The future of search. Google in 2025, AI and SEO. [VIDEO]

Dear Marketeers,

Firstly, I hope you’ve had a wonderful time with your families over the holidays. 🎄

With the festive season behind us, my schedule is back on track, and I’m excited to kick things off with Franc Talking’s first video discussion. The next edition of Franc Talking is scheduled for January 12th.

Having worked in digital marketing for over 20 years, I was fortunate to start my SEO journey with Jon Earnshaw, my mentor from 2006 to 2013. Jon, now Chief Product Evangelist at Pi-Datametrics, taught me invaluable lessons about SEO, presenting to large audiences, and navigating complex issues, both in a professional and personal capacity.

In our discussion on The Future of Search, we explored key topics, including:

• Google in 2025; what will it look like?

• The importance of Brand and Product in SEO

• The introduction of AI Overviews in search results

• The rise of ChatGPT and Google sleeping at the wheel

• How user behaviour is shifting away from traditional search

• Is producing content via generative AI a good idea or not?

• Can you be responsible with AI but also future facing?

• How can you integrate SEO within a business?

• How important is UX for SEO in 2025?

• What tips are there for anyone starting out in SEO in 2025?

• Will Apple ever create a search engine or is that dead in the water these days?

• How important is TikTok in search?

• How do you approach Google Core Updates?

Take a look for yourself.

You can read the transcript below too. 👇

We spoke in the discussion about some resources, which you can find below:

• https://www.seroundtable.com/

• https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/

• https://www.growth-memo.com/

• https://www.searchenginejournal.com/

• https://www.thefxck.com/

• https://pi-datametrics.com/

• https://similarweb.com/

• https://www.lumar.io/

• https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/

Discussion with Jon Earnshaw on The Future of Search

This transcript was generated using Fireflies.ai and may contain some misspellings.

Andy Francos
Right, okay. So hello to everyone. This is episode nine of Franc Talking. And I'm delighted to be joined today by Jon Earnshaw, who is the chief product evangelist at Pi-Datametrics, a renowned speaker at Brighton SEO and also a longtime friend of mine who gave me my first job in SEO back in 2006. And yeah, I'm delighted to have Jon here today. So thanks for being able to make the time today, Jon. 

Jon Earnshaw
Andy, thank you so much for inviting me on. It's a real pleasure. Like as you've said, we've known each other for so many years and our paths have crossed so many times over probably what, the past 20 years, I would say. I'm just trying to think how old my son Charlie is. Because you were his very first babysitter. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, I remember very well. Yeah. And a little more greyer than when we first met these days.

Jon Earnshaw
More handsome. 

Andy Francos
I appreciate that. Thanks. But yeah, just to kick off what we've got today is a great run through in terms of the future of search, Jon and I. Jon, much longer than me, has been involved in the search landscape and looking to better brands in terms of their organic visibility for many years. And we've seen multiple changes in Google which we're going to chat through today and how to approach search engine optimisation organic performance. But yeah, what I thought we'd kick off with is to look at the landscape where we are right now and really to start with AI and how Google has changed and shifted its approach from obviously ChatGPTs like mass popularity from 20, from Q4 of 2022 onwards.  

Andy Francos
Yeah. So what we'll do, I think Jon, is we'll kick off to start looking at AI Google. And if we zone in on a quote that Sundar Pichai, Alphabet's CEO, said at the Dealbook Summit with the New York Times with Andrew Ross Sorkin, he said search itself will continue to change profoundly in 2025. How. What did you take from that with, with Sundar? 

Jon Earnshaw
I loved it and I absolutely agree. And we've seen this coming for several years now. And this really is going to be the inflection point, the tipping point. Call it what you will. Prabhakar Raghavan, who's very senior at Google, said, I think around 18 months ago, Andy, he said something along the lines of search is no longer question and answer. Search is a journey of exploration and discovery. And Google's had so much capability for so many years that we haven't seen Rank brain came out. Google's been using AI for many years. But it's only. We started to see this manifesting in a form of the AI overview, I think we're only seeing the tipping point. 

Jon Earnshaw
By the time we get to the end of 2025, search is going to be different, search technology is going to be different and the entire experience is going to be different, which means SEO is going to have to be different. 

Andy Francos
And how would you foresee how? Like, if you've got SEO managers listening to this, how would should they adapt or evolve to the changing landscape that you see, you've got. 

Jon Earnshaw
To understand and immerse yourself in this landscape. If you're looking at Google today and for example, trying to get onto page one for something or multiple terms, if you're relying on the same things that you were doing 18, 24 months ago, that's simply not going to work. The reason why it's not going to work is because the SERP is fundamentally different. What we're seeing in the SERP is different. What it takes to get into the SERP is different. And the old school techniques, many of those that are still applicable, we've simply got to do more than that. It's simply not working. What was working 12 months ago? 

