How Google and AI are Killing Travel Blogs Like Mine
I'm not going to sugarcoat it: it's been an awful last year for small digital publishers like me. I've spent the last 15 years building this travel blog into a trusted source of information, and in less than 12 months it has gone from a really successful business I was confident in to a ticking time bomb that I'm scared of.
And it all comes down to Big Bad Google and the rise of AI.
If you also work within digital publishing, you're probably feeling this, too. I haven't heard of many small, independent website owners who haven't felt the effects of this in the last year or so. But I realized recently that the average reader of my site or follower on social media has no idea what has been happening to us behind the scenes.
So I'm here to show you.
Let me be clear: I still LOVE what I do here. The blood, sweat, tears, and tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars I have poured into this site over the years have been worth it, and I'm so, so proud of what I've built. There are more than 800 posts on this blog, covering 50+ countries on 6 continents around the world. I've won awards, spoken at conferences, and been interviewed as an expert on both travel and travel blogging. But the last year has been anything but encouraging.
In the last year (2024), I have lost roughly 40% of the traffic on this site alone. My ad income (which is the main way I earn money) is down 34% year over year (though a couple months ago, it was down 42% year over year). And I'm actually considered to be one of the lucky ones, as many of my fellow bloggers have lost nearly everything in the last 12 months.
So what the hell happened? It's a mixture of AI becoming more ubiquitous and “learning” (read: stealing) from sites like mine, and Google making changes to its algorithms that actively hurt small publishers in order to boost its own earnings.
I'm not gonna get super technical with this, but I do want to give you a little insight on how this has all happened so quickly.
Table of contents
How AI has evolved
AI, or Artificial Intelligence, as it relates to the internet is not new; AI has been around for decades, streamlining processes, building algorithms, and automating all manner of tasks. (Here's a good historic AI timeline.) But things accelerated in the 21st century, when we began to get things like IBM's Watson and Apple's Siri, which were AI tools designed not just to help humans, but to mimic them.
In the last handful of years, AI has evolved rapidly into the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) era, with consumer-facing tools emerging that can not only automate tasks, but also generate their own content.
The advent of “large language model” tools like all the GPTs are what is currently driving the AI Renaissance. The ChatGPTs of the world that can write essays, carry on conversations, and even generate images sound cool on the surface. But underneath, they are what may ultimately be the downfall of industries like mine.
How does AI learn?
First things first: all AI tools currently on the market (and any future ones that will be released) are machine learning tools. No matter how life-like an AI chat bot or assistant may seem, they are not real, and do not possess human emotions, morals, or reasoning. Meaning someone has to “teach” them everything they know.
The big question (and an ongoing legal question) is in regards to that “teaching.”
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, it made AI technology available to the masses. Anyone could now use AI to ask a question, write an essay, brainstorm ideas, or even plan a trip. But the output that ChatGPT and similar AI tools give has to come from somewhere.
Every iteration of OpenAI's GPT (which actually dates back to 2018) has been trained on a variety of sources or parameters. The first version of ChatGPT was trained on “570 GB of data sourced from books, Wikipedia, research articles, webtexts, websites and other forms of content and writing on the net. Approximately 300 billion words were fed into the system.”
Other companies have admitted to training their AI tools on everything from Reddit threads to YouTube videos – all content created by actual humans who never gave any of these generative AI models permission to basically scrape their content. There are many ongoing court cases against the likes of OpenAI, Meta, Perplexity AI, and others surrounding this unauthorized and uncompensated use of intellectual property.
And the AI companies have admitted that they've done (and still do) this, but use the excuse that “it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.” (source)
How AI is affecting me
You won't likely find me filing a lawsuit against Microsoft or Meta anytime soon, because I'm small potatoes in the grand field that is the internet. But generative AI is now everywhere, and it's affecting me – and probably you – every day.
Not a day goes by without Gmail prompting me to let its Gemini AI write an email for me, or Facebook's Meta AI providing me with irrelevant links beneath photos, or emails from companies offering to “create” me an AI best friend (yes, that's real). Meta even tried to launch “AI users” recently, though it so far hasn't gone very well.
Within the travel industry alone, we're also now seeing everything from AI chat bots offering to plan trip itineraries to actual AI travel influencers (insert the largest eyeroll possible here). All of these will take not only work but also authority away from actual human travel content creators who spend money and time actually traveling to places in order to give tips about them.
An AI chat bot has no real concept of time or distance, and certainly has no first-hand experience with travel. All it takes is a person to have one bad experience with an AI-planned trip, and they'll start mistrusting all the travel content they see online.
