Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!
Come join Spencer and Jared as they take on the latest news in SEO, AI, Google, and beyond.
This week’s episode kicks off with some big news from Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, who talks about the future of Search.
The main pivot he focuses on in the interview is the shift to AI, which he expects to serve the company well over the coming decade. He notes that AI has been working behind the scenes for a long time now and that Google has to evolve to meet the changing needs of users.
What does he say about chatbots? And what does he say about websites? Are they going away and is SGE going to take over? Tune in to hear what Spencer and Jared think about his comments.
Moving along, they talk about a LinkedIn post from Lily Ray on the SEO visibility growth of Reddit and the mindblowing statistics she shares.
What theory does she share that Spencer doesn’t agree with? How does this all play into Google’s antitrust lawsuit, problems with Gemini, and its declining share price?
And what about Reddit’s poor-quality results in Search? Listen to the episode to hear the ridiculous Reddit response to a weight loss query.
Spencer then shares a tweet from a series by Glenn Gabe on the March Core Update, talking about whether the update has finished or not, the role played by the HCU, and the lack of recoveries from these updates.
What did John Mueller say about the core update? What do Spencer and Jared think about the updates and when they’ll finish? Check out the episode to find out.
The last topic is that Bing usage is on the rise, having gained some footing recently, and Spencer and Jared note from the article that Bing actually powers several other search engines, including DuckDuckGo and Yahoo.
What do they recommend when it comes to optimization? Who uses Bing and why does it matter? What’s happening with desktop search?
As for their Shiny Object Shenanigans, Spencer highlights two of his side hustles, the Amazon Influencer Program and his Facebook traffic project, neither of which rely on search engine traffic at all.
Jared then announces the Alt G Online Conference: Unleash Your Content’s Potential Beyond Google, which will bring together people earning money on alternative platforms. It will be held on April 25th, and both Spencer and Jared will be speakers.
In line with the conference, the Niche Pursuits Community is welcoming a series of expert speakers each week who are also talking about using alternative traffic sources.
Jared talks briefly about his Amazon Influencer Program side hustle and then teases a new side hustle he’s about to launch. Come back next week for all the details!
As for the Weird Niche Sites, Spencer reveals iScrap App, which reports local scrap prices. They’ve got a blog and a directory and they’re doing well in search: 300k visitors per month according to SimilarWeb.
They monetize with display ads, they have a store, they sell directory space to scrapyards, and the owner probably has a nice little side hustle with this weird niche site.
When it’s Jared’s turn, he reveals Live Oasis, which lets you research the toxicity of many water brands and rates the water quality in different municipalities. It has a subscription model, which provides access to more information and research, but is it earning money?
Beyond that, this brand-new website is doing quite well and ranking for lots of keywords. What does Jared discover when he digs into the backstory? And where is all of the data coming from? And what if they were to change the model a bit? Hear Jared and Spencer’s recommendations.
We hope this episode helped bring you up to speed on the latest happenings in the SEO and content creation space and gave you some new ideas when it comes to your own businesses.
See you next week!
transcription
Spencer: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the niche pursuits podcast today. We’re going to be talking about the future of search. Uh, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has some thoughts on what the future of search looks like, and he specifically mentions a pivot. In search that he’s implemented and he thinks it’s paying dividends.
And so we’re going to talk about what that pivot is and overall his perspective on what the future of search looks like, and of course, how that applies to you and I as bloggers and niche site creators, uh, and then. In addition to that, we’re going to be talking about the March core update that’s happening right now.
We’re going to talk about Reddit and Google and that entire relationship. And a lot of these things that potentially dovetail into the future of search. And, uh, so, so that’s the main thing that we’re going to talk about here. But of course, we will also talk about our side hustle projects that we’re working on briefly.
And then two weird niche sites. Each of us have a weird niche site that we’ve found. We’re going to share with you and we’re going to dive into what’s working, maybe why it’s weird and just why we think it’s an interesting site to share here on the podcast. So having said all that, Jared, how are you doing today?
Jared: Very well spencer welcome back. It’s been a while since you or I were out. You’re out of town I believe last week. I don’t know you weren’t here last week Uh thomas did a great job, but it’ll be good to good to have you back in the hosting chair
Spencer: Yeah, it’s good to be back. I took a little vacation. I was on spring break, you know got outdoors did some hiking And things like that and kind of unplugged for a little bit.
So I do appreciate thomas and yourself um making sure the The news episode carries on for everybody. Uh, so let’s go ahead and jump into today’s top story. As I mentioned, uh, Google CEO Sundar Pinchai, uh, he just did an interview. It looks like with the Stanford school of business or some, um, you know, school through, through Stanford.
Uh, and he was asked a lot of questions about what does the future of Uh, search look like and he kind of gave a vision for here’s what it’s search is going to be like over the next 10 years and this article just on, uh, search engine journal sign summarizes this interview. The interview wasn’t actually done with search engine journal or anything like that, but they summarize this interview.
Uh, and the big pivot that, uh, the CEO of Google talked about is, well, I’ll read his quote. He says, one of the main things I did as CEO is to really pivot the company towards working on AI. And I think that will serve us well for the next decade ahead. And so does, uh, does Google care a lot about AI? I mean, there you have it.
The CEO says that’s the big pivot he’s made so far, uh, as he’s been CEO and he’s only been CEO for, I don’t know, the number five years, something like that. Um, and, uh, he believes that AI is going to serve them well over the next decade. And so he kind of gives a, a little bit of a discussion on all the R and D that they’ve been doing.
Of course, we know about Gemini, Gemini pro their AI generation tool. And we have seen as content creators, the search generative experience or SGE that is now happening directly within Google. And he talks about these things a lot. I, it feels like that is pretty much the biggest things that he talked about throughout this interview when he looks at, okay, what.
Does the future of search look like? Well, he basically says that technology is evolving and technology is going to always evolve, but search is essentially, um, still going to be happening in the same overall manner. People are still going to be searching things, but the technology is going to be more advanced, including, you know, AI.
And, um, what is interesting to me is that he was sure to point out that, Hey. AI is nothing new. Uh, we’ve been trying to implement artificial intelligence into our search results for a long time. We’ve been doing this through featured snippets. We’ve been doing this through, um, all the additional features.
Within search that, uh, behind the scenes, it’s, it’s been this artificial intelligence that has been surfacing some of the, the best content and even the instant answers that they have. Right. Um, they’ve been doing that for a long time. And so Google or search. I’ll just read this quick quote. Search used to be text and 10 blue links, maybe 15 years ago, but you know, uh, but you know, now it’s images via videos via finding answers for your questions.