Andy Francos
Okay. And in terms of the kind of transition from the old school, like you say, so you got what people would look at would be link building, you'd be looking at page title optimisation, like these kind of things that maybe 15 years ago would have been extremely important. But we've seen obviously the importance of brand in terms of brand searches and how you can build out your authority this way. So again, it's been embedded with other teams around the business to look at above the line. So if you're doing TV and to really look at the product as well. So how can you make a superior product that is going to make a difference that people want? That's very easy just to say. And also from an SEO side of things, how can I influence that? 

Andy Francos
But how important is product and brand in the world of an SEO today. 

Jon Earnshaw
Product and brand is still hugely important. And let's think about that. It's not just the brand and the product that's important, but more these days, Andy, it's what people are saying about your product and your brand. And let's talk about social media, for example. What are people saying? Because let's remember that Google is not only analysing the signals it sees on your site, but it's very much analyzing what people are saying. It's analysing what people are saying about the people who are writing the content on your website. So SEO used to be siloed. It needs to break out of its swim lane. You talked about those other areas within the business. It's absolutely essential that SEO is connected, that business becomes interconnected, because nothing works in isolation anymore. 

Andy Francos
No, I totally agree. And that's only from my experience as well, is that if you are operating in a vacuum on your silos, you're not going to get anywhere near the traction you need. So I do think maybe more from the digital side needs a seat at the table at like at the business to make sure that you are influencing other areas that wouldn't be historically seen as like a direct impact on SEO performance. Okay, no, all good. And let's talk about AI overviews as well. So just a bit of histories for people that might be new to SEO and want to just get a bit more of insight. So they were rolled out in Q1 of 2024 is that right? 

Jon Earnshaw
Yeah, yeah. Pretty much in the form of search generative experience, of course. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, yeah. And what is there any kind of engagement figures that you see from the work you do with obviously with high data metrics and anything like that in terms of how users are interacting with the component. 

Jon Earnshaw
You're opening a whole can of worms here. I mean, personally, Andy, I love the AI overview. It's missing some of the magic that the SGE had But let me put this into context. I had a meeting with one of my biggest clients middle of last year, and were talking about the AI overview and the impact that this is having on particularly information search, I. E. You know, 70 to 80% of the time now we're seeing an AI overview. And I asked one of the. One of the people in the room, what do you guys think of the AI overview? And one of them put their hand up, said, you know, I actually love it. And I said, why? She said, I didn't used to, but I love it now. I said, why do you love it? She said, because I trust it. 

Jon Earnshaw
And that's what we're seeing. We're seeing this shift away from people criticising it. We're seeing this shift away from it. Returning information such as you can glue cheese onto pizza into Andy, something that's actually really very useful and providing a lot of insight. And I'm getting very positive sentiment along with some big questions. How do we get in there? That's obviously first and foremost on everyone's mind right now. 

Andy Francos
Definitely. And I know you've done a talk at Brighton SEO regarding how brands can be featured in there or be referenced. What tips would you give to someone that I guess, A, wants to be able to be visible there, but B, how can they track performance as well? 

Jon Earnshaw
Yeah, tracking performance is a little difficult. Obviously that's something that we're doing at PI, but outside of that, I would say take the search terms that you want to own, take the conversations that you want to own, start to think and forget about those trophy terms and really look at that landscape. To what extent is the AI overview appearing for the terms and the conversations that you want to earn? Who's in there right now? Okay. And an example I talked about at Brighton SEO was Forbes, and I was doing a lot of analysis around the area of Bitcoin. Obviously you've got a background in. In finance, so you know how tough it is to get onto page one. So what were doing was looking at the extent to which Forbes were either appearing or not appearing. 

Jon Earnshaw
And one thing that we discovered was as soon as they had more than one piece of real estate on page one, organic, regular, classic. Forget the I overview. They started to appear and they were occupying almost 50% of that AI overview by having a classic link and an image, or a classic link and a video, or a classic link and answer card. The answer card alone is a massive signal that your content is aligning with the intent of the audience. So it's about Looking at the landscape, asking, do I belong? It's about those things that you mentioned, Andy, like titles, links. All of that is still absolutely critical. But where you see the conversation happening with the AI overview, you need to look at the nature of the content that's in there and ask, why is that content? What am I not doing? 

Jon Earnshaw
But first of all, you have to get onto page one. You have to get onto page one and open multiple doorways. 

Andy Francos
That's useful as well for people wanting to look at their strategy and to evolve it. And like you say, the work you're doing at PI helps you to track performance in terms of that visibility. And I guess with Google Search Console, they don't have anything yet that could differentiate between whether you appear in like classic 10 blue links versus AI overviews, which I guess there was a few years ago, there was a debate on featured snippets and getting specific queries for that. But I guess if you overlay PI and Google Search Console, you be able to see the visibility and the clicks increase, for example, or decrease. 