The cost of AI
I also want to briefly touch on the true cost of AI tools like ChatGPT – and I'm not talking about the direct cost to your pocketbook, since most of these AI tools are free for the average person to use. I'm talking about the staggering environmental cost that nobody seems to be talking about. (Then again, maybe you just don't know!)
In order for AI to do what it does, it requires absolutely MASSIVE amounts of energy to power giant data centers. Data centers owned by the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Meta are not new; but they are growing exponentially with the rise of AI technology.
And with an increased demand for energy (in this case, electricity to run all those super computers) comes an increased demand for ways to generate that electricity. Even though Google has made some big promises to reduce its carbon footprint, the increase in fossil fuel usage to power data centers has meant that, in the last 5 years, Google's greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 48% – 13% in 2023 alone.
It's estimated that some of these data centers will soon be using more electricity than entire cities to power the ChatGPTs and Geminis and DALL-Es of the world. Google and other tech giants are even looking toward nuclear power to meet the energy-guzzling needs of AI.
And energy isn't the only thing that AI is guzzling. The power required to run all those servers produces an immense amount heat as a byproduct. And in order to cool the systems down, many data centers use copious amounts of water; more water than anyone initially thought, in fact.
A 2024 study found that that asking ChatGPT to write you one short email consumes the equivalent of a 16 oz bottle of water – and that doesn't take into account the amount of water used to *train* the AI to be able to answer that email.
Some data centers used a closed-loop cooling system where the water can be re-used multiple times, but there's a finite number of times the water can be recycled, and some of it is always lost to evaporation. And this is all in a day and age when scientists are predicting that global demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% by 2030, and Google and Microsoft are already operating data centers in areas facing water scarcity.
It's estimated that a single ChatGPT prompt uses anywhere from 10x to 25x the amount of energy/water that a “normal” Google search would use. Just some food for thought.
Blogs, Google, and the HCU
And speaking of Google searches…
Google has been the main arbiter of information on the web for 20+ years. Its very name has become a verb to mean “to look something up on the internet” (as in, “just Google it“).
As a blogger, in order to have my content “found” on the internet, I've had to play by Google's rules. Because, like it or not, Google is the main search engine used around the world. Google processes an estimated 5.9 million searches per minute, or 8.5 billion searches per day, and most bloggers have – up until now, at least – relied on Google to send them a good chunk of their overall traffic.
And a site like mine earns traffic from Google through search engine optimization, or SEO. Search engine optimization is simple on the surface: basically, you try to answer queries with your content that people are searching for, and then use specific keywords in that content to signal to a search engine like Google that your content is relevant in answering that query. Google's algorithm then decides which content is actually “best” for any query, and places that content at the top of search results.
Or, at least, that's what it's supposed to do.
(For reference, in 2023, Google search drove roughly 75% of my total site traffic, accounting for more than 1.3 million sessions on this site. In 2024, Google still drove 75% of my traffic, but the number of sessions dropped to around 870,000.)
Are blogs dead to Google?
For years, blogs and other small sites appeared to have just as much chance of showing up at the top of Google search results as larger sites. If your content was good (as in, on-topic, well-written, and generally helpful), the search results would reflect that.
But something changed in the last few years.
Now look: I'm not a Google insider, and some of the things that have happened to search in the last decade may very well be coincidental, or just the natural evolution of the internet (even if I hate it). But there are several things that certainly seem connected, and that suggest that Google maybe cares less and less about humans and good search results these days and more and more about ad dollars. (Welcome to capitalism!)
Google hired Prabhakar Raghavan (the guy who was in charge of Yahoo search from 2005-2012 – you know, when it was run into the ground) to head both Google Search and Ads in 2020, and search results have seen dramatic changes since then. (This article is a fantastic if scathing look at Raghavan, who was replaced in October 2024.)
The “Helpful” Content Update of 2023
Google is constantly releasing updates to its search algorithm, with usually a couple major updates pushed out each year. These updates aim to improve search results to better meet user intent. And for years, they more or less did seem to weed out spammy sites and misinformation, and provide searchers with the information they were looking for.
I've known bloggers who got “hit” (i.e. negatively affected) by various Google algorithm updates over the years. But they were always the outliers and not the norm; generally, if you were publishing “good” content (i.e. written by you that was either helpful or at least entertaining in some way), then your site would usually fare okay in major updates. And if you did get hit in an update, there was usually a way you could improve your site and start gaining search traffic again.
But then came the “Helpful Content Update” in September 2023. This was not the first Helpful Content Update (HCU) Google had ever released, but it was the first that seemed to target smaller publishers across the web.
Google claimed this update was going to focus on “identifying signals of quality that correspond to helpful content” – which sounds like a good thing, right?
But what happened was many small websites and blogs suddenly saw their content falling down in rankings, or disappearing from search results altogether. At the same time, we saw an increase in sponsored content, thin content from huge brands/publishers, and outdated content from forums like Reddit, Quora, and TripAdvisor suddenly appearing at the top of search results.
Gaslit by Google
Google claimed that sites negatively affected in the September 2023 HCU were perhaps not actually helpful, or were maybe trying to game the algorithm by publishing spammy, keyword-stuffed SEO content that didn't take real human intent into account. Now… were there sites out there over-optimizing for SEO? Sure! But plenty of sites who got hit were not doing anything wrong.
Google has kept insisting that they are not slapping entire sites with an “unhelpful” qualifier, but the fact is that very few sites that were hit in the September 2023 HCU have seen any significant recovery.
SEO experts, site developers, bloggers… we've all been at a loss. Every single one of my blogger friends saw less traffic in 2024 than in 2023. And, in some cases, the losses were absolutely devastating; I'm talking up to 90% traffic (and income) loss for some sites.
And the sites that were hit the worst all had one thing in common, regardless of topic or industry: they were all independent (i.e. small) websites. (It would later come out in leaked documents that Google has been adding a “smallPersonalSite” tag to identify smaller independent websites – I wonder why?)
A second blow came in March 2024, when another core update hit even more small sites. This was around the same time that Google signed a $60 million deal with Reddit that would allow Google to train its new AI tech on Reddit posts. Suspiciously, this is also when Reddit posts starting showing near the top of every single Google search. (Coincidence? Hard to believe it was.)
In October 2024, in what was perhaps just a fluffy PR move, Google hosted several independent bloggers hit hard by the HCU and other recent updates for a “Creator Conversation Event” at Google headquarters in California. To talk and “listen,” they claimed.
There are various reports from bloggers who attended this event (read this one or this one), and they all agreed on a few things: namely that Google was trying to deny that big brands (and Reddit) have been given priority in search results, that sites hit by the HCU likely would not recover anytime soon, and that they *didn't know* why some objectively good sites were so negatively affected.
What I extrapolated from this is that Google's own engineers don't even fully understand how its algorithm works any longer, and they could not roll it back or reset it to a pre-HCU time even if they wanted to. Search has changed forever.
When Google and AI unite
And this circles us back to AI.
AI in some form has already been at work for years to help build those complicated and secret search algorithms (that may or may not be out of control now). But in the last couple years, Google has added AI to its outward offerings to consumers, too.
Not to be left in the dust of generative AI and other tech giants like Microsoft and Meta, Google introduced its own chatbot, Bard, to the world in the first half of 2023. Bard got off to a rocky start, but eventually evolved into Gemini.
But Google took its AI integration to another level in May 2024, rolling out “AI Overviews” in its search results as part of its new “Search Generative Experience (SGE).” These overviews now appear at the top of most search result pages, and summarize some of the top search results right there on the page.
The two main problems are: Google's AI cannot differentiate between accurate information and spammy misinformation (which is how for a while it was suggesting people add glue to their pizza sauce), and it's just regurgitating content it's “reading,” thereby taking traffic away from the sites it's pulling info from.
A site like mine does not make any money from someone seeing something I wrote in a Google AI Overview; I only make money (for example, from ad impressions) when someone clicks over to my site and reads the content on my page. But why would they need to click over to my page if Google is showing my content right at the top of search results?
There was plenty of uproar when AI Overviews first launched, both over the sometimes contradictory nature of answers, and the fact that it was essentially stealing content from publishers without any credit.
Google has finally started adding some citations to its AI Overviews, which is at least a step in the right direction.
But those AI Overviews coupled with the other changes Google has made in the last year have led to people just not finding content on sites like mine any longer.
Yes, search results suck now
I'm sure that, for many years, you could do a Google search and find what you were looking for pretty quickly. Yes, there have always been ads in search results, but for the most part you used to be able to find a solid answer to whatever search query you typed in without scrolling too far down the page.
Now, though, when you perform a Google search, you might see a large AI Overview section (the screen real estate this section takes up is only increasing), followed by some links to (possibly outdated) online forum posts, followed by ads from few big-brand/marketing-focused websites, followed by a slew of video links, and THEN maybe some website content related to what you were searching for. Maybe.
But you might also now find yourself returning to that Google search bar to try to re-write your search query because Google isn't really showing you what you asked for.
And this is 100% by design.
Google WANTS you to spend more time within its own environment. The more times you have to run a Google search, the more opportunity Google has to show you ads/sponsored content, and push you towards their own tools. Basically, the longer you spend within the Google ecosystem, the more money Google stands to make from you.
In 2024, Google saw record profits and revenue, despite more and more people expressing wariness over the reliance on AI in search results, and Google's search market share falling below 90% for the first time in a decade.
So what can we do?
Here's the thing: I'm super passionate about this topic because it's directly affecting me and my ability to run this site as my main business. I realize that many of you have not (yet) been affected by AI in any meaningful way, other than maybe getting frustrated by crappy search results.
But I do ask that you consider the broader implications of a world that increasingly relies on AI. My job will not be the only one that AI comes after.
Here are a few things we can all do right now:
1. Be skeptical of AI
While AI and GPTs have improved by leaps and bounds over the last year, the fact is that AI technology is still just that – technology. It cannot think for itself. It often “hallucinates” or simply makes things up if it doesn't “know” (i.e. can't find) an answer. And it still can be fairly easily manipulated.
Here are just a few news stories from the last year that I saved that highlight some of the bad behavior AI can get up to:
- Air Canada Must Honor a Fake Refund Policy Created by Its Chatbot
- Lawyer cites fake cases generated by ChatGPT in legal brief
- X’s AI bot is so dumb it can’t tell the difference between a bad game and vandalism
- Annoyed Redditors tanking Google Search results illustrates perils of AI scrapers
- A chatbot hinted a kid should kill his parents over screen time limits
And I mean, we all remember several years ago when an early Microsoft AI chatbot turned into a Nazi on Twitter within a day, right?
AI is not – and never will be – perfect, and just blindly accepting everything that an AI tool outputs as factually correct and morally sound is a mistake.
2. Don't use AI when you don't need to
Artificial intelligence can absolutely be useful. But do we really need to use ChatGPT to create fake cartoon images of our pets doing jobs, or answer emails we could write just as quickly ourselves? No. We really don't. Especially when we now have a better idea of the environmental costs of all those AI queries.
There are plenty of positive use cases of AI, but there are plenty of tasks people are using AI for that they just don't need to.
I don't WANT to see AI write novels or create movies (have you seen this? it's terrible). I want it to transcribe a podcast to make it more accessible, and let me know if I've done the math wrong on my accounting spreadsheet. I don't need AI to build me an itinerary for a city it has never visited when there are real people out there who have been to that place who can help me instead.
3. Vote in your own best interest
There really hasn't been a lot of conversation around the future reality of AI in terms of economic impact (I mean, what happens when AI replaces so many jobs that there aren't enough jobs for real humans to do?) – but I imagine there will be in the future.
And when those conversations begin, pay attention to the lawmakers who get it, and who aren't in the pockets of the mega-corporations looking to save as much money as possible by replacing humans with tech. (Then again, who am I kidding? In the US, they'll replace us all with AI in a second if it means billionaires will make more.)
4. Consider changing your default search engine
It's difficult to avoid AI these days, even in search results. But if you're especially pissed off at Google like most bloggers are these days, there ARE other alternatives out there. Google still has a monopoly on search (literally, as decided by the DOJ), but it's not the only search engine in the game.
Other alternatives that don't rely on AI include DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and Brave. And Bing is an option if you're just looking for less-manipulated search results (though Bing is owned by Microsoft, and uses AI).
5. Follow your favorite bloggers
If there are bloggers and creators you find yourself turning to or even just stumbling upon regularly, please consider doing a few things to support them:
- Bookmark their site – This one is so easy. Bookmark your favorite sites, and read them regularly if you can. Every single pageview is helpful to us; you don't have to click a single link or buy anything in order for me to earn money from the ads on my site.
- Subscribe to their newsletter – Most bloggers have a free email newsletter – me included! (You can sign up here.) An email list is one of the few things a blogger “owns” beyond their site, and is a great way to ensure you get regular updates from your favorites. (And if you already subscribe to your favorite bloggers, remember that clicking on links is an easy way to support us!) Some bloggers might also offer paid subscriptions through Patreon or Substack, too, which is a direct income stream you can support if you're able to.
- Share with a friend – Yes, sharing a blog post or Instagram post or even just the name of your favorite blogger/creator can help! Word of mouth still matters.
