Tips Tuesday – Matt White Flagging, Best AI Search, AI Search on YouTube

Tips this week include:

• Matt white flags on lawsuits
• WP loses market share – and why not to care
• WP 7.0 testing update
• React 19 upgrade coming in WP 7.1
• Where do folks who leave Google go?
• Can Claude and Perplexity save blogs?
• Tell your friends to make the Search switch
• Bot types that access our sites – DIY SEO workshop
• YouTube improves AI labeling
• AI Search on YouTube – and how it will affect watchtime
• How to attract AI video suggestions

WordPress Tips

Matt White Flags on Lawsuits

Matt Mullenweg is begging for mercy from the multiple, ongoing lawsuits between WPEngine and him personally, and him as the owner of everything WordPress.

Oh, come on!

He picked this fight.

Then he did everything he could to make it worse by shocking everyone that he was the sole owner of everything. And then he locked out key people from the WordPress plugin and theme repos because they called him out on it. He even took over a super popular plugin from devs who were locked out and made another WP owned version of it.

And then he told Automattic employees that if they weren’t in agreement with him that they could walk, which many did. Then he complained there weren’t enough people to do the work and WP releases had to be scaled back.

And now, he’s realizing what super deep pockets, and how many lawyers the private equity parent company of WPEngine has on retainer.

I don’t know if he truly gets how many people in the WP community that he hurt, or how much he hurt the future of WP itself.

But karma’s a bitch, and she’s knocking on his door. 

And since he made sure everyone knew that he was “the sole owner and man in charge” he now stands alone to face the consequences.

I don’t know what will happen to Matt.

I do know that the WP community is too big and the ecosystem is too invested to let WP go under.

I’ll keep you posted on what becomes of this because it sounds to me like Matt is ready to throw in the towel.

WP Loses Market Share

Search Engine Journal reports that WP has continued to lose market share for the last 6 months in a row.

I wouldn’t get too bent out of shape about this.

See the chart midway down in the article of before and after Matt pulled this stunt with WPEngine.

That spooked a bunch of enterprise-level site owners. And it takes a while for them to switch sites that big, or with that much traffic, over to another CMS (Content Management System).

I expect we will see more of those huge sites make the switch through the rest of this year.

As for us bloggers, WP is still the way to go for now.

WP 7.0 – Testing Update

I’m in the final stages of testing WP 7.0. I’ll have a What’s New post out as soon as I determine that it is safe for us to update.

React 19 Upgrade Coming in WP 7.1

The WP 7.1 release is slated for August. 

It will have the new React 19 JavaScript update in it.

This will primarily affect Gutenberg, including all themes and plugins that run on Blocks.

Fortunately, the Gutenberg plugin, which has the bleeding edge features, already has the new JS upgrade. So, it will at least be heavily tested on native Gute blocks by the time it rolls out.

And this gives makers of other Gute Block plugins plenty of time to test too – let’s hope they get started on that now.

AI SEO

Where Do Folks Who Leave Google Go?

Thank you to long-time follower, Andrew Hatchett, for sending me the link to this video titled Everyone is Leaving Google.

Come this summer, when Google rolls out their new AI chatbot in place of the Search Bar we’ve been using for the last 25 years, I believe even more folks will call it quits with Google.

But, where are they going for Search?

ChatGPT was the early favorite. But because of their ill-thought out politics, millions of people have quit them.

A big bunch of those folks moved over to Anthropic’s Claude because it was seen as the “do no harm” guys in that political game.

But, my favorite AI Search for the last several years has been Perplexity.

It has given me multiple results – and all with citations of where it sourced that info – all with no ads – and it requires no account and no login to use.

In GA4, I see multiple hits from Perplexity on my sites too.

Can Claude and Perplexity Save Blogs?

I think so.

And this is why I’ve been advising site owners to just hold on.

The AI tide is turning.

AI Search will become the norm.

But LLMs like Perplexity will still give links back to our informative sites where folks can read more about a topic.

I hope Claude will do a better job of source citations, as it tends to give a summary first, and citations only when asked for in most queries.

But keep in mind that Anthropic, which owns Claude, is focusing hard on AI for enterprise and industry. They have a huge emphasis on code creation and debugging, as well as security. And OpenAI, owners of ChatGPT, are trying to catch up with them by courting enterprise folks.

I think this will help Perplexity find its niche audience as the preferred Google alternative for Search.

Tell Your Friends to Make the Switch

Want to help yourself?

Then tell your family, friends, and followers to get off Google and go to Perplexity for their searches. 

Here’s the link https://www.perplexity.ai/

Unlike Claude, no account or sign is needed to use Perplexity.

Of course, you can get an account to track your chatbot history with it, like you do with Claude or ChatGPT, if you like, but it’s not required.

The bottom line is that all searches will require interfacing with an AI chatbot soon. It might as well be one that gives source citations and helps us drive traffic to our sites.

Bot Types That Access Our Sites – DIY SEO Workshop

In this week’s live workshop for the DIY SEO course we’ll have a look at the different types of bots that come to our sites.

Those include:

• Fast crawl bots
• Regular crawl bots that render the page
• AI search crawlers
• AI chatbots
• AI Agents

We’ll also cover why some of these bots get blocked and an experiment I’m running with my clients to address those blocks.

Video Tips

YouTube Improves AI Labeling

For years now, YouTube has trusted its creators to self-label their AI videos.

Well, that didn’t really work well. Most creators didn’t do it.

So now, YouTube is doing their own AI labeling.

I’m pretty sure that some non-AI created videos are going to get slapped with an AI label over this, or worse, taken down because of it.

But, the real test will be to see if there is a reduction in AI Slop videos over it. I actually doubt it, especially with Shorts, as they are rather entertaining and keep viewers on the platform.

AI Search on YouTube

During the Google I/O conference, they announced that AI Search was coming to YouTube.

It’s called Ask YouTube.

Y’all, AI Search has been in YouTube for the last 2-3 years already.

The change will be that it will resemble AI Search works on Google Search.

For example, have you ever done a search query on Google where it highlighted a video and took you to the exact spot in the video that addressed your query?

Well, that’s what will happen on YouTube now too.

When you search on YouTube, they won’t just show you video titles, they will highlight spots in specific videos where those keywords or similar words are mentioned.

FYI, the new Ask YouTube is currently only available to Premium YouTube users. But they say they plan to roll it out to all users soon.

How Will This Affect Watchtime?

I think that depends on what type of video you make.

For my how-to videos, I think it will actually increase watchtime.

Folks will be jumped into the middle of a video where I mention what they searched. And when they see how good the info is, they will likely watch the entire thing.

For example, on Heartwood Art, I have a CAD tutorial video on how to rotate a board.

And, I have CAD tutorials on how to model an entire build, like a workbench. And in this longer video, I show how to rotate a board too. In fact, I believe I show that topic in every full model CAD tutorial. 

So, this gives me multiple opportunities for the AI search to highlight specific places in many of my videos.

Fine with me!!!!!

But, for long, talking-head or interview videos, folks may just watch the segment that deals directly with that topic. However, even if folks don’t watch the whole video, they may find someone new to follow.

How to Attract AI Video Suggestions

I have 3 ways that I format my videos and description for YouTube that promotes my SEO.

And all 3 of them will work perfectly for this new snippet/segment AI search on YouTube as well.

FYI, 1 of these formatting tricks helps my Reels on Instagram get noticed more too.

I’ll be doing a new workshop for it in the DIY SEO course soon.