Jon Earnshaw
Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing, you know, let's go back only a couple of years. Everyone was obsessed with the zero click SERP. Well, I can tell you what that is. You know, zero click SERP was never a thing. That was a misinterpretation. But we are fast moving to a SERP that is going to become very conversational. I say it here now and it's going to become conversational. Those blue links are going to fade into the background. They're still going to be there. But when Google reintroduces those conversational tokens that it had with SGE into the AI overview, you know what's going to happen? We're going to move from vertical scrolling into horizontal conversations. That's going to be the biggest shift. And I think that's what Sundar was leaning towards in that quote that you mentioned at the start. 

Andy Francos
Okay, so an example with that is if I was looking for, I don't know, not that I bake much, but if I was looking for cookies and cream, like cheesecake, I was gonna pull together, how would that evolve that? I'd put that as a recipe, as kind of more your standard classical syrup, then I would be in the world where I'm immersed within all of these things, where I could look at video imagery. But then it's more of that conversation whereby it could be, how many people is it for? Is it for a special occasion? And then all of a Sudden the answers would be customised based upon the interaction. 

Jon Earnshaw
We are very much Andy, moving towards a personalised SERP. Not, not personalised based upon the actual SERP itself, but personalised based upon your inputs. We know that people are moving away from keywords. We know that people are moving away from trophy terms. We're seeing a huge increase in the number of searches that have five plus keywords. I mean the search engines are pushing us for this. Whether it's Google, whether it's perplexity, whether it's search GPT, they're all saying come on guys, stop clinging on to trophy terms like best cheesecake. You know, start to think about, you know, autocomplete. I talk about autocomplete, you know, I love it, I, I love it, you know, autocomplete not suggestions but predictions. And those autocomplete when you click on those you get a very different SERP. But 80% of those autocompletes are now taking you into a conversation. 

Jon Earnshaw
And when Google brings back those conversational tokens, which it will do, then we're in for a very different landscape. And that means that necessitates understanding, looking closely, not just optimising and hoping for the best, but looking closely, optimising and looking again. 

Andy Francos
So like this could take us into in terms of the evolution and how Google has innovated over the years. Right. So that is a tech piece of tech that was rolled out in 2010. Was it with Marissa Mayer? Was, I think I might be able to check on that. But so that's 14 years ago and it's still essential and people still you and you see it obviously on TikTok, you'll see it on other social medias in terms of trying to predict what somebody's going to say. But do you think Google. 

Andy Francos
So I guess with the rise of chat GPT, especially in Q4 of 2022, like given the investment and how market leading Google Alphabet have been with DeepMind, the investments they've made in terms of AI, like you said with Rank brain but do you think they were caught by surprise by how ChatGPT accelerated so quickly and became a consumer facing product and then you had a lot of bad PR with Google rolling out like you said, the glue on the pizza. Excuse me. And some images that weren't exactly accurate. Do you think they were caught by surprise given how dominant they are within the space? 

Jon Earnshaw
Yeah, I think they were massively hugely Caught by surprise because Google was obviously working at the time on its own version of this conversational search experience. And then when ChatGPT launched, it was actually forced very quickly to play its hand in the form of Bard. So it wasn't ready. And the problem is with Google, everybody is very quick to criticise when the results aren't right. With ChatGPT, it doesn't matter. Some of it's good, some of it's not very good if your prompting is not on point. But nobody cared about that. But everybody cared. And Google stock price plummeted when it talked about some event in space and mentioned the wrong space telescope. So Google, you know, has its hands tied to a certain extent. It needs to do this very carefully. But I'll come back to autocomplete. Again. 

Jon Earnshaw
Google does not want using those trophy terms, okay? They're very expensive. So Google does want the money, but it doesn't want using them. You know how many people use autocomplete? The amount of time saved every day adds up to 200 years of typing. So Google's saying nobody wants the trophy terms. Everybody wants these longer terms. And Google wants us to actually use longer queries and conversations. But it has been hamstrung with its infrastructure. Gemini is starting to look very good, but the majority of people haven't heard it. But the future of search is not question and answer. It is not blue links, that's for sure. 

Andy Francos
So historically Google's had a 90 market share obviously with the likes of Bing, Yahoo, it's absolutely nowhere near but can you see that night 20% over the next couple to the likes of Chat GPT or Claude. But also I guess it's more important that it's the evolution of search and information discovery. So I use Chat GPT every day but not in the, I would have used Google when I was doing research or when I was trying to check up on something. So it, I think it does come down. So this is more from a macro perspective rather than search technology. It is how you can attract the attention of someone. 

Andy Francos
And if I'm like well, I actually prefer the interactions with ChatGