Tips Tuesday – Make Yourself AI Profitable, AI in free Gmail, WP 7.0 Delayed

Tips this week include:

• WP 7.0 RC1 delayed
• Joost says you don’t need WP
• Google personal Intelligence now free
• Personalized AI mode in Search
• 60% drop in traffic
• AI will bite itself in the butt – and bloggers will win
• Will the AI bubble burst – 3 points I see about it
• How to make AIs profitable – why it matters to you
• How to make yourself profitable in the age of AI
• How are you pivoting?

WordPress Tips

WP 7.0 RC1 Delayed

The first Release Candidate (RC1) for WP 7.0 was delayed. It was supposed to roll out last Tuesday.

But as the date neared, concerns were raised regarding enhancements for Real Time Collaboration performance, Client-side Media image optimization, and release package size. Some of these are the same things that made me give it a sideways look, and I hope they actually remove a few elements.

Instead, they released a Beta 6 version last Tuesday.

I expect the RC1 to roll out today and we’ll see what made the cut.

A Release Candidate means that no more additions will be added and they will only work on bug fixes until the final release, which will be in early April.

I’m watching this one closely and will keep you posted. 

Joost Says You Don’t Need WP

Joost de Valk, creator and former owner of Yoast SEO, says that most sites don’t need a CMS (Content Management System) as complex as WordPress.

In fact, he just moved his personal site over to Astro, which is built entirely with AI. And he makes new posts by chatting with that AI.

I found this article on Search Engine Journal to have balanced reporting on Joost’s proclamation.

Joost says that CMSs are needed in some cases, but that “most sites are just static pages with maybe a blog.”

There are billions of small business owners who need nothing more than a static site. They are merely looking for online visibility to gain more foot traffic or be contacted for a service.

That is not us.

Nor is it news sites, product sites, or a gazillion other sites that need complex integrations.

The SEJ article also cites pushback from other devs that wonder how many of these small site owners really want to tweak their site’s HTML and CSS via AI, or want to use a chatbot in GitHub to add new content. 

And that doesn’t even cover adding any type of integration, even a simple one, like a contact form that is secure and protected from spam.

To me, the whole move and statement by Joost are him biting the hand that fed him and then him putting his mouth where that money is to move off a platform he’s frustrated with trying to change.

And of course, he’s not using the Yoast SEO plugin on his static site because he knew how to tell the AI to add the schema markup needed. 

The SEJ article mentions how lightweight a hard-coded static site is.

True, but that doesn’t help if it doesn’t include critically important code that you need.

Most static site owners won’t have a clue to even ask AI for schema markup or any kind of security.

I VERY seriously doubt Joost knows anything about site security either. Most SEOs don’t.

So, take his statements with a grain of salt. 

SEO Tips

There are several good tips in Search Engine Journal’s SEO Pulse this week that I want to highlight for you below. But you might want to just read the whole post for yourself too.

(The tips below can be found in the linked article above.)

Google Personal Intelligence Now Free

(FYI, the following applies to personal Google accounts, not Workspace accounts.)

Personal Intelligence is an AI product from Google that used to only be available to paid AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. But now it is being rolled out to all free personal Google accounts.

Read that as free Gmail users.

The AI Mode in Personal Intelligence can reference email confirmations, travel bookings, and photo context to personalize responses.

I’m not interested in AI reading my emails.

Here’s a video from January for how to turn AI off in Gmail. (I have not seen a recent post/tutorial, so I don’t know if this works for the new Personal Intelligence too.)

Here’s how to turn it off in Chrome. (Same disclaimer with whether this will work for the new thing or not.)

There is no word about when these features will roll out to Workspace accounts, though they already have Gemini available. 

I’ll keep you posted as best as I can. Let me know if you hear anything about it.

Personalized AI Mode in Search

We all know that what you see when you input a query in Google Search is different from what other people see using that same query.

That’s because the results are based on our IP location and our individual search histories.

Well, the new Personal Intelligence mentioned above is going to do the same thing for AI Mode.

Here are the facts.

Google has been using AI in Search for well over a decade.

So, the AI Overviews (AIO) we see in Google are just a new way of displaying what they had already shown folks via Featured Snippets, videos, and blog posts.

I think AIO has been just as personalized as regular search results from the get go.

So, the only new “personalization” happening here is the extra data being sourced from your emails or such.

60% Drop in Traffic

Further down in the SEJ article, you’ll find a section on a new report from Chartbeat.

It says that small publishers have lost 60% of their traffic over the last 2 years.

Duh! Like we didn’t already know that!

But the difference in this report is that they broke down publisher size instead of lumping all blogging sites as a single collective.

SEJ summarized the report:

“Small publishers lost 60% of search referral traffic over two years. Mid-sized publishers lost 47%, and large publishers lost 22%. Google Discover referrals fell 15% over the same period. Larger publishers are partially offsetting losses through direct traffic, email, and app referrals.”

They go on to say:

“ChatGPT referrals grew over 200% in this data, and they still account for less than 1% of publisher page views. The growth rate sounds impressive until you compare it to what search took away. Chatbot traffic is still too small to offset those losses in this data.”

AI Tips

AI Will Bite Itself In the Butt – and Bloggers Will Win

This is the quote that stood out to me in the SEJ article above about the decrease in regular search traffic and the low uptake on AI search:

“Each week brings some new advancement in technology that’s great for consumers but threatening the ecosystem that generates the flow of information in the first place.” ~ Layne Bruce, Executive Director of the Mississippi Press Association.

At some point, the AI info will become mostly junk, especially when a big change hits.

Let me explain.

Remember when “gluten free” started to become a thing?

Yeah, the foodie bloggers were all over that.

And Google had fresh post links to share to ensure searchers found the info they wanted.

Well, with more small bloggers giving up their sites due to the downturn in traffic, only the bigger foodie sites will have that new info. And many of them are gatekeeping so that AI bots can’t crawl their content.

And that means Google will have no “news” to share when some big things hit.

My Advice for Bloggers

Wait out the novelty of AI, as far as search.

Folks will get wise, or get caught, using AI junk info and searchers will want to find real people, with real experience, that they can trust again.

Will the AI Bubble Burst?

AI is here to stay – sort of.

Here’s what I see.

The Power Users

Enterprises at the corporate level, research organizations, and all manner of industry are going to get the biggest bang for the buck by using AI.

But, they are encountering their own issues with it in their haste to adopt AI to cut the bottom line overhead.

In this article from the Harvard Business Review titled A Blueprint for Enterprise-Wide Agentic AI Transformation, they say:

“AI acts as a powerful amplifier. When introduced into a weak or fragmented system, it doesn’t fix the system; it amplifies its flaws.”

They go on to say:

Many leaders still view AI through the narrow lens of automating existing, static, linear processes. This strategy frequently manifests as the creation of “persona-based” agents—tools designed to mimic or replace a specific human job—which misses the true value of agentic AI because it digitizes organizational silos rather than removes them.”

(FYI, the HBR post was sponsored by Google Cloud Consulting, which advocates that corporations should hire them to help reinvent their whole wheel with how they do things and build master AI agents to handle it rather than letting their employees “play” with AI to find ways to replicate individual jobs with individual AI agents.)

The Cost of Casual Users

But, the billions of casual users like you and me are becoming an overwhelming drain on AI resources. Our use of it is considered “consumer AI”.

WAY too much of consumer AI is free to use and the big AI providers have been bleeding money on it since Day 1.

OpenAI has said for over a year now that they are looking into selling ads on the free version of ChatGPT. Not even that will cover the insane cost of running the current data centers, much less any new ones.

And there has been significant push back from state and local governments saying they don’t want new data centers built in their back yards either. The drain on resources is just too high.

Loss of Investor Interest

Investors are pulling back on AI too.

News broke last week that Zuck lost $80 billion on the Metaverse project before shutting it down.

But other reports are coming in, like this one from Business Insider, that say he didn’t really lose the whole $80 billion. The Reality Labs company that built the Metaverse has also built other products that are selling, like Quest and the Ray-Ban AI glasses, and more. However, fewer investors are seeing the potential for real profit in these things.

How to Make AIs Profitable – Why It Matters to You

Google has always been free to use.

Here’s what I know about that – when the service is free, you are the product.

I expect most of the consumer AI level services, like ChatGPT, to remain free.

But I also expect every one of those AI providers to figure out a way to run ads, just like Google does.

And to make that work, they are going to need to gather info on us, just like Google does via Chrome.

The content/queries that we type into the AI chatbot are not enough data. 

The AIs need to know demographic and location data too, plus what other sites we visit, so they can place us in cohorts to ensure they are serving the right ads.

That is why every one of the big AIs said they were working on their own browsers, so they could replicate the tracking that Chrome does. 

It’s why Google has fought in the courts tooth and nail against having Chrome split off from the company due to the claim it has some sort of monopoly in the browser market. Google needs Chrome, and the user data it provides, to stay in business.

Every free social platform you use is collecting this type of data on you too, and for the same reason – to show you personalized ads.

If you run ads on your site, your visitor info is being shared with the ad agency you use for the same reason.

That collected data is the gold mine in all of it.

How to Make Yourself Profitable in the Age of AI

I hope it’s abundantly clear to you where we are headed.

The entire internet is becoming one big shopping mall.

Your best bet is to create content that attracts users to a platform and helps keep them on that platform so that they can show more ads to their visitors, while paying you a cut of that revenue.

In my mind, video is the perfect content to make to meet that criteria.

Both YouTube and TikTok pay creators. Meta is starting to pay them. (Reel viewership is up 30%.)

Trying to get folks off a platform and onto your site is not what the platform is interested in promoting.

However, they NEED creators.

Both Pinterest and Meta have waffled for the last 5 years trying to figure out how to balance what their users want vs what the platform needs.

Folks won’t visit or stay on a platform if it has too many ads.

Visitors want to connect with real people, for the most part.

So, platforms have to show content that takes folks away from their site now and then too, whether that’s to the creator’s website or to a Shop/Store to purchase something.

TikTok figured this balancing act out years ago when they opened the TikTok shop – real people hawking real products. YouTube has replicated this shop idea. Meta is floundering while still trying to figure out how to run it.

How Are You Pivoting?

As you know, I’ve personally chosen to ride the incoming waves of change by creating how-to videos that AI can’t replicate. And I make my money from the video platform, for the most part, with some Amazon affiliate sales too.

Several of my clients have started a Substack Publication, and some of those are paid subscriptions, and a few have moved into member sites there.

Personally, I think Substack is one of the last platforms standing that has been squarely focused on readers, not video. But, that may be changing as they have been promoting folks doing podcasts there and they have now made a Blab-like way to record video shows.

I still think blogging may have a comeback after the novelty of AI wears off. But I don’t know how long that will take, or if folks will prefer video/audio to the written word.

Or, folks might prefer a written summary of a video/audio broadcast, especially if it is a long one. I know I do!!!

Only time will tell as all of this shakes out. And I’ll do my best to keep you informed.