Those are all changes. You know, to my earlier point, people kind of, you know, We’ve done all this in Google search for a long time and people like it, people engage with it, people trust it. So he’s sure to point out that, hey, Google hasn’t been just 10 blue links for a long time. So that’s my quick take overview.
Jared chime in. What’s your thoughts on this interview?
Jared: It’s good read. I think it’s good read because this is exactly the way. I would imagine a CEO would think about search. We, we think about like, I know some of the conversations I’ve been involved with just this week is like, how are we going to optimize for SGE?
What does it look like to get your content inside of there? We talk about load times and, you know, all these things that we tend to focus on. And this is, this is, Many would say probably pretty generic as it relates to the future of search in 10 years. And at the same time, it’s probably a very viable look at search in 10 years because it’s from a very high level and it’s really taking what has been the last 10 years of search or last 15 as he puts it and kind of uses it to transpose what, what the next 10 years would look like.
So if you’re looking for SEO insights here, you’re not going to find any. If you’re looking for kind of how A broader scale looks at the future of search. I did think it was pretty interesting. I did have something I wanted to read out. I was worried you were going to kind of hijack. I think this is interesting.
Um, let me read this one little part here for you. Um, one of his quotes, look, I think it’s one of the most, uh, one of the common myths around Google, uh, around that Google has been 10 blue links for a long time, you know, when mobile came, we knew Google search had to evolve a lot. We call it featured snippets.
I think that’s interesting. I never had correlated that featured snippets were a direct response to the increase in mobile usage and mobile search. Not sure that’s exactly what he’s saying, but he’s insinuating that. And I wonder if, you know, SGE is their similar approach to AI, akin to mobile, uh, feature snippets was to mobile search.
Spencer: Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. I agree. I think it’s super interesting, right? They, they evolved when, uh, mobile phones were becoming higher usage, added, uh, these features snippets. And then of course we now have AI continuing to evolve search. And I think that, uh, the, the other sort of big thing that he said is that, um, SGE is not a chatbot experience.
Um, basically saying that chatbots. And search are kind of two separate things, right?
Jared: And that’s interesting because I think Bing has integrated chat GPT so closely into their search experience. They would almost say, I don’t want to put words in their mouth, but from what they’re doing, they would almost say that chat bots and search are akin to each other, right?
Right.
Spencer: Yeah. And, but he’s, he’s trying to kind of differentiate potentially this strategy or this way moving forward. Right. Uh, he says, and so I think that’s different from when you’re in a chat bot. And I think that the more active area of research, I think that’s more, a more active area of research where sometimes it has its voice.
So how do you get those moments? Right. And, you know, again, for us, I think it’s an area where we will be deeply committed to getting it right. Um, and so. Even though, uh, S. G. E. And A. I. Is implemented into search itself, he still does try to differentiate between using a chat bot versus. Search, which again is an interesting perspective.
Um, and then the other thing that I want to highlight, if I can find the quote, uh, but essentially that, um, I don’t know if I’m going to find the exact line I was looking for, but basically that, that websites. very important to Google. That’s not going away. And of course, that’s a big worry for us as bloggers.
Is SGE going to take over and just answer all the questions? Is AI going to answer everything? Uh, but he’s sure to point out that websites, content creators are very much needed, and he sees that as the way. Going forward in the future as well, that this content is going to be needed. Uh, search is going to be all about surfacing that content.
Um, but that AI large language learning models are going to. Enhance that experience of surfacing that information.
Jared: Yeah, I, that’s, that was gonna be the one I brought up next. I mean, I kind of summarized it here in my notes, but he said, even with advancements, and this isn’t a quote, this is my summary, even with advancements and AI pointing users to websites.
Remains a priority. Um, the focus is on providing high quality, trustworthy information, balancing direct answers with a range of opinions. Um, and so I, the quote I have here, I think it kind of applies is, um, uh, Uh, I think we’ve always struck the balance. That’s what I’m saying. It’s not about giving an answer.
There are certain times you give an answer. What’s the population in the United States? Yes. It’s an answerable question, but there are times you want to surface the breadth of opinions out there on the web, which is what search does and does it. Well, the summary can still point you to the range of options out there.
Right. And we do that today all the time. So, um, and he had other quotes as well, but you know, he was bullish on websites remain a very large part of the. Search experience 10 years from now,
Spencer: right? Exactly. And I think it’s difficult to predict even for a CEO to know exactly what search is going to look like in 10 years.
Um, you know, things are rapidly changing with the use of AI, but at least publicly, uh, the CEO of Google is sort of stating that, hey, We’re we’ve, we’ve been evolving for a long time. We’re going to continue to evolve, but that it’s going to continue to feel like just a search experience. You go and you search and you get your answers.
Um, he certainly is not making any bold statements that that’s changing drastically and I wouldn’t expect him to do so.
Jared: How about this for an alternate universe? What about in 10 years, if you go to the Google homepage and there’s. Two windows to type into. And one says, search S G E A I experience. And the other says, search the Reddit experience and that’s it.
Spencer: That would be a big change. Uh, kind of feels like we’re
Jared: going that way sometimes, doesn’t it?
Spencer: It does a little bit. And, um, you know, since you brought up Reddit, maybe let’s, let’s talk about, you know, something that Lily Ray brought up recently, you know, we’ve talked about the Google. Reddit relationship for a long time.
It feels like, um, Google’s, I don’t know, kind of got a crush on Reddit a little bit. I think at this point it’s more than a crush. It’s a little, I think we’re getting into like a fair territory or something. I, Oh yes, certainly. I mean, it’s, uh, I mean, if you look at this, um, Lily Ray pulled out a bunch of data from the SEO visibility growth of Reddit.
And she says that it’s, she believes, she says, I’m pretty sure that the. SEO visibility growth is unprecedented in the history of Google search, which is kind of mind boggling to think. You have to pull up
Jared: the
Spencer: graph
Jared: that she has somewhere in there, by the way, just at some point.
Spencer: Yeah, a couple of images down here.
That one, yeah. This one here.
Jared: Yeah.
Spencer: Yeah. Here we go. We can get that one pulled up. That is just. I mean, that’s insane. That goes to, and that’s even like, uh, the beginning of March, isn’t it? With the, uh, Oh my, well, okay, no, that’s, that’s 2023. So that’s like, so it’s the helpful content update,
Jared: right? So you’ll actually see where we were talking a couple of weeks ago about the dip Reddit had.
Well, they have not only recovered from that dip, but doubled the the the the downward trend. Yeah. It’s like, even when they dip, we can’t even get the news out fast enough before they’ve recovered and and regained and and gotten more traffic, but
Spencer: anyways. I agree. Um, she says here that Reddit has moved from the 80th biggest SEO site on Google last July to now the sixth biggest today.