And if there are travel bloggers you follow regularly, maybe consider checking their site for travel info first before turning to ChatGPT or an old Reddit forum from 2015 when you're planning a trip of your own. (And if you can book a hotel or tour through a travel blogger's affiliate link, that's also super helpful, too!)
What I'm doing as a blogger
Sadly, many of my travel blogging colleagues have already thrown in the towel. Some have had to let go writers and editors; others have shifted attention to other mediums like YouTube; and still others have quit entirely and gotten other full-time jobs again.
As a small publisher trying desperately to keep my head above water, there are a few things I'm working on at the moment. These include:
- Trying to grow my traffic numbers from non-Google sources such a Pinterest, my email list (are you subscribed?), and my social media channels. It is a very, very long road to replace the amount of traffic that Google search used to send me, though, and most of my traffic will likely never come back.
- Brainstorming products and services to offer. I already sell some printable versions of my most popular itineraries, and may put together a travel-related ebook or two this year. But those are not huge money-makers.
- Considering other sites and sources of income. I have a second niche site (Cleveland Traveler) that isn't as big as this one (and that also lost traffic in a recent update), but that has a more targeted audience on social media. I got on the right PR lists last year (don't ask me how; I wish I knew), and made a sizable amount of income in 2024 from paid partnerships on Instagram and TikTok. I'd love to continue figuring out how to land more work like that.
Others I know are testing putting up paywalls on their sites, running group tours, or shifting over to being travel agents instead of travel bloggers. There are lots of options, and no one knows what the best path ahead is.
What I'm NOT contemplating yet is quitting.
I am very aware that Google may continue chipping away at my traffic until I'm no longer making enough money to do this as my full-time job. And I will mourn that like the death of a loved one if/when it happens. But we're not there yet, and I plan to continue traveling and publishing new content on this site as long as I can.
My strategy isn't changing that much, though I do think I'll focus more on a mixture of content types and topics, keeping in mind that I need to write things that have a chance of catching peoples' eye on social media since they're not likely to find most of my content in search results any longer.
I don't plan to stop blogging. But I am starting to come to terms with the reality that I might, at some point in the next couple years, need to declare defeat and turn to something else as my main source of income. Many of my friends are sadly already there.
Is there any hope?
Listen, one of my favorite movies as a kid was “Pollyanna,” and maybe it had more of an impact on my young mind than I realized, because I still find myself feeling optimistic about this site and my “job” as a travel blogger more often than I let myself feel stressed. That doesn't mean that my traffic won't be entirely wiped away tomorrow, because it could be.
But I don't see a future where the internet doesn't exist. How people access information might change, and I certainly do not condone AI bots stealing all the work I've personally done. But I do still believe there is a demand for content like mine, if only people can find it.
So if you value content created by humans for humans like what you find on this site, please consider speaking up and showing that support in whatever ways you can.
Thanks for reading. If you got this far, you deserve a cookie.
– Amanda
Amanda Williams is the award-winning blogger behind A Dangerous Business Travel Blog. She has traveled to more than 60 countries on 6 continents from her home base in Ohio, specializing in experiential and thoughtful travel through the US, Europe, and rest of the world. Amanda only shares tips based on her personal experiences and places she's actually traveled!
First of all: I really like your content and enjoy following your trips! And I’m sorry to hear that you are losing income, on a personal level, because I know that you spend a lot of time creating content.
It’s certainly interesting to read about all of this and explains what I have noticed, too (the decrease in quality of Google search results)
But stepping back, I cannot help but notice: your income is based on people being directed by a company offering its services for “free” and that generating income from ads. If we take this model away from the digital space, it would be as if you are relying on an airline to bring people to your hotel for free and now complaining that the airline changed its flight schedule. You are not entitled to get traffic from Google. I agree that for their own good, they’d better improve their search results again, but ultimately it’s up to them to do whatever they want. They helped you and all other bloggers for some time because it was beneficial for them, but if they change their system, you can hardly blame them just because it affects you. You don’t pay for their services, after all.
The use of blog posts in AI is of course a different story. I’m an IP lawyer, so I shold know. But to be honest, I don’t have an answer for that either. The question is whether linking to the source is so different from citing something in a scientific article. Usually, when I read something in one paper, I don’t have a need for reading the original paper, either. But no one would say that citing a paper is a copyright infringement.
One option you mention is a paywall. And I guess that is where things are ultimately headed. To protect from AI “crawling” on your side and to ensure quality of the information on the reader’s side. Obviously, this will change your business model significantly, but I must admit that the whole blogging business always seemed a fluke to me.
