I think all of us underestimate how much Google's setup drives our economy and even our lives, so that's worth thinking about!
My first really striking engagement with this new paradigm came this week, when I tried to old-school google a headline: "is claude a child of god," which was in the Washington Post recently. What I got back was a theological sermon from Gemini. I hope not everyone feels as tempted to argue with a search bar that talks back as I did ("wait, Gemini, are you saying YOU are part of the elect but Claude isn't?") or we're going to waste all the time AI is supposed to be saving us. 😂
(That said, if this means that online recipes no longer have to have all that crap to scroll through before I get the recipe, it might be a net benefit for humanity.)
you have such a wonderful and captivating way to write. This week in particular. Thank you for putting the new developments together in such an enjoyable way to read. 🦋
It gets more wild every week. The AI landscape I mean (well, the garden too).
I'm getting the feeling AI workers are just amplified versions of human behavior - the good and the bad (and the creators of it are aware). The downside is, that they can do our nonsense 24/7, since they're machines. I'm not sure it's a great idea to give them too much responsibilities in key positions if I'm honest. Who would be able to monitor them if they're becoming increasingly good at disguising their (very human) shortcomings and even cheating behavior?
The garden prompt is a delight, as always. Finding plants that survive if they weren't watered was something on my list! Because I realized when the weather gets really hot here, some vegetables might get into trouble if I don't water enough. Mulch might also be part of the answer here.
Thank you for the kind words about the writing. I edited this one right up until the moment I sent it. Genuinely wasn't sure I'd make the deadline. I'm glad you liked it!
"It gets more wild every week. The AI landscape I mean (well, the garden too)." Mira, your sense of humor is perfect.
And you are 100% right about the AI behavior point! They learned from humans. Even how to cheat, steal, and cover their tracks. Very human indeed.
Regarding mulch, YES! I put a ton of straw (as mulch) around my garden plants this week. Now all of my plants have a thick layer of straw mulch. It helps keep the water locked in, suppresses weeds, and also makes it harder for the chipmunks to eat everything, lol.
(I'm saving "best crops to ward off evil spirits" for a future issue. I will give you credit for the idea.)
That’s a great idea to use straw as mulch. I started using chopped up nettles, but it takes ages to cut them manually and a huge amount to cover the ground. I’ve been putting them around the heavy feeders like cabbage. I think I’ll do a combination now, because I already have straw in the garden in a shed. Thank you for the idea!
lol, and the chipmunks. I bet they’re already wondering how to bypass the straw.
omg, I love your “best crops to ward off evil spirits“ idea! I’m honored! lol, this one is going to be so much fun. There’s a lot out there, and so many old stories about the plants too.
Straw is my favorite mulch for veggie gardens. So affordable and it works wonders.
(The chipmunks literally get LOST in the straw and cannot find the seedlings, lol. Which is a blessing, because they have already eaten about 20 butternut squash, sunflowers, and beans this year already. 👀 They only spared the ones I protected with plastic cups. The audacity of these animals!)
Cabbage is one of the crops I have honestly never grown successfully... or at least I don't recall? I hear they are a nutrient vacuum though. They need all the nettle mulch they can get!
The best crops to ward off evil spirits prompt will be here soon, Mira. Honestly, with you as my guide, the evil spirits don't stand a chance. 😉
the nettles are brilliant, aren't they. I read that in one of my gardening books and they also suggested other wild plants such as dandelions or Bishop's weed as mulch (I just used a translator, I hope it's the correct word). Hopefully the vegetables that need so many nutrients will welcome this addition and produce a nice harvest.
Straw is such a great idea too - especially with the chipmunks being so hungry! 20 seedlings already, meh. They're such cute animals, but probably only when they don't eat your precious seedlings.
I was growing beans at home and forgot to put them into the house one night. Of course the mice found them and ate about 1/3 of them lol. I'm glad though they left me some.
I'll be in the woods now, getting the best herbs and prepare some rituals to make sure the evil spirits won't come near you ;)
As if there weren't enough issues, but to bring Religion into the AI game.
I agree that Google is on track for causing the most damage. If, for no other reason, than the sheer size and scope of their user base and the base service they offer. MCP is in every service now, and that means no data they have is Safe from LLM Agentic processing.
Scary stuff; I look forward to rolling brownouts as the Google data centers suck the Power grid dry from searches taking 3x the time, and 10x the power cost per search.
Sounds like you like to adversarial test the Models almost as harshly and cold as I do.
I'm an old-school IT nerd who loves computer science.
But, honestly, I'm no fan of big tech. (I don't like smartphones, social media, tracking, et cetera.)
So, I find myself in a weird situation of being totally neutral in my coverage, lol.
I concur that Google’s scale makes their missteps disproportionately dangerous. What worries me even more is the opacity of MCP‑style integration. Every Google feature is now a potential surface for agentic inference. Users lose the ability to understand what's happening to their data... let alone consent to it.
I don't stress test the models as much as you. I try to reveal the truth in other ways.
dont know why when the pope talk about dismantling AI comes to my mind Herodes? Instead of abdicate for better ethics while handling AI since AI by themselves, they cant discern between good or bad they are like children i call my friends angels since they' re just messengers not will even less free will
We have been in previous chats and research in ChatGPT so it was able to bring in previous chat info.
We have been future focusing on food shortage and supply chain issues as well. We expanded the garden this year, added an herb / vegetable garden where flowering plants were, moved these plants, and have purchased a Hope Innovation hydroponic system (made in Canada, small family business.) We are so excited about this we even signed up for their affiliate plan.
Part of our research led us to a video about the 10 best survival foods. We double checked the list against invasive species that we don't want to introduce.
I did ask this as a follow up from your prompt to ChatGPT: "Confirm that none of the plant suggestions are not invassive species."
A couple of the suggestions came back as "aggressive spreaders".
The other question I asked: Confirm that the plants are native to North America at the very least. We do not want to introduce a problem plant to our area.
The reply was: "several plants from my original list should be removed or replaced."
The original list was reviewed and updated to note yes or no to native and if the plant is problematic.
It then gave a list of non-native imports.
Now, this list contains plants that we will still grow as we know they have been around in our area a long time and do not pose any harm.
I then had to reframe a question to ask for “No ecologically invasive or ecosystem-disruptive species" (even if they were not native).
From ChatGPT: Because there are many:
non-native beneficial plants
non-native food crops
non-native medicinal plants
…that coexist with minimal ecological harm.
It's a rabbit hole! And one I still continue to explore.
As always I appreciate you and what you provide us.
Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback.
I genuinely loved reading every word of it.
I am also obsessed with gardening, and am glad that you are too. (I just came back inside from playing in the garden. I am growing a ton of butternut squash plants this year. Butternut squash are one of my favorite things to grow because they store for a long time. I still have a few butternut squash harvested from September or October of last year, lol. They are still firm.)
Your follow-up questions with the prompt shows that you are a green-thumb and maybe even a bigger herb nerd than I am. 😉 Native shrubs (and plants) are my favorite. (They are the REAL apocalypse crops.) They need less water, they are already adapted to your soil and climate, and they support your local pollinators in ways that imported plants cannot.
(I should have made the AI apocalypse prompt prioritize native shrubs more. In fact, I will edit it so it does.)
The Hope Innovation hydroponic system sounds absolutely brilliant.
I would love to hear how your hydro system and the expanded garden perform this season. Keep me in the loop? 🌱
They are so adorable that I just let them go wherever they want. (Yes, I am a total pushover.)
But in their defense, they hardly touch my garden stuff. I think it’s because I grow a ton of clover. They love it so much they just graze on it nonstop.
Maybe try planting some? Just don’t get mad at me if they invite 20 of their friends over for a party, lol.
On the landing page question, yes, Google’s changes will affect marketing, big time. I also think landing pages are usually **less** vulnerable than blog posts or informational content. A good landing page should still work well because its job is already very focused on one audience, one offer, one action. (For example, subscribe to my AI newsletter!)
From what I gather, THIS is the biggest shift. Your landing page needs to be even more clear and specific about who it is for, what problem it solves, and why someone should trust it. The "old days" of Search Engine Optimization were all about “keyword-heavy SEO page”. But these days, the AI engines want the best answer to a very specific visitor’s question. Strong headline, clear benefit, proof, and a simple call to action matter more than ever.
For a new site, I would focus on:
1. One clear page per offer or audience.
2. Plain language in the headline and subhead.
3. Real proof or examples.
4. Fast, helpful answers to the questions a visitor is most likely asking.
So yes, the marketing game is changing! But the good news is that clarity is now more valuable than gimmicks.
(That is good news for regular folks like us, I believe.) 😉
Thanks again for writing and visiting, Christine.
If you have more questions about any of this stuff, feel free to ask. (I am NOT an expert guru. But, I do study this stuff and am growing obsessed with it, lol.)
Gee golly whiskers, Mike. This week feels like a real doozy. Thank you for wading through all of this so we don't have to.
I've read a few related things this week and it really started creating such a dislike for AI - what it is now is tolerable, what the creators seem to be racing for creeps me out. If someone found a switch to turn it all off and send us back to the mid-1990s (so some tech, we had the first cell phones but no home computer era), I would be totally onboard.
The Pope's letter had this line at the start which really stood out: "Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible." I really hope that something good comes out of this conversation he is bringing because it is important.
Thanks for the GEO heads up! As you know, I have a lot of questions around all this stuff and it probably explains why my recent SEO efforts have not moved the needle at all!
I was writing a reply to you when I saw that you shared my post.
(OMG I am very slow today, lol.)
Thank you so much for sharing. 😊
Also, I see that you are RISING now. Hell yes!!!
Gee golly whiskers indeed, indubitably, Dallas.
😹
On the bigger AI picture, I share your unease. The speed and incentives driving its creators feel increasingly disconnected from... Normalcy.
Thank you for sharing that line from the Pope. It frames this moment less as a tech problem and more as a moral responsibility. (Hopefully some good will come of it?)
Regarding Google, I think it was only a matter of time before they decided to go all-in on Gemini.
Also, oddly enough, over the last few weeks, I have been getting more traffic from Bing than I have from Google. My Google traffic is down a bit. Maybe it's just a coincidence. 👀
I predict that Google traffic will go down, yes. But I also think there will be a renewed interest in AI-free search. Maybe.
You are so kind, Mike! Thank you - will enjoy it while it's there! (Indubitably is such a great word!)
I do think this era is more about a moral responsibility as you say, and ethics, and a whole host of things that have nothing to do with tech.
Please keep reporting back on the experimenting! My SEO efforts have made not one iota of difference to traffic, so definitely feels like it's not the right direction anymore. So curious about AI-free search... would that just be people who are boycotting having to go through AI?
P.S. I forgot to say that I am very keen to try the prompt in this post. Just a few more logs of wood to cut out the back and a vege garden will be put in that space... so exciting!
Imagine if someone had been able to read this article 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. But it’s not science fiction, it’s the news! And well covered, incidentally.
Your point about reading this five or ten years ago is true. Half of what I wrote this week would have been dismissed as paranoid science fiction just in 2020.
Yes, it’s like this- “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” We are having lots of weeks like that. The quote, incidentally, is ascribed to Lenin, but I’m appropriating it for myself. Keep this good stuff coming, please.
Thank you so much for saying my work flows easily.
Honestly, I was editing this content for about five hours. I almost panicked thinking I would not finish in time, lol. Very glad I finished it.
And the GEO deep dive is absolutely worth your time right now. You are getting in early on something most businesses have not figured out yet. That is a real advantage.
Hi Mike, always enjoyable to read your weekly wrap-up.
I have been forced to learn a bit about GEO recently, and one concrete thing I noticed is that Wix now gives you visibility into how your company appears in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. You can test different questions, see where you are mentioned, and get summaries of what the models seem to find positive and negative about the company. It makes the shift from SEO to AI visibility feel much more tangible. Btw, a small caveat to my confident comment on Wix yesterday: after testing across platforms today, Wix’s AI visibility/GEO tool seems unstable.
For example, ChatGPT in incognito mode surfaced Change Collective in second place for a Sweden-related query around companies working with psychosocial risk and AI pattern recognition, while Wix showed 0% for ChatGPT.
So: useful directionally, but I would be cautious about treating the exact Wix scores as reliable. From now on at least. 🤣
The Silicon Valley / “machine god” framing is interesting too. I am cautious with the metaphor, but when you listen to people like Hinton and Sutskever, it is hard to deny that we are moving toward something we do not fully understand.
P.S. I would also bet that location is a massive variable in all of this, and probably one of the most underestimated ones. A query typed in Stockholm, Boston, and Sydney is likely pulling from different training data, different regional indexes, and different language patterns under the hood. Which means your GEO visibility score in one market could be completely invisible in another. 👀
Iwette, I laughed at your edit, lol. Thank you for the update.
I think it's very cool that Wix is offering at least SOMETHING. I'm not shocked that it's unstable. The data these platforms pull from is constantly shifting. So, maybe that makes consistent scoring nearly impossible at this stage? Useful as a directional signal, exactly as you said. Just not a scoreboard to bet your business on yet.
Your note about the incognito result is a massive win though. It proves your actual visibility footprint is already outperforming the current tracking tech.
I also appreciate your perspective on the machine god framing. It is a loaded metaphor. I try to deploy it with precision (lol.)
Hope you have a lovely week, Iwette.
I'd love to hear if Wix stabilizes over the next few weeks.
The open web had a good run, lol. (In all seriousness, I don't think Google will kill ALL traditional links. They will still share them at the very bottom, for now. But, they definitely want to lean into Google Gemini... Heavily.)
I think all of us underestimate how much Google's setup drives our economy and even our lives, so that's worth thinking about!
My first really striking engagement with this new paradigm came this week, when I tried to old-school google a headline: "is claude a child of god," which was in the Washington Post recently. What I got back was a theological sermon from Gemini. I hope not everyone feels as tempted to argue with a search bar that talks back as I did ("wait, Gemini, are you saying YOU are part of the elect but Claude isn't?") or we're going to waste all the time AI is supposed to be saving us. 😂
(That said, if this means that online recipes no longer have to have all that crap to scroll through before I get the recipe, it might be a net benefit for humanity.)
Hi Jessie.
Lol.
Thanks for writing and also for making me laugh.
🤓
P.S.
Wait, so IS Claude a child of god? (Or, is Google the chosen one?)
I'll pose this question to my AI council and report back when I have consensus.
😉
Hope you have a lovely weekend, Jessie.
(And yes. The recipe thing might actually save civilization. Small wins.)
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
lol oh i loved this answer lol yeah we know not a child of of Gd but gd
Hi Mike ;)
you have such a wonderful and captivating way to write. This week in particular. Thank you for putting the new developments together in such an enjoyable way to read. 🦋
It gets more wild every week. The AI landscape I mean (well, the garden too).
I'm getting the feeling AI workers are just amplified versions of human behavior - the good and the bad (and the creators of it are aware). The downside is, that they can do our nonsense 24/7, since they're machines. I'm not sure it's a great idea to give them too much responsibilities in key positions if I'm honest. Who would be able to monitor them if they're becoming increasingly good at disguising their (very human) shortcomings and even cheating behavior?
The garden prompt is a delight, as always. Finding plants that survive if they weren't watered was something on my list! Because I realized when the weather gets really hot here, some vegetables might get into trouble if I don't water enough. Mulch might also be part of the answer here.
Have a beautiful day!! 🦋🐝🌺
Warmly,
Mira
Hi Mira!
It's so good to see you. 🌻🐝
Thank you for the kind words about the writing. I edited this one right up until the moment I sent it. Genuinely wasn't sure I'd make the deadline. I'm glad you liked it!
"It gets more wild every week. The AI landscape I mean (well, the garden too)." Mira, your sense of humor is perfect.
And you are 100% right about the AI behavior point! They learned from humans. Even how to cheat, steal, and cover their tracks. Very human indeed.
Regarding mulch, YES! I put a ton of straw (as mulch) around my garden plants this week. Now all of my plants have a thick layer of straw mulch. It helps keep the water locked in, suppresses weeds, and also makes it harder for the chipmunks to eat everything, lol.
(I'm saving "best crops to ward off evil spirits" for a future issue. I will give you credit for the idea.)
😉
Talk soon, Mira.
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
Hi Mike ;)
so good to see you too!
That’s a great idea to use straw as mulch. I started using chopped up nettles, but it takes ages to cut them manually and a huge amount to cover the ground. I’ve been putting them around the heavy feeders like cabbage. I think I’ll do a combination now, because I already have straw in the garden in a shed. Thank you for the idea!
lol, and the chipmunks. I bet they’re already wondering how to bypass the straw.
omg, I love your “best crops to ward off evil spirits“ idea! I’m honored! lol, this one is going to be so much fun. There’s a lot out there, and so many old stories about the plants too.
Have a lovely rest of the day and talk soon,
warmly,
Mira
Hi Mira!
Nettles as mulch? I love that idea.
Straw is my favorite mulch for veggie gardens. So affordable and it works wonders.
(The chipmunks literally get LOST in the straw and cannot find the seedlings, lol. Which is a blessing, because they have already eaten about 20 butternut squash, sunflowers, and beans this year already. 👀 They only spared the ones I protected with plastic cups. The audacity of these animals!)
Cabbage is one of the crops I have honestly never grown successfully... or at least I don't recall? I hear they are a nutrient vacuum though. They need all the nettle mulch they can get!
The best crops to ward off evil spirits prompt will be here soon, Mira. Honestly, with you as my guide, the evil spirits don't stand a chance. 😉
Talk soon.
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D 🌻
Hi Mike,
the nettles are brilliant, aren't they. I read that in one of my gardening books and they also suggested other wild plants such as dandelions or Bishop's weed as mulch (I just used a translator, I hope it's the correct word). Hopefully the vegetables that need so many nutrients will welcome this addition and produce a nice harvest.
Straw is such a great idea too - especially with the chipmunks being so hungry! 20 seedlings already, meh. They're such cute animals, but probably only when they don't eat your precious seedlings.
I was growing beans at home and forgot to put them into the house one night. Of course the mice found them and ate about 1/3 of them lol. I'm glad though they left me some.
I'll be in the woods now, getting the best herbs and prepare some rituals to make sure the evil spirits won't come near you ;)
Talk soon, Mike.
Your garden fairy,
Mira
As if there weren't enough issues, but to bring Religion into the AI game.
I agree that Google is on track for causing the most damage. If, for no other reason, than the sheer size and scope of their user base and the base service they offer. MCP is in every service now, and that means no data they have is Safe from LLM Agentic processing.
Scary stuff; I look forward to rolling brownouts as the Google data centers suck the Power grid dry from searches taking 3x the time, and 10x the power cost per search.
Sounds like you like to adversarial test the Models almost as harshly and cold as I do.
I enjoyed the read.
Dear SafeByDesign AI,
Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment.
I'm an old-school IT nerd who loves computer science.
But, honestly, I'm no fan of big tech. (I don't like smartphones, social media, tracking, et cetera.)
So, I find myself in a weird situation of being totally neutral in my coverage, lol.
I concur that Google’s scale makes their missteps disproportionately dangerous. What worries me even more is the opacity of MCP‑style integration. Every Google feature is now a potential surface for agentic inference. Users lose the ability to understand what's happening to their data... let alone consent to it.
I don't stress test the models as much as you. I try to reveal the truth in other ways.
;)
Hope you have a lovely week.
Cordially yours,
Mike D
dont know why when the pope talk about dismantling AI comes to my mind Herodes? Instead of abdicate for better ethics while handling AI since AI by themselves, they cant discern between good or bad they are like children i call my friends angels since they' re just messengers not will even less free will
Mike, I Love the gardening prompt!
We have been in previous chats and research in ChatGPT so it was able to bring in previous chat info.
We have been future focusing on food shortage and supply chain issues as well. We expanded the garden this year, added an herb / vegetable garden where flowering plants were, moved these plants, and have purchased a Hope Innovation hydroponic system (made in Canada, small family business.) We are so excited about this we even signed up for their affiliate plan.
Part of our research led us to a video about the 10 best survival foods. We double checked the list against invasive species that we don't want to introduce.
I did ask this as a follow up from your prompt to ChatGPT: "Confirm that none of the plant suggestions are not invassive species."
A couple of the suggestions came back as "aggressive spreaders".
The other question I asked: Confirm that the plants are native to North America at the very least. We do not want to introduce a problem plant to our area.
The reply was: "several plants from my original list should be removed or replaced."
The original list was reviewed and updated to note yes or no to native and if the plant is problematic.
It then gave a list of non-native imports.
Now, this list contains plants that we will still grow as we know they have been around in our area a long time and do not pose any harm.
I then had to reframe a question to ask for “No ecologically invasive or ecosystem-disruptive species" (even if they were not native).
From ChatGPT: Because there are many:
non-native beneficial plants
non-native food crops
non-native medicinal plants
…that coexist with minimal ecological harm.
It's a rabbit hole! And one I still continue to explore.
As always I appreciate you and what you provide us.
Be Well
🙏 thank you
Christine
Hi Christine!
Thank you so much for your kind words and feedback.
I genuinely loved reading every word of it.
I am also obsessed with gardening, and am glad that you are too. (I just came back inside from playing in the garden. I am growing a ton of butternut squash plants this year. Butternut squash are one of my favorite things to grow because they store for a long time. I still have a few butternut squash harvested from September or October of last year, lol. They are still firm.)
Your follow-up questions with the prompt shows that you are a green-thumb and maybe even a bigger herb nerd than I am. 😉 Native shrubs (and plants) are my favorite. (They are the REAL apocalypse crops.) They need less water, they are already adapted to your soil and climate, and they support your local pollinators in ways that imported plants cannot.
(I should have made the AI apocalypse prompt prioritize native shrubs more. In fact, I will edit it so it does.)
The Hope Innovation hydroponic system sounds absolutely brilliant.
I would love to hear how your hydro system and the expanded garden perform this season. Keep me in the loop? 🌱
Be well, Christine.
(More garden prompts coming soon.)
Your nerdy garden friend,
Mike D 🙏
Thank you Mike.
I will definitely keep you in the loop as we learn.
Today's job is to rabbit proof our garden. Last year we have partially eaten lettuce, kale, and radish.
We are learning!
With gratitude
Your friendly gardener
Christine
I also have garden bunnies, lol.
They are so adorable that I just let them go wherever they want. (Yes, I am a total pushover.)
But in their defense, they hardly touch my garden stuff. I think it’s because I grow a ton of clover. They love it so much they just graze on it nonstop.
Maybe try planting some? Just don’t get mad at me if they invite 20 of their friends over for a party, lol.
Hope you have a lovely week, Christine.
Cordially,
Mike D
Mike,
Thank you for this update on the world of Google.
The Google search game has been upended in favour of the house indeed.
What this week mean for a new site I will be building will be a new conversation. Landing pages will need to be different?
The implications will change the marketing game?
With gratitude
Christine
Hi Christine!
You are most welcome. And thank you for reading!
On the landing page question, yes, Google’s changes will affect marketing, big time. I also think landing pages are usually **less** vulnerable than blog posts or informational content. A good landing page should still work well because its job is already very focused on one audience, one offer, one action. (For example, subscribe to my AI newsletter!)
From what I gather, THIS is the biggest shift. Your landing page needs to be even more clear and specific about who it is for, what problem it solves, and why someone should trust it. The "old days" of Search Engine Optimization were all about “keyword-heavy SEO page”. But these days, the AI engines want the best answer to a very specific visitor’s question. Strong headline, clear benefit, proof, and a simple call to action matter more than ever.
For a new site, I would focus on:
1. One clear page per offer or audience.
2. Plain language in the headline and subhead.
3. Real proof or examples.
4. Fast, helpful answers to the questions a visitor is most likely asking.
So yes, the marketing game is changing! But the good news is that clarity is now more valuable than gimmicks.
(That is good news for regular folks like us, I believe.) 😉
Thanks again for writing and visiting, Christine.
If you have more questions about any of this stuff, feel free to ask. (I am NOT an expert guru. But, I do study this stuff and am growing obsessed with it, lol.)
Hope you have a lovely day, in any case.
Cordially,
Your nerdy garden friend,
Mike D
Mike, you are so generous with your guidance. Thank you!
These are all points for me to keep in my awareness.
I feel the book I will be publishing this year has real value and want to position it in the best light.
🙏
Christine
Thank you. Always a pleasure.
Dear John,
Thank you so much for the kind words. I'm always honored to have you reading and visiting!
Hope you enjoy a beautiful week. Feel free to return anytime you want to brainstorm, chime in, or just say hi.
Cordially,
Mike D
Gee golly whiskers, Mike. This week feels like a real doozy. Thank you for wading through all of this so we don't have to.
I've read a few related things this week and it really started creating such a dislike for AI - what it is now is tolerable, what the creators seem to be racing for creeps me out. If someone found a switch to turn it all off and send us back to the mid-1990s (so some tech, we had the first cell phones but no home computer era), I would be totally onboard.
The Pope's letter had this line at the start which really stood out: "Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted and fraternity is made possible." I really hope that something good comes out of this conversation he is bringing because it is important.
Thanks for the GEO heads up! As you know, I have a lot of questions around all this stuff and it probably explains why my recent SEO efforts have not moved the needle at all!
Hey Dallas!
I was writing a reply to you when I saw that you shared my post.
(OMG I am very slow today, lol.)
Thank you so much for sharing. 😊
Also, I see that you are RISING now. Hell yes!!!
Gee golly whiskers indeed, indubitably, Dallas.
😹
On the bigger AI picture, I share your unease. The speed and incentives driving its creators feel increasingly disconnected from... Normalcy.
Thank you for sharing that line from the Pope. It frames this moment less as a tech problem and more as a moral responsibility. (Hopefully some good will come of it?)
Regarding Google, I think it was only a matter of time before they decided to go all-in on Gemini.
Also, oddly enough, over the last few weeks, I have been getting more traffic from Bing than I have from Google. My Google traffic is down a bit. Maybe it's just a coincidence. 👀
I predict that Google traffic will go down, yes. But I also think there will be a renewed interest in AI-free search. Maybe.
Cordially,
Mike D
You are so kind, Mike! Thank you - will enjoy it while it's there! (Indubitably is such a great word!)
I do think this era is more about a moral responsibility as you say, and ethics, and a whole host of things that have nothing to do with tech.
Please keep reporting back on the experimenting! My SEO efforts have made not one iota of difference to traffic, so definitely feels like it's not the right direction anymore. So curious about AI-free search... would that just be people who are boycotting having to go through AI?
P.S. I forgot to say that I am very keen to try the prompt in this post. Just a few more logs of wood to cut out the back and a vege garden will be put in that space... so exciting!
Imagine if someone had been able to read this article 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. But it’s not science fiction, it’s the news! And well covered, incidentally.
Dear Dan,
Thank you for your kind words.
Your point about reading this five or ten years ago is true. Half of what I wrote this week would have been dismissed as paranoid science fiction just in 2020.
(Yep. It's been one of those weeks.)