Um, that is just mind blowing. The, the sixth biggest SEO site in the planet. Right. Um, And things, I mean, this graph kind of shows it all. It just continues to grow. Like you said, maybe there’s bumps in the road, but it just continues to grow. And she brings up a point, which I’m still not really on board with this theory, and she kind of says the same thing.
She’s like, I’ve avoided this theory, but it’s like almost getting ridiculous, not to at least look into it further. Like, is there some sort of monetary or backdoor relationship with Google and Reddit? I mean, uh, Uh, Google recently had this partnership that we talked about on the podcast.
Jared: Yeah. I was going to say there is a monetary relationship.
There, there is. Yeah. I guess it’s in the
Spencer: open. You know, how far does it go? I guess maybe. Right. So, um, Google is paying Reddit 60 million a year, uh, to access all their data user information to train their AI models. Right.
Jared: And I was going to say, and, and to, to your point, Lily’s point, I’m being facetious by saying there is a deal, but the deal has nothing to do with what shows up in search.
Exactly. It’s strictly for training their AI model, right? So anyways, I, I, I say that, but it shouldn’t have any impact on what’s ranking is,
Spencer: is, yeah. It should not, right? But it is hard to ignore when, you know, Hey, we’re, we’re paying you 60 million and, Oh, we’re going to send you a bunch more traffic. So you can get a bunch more data, you know, and blame it on the algorithm, you know, blame it on the algorithm.
That’s just the way it works. So, um, that’s just another, not necessarily. News story, but an update to like, okay, Reddit is still crushing it in Google. Um, yeah, I guess this is what the future of search looks like. I mean,
Jared: you, you joked about having a crush on Reddit and I joked about having an affair with Reddit, but the last couple of minutes, it almost feels.
Like that’s a good analogy, right? Like we don’t know anything’s going on, but we just noticed they’re spending a heck of a lot of time together and it’s odd they’re spending so much time together. And so it’s just worth mentioning that the correlations, there’s too many of them to, to Lily’s point, not have to kind of say it out loud and not say there’s any validity to it, but I think, and Spencer going all the way back to what we talked a lot about last year, which we haven’t heard anything about this in a while, or am I just living under a rock what’s going on with the antitrust lawsuit against Google by the DOJ?
And the fact that this feels so oddly timed because this looks so anti trust esque, this seems so oddly timed to all correlate and happen at the same time as they’re in the middle of an antitrust lawsuit. So that timing seems very off from a PR standpoint. We saw Google take a huge hit in their stock price, albeit fairly limited when they had to pull back Gemini and the release there, like their PR image is important to them.
This feels Weird and out of place, especially given that they’re in the limelight for the DOJ lawsuit.
Spencer: And I mean, I, man, somebody, and maybe it’s going to have to be me doing another YouTube video, but somebody has just got to call out Reddit again and Google for all the ridiculous results that get pulled up on Reddit, right?
Um, it’s kind of talked about in this discussion here that, I mean, Google has spent years and, you know, Tons of engineers and using AI and all these really smart people to surface the best results possible and the answer they’ve kind of ended on as well. Let’s surface Reddit all the time. And then you get these answers on Reddit.
Uh, where does she say this one is just hilarious. She says yesterday, I found an example of Reddit result ranking prominently on page one, when I searched Google for how to lose 10 pounds in a week. And a Redditor suggested. Cutting off your arm, right? Like that’s, is that the answer that Google wants to be giving people to losing 10 pounds?
Oh, it is. It is the
Jared: answer they’re giving them. It
Spencer: is the answer.
Jared: And they’re defending it. You know, I mean, they’re not defending that specifically, but they’re defending the fact that, uh, and I, I don’t want to misquote, but basically a quote of people like getting Reddit, Reddit answers. So we’re surfacing them as if there’s no.
Duty to provide answers that are valid rather than answers that are what people want, you know Like my get my kids want ice cream every day It doesn’t mean as a parent I give it to them every minute right like I have a duty above that Uh, to, you know, and so it just feels very odd that these answers are being serviced in the response typically, or oftentimes it’s like, ah, dang it, that’s just kind of what people want.
Spencer: Yeah, it’s like, kind of throw out this your money, your life thing, who cares? Like, just let Reddit answer all those questions, right? I, after all these updates, and so it, it feels a little bit disingenuous. I just, I have to think at some point, there’s got to be some, Uh, reverse PR nightmare, because if you remember, the original story that was like a PR nightmare was, you know, a journalist went to Google and couldn’t find his answers, and then he went to Reddit and found his answers.
Jared: And so then he started pending Reddit to the end of every search.
Spencer: And now, it’s like we’ve come way too far. At this point, there needs to be another story saying, okay, read it. You went to, or okay, Google, you went too far with Reddit. Right. And maybe I just need to create that video again, but, uh, I figured some big name journalist for the wall street journal just needs to cover it.
I mean, this is just a juicy, juicy story that, uh, You know, unfortunately I don’t have a big enough microphone, um, to cause a real dent in Google’s image. But if somebody covers it, wall street journal, if you’re listening, I’m happy to talk,
Jared: we need to all start going to Reddit and searching, but appending the word Google to the end of our Reddit search.
Oh, wouldn’t that be great.
Spencer: We’ll have come full circle at some point. Well,
Jared: I don’t think anyone’s all that much happier with the non Reddit results we’re seeing in Google right now either. So, between Parasite, SEO, or whatever they’re calling it and apparently solving in the next couple weeks, um, uh, to, you know, just, you know, uh, Forbes writing about the, you know, Uh, the best, uh, uh, everything under the sun.
Exactly.
Spencer: They, they’re an expert in everything now. Um, and you know, speaking of current search results, we do have this March core update. I’m just sharing a tweet, uh, from Glenn Gaby. I think he’s kind of doing this daily here. Basically saying, Hey, the March core update, uh, he says his core update notes, I guess is what he calls it.
April 11th. That’s today that we’re recording, uh, no finish yet to the core update. And so if you don’t like the Google search results, The update hasn’t finished, but it’s starting to feel like we’re getting to the very end. And in fact, Glenn says he felt like it would be over, uh, by now, but it’s still going on.
So there’s still like this sliver of hope that there’s going to be, Uh, some changes to sites that were hit by the helpful content update. Of course, the helpful content update is now part of the general core updates. Right. Um, but as he points out, unfortunately, this is, I mean, it, it’s kind of depressing, but we have to talk about it.
It’s just that he has not seen any, uh, reversals of the helpful content update. We have not seen any sites. Have a recovery during the March core update, which is what a lot of us were really hoping. Um, in fact, just being, you know, boots on the ground, talking to a lot of people, uh, people have been hit harder, you know, they got hit by the helpful content update and they got hit even harder somehow, uh, in the March core update.
And so it’s, uh, it’s a little bit depressing out there, right. For a lot of listeners. And so I don’t want to make light of what’s going on because it, it’s I mean, it has a lot of people struggling in their business and really questioning what to do next.
Jared: Yeah.
Spencer: We’ll
Jared: talk about it a little bit later as well.
We’ll kind of touch on, you know, what the future could look like and what people are doing about it, you know, but you’re exactly right. Like, I think everybody wants to reserve final judgment until this core update, uh, wraps up, of course. We’re dealing with like the longest core update in the world. Um, you know, Thomas and I talked last week about how surely, you know, by the time we got on this week, we’d be talking about the wrap of the core update right after we got off recording as the podcast was going live.
Well, uh, John Mueller, uh, either slipped or kind of let it take out of the bag at a presentation he was doing. I feel like Berlin, Germany, somewhere in Europe, basically that the update was still rolling out would have a couple more weeks, you know, he said, I think one to two weeks. And so here we are. One week later could be another week.
John Mueller has addressed that. And so sure enough, we haven’t seen the end. And, uh, I suppose there’s a chance it might not be done at this time next week. Although I think next Tuesday is the six week mark now. So I think we should be wrapping up. But you know, but it’s, it’s always tough, you know, like when you’re waiting for news about something as, um, as, as, as devastating as the helpful content update was to so many of the listeners here.
And of course, this is the update where we have to wait the longest for that news. So you’re right. It’s a kind of a troubling time for many and tough, and you don’t want to put the nail in the coffin until we’re there yet. But at the same time, you know, Glenn is documenting every day how there’s just hasn’t been any movement yet.
So.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, kind of just hold on out there, you know, give it another week. And, uh, we’ll be hopefully by then talking about a summary of the March, uh, core update, hoping, you know, fingers crossed that there are some positive updates, uh, something positive to say, you know, about the update instead of, Oh, Reddit just got a bunch more traffic, you know, after the update,
Jared: I mean, we, we, I know you and I both already have so many, Thoughts to share about
Spencer: all
Jared: this topic, right?
We talk about offline all the time and stuff, so I’ll save it for next week and the following weeks, but suffice to say, like. Seen zero movement on any of the sites impacted by the HCU is, is just, it’s a fascinating approach to the larger topics we’ve already addressed today. So, yeah, I’ll leave it at that and stay tuned for more thoughts later.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly. Especially with all the chatter and, you know, sort of the communication with, uh, Danny Sullivan, Google search liaison on Twitter, you Dived in deep into all these Twitter threads and sort of tried to provide consoling, uh, words, um, and to not see any movement on that front is a, is a little bit frustrating.
So, um, we will. So we will leave it at that, uh, but we do have one other, uh, interesting, uh, thing that I, I think you touched on a little bit with, uh, with Thomas last week, I think you said is, um, sort of the usage of being right? Um, that being usage is on the rise. It actually gained, um, some, some footing or number of users or percent total usage of search, right?
There’s a little bit more happening on being now versus, uh, Google, uh, than before. So, uh, But it was the being now remind me, who is this person? Uh, for a breeze canal, she is the principal product manager at Microsoft being, and she says the being usage extends beyond what many SEOs may realize. Uh, and then he goes on to basically say that, um, In addition to just being, you know, you’re hopping on being and using the search engine directly, being actually powers several other search engines, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Ask, Ecosia, Swiss cows, and more surfaces as windows co pilot and more.
So if you sum up all of that, the impact is even more significant. So if you’ve seen your Bing search traffic increase, great. But if you’ve seen, you know, more traffic coming from DuckDuckGo or Ask or Ecosia or all these. That’s really just being right. So, uh, if you optimize on being right, that’s a way to tap into kind of all these, um, a little bit more.
Jared: You’re not just, and not that we’re there yet, maybe as SEO is for optimizing specifically for being, but I think if you, to your point, exactly, if you optimize for being, you’re actually also optimizing for duck, duck, go. You’re actually also optimizing for Yahoo. And, um, you know, Thomas kind of brought up a good point last week that, you is worth mentioning, like If your target demographic is a bunch of millennials, well, maybe you don’t need to do it.
But, to his point, like, boomers love Bing, right? Because it’s defaulted on the Internet Explorer. And, you know, so if that’s your target market, you know, Man, there’s more and more of a case. This is more and more interesting to think about optimizing around a Bing, because of all the platforms it’s on.
Spencer: And, um, the other interesting thing, uh, to note is that, uh, the desktop search market share, so desktop, again, this is, you know, the boomers, they’re not using the mobile device.
So it does skew to an older audience. Probably, uh, the desktop market share shows the being at over 17 percent share with Google at 76%. So that is very interesting. Um, and then also Yahoo is almost 4 percent DuckDuckGo is 2 percent and others, right? So you get well over 20 percent of the desktop search share is happening really with being search engine.
Jared: And, and I mean, that’s a staggering number, 17%. I know that most search happens on mobile, so let’s not, you know, let’s not get carried away here. More people are searching on mobile, but. That’s still like you’re getting into, you’re getting these figures, you’re getting these data points that are suggesting more and more of that being as a powerful, uh, search to be reckoned with, especially going forward.
Spencer: Exactly. And I guess the overall stat that, I mean, kind of started all of this off is that, um, you know, stat counters showed that Google. Lost about 2 percent market share. And, uh, being was the one that gained almost all of that share. So, and that was the article that we covered that
Jared: we covered last week.
So it kind of dug down perfectly.
Spencer: Yeah. So, um, yeah, just, just interesting tidbit to see, you know, kind of think about where being powers, everything, and maybe it’s time I’ve actually been thinking is maybe it’s time to, uh, dust off or even see if I have a Bing webmaster tools account. I think maybe 10 years ago, I set one up, but.
You really would
Jared: have, uh, you would have enjoyed last week’s episode.
Spencer: I would have that. Is that what it was all about? See, I was out hiking Bryce Canyon and unfortunately not listening to the. I
Jared: don’t blame you. I don’t think of it for me, a vacation does not constitute listening to the niche pursuits podcast, so I totally understand, but we, we, we joked about how, you know, it’s time for when to dust off their Bing webmaster tools and get their logging out and kind of go back to looking at it.
Spencer: That’s exactly right. So, uh, you know, shout out to last week’s podcast. There’s probably a link somewhere. Um, but yeah, if you want to hear that discussion a little bit more, go for it. Well, we’ll just end it there.
Jared: Another week of being in the news. I think that’s the important thing. Another week with being, I guess, success being in the
Spencer: news, you know.