Lastly – AI is not causing significant environmental harm. Data centers only contributing to 1 to 2% of energy consumption, according to the World Energy Outlook 2024 by the IEA, and only 1% of that is probably caused by AI. Let’s face it – you would have to do many many unnecessary AI searches before you ever come close to the carbon footprint caused by continuous travelling. And I’m not saying that to shame travelling (I travel quite a lot myself), but just to put things into perspective. AI has problems, but environmental impact is not one of them.
To end on a positive note: I really hope that despite all these changes, you will find a spot to do whatever you love and earn money doing that!
The problem is that Google has a monopoly on search (they’re in lawsuits over it, as I’m sure you’re aware). And so while you are correct that Google doesn’t “owe” anyone traffic, they also have a monopoly on search results and seem to be making changes that target a certain subset of websites (i.e. small publishers), which has not happened before. I get where you’re coming from, but it’s not really the same as “an airline bringing people to a hotel for free” because in the hotel’s case, there would be other ways for people to find, book, and get to that hotel. If Google did not have a monopoly on search, the effects of their changes wouldn’t be felt as hard, and I probably wouldn’t have written this post!
As for AI, I do think the environmental concerns are real – but I also know it’s futile to care about, because these megacorps are not gonna pull back. Google’s greenhouse emissions increased 13% in 2023 alone, which is not nothing. I included that section on AI energy/water use because the vast majority of people don’t even think about technology using ANY energy, and I think it’s worth being aware of. Everyone’s aware of the carbon emissions of celebrities using their private jets, so it’s only fair to try to make people aware that processing stupid AI queries also uses resources.
Thank you for this blog post and wish good luck to you and all of us who feel dread for the future.
As another commenter suggested, what readers can do to help bloggers is to skip past the AI results and click on a blog. Google learns from mass behaviours – if they see people not clicking on the Reddit, TripAdvisor and other truly Unhelpful Content, and on blogs, they’ll move them back up. They should do the same query though – don’t just add ‘travel blog’ to stand a better chance of the search engine serving up what you want. If enough people do that, it can change things.
There’s another thing in the Google search engine ingredients leak from last year that I’m fascinated by, and have a bit of a theory about and that’s the social engagement metrics stuff. Google’s people swear up and down that they don’t use social data in ranking, and yet there’s a whole complex, maintained, expensive API just sitting there in the ingredients cupboard. Given how Google reps have been proven to deny things that turned out to be true, I’m suspicious. What seals it for me is that the almost all of the sites hit in the late 2023/early 2024 Google updates all had something in common – really low engagement on social. They might have had tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, but when they post infrequently and the followers to likes ratio is 100,000:30, that’s going to look off. It makes sense – Google told us they don’t care about social media numbers, and social doesn’t drive clicks relative to the effort required to be active and engaging. But what if they do care? What if the measure of ‘this blogger is trustworthy’ is ‘this blogger is out there, living the life they’re writing about, posting about it on social’?
All that to say – if you’re a reader of a blog, interact with that blogger on social – Facebook/IG or wherever they are – attention is the currency of the internet and it might just be Google is keeping score of that too.
Yes, that’s a good point about social engagement! I have always believed that sharing links to content on the likes of Facebook and Pinterest helped with rankings, especially if that link got some decent interaction. The same with backlinks – Google for a while swore they really didn’t matter, but I never believed that for a second. I think having a “brand” these days is probably more important than ever, even though it’s hard to build one with a small, one-person website.
Thanks for the great article Amanda. I agree with everything you said regarding AI and Google prioritizing big business in search results.
I am one of the unlucky travel bloggers who lost more than 99% of my traffic. Unfortunately, many of us have not played the popularity/social media game, so no one cares. The more sharing their story, the better. To be honest, I preferred to stay more anonymous and focus more on my content, rather than advertising myself as many influencers do today. To each their own – it’s just not my style. I am fine with everyone doing their own unique thing. I see social media as extra page views, not my main source of traffic. I don’t even use social media in my everyday life.
I started blogging 12 years ago and reached a high of 400,000 page views with over 6000 clicks per day just from Google. Yesterday, I received 2 clicks from Google. For years, I made over $4000 a month, today I am lucky if I make $100. This has been truly depressing as this is my only site and my only source of income.
Replacing me in Search the past few years are big businesses i.e. resorts, attractions, and tour groups, small blogs that copy my ideas and content, and content mills that use AI. As one example out of many, I am now outranked for a search query I created back in 2015 (things to do in Orlando besides theme parks). For years, I outranked big sites like Tripadvisor, Visit Orlando, and Westgate. I was ranked #1 for “things to do in Orlando” as well as “things to do in Orlando besides theme parks” for years. Today, these sites are still on Page 1 for the same article and I sit on Page 18 for the same article. Small newer bloggers (started blogging between 2020-2023) who copied my unique idea continue to rank on page 2-10 even though they stole my idea and oftentimes paraphrase my content. If these new bloggers cannot outrank Trip Advisor for this query and I did so for many years, how can these same bloggers outrank me today?
For years, I ranked in the 0-1 position for hundreds of articles. Today, most of these articles are indexed, but shadowbanned as copycats and big businesses continue to take my place even though most use stock photos and have very little evidence of first hand experience. I use no AI, take no sponsored trips, use zero stock photos, and write 100% of the content by myself. My husband (a web developer and designer) designs the site and works on all tech issues. We are a 2 person site, not a huge content mill.
I think more blame also needs to be placed on small bloggers who copy others hard work, not just big businesses. They are both the problem, in my opinion. I see many small new bloggers who have dozens of articles that are “just too similar to mine.” Sure, a few articles being similar in nature is fine, but when a blogger has 75 articles with the same title as me, it’s a bit suspicious as if they are copying my entire sitemap. I also saw my site advertised on a black hat SEO site in 2020 as a site to consider for reverse engineering. This just happens to be exactly when I noticed many copycats coming on the scene. I have worked hard to get this content, living in 20 cities in over 10 states in the past decade.
I have sent in many DMCA requests, most of which have been approved (besides 2 big businesses). If I ever get the time, I will pursue more. I am fine with new bloggers producing new content, not “repurposing” my content. Perhaps they need to be a bit more creative and produce their own material, instead of attempting to rank by “improving upon” my original thoughts and ideas.
I’m sorry that has happened to you, Maureen. Unfortunately there’s no barrier to starting a website these days, and plenty of people do it with bad intentions (i.e. make a quick buck by stealing ideas and content from others in order to monetize as fast as possible).
I’m always telling clients to stop putting all their time and effort into “rented” space via social media channels and also put work into their own websites. Turns out for many that was “rented” space too.
One of the extra challenges now is that many bloggers and website owners are now looking to get other work where there isn’t much. Its a nasty vicious circle and I miss the 90s! Well let’s be honest I miss the 80s what I remember of it!!
Yes, AI is replacing a lot of freelance writing/editing jobs these days, too, which makes it extra difficult! It also doesn’t help that, despite me doing this job for 15 years now, plenty of people still don’t consider it real “work,” and minimize the skills and experience I’ve gained from it.
Thank you for shedding light on this issue—your frustration is deeply valid. It’s heartbreaking to see years of hard work and dedication undermined by algorithm changes and AI content proliferation. Small publishers like you bring a unique and personal touch to travel content that larger entities just can’t replicate. I hope readers and platforms alike recognize the value of independent voices and work towards solutions that ensure creators like you can thrive in this evolving digital landscape.
I think this is the second time I’ve read this, but I want to add different comments. It’s not true that AI cannot be reset. It may be true that it can only be reset to start over though. The beginning of that learning is indeed clumsy and just weird. I also believe that you can exclude some “training” and make it perhaps semi blind, at least for a while. But when you have the whole internet as its input data that’s not going to be probable.
I too am frustrated about current searches and the bad info I get from them. I wish I knew how to do more than boycott those search engines.
I value websites such as yours and have benefitted from them! (A recent trip to Michigan was memorable, in part, from your MI guide). I share you and a few other favorite travel bloggers with friends and family…. just passed your information on last week, to two of my children.
I will always try to seek out my favorite travel bloggers, and skip over AI if at all possible! I hate what is happening.
I just want you to know I appreciate your hard work and efforts.
I so appreciate all of that, Brenda!
Fantastic read and thank you for bringing this to light for so many content creators. I’m one of the very unlucky ones who lost 98.5% of my traffic on a site I poured my heart and soul into. We will see how things turn out! Saving this to reread a few times – you’ve got some great info here!
Ugh I’m so sorry to hear that, Sarah. I hope there’s some hope for us all in the future.
Well written and thank you for shedding light on this topic. I have always enjoyed your newsletters and will continue to bookmark you as my go to travel site. Hang in there!
Thanks for sharing all of this. It has been rough to watch so many bloggers get struck down by these changes.
It’s been rough for me to watch friends lose their businesses entirely. 🙁
Thanks for this behind the scenes look – it is super informative and helpful for those of us not experiencing this directly. I subscribe to your blog via a feed aggregator, follow you on Insta, and get your newsletter. I always check your site directly (along with a few other trusted travel blogs like Earth Trekkers) when planning a trip because personal experiences are so much more meaningful than anything a AI can generate. So I’m rooting for for you! Hope you can navigate these waters and make it through OK.
Thanks so much, Sara! I appreciate all the effort to actually get your travel information from real people, and am honored that I am one of those sourses you trust!
Wow! I’ve had my head stuck in the sand for sometime, I had no idea about most of what you’ve written about. Clearly, we are moving in the wrong direction in regards to AI and small online blog business. Thank you for opening my eyes to this disaster, I will be making more informed choices when needing an internet search.
It’s a topic that’s talked about a lot within blogging circles, but I know that the average reader/internet user just doesn’t know. Hence why I wrote this! I appreciate you reading.
Thank you for writing this post. I could have written pretty much all of it myself, and I know many other (travel) bloggers who would wholeheartedly agree as well.
Yes, the Internet evolves, and it is not just Google that develops and uses AI. The floodgates are open and there is no turning back.
But it is indeed frustrating, maddening even, to see Google and others essentially steal your content and to present it as theirs. Some AI services do list sources every now and then, but usually in such a way that few – if any – people will click through.
That said, you’ve got a fantastic blog. Highlight the FACT that while AI services can pretend to know what they are talking about, only you can share human-feet-on-the-ground insight and information. And that you do, with authority, honesty, and style.
I definitely do highlight that everything on this site is written by a real human and based on actual travel experience – but the fact is that many people simply don’t care, and those who do care have a much smaller chance of actually finding my content these days. I know my content is good, though, and I’ll continue creating it as long as I can!
Cookie please! 😉 I am a reader, and I love hearing people’s personal stories and experiences. I get so annoyed when AI tries to give me information, and so often it’s outdated or just plain wrong. Keep doing your thang! Maybe AI will destroy itself. One can hope…
One can indeed hope. I just wanna know where the AI is going to get all its info once people stop updating and publishing new content. Wish I could send you a real cookie! Thanks for reading.
For what it is worth, I too am frustrated with AI. And, even in Safari I see too much generated “stuff” that I either know as wrong or actually contradicts itself.
As I read your article I started thinking maybe it is time to switch to where I can control the search. I used to hate Bing, but lately Google is no better and often much worse.
As for your blogs, I’m unaware of where they are outside of this newsletter. Most likely because I’m not on social media.
I do think about your posts and often read them all the way through. Traveling doesn’t always allow me to though. Please don’t go behind a paywall though.
As a thought I get a newsletter from a Bill who often talks about assorted things and I suspect would love to cover this sort of issue and how to help fix it. His last name escapes me and I cannot at the moment get to it.
Wishing you many more years of success.
And comments like yours – coming from just a normal person who uses search engines – only underline everything I’ve assumed lately about how average people don’t actually want or like all these changes. The people running Google (and Meta and Microsoft) are so out of touch with reality, and believe everyone is just as in love with AI as they are, even though we are not!
As for where to find me, you’re on my website right now, and that’s the best place! I hope I never have to go behind a paywall, but that’s the way the internet as a whole might be heading, sadly. (SO many of the articles I wanted to link to in this post were behind paywalls!)
I would encourage you to reach out to bill murphy nt. He’s gotten quite good and getting around paywalls.
I’m not sure where my head was about where your blog was, of course when I chose read more I was thrown onto the internet😇 I’m glad to hear this is your primary outlet as Facebook and instagram as basically paywalls to me, or rather security walls! Perhaps I was thinking more of what YouTube was experiencing.
Hang in there. I’ll do better at clicking onto the web, even when I’m out of time, hopefully that’ll help some.
Thank you for writing this. You’ve said everything I could never put into words, plus some stuff I didn’t even know about. The last year or so has been so stressful and discouraging as a blogger. My “main” site was one of the sites pretty much obliterated by the updates, going from 150k sessions a month (it was 500k before the pandemic but whatever) down to about 15k sessions a month now. I don’t even touch the site anymore because $5 a day of income isn’t worth my effort. I’m just glad my Berlin site is surviving reasonably so far. It was hit a little in August but still chugging along enough to think I can keep growing the site and more importantly the income. I know we always have to adapt, but this is way different.
This IS so different. I understand that the internet is always going to be changing and evolving, but this has been such a big, negative change all at once, and there’s really no good way to pivot in a way that’s viable for most people. I’m sorry you’ve been feeling it, too!