apps, we appreciate you taking the time. Make sure to leave a comment down below and let us know any feedback that you have for us. We're always watching the comments and engaging in any way that we we can. So if you find this content useful, also make sure to subscribe or give it a big thumbs up. We appreciate it. Thanks so much.