And that’s news itself right there, right? Being mentioned twice in a row on the Niche Pursuits podcast. Uh, so, um, that, that kind of summarizes all the big news stories that we wanted to chat about. Um, and so we’re going to move into our shiny object shenanigans, uh, that we have to talk about. And interestingly, Kind of the news thread ties into our shiny objects here as well as I’ll discuss, but basically, you know, a quick update on, on things I’ve been working on, I’ve talked about a lot in the past is one Amazon influencer, right?
I set that, been talking about that for about a year now, but that’s, you know, something totally. Different than Google, you don’t send any traffic to your website. Um, but you know, I’m still making 1500 to 2, 000 a month this year after having putting, put minimal effort into that over the last three, four months.
Um, and, and things are going great there. Um, and then the other sort of side hustle that I’ve been working on for a long time, over a year. Is trying to get more and more traffic from Facebook. Uh, so I have a separate brand, a separate website that really the only source of traffic right now is a Facebook traffic, you know, it has a Facebook page and I’m trying to drive traffic there, you know, and it gets anywhere from 10, 000 to as high as 50, 000 visitors a month.
If it gets, you know, a couple of pieces that do really well, but what’s interesting, of course, about those two side hustles is that they don’t rely on Search engine traffic really at all. Um, you know, they’re not Google reliant. It’s not SEO. And these are a couple of projects I’ve been working on for about a year now.
And again, I just say it’s interesting because. There is so much more interest now in sort of these alternative sources to Google, this also alternative source, um, of traffic or business, um, that, you know, there wasn’t quite as much interest in six or eight months ago when the helpful content update first came out, um, which I can stop sharing this article on my screen, but, um, so.
I don’t know. Maybe I’ll let you kind of announce what you have coming up, Jared, as it ties into this, um, alternative source of traffic. And, um, I’ll share a little bit more after you kind of say what’s going on there. Yeah, it is
Jared: funny. We’ve been categorizing alternate sources of traffic to Google as side hustles and more and more of the conversation becomes, wait a second, do I need to make Google my side hustle, Google traffic, my side hustle, and look at other Channels other vehicles as an alternative source of traffic.
Um, so yeah, that that conversation has been going through my mind quite a bit, you know, and I’m with you. I did a newsletter last year as one of my side hustles. We can growth did the Amazon influencer program with you and those are all different forms of traffic to Google. And that question then obviously banging around for so many people right now who have seen their, their content, their website, get hit by the HCU, the March core update, et cetera, et cetera.
Wondering about the business model going forward. Anyways. So, um, I thought we’d get together a bunch of different people who are having success on different platforms and put a full day together where we talk about each of these alternative traffic platforms and talk about it from a standpoint of what does it look like.
How viable is it? And probably most importantly, is it a direction you should start going? And so it’s called the, uh, the alt G conference. I think you can all figure out what the alt stands for and what the G stands for. But, uh, we’ll leave it at that. The alt G conference it’s free. And it’s going to be happening on Wednesday, April 24th.
And, um, suffice to say, you know, I mean, we can kind of go into a little bit more detail, but we’re going to be talking about all the different ways to get traffic to your content outside of Google and you’ll be a speaker. Uh, I’ll be speaking as well. Um, we’ve got a lot of different people. Many to most of which you’ve heard here on the podcast, like John Dykstra and Moss, Michael Dinnage, Tony Hill, Tim Stoddart, Thomas Smith from, from last week, Samuel King speaking about, Hey, what does it look like to get a directory and get traffic there?
What does it look like to use Facebook for traffic? What does it look like to use? Um, uh, uh, Pinterest and, uh, uh, yeah, all these different topics, right?
Spencer: So, um, that’s, uh, super exciting. I’m excited to be a part of it. I actually just, uh, put together my presentation earlier today. Uh, for this, I’m going to be talking about the Amazon influencer program. Um, and so if people want to check that out, I do have a link, so I can track how many people are coming here through the podcast and, uh, through niche pursuits.
So if you just go to, uh, niche pursuits. com. Alt G that will take you to, um, the registration page where you can, um, where you can register for free. I was typing that on the wrong screen here. But yeah, if you go to niche pursuits. com slash alt G that will take you here to the registration page where you can register for free and it’s free for.
How long is it? Um, day of,
Jared: yeah. So you’ll get to watch the day of here’s the cool thing. I’ve already gotten a couple of emails about it. It’s not live. Right. So it’s all going to be pre recorded, but that’s good because it means you can log in at any point during the day on the 24th and watch the whole thing.
So it’s not, it starts at 8 AM Pacific, but it’s not like if you missed a launch, you’re going to miss the first topic. Um, you’ll get to kind of watch it throughout the day. It’ll be all day that day. And then after that, I think we’ll do a recording. Um, it looks like we’ll be able to do a recording and publish it for, you know, like a really cheap rate if people want to take advantage of that, but free to sign up, free to register, free to watch it all day on the 24th.
Spencer: Perfect. So yeah, just go to niche pursuits. com slash alt G and you’ll be able to watch my presentation, um, on Amazon influencer program where I share, you know, all my earnings, all my strategies, how I hire people, mostly how I outsource it. I kind of did it with that viewpoint of like, Hey, if you want to outsource your Amazon influencer.
Um, side hustle, this is how I did it. And you can follow these strategies. Uh, and then of course, Jared’s talking and all the other people that, uh, that you listed there. So people can go check that out. I do think that’s, that it’s interesting, uh, just in the fact that, um, we also have been talking about a lot of these things inside the niche pursuits community.
Where we’re bringing, um, Expert. It’s in each week. You know, right now we’re currently talking about Google Discovery. We’ve had three people coming in and talking about Google Discover over the past three weeks. We had Tony Hill, uh, Lily Ray, uh, last, last week. Yeah. Uh, that she just, I mean, it’s. One of the best presentations I’ve heard, uh, on the subject subject.
I’ll be honest. Uh, and then Thomas Smith, he spoke today, which he is just like a vault of ideas for titling, uh, great titles that might do well on Google discover. He shared a lot of unique angles that were not shared in the previous two presentations, because he talked more about like local news and how you can hyper focus a lot of the things.
And he shares his website with examples, with the web stories, with the titles, with everything. Um, so it was super good. So, um, but then we’re going to talk about Facebook traffic. Uh, we have three or four experts already lined up to talk about how can you get a ton of traffic from Facebook anyway, so people can go over to community.
nichepursuits. com if they want to check that out. So having said that, Jared, do you have any other. Side hustle projects that you wanted to bring up or did we kind of cover it all?
Jared: You know, I you know, I talked about influencer last week. I’m having a renaissance of results and and uh influencer. Um, and uh, Uh, I mean, I she’s I don’t well you didn’t hear last week’s podcast.