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
Yes, it’s like this- “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” We are having lots of weeks like that. The quote, incidentally, is ascribed to Lenin, but I’m appropriating it for myself. Keep this good stuff coming, please.
I'll try my best, Dan.
😉
Hope to see you next Wednesday.
Cordially,
Mike D
great article again mike. really big. was from google, pretty wild transition we’re all going through this year.
ToxSec!
Thank you so much! It's always a pleasure to hear from you.
I swear, there have been more tech updates in the past year than there have been in the previous 10.
Glad you're here to help us sift through this mess, lol.
Hope you have a great week.
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D 🙏
Thanks so much for putting this together. Your writing really does flow easily. I'm devoting the next few hours doing a GEO deep dive thanks to this.
Dear Avery,
Thank you so much for saying my work flows easily.
Honestly, I was editing this content for about five hours. I almost panicked thinking I would not finish in time, lol. Very glad I finished it.
And the GEO deep dive is absolutely worth your time right now. You are getting in early on something most businesses have not figured out yet. That is a real advantage.
Hope you have a beautiful week, Avery.
Hope to see you next Wednesday. 🙏
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
Hi Mike, always enjoyable to read your weekly wrap-up.
I have been forced to learn a bit about GEO recently, and one concrete thing I noticed is that Wix now gives you visibility into how your company appears in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. You can test different questions, see where you are mentioned, and get summaries of what the models seem to find positive and negative about the company. It makes the shift from SEO to AI visibility feel much more tangible. Btw, a small caveat to my confident comment on Wix yesterday: after testing across platforms today, Wix’s AI visibility/GEO tool seems unstable.
For example, ChatGPT in incognito mode surfaced Change Collective in second place for a Sweden-related query around companies working with psychosocial risk and AI pattern recognition, while Wix showed 0% for ChatGPT.
So: useful directionally, but I would be cautious about treating the exact Wix scores as reliable. From now on at least. 🤣
The Silicon Valley / “machine god” framing is interesting too. I am cautious with the metaphor, but when you listen to people like Hinton and Sutskever, it is hard to deny that we are moving toward something we do not fully understand.
P.S. I would also bet that location is a massive variable in all of this, and probably one of the most underestimated ones. A query typed in Stockholm, Boston, and Sydney is likely pulling from different training data, different regional indexes, and different language patterns under the hood. Which means your GEO visibility score in one market could be completely invisible in another. 👀
(There are so many variables, lol.)
Cordially,
Mike D
Right, I wrote in Sweden. Correct observation.
Hello Iwette!
Thank you so much for writing and visiting! 😊
Iwette, I laughed at your edit, lol. Thank you for the update.
I think it's very cool that Wix is offering at least SOMETHING. I'm not shocked that it's unstable. The data these platforms pull from is constantly shifting. So, maybe that makes consistent scoring nearly impossible at this stage? Useful as a directional signal, exactly as you said. Just not a scoreboard to bet your business on yet.
Your note about the incognito result is a massive win though. It proves your actual visibility footprint is already outperforming the current tracking tech.
I also appreciate your perspective on the machine god framing. It is a loaded metaphor. I try to deploy it with precision (lol.)
Hope you have a lovely week, Iwette.
I'd love to hear if Wix stabilizes over the next few weeks.
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
Bring Back The Old Internet never sounded better.
😋✨💫⭐️👀
xoxox
MM
Dear Mica,
Thank you for writing! 😊
I'm with you 100% on the "Bring Back The Old Internet" movement.
Take me back to the late 1990s. Dial-up sounds and all. At least when the internet was slow, it was honest about what it was doing. (Lol.)
Hope you have a beautiful week, Mica.
🌻🐦⬛
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D
Great post! Thanks for the Google update.
Hello Kay!
Thank YOU for reading.
The open web had a good run, lol. (In all seriousness, I don't think Google will kill ALL traditional links. They will still share them at the very bottom, for now. But, they definitely want to lean into Google Gemini... Heavily.)
Hope you have a lovely week, Kay.
Cordially,
Your nerdy friend,
Mike D