SEO has always been great because there are so many ways to be successful. Now there might be even more.

SEO has been the most profitable channel by some margin for the last 15 years.

We can debate about the rights and (broadly) wrongs of last-click attribution until the cows come home, but SEO has been the money channel. The channel the execs have leapt at.

But now, the days of traffic for old rope are gone. Audience journeys have become more complicated than ever, and some of the shine has been taken off search.

While it was always over-buffed, you’d be a fool to forget Google. According to all of the clickstream data I’ve seen, the majority of user journeys – regardless of whether it’s AI-led – use Google at some stage. Particularly when they’re close to the point of purchase.

But you cannot build a brand through Search anymore. If you’re an SME, it’s very tough to break into. These aren’t bad things. It’s so lucrative it should be hard. We need better spam policies from Google and we need them to figure out how to combat the slew of slop AI has turned the internet into.

We need brands that have real presence, heft, quality control and an audience before they start to crack the Search code. Google knows they have a quality problem. They’ve been very slow to act, but I hope that’s about to change.

The Helpful Content update was, let’s say, interesting. Interesting in the brands that got nuked by it at least.

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