We weren’t here. Dang it Uh almost four thousand just a couple dollars shy of four thousand dollars in march
Spencer: That is impressive. Yeah. I’ve heard you’ve kind of shared privately some of the updates that you’re having like a hundred dollar days, like bigger days. I’m like, okay. I had
Jared: a couple of 200 day, 200 plus days in March.
So, um, that’s cool. I’ve been, um, uh, I’ve been getting more involved in some of the Facebook groups too, about it. Can you believe I went through the whole year last year without being in any of those Facebook groups? Like so active. Um, uh, and it’s been cool, but more or less, you know, a lot of it, you kind of, it can ignore, but, um, no, I have a new project that’s coming.
And I’m glad we talked about the Alt G conference today because I’m, I’m not quite ready to make like this really polished official announcement. Okay. I think by next week, I will be, let me just put it this way. I bought the domain this week for it. Ooh. So, you know, I mean, I can’t actually, I think everybody listening goes just cause you bought a domain name doesn’t mean it’s happening.
Cause how many domain names do we all have? But trust me, it’s happening. I was going to get it. Yeah. You bought the domain. I brought the domain. So I’ve shuttled on the idea and stuff. So, so next week I will share, um, the, the, I think the 2024 project that I’m going to really be spending most of my time talking and focusing about when it comes to the side hustle world this year.
So, um, I’m excited and a little tease for next week. I’ll be talking about next week. I’ll have a lot more lined up next week. A lot more of the plan in place for it, but, um, domains purchased. We’re good. We’re doing this. Whoa.
Spencer: I like it. That, you know, that’s why we do these shiny object shenanigans is to get the adrenaline pumping, the excitement.
It’s like, Ooh, you know, this could be the next big thing.
Jared: You know, spring, it must be a spring time thing for me because last year in spring, Amazon, uh, uh, weekend growth was March. Amazon influencer was may this year. I’m launching my new project in April. I mean, it’s gotta be a spring thing. There’s something to be said
Spencer: about going through a long, cold, dark winter.
And then just like, we got it. Break out of our shell and do something fresh and new
Jared: so next week next week.
Spencer: All
Jared: right
Spencer: segment. Okay, I’ll be here Let’s let’s do it Okay, very good. So let’s go ahead and save a few minutes now for our weird niche sites and So I’ll go ahead and go first I’ve got this weird niche site and Again, just thank you to the niche pursuits community I have a large backlog now of weird niche sites.
And so I tapped into that and found, found this one that I think it’s really interesting. Um, you know, Jared, maybe I’ll ask you this question. Have you ever at some point in your life, you know, maybe it’s not been recently, but at some point in your life, have you ever been driving down the road and saw just like a, Old rusty heap of metal or something like that.
And thought, you know, I want to just throw that in the back of my car. Go see if I can turn that in to cash, you know, turn it in as scrap metal. How much could I make from that? You know, I, have you ever dreamed that I have, I’ll, I’ll be honest. I’ve thought of doing that.
Jared: Uh, similarly, we redid our backyard a couple years ago, and they were ripping out some of the stuff that was there from when we moved in, and they were, they were like, you want us to haul this away, right?
And I was like, yeah, yep, yep, that’s what I asked, and he’s like, I, I agree, haul everything away, but this, you’ve got a lot of brass that was used to line your walkway, you probably ought to go take that in, that’s probably three or four hundred dollars worth of brass. What? That’s a thing. And he’s like, it’s definitely a thing.
That’s a thing. So you’re, I haven’t driven by the side of the road, but
Spencer: that’s a story that came to mind when you, when you brought that up. Yeah, no, it, it’s a thing and it’s a side hustle thing as I’ll show you here. Uh, in a minute, you know, I I’ve dreamed big of a lot of things and I’ve actually tried some, some weird things like trying to get golf balls out of ponds and things like that for money, but.
I never actually got my scrap metal money, uh, but I always thought about doing it. But if you want to do it, I’ve got the website, like you need to know. Um, it’s my weird niche site here today. It is, uh, I scrap. I scrapped app. com I scrapped app. I read that
Jared: totally different. I read that as is crap app doc.
Spencer: Yeah, I did too. The first time I saw it, I thought this is going to be very weird, but it is I scrap, uh, and they have it lowercase. So maybe it was an iPhone app to start. Probably. I know it did start as an app. Uh, for a phone and, um, it actually started by a local, uh, scrap yard, somebody that owned this and he’s like, you know, my customers are always calling in asking what the current.
Um, metal prices are right. Like how much can I get for this pile of brass? Uh, or whatever it is. Steel, copper, aluminum, um, catalytic converter listed at the top. Yeah. It can’t be good for
Jared: theft.
Spencer: Yeah, I know. Um, but, uh, so he, he’s sick of answering all the calls. So he created an app and started having all his customers just install that, go to the app.
Boom. You get, you get your price. And so now there’s an accompanying website. And so all his customers started using it. A lot of other customers started using it broader, and then he started getting other scrap yards that also wanted to be listed. And so, um, I know that there is now a premium price you can pay.
Um, Oh, this is just prices for metal, but you can actually pay the I scrap app. If you’re a scrap yard to get like premium featured, because you can come up here and you can do a search for your local area. Right. Uh, you can find a scrap yard and like, this is a premium yard here. That’s not too far from me.
I think they’re paying 30 bucks a month to be listed, right? It’s like a directory, uh, type type website, you know? So, um, they also have. A bunch of articles, um, you know, they’ve got news, but they, uh, they do pretty well in Google search. So let me pull up their Ahrefs. Um, you can see that they’re getting about 138, 000 organic visitors a month.
Um, they sailed right on through, um, all of these sort of updates. That have happened, uh, did well in the helpful content update. It looks like, and, uh, done just fine. And so they’re getting, I think I went over to similar web and it shows, well, let’s share it, um, that they’re getting, you know, around 300, 000 visitors a month, sometimes more, right?
About 300, 000 visitors a month. And, uh, so they have display ads, so they’re making revenue from that. Uh, they also have, um, You know, their, their premium, uh, directory listings. So I think their business is doing, you know, pretty decent just for this app. And again, it was started by a guy that owns a scrap yard.
And so this is his probably side hustle little app, I have to assume. But, uh, I did. Kind of have to chuckle when I see, you know, you can get the price for a catalytic converter. And now here’s this article for four ways to prepare your catalytic catalytic converters for scrap, right? Um, some of the clientele that maybe are reading these articles, maybe are not the most upstanding, but hopefully most of them are.
Jared: Well, I, you know, we, we I’ll leave it there. Uh, yeah, they also just leave that one there. They also have a shop, um, not a Shopify site. Big cartel. Yes. Which is Shopify competitor. Um, I don’t get the hustle theme. Do you know what’s, what’s the hustle angle? Everything on their shop, if you’re not looking is all hus, you know, the, all the paraphernalia is all hustle.
