I recently had a discussion with AI Mode about a fear that many small website owners are probably feeling right now. The fear is simple: If Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews can answer questions directly in search, what chance does a small hobby website have? This is especially worrying for people who are not … Read more
AI Mode changes the way we need to think about websites. In traditional search, the pathway was fairly simple. A user typed a query into Google. Google showed a list of websites. The user clicked one or more of those websites. The website then helped the user find the answer, make a decision, solve a … Read more
For years, the basic website strategy was simple. Find a question people are searching for. Write a useful article that answers it. Get found in Google. Earn the click. That model is not dead, but it is becoming much weaker. The reason is simple: AI Mode is very good at absorbing, summarising, combining, and repackaging … Read more
A useful website is changing. For years, a lot of website content was built around a fairly simple idea: Find a question people are searching for, write a page that answers it, and hope Google sends visitors. That model is now under pressure. Not because questions have disappeared. Not because people no longer need help. … Read more
In traditional search, the user typed a query and Google returned a list of pages. The user then had to do the work. They clicked a result, scanned a page, went back, clicked another result, compared advice, changed their search, tried again, and slowly moved towards the answer they needed. AI Mode changes that process. … Read more
For many years, search worked in a fairly simple way. A person had a question. They typed that question into Google. Google showed a page of results. The person clicked through to a website. The website then had the job of answering the question, explaining the topic, recommending a product, or helping the user take … Read more
One of the hardest parts of building a small website is not creating the website. It is getting people to discover it. You can write helpful articles, choose a niche, publish regularly, and still find that very few people actually arrive. That is especially difficult for a part-time website owner. You may not have a … Read more
I recently Googled “affiliate marketing” and saw a simple line in the AI overview that caught my attention: Show exactly how a product solves a specific problem. At first glance, that sounds obvious. Of course an affiliate marketer should explain how a product solves a problem. But the more I thought about it, the more … Read more
I recently read a comment from someone who had been building websites for more than ten years. They explained that a previous product review site, built up over several years, had been badly hit by Google’s 2023 and 2024 algorithm updates. Most of the traffic disappeared. The way they described it was that the audience … Read more
For years, a lot of SEO advice trained people to think about content in a very technical way. Put the keyword in the title. Put the keyword in the first paragraph. Put the keyword in an H2 heading. Put the keyword in the image alt text. Mention it a certain number of times. Make sure … Read more