Google Hates Us

Why that might NOT matter for YOUR Brand

The Creator Income Collective

(Membership Community)

Did you know that I have a low-cost membership community? The goal is to foster connections in a warm and chill atmosphere. I also share creator monetization conversations in that community as well as a resource called “Subscribed” where members share their newsletters/email list and you can reach to see if you can collaborate with them if you’re a good fit for the work that they’re doing and the community that they serve.

Doors will re-open at the end of Summer. Details coming soon.

And, if you didn’t get a chance to read last week’s newsletter-I talked about sharing opportunities with the people in your life. They might not know about them.

An Acknowledgement

Before I get into the heart of today’s conversation, I would like to acknowledge that things change. That’s the natural course of things. But, the change that I’m going to talk about today impacts every single one of us in different ways depending on how we use the following tool:

GOOGLE

For several years now things have been a little different in GoogleLand (I made a new word) For Creator Entrepreneurs it has become increasingly obvious that Google was starting to break up with us and just wasn’t that into what we were doing. What actions gave this shift in sentiment away?

• The constant Google Core updates that left businesses broken and often times unable to recover lost traffic and referrals-losing income that enabled many people to work and live outside of a regular 9-5 (or able to earn extra money in addition to having a 9-5)

• The AI results that showed “Meh” results and information.

• The slow but steady drop in traffic to our our websites

Affiliate Disclosure

“In order for me to support this newsletter, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog. Please note: As an Amazon Associate I may earn income from qualifying purchases that you may make if you interact with an Amazon Affiliate link associated with Creators Getting Paid”

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Last Week

Google announced that what it has been working towards would go “live” on May 26th, 2026. An AI driven experience that would scrape the web in order to find the best answers and context to user requests. One thing that frustrated people was Google acknowledging that it was DE-PRIORITIZING attribution. Basically, they weren’t going to share backlinks to the work that people are publishing. Work and and content that Google plans on scraping in order to answer the questions that people are asking. I was pretty f#cking pissed when I saw this.

The Recent Google User Experience

I went from buying pissed to thinking about what it has been like to use Google in recent years. What I landed on…

Not Great.

The Google User Experience has shifted in some profound ways that have already influenced me to market my content differently for many years now. I realized that even though I was hoping to get traffic from Google that I’d already shifted how I marketed the posts, podcasts and other pieces that I produce and share with the world.

Here’s why…

• Google Search result quality has become increasingly inconsistent in a bad way.

• I hate having AI forced on me vs. being able to Opt In. I have an Android device and Gemini has made it difficult to use my phone! It opens randomly, there’s now ads on my phone and when I tried to opt-out, I couldn’t.

• GMAIL has become an endless marketing play. I hate receiving all of the marketing content that I’m getting in my promotions tab. Many of these things coming from businesses I’ve never heard of.

• When I search for topics such as “Podcast episodes discussing affiliate income” no results come up. How is that even possible? Shouldn’t the AI be smart enough to understand the context of that straightforward question and share a large number of results?

Who Is Google’s Real Client

(It’s Not You)

I have a sneaking suspicion that we “The People” aren’t Google’s real clients. If you run a Bricks and Mortar business, are a Creator Entrepreneur writing helpful posts for your community and the people you serve-those efforts matter but not to Google in the way that you’re hoping for for YOUR business.

• Creators

• Bricks and Mortar Businesses

• Venues

• Personalities

• Religious Spaces

• Organizations

• Mission focused communities

• A daily user of Google

You’re no longer going to be served well by Google because it doesn’t seem like we’re the company’s primary clientele. If you feel like our needs aren’t being met and we’re an afterthought, this is probably because we are.

Maybe We Already Knew This

(Growing My Brand)

After cooling off I looked at my data and I came away with the following interesting insight into my business and brand.

I’d already shifted away from a Google First marketing approach.

And I’d made this shift many years ago. People are finding me and my work in the following ways:

• Word of mouth

• Podcast interviews

• Threads

• Unique community experiences

• Livestreams

• Collaborations

• Newsletters

• Pinterest

• My City Cast Denver guest hosting gig

My personal brands have never grown to the large organic reach numbers people dream of getting from Google search.

Lessons Learned

I think these lessons are important to reflect on as we focus on protecting and growing our reach.

• There’s more than one Search Engine out there and they come in many different forms. Here are a few listed below.

  • YouTube

  • Pinterest

  • Threads

  • DuckDuckGo

  • Firefox

• Focus on growing your list with the people you would like to serve. This is a daily action.

• Backlink your content through your brand eco-system. Did you write a post? Talk about it in your podcast. Don’t have a podcast but have a YouTube channel? Share a link there. Active on Threads? Share a link there. You get the picture.

• Collaborations are everything!

• The traditional rules of business still matter and have never gone away during the digital age.

  • Rule #1-Always be marketing

  • Rule #2-It’s who you know

  • Rule #3-Build your list

  • Rule #4-Word of mouth matters

  • Rule #5-Repeat customers are the best-converting someone to becoming a customer the first time is really hard.

Timing is Everything

(Google May have F#cked Up)

I actually think that the timing of this change may be bad for Google (for awhile). The sentiment around AI adoption has definitely soured.

Here are some questions that I have for Google and other folks who have been watching and thinking about the impact of AI on both creative and traditional work/businesses.

Question #1-Have people become decentivized to create content their websites? Will this kill website content or will people put part of it behind a wall to discourage Google and other AI models from scrapping content without attribution?

Question #2-Will this signal an even faster shift to YouTube or production of video content because YouTube as a search engine is still useful and working for a large number of creators on that platform.

Observation #1-I actually think that the majority of Creator Entrepreneurs are growing their brands off of Google or that Google brings most folks a fraction of the traffic that they’re hoping for so they’ve shifted to focusing on growth levers from other platforms and taking different types of marketing approaches in addition to SEO.

Observation #2-Claude AI shares backlinks and attribution-I’m not sure why Google is actively opting to de-prioritize doing this.

Thought #1-How do you gain back TRUST? How does Google regain the trust that it has steadily been losing from the people who helped grow the platform?

Share Your Thoughts

Are you making changes to how you market or changing how you approach using Google as a marketing tool for your work? Have you noticed changes or are things feeling like before? I’m nosey, what are you thinking?

Have a beautiful week,

Michelle