Um, maybe hus like if you’re scrapping, you’re hustling.
Spencer: I don’t know. You know? Exactly. Yeah. That’s, that was actually my point, you know, is kind of. The, the story I asked you, you know, is like, Hey, have you ever wanted to quote unquote hustle? You see something on the side of the road, you pick it up, throw on your pickup, go make some money.
You’re scrapping, right? Yeah. If you’re scrapping, you’re a hustler, A hustle hustler. Like this is legit hustling. Like this is not like blogging, hustling. Like, oh, my fingers are so tired. Yeah. Like, I’m typing, this is like carpal
Jared: tunnel. My
Spencer: arms are tired because I’m lifting scrap. Right? So. Yeah, I love it.
The t shirt build wealth, the hustle, the scrapper. Build wealth.
Jared: All right. That might be a bit of a stretch.
Spencer: It
Jared: build the wealth. I don’t know. The catalytic converters, you know, it wouldn’t take many of those to, to
Spencer: equal what blogs are putting out these days. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you got magnets, sweatshirts.
So I thought this was kind of funny. I don’t know if he’s selling any merch, but like there must be. You know, hus, scrap hustlers. I guess. So
Jared: here’s a, here’s a question back to the original question you had for me. Will they come, will they, will they line up someone that can come pick up my medal and pay me for it?
I get it probably for a less of a rate, but can they line up a scrapper who wants to come to my yard? ’cause I still got that copper in my yard four years later. ’cause of course I haven’t done anything with it. . I probably, uh, if it’s of a certain, that would be good too. Imagine if I could pay as a scrapper to get leads on scrapping spots or scrapping places.
Spencer: There you go. I like it. You got a big truck and all you’re doing is you know, you’re loading stuff
Jared: Right now you’re relying on correct me if i’m wrong It sounds like you put a lot of thought in this you’re relying on just driving by a pile of scrap But what if the scrap leads came to
Spencer: you? That’s even better.
That’s even better Um, you know, I do know that I mean a a big part of scrapping is cars right, um, although This has got to be a typo. I just noticed this up in the header. It says sell cats Oh So catalytic converters. I thought it was car. I thought it was cars as the whole. I’m embarrassed to say I know
Jared: that.
And no, it’s not for the reasons you think, but yeah, yeah, right. Uh huh.
Spencer: Um, and it’s
Jared: perceived that podcast isn’t paying the bills, Spencer. What can I say?
Spencer: A little side hustle that you haven’t told us about. Um, but cars are a big thing, right? So like I did basically have a junk car. Right. At one point in my life where I basically had the junkyard come and pick it up.
And, and they, they did come pick it up. I did a call with a guy on the phone and said, Hey, you want to scrap my car? And he said, sure, I’ll come pick it up. Right. So I’m, I assume there’s some sort of pickup service.
Jared: Yeah. That’s a whole, I mean, your car gets totaled. You can either have a, given to a junkyard, you can scrap it for parts, right?
Like that’s kind of what they refer to. Like you can sell off the individual parts and people buy. Old junk cars because they can quickly evaluate how much the parts scrapped, pulled off, and individually sold are worth versus the whole car itself at that
Spencer: point.
Jared: Yep, exactly.
Spencer: So I, I serious way of doing business to a, to a guy that then scrapped it out and probably probably
Jared: use this site then to figure out where to take the catalytic converter from your car.
Spencer: That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So, um, I, I just, I find it kind of a fascinating, cool, uh, website, you know, Hey, it’s kind of like, um, you know, checking the stock market. What’s the scrap prices for everything. I’ll go to the recent page and, uh, See if I, see if I got a money maker here on the side of the road.
Jared: That’s fun. I like that. I, I agree with you. Um, it’s a bit like, um, I don’t know the community at all, but just talking it out. You’re right. There is definitely like a community around scrapping scrap metal. And this is just, again, we’ve talked on and on and on about this on the podcast, like kind of keying in on I’ll even say like probably a somewhat passionate community, you know?
Spencer: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know how much money some of these guys are making, but yeah, if you’re really hustling, like why not make a name for yourself? You get all the leads, you get all the scrap.
Jared: Very good. All right. Well,
Spencer: all right. What do you got for
Jared: us, Jared? I have a weird one.
Uh, this was shared by a listener. Thank you very much. Um, the, uh, the site is called, uh, live dash oasis. com. Uh, it it’s, it’s, uh, it’s so much to talk about with this site. So I hope, I hope I don’t go on. It looks like we actually have a little bit of time here. We, we. Um, basically it’s, it’s, it’s centered around the idea of, do you know what’s in your water?
90 percent it says on the, above the fold here on the homepage, 90 percent of your water sources contain toxins, microplastic and other contaminants. And so you can basically search the, Ratings the toxicity report for, I believe, almost every brand of water company out there, you know, um, and they have it, I believe, listed in alphabetic order there, but they don’t have, or they actually, they call it the lowest rated bottled water.
Um, uh, and so you kind of, you know, search aquafina or, you know, whatever you want there. They also. Will rate the water that comes out of the tap in various municipalities, uh, Denver, Colorado, Lansing, Michigan, Honolulu, Hawaii, Minneapolis, Minnesota. So they have kind of two sides to their website and, uh, you know, so you can kind of get like the toxicity report for your favorite, uh, bottled water company and then for the locale that you live in.
Now, Spencer, as you’re already discovering, there is not a lot you can get from this website. Not without logging in of some kind. There’s a paywall, I mean, for everything, like nothing is unpaywalled. So I kind of had to make the decision, how much do I really want to talk about this site? So I went ahead and, uh, uh, entered my email address there.
You don’t have to sign up to pay. You just got to give them your email address. To see the results. So you think, no, you give them their email address. They email you a confirmation. You confirm, and then you still can’t see anything. That’s all right. Yeah. I actually put a screenshot in the, uh, in the, uh, in the agenda there.
I should’ve told you about that ahead of time, but, um, so it’s, It’s really, uh, I would say that this website is long on prospect, brilliant in many ways when you think about, you know, I have never really spent much time researching the water sources I drink and I would, I would be fascinated to spend 10, 15 minutes diving into that.
And it’s long on these ideas and very short on the, uh, on the, uh, implementation of them, not great yet on the implementation. What you can do when you get through all that is upgrade your health by spending 5 a month to have access to all this stuff. Now, Spencer, to me, this doesn’t seem like something I’m going to be researching on an ongoing basis.
It feels like something I’m going to do once. Right. I’m gonna be like, how’s my water in San Diego? Cool. It’s bad. All right. I got to put a water filter in or, you know, right. Get my question, solve my problem, move on. Like I’m not a water snob. I’m not really interested in learning ongoing. Awkwafina. How bad is it?
It’s bad. Okay. Should I switch to Fuji? Okay. Or, you know, what Fiji, whatever it is. Right. And so I just feel like their business model of charging you on a monthly subscription basis for information. I kind of expected to already get for free is probably not converting too well yet.
Spencer: Yeah, I tend to agree.
I’m trying to think of who’s going to pay 5 a month to know that Agua Vida has this many microplastics, fluoride, pH, et cetera. Who who’s going to pay for that.
Jared: So this is one of those things where, and we see it a lot in life and we probably all made this mistake where we kind of have what they call product market fit misalignment.
And maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think the product market fit here is dialed in. Let’s talk about the website itself. Let’s talk about like, you know, some of the other things we like to talk about. Right. Cause I do think this part’s pretty interesting. So this is, um, this is, uh, uh, uh, from what I can tell, this site’s a month old.
So in ICANN, it was registered in March of 2024. Okay. Brand new. Yeah. Now, uh, it’s, it’s a DR 0. 9, but it’s growing fast. It already ranks for several hundred keywords. Which is great. What is, what is Google ranking? Like paywalled content? I don’t get it. But they’re ranking all these direct queries that people have.
And so it’s super interesting that after a month, it’s, it’s got a lot of keywords. It does. So I had to immediately say like, okay, what’s going on? So I had to pull this into archive. org to see, are they working off of a, like an age domain here? I mean, it’s a DR 0. 9. So whatever it is, doesn’t isn’t much.
And, uh, yeah, I mean, not that it’s having any impact, but this domain does have a previous history. It’s been around in fits and starts since 2004. Uh, and it wasn’t even an English site back then. If you look at some of that stuff from, yeah, from back in 04 and 05, uh, it came back online in 07 and 08 had a little brief stint back online, 2010 and 11.
Uh, we had a little bit in the mid 2010s and then we have this site launching again.
Spencer: Looks Japanese or something like that. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Interesting.
Jared: So, um, you know, I think overall, like, interesting site. It’s paywalling basically everything. It’s coming out of the gates ranking like crazy. It’s got this long history.
Not. Robust, but it’s got all sorts of different uses over time, but a weird niche, what a weird site. What a weird project.
Spencer: I agree. It is a little bit weird. And I have to wonder, like, are they pulling in a lot of this data just automatically from somewhere? Like, did they really go through and Do this massive study or something to get all of this data or is, is there just some big resource that already has this and they’re just programmatically kind of populating all this stuff?
Jared: Yeah. You know, they’re about pages. Um, uh, pretty light suffice to say, doesn’t really say, doesn’t really tell you much. Um, uh, the, uh, the FAQs, there is a section for you. I did notice this. If you click FAQ in the bottom, does it address your exact question? Where do you get your data from? For those of you not watching on the screen, it says, Uh, don’t worry, it won’t take me long to say it.
We get our data from science backed research papers, official water testing reports, non profit research centers like EWG, and from leading scientific experts.
Spencer: Sounds really, really official there.
Jared: Very
Spencer: vague. Yes.
Jared: It’s all the things Google does not want us to do anymore.
Spencer: And they do use affiliate links to fund this project.
Jared: So, Aquafina is terrible, don’t buy it, but if you want to, here’s our affiliate link. Is that kind of what you’re saying? Yeah, might as well.
Spencer: Yeah. Might as well click here. So, interesting. Okay. Alright. Um, it’s interesting that a listener suggested this to you. I asked them, is there a site, because I’m like, I don’t want to be, and they said no.
They
Jared: said ha ha,
Spencer: no. Okay. That, That was my question. I figured that’s right. You’re
Jared: going with that.
Spencer: They really just come across this in the wild. I mean, it’s brand new. They must have randomly searched one of these key phrases or something. Well,
Jared: they are ranking. I mean, I don’t know why yet.
Spencer: Mm-Hmm.
Jared: you, you would not back to Sundar pinchy, uh, line, you would not get the answer you’re looking for if you came to this site.
Spencer: No, it, and yeah, all you get is pictures of water bottles and really no information. Um, interesting. This would be a cool one to follow up with. Yeah. In like six months or a year to see what’s really happening with this website.
Jared: I mean, again, flipping the model on its head a bit. You know, what if instead of doing this, you could use that data and surface it.
So instead of, uh, because clearly like either they’re in a very untapped niche or, um, uh, you know, there, there’s not very much competition or something. There’s not very many good answers here, but like they’re already ranking out of the gates for a lot of keywords. So what about providing that information and then finding ways down the road?
Once you kind of understand the user journey that people are on to monetize, Rather than getting everything, you know, like it’s almost like this is almost in many ways. And again, I don’t want to be too presumptuous, but it’s almost like the anti approach, like, you know, but, but good idea in an industry or a niche that’s clearly has tons of opportunity.
So, um, so I almost wonder what the site could be if they just changed the model a bit.
Spencer: Yeah, I agree. I think giving away the information for free is probably the way to go. And then, um, you’ve got your couple of top recommended water filters or top couple of recommended, you know, water companies, delivery companies,
Jared: installation companies, you could localize this out directories, like, Hey, here’s the number one in your locale to install this water filter.
That’s going to give you the best water ever. I mean, um, there’s so many angles. Uh, I think, you know, I think that, but I feel like every time I’m landing on anything, this page is going to rank for it because I want to know if my water is good and if it’s not, I want to solve it. So don’t charge me for that.
Charge me for the
Spencer: solution. Exactly. And so, yeah, it does make you wonder how long they’ll be ranking in Google with limited information. You know, if people go and get no information, they just bounce back. And I don’t think Google likes that. So
Jared: we know they don’t like
Spencer: it now. Well, uh, yeah, we’ll have to put, um, a note or something of like, okay, in six months, let’s take a look at this.
Jared: Well, you and I are both so organized. I’m sure that’ll happen naturally.
Spencer: Yeah. Yeah. Better add that to the notes now and just not touch it for a year. Yeah. Um, all right, well, very good. Whether or not we ever talk about this website again or not, I cannot guarantee, but hopefully you enjoyed this weird niche site.
My weird niche site. And of course, everything else that we talked about here, uh, on the news episode, um, if you want to continue following along with niche pursuits, you can of course, subscribe if you’re on YouTube or if you’re in iTunes or Apple or Spotify, go ahead and hit subscribe, we’d love a rating or review there as well.
But that’s all we got for you today. Thank you everybody for listening to the niche pursuits podcast. Have a great weekend, everyone. We’ll see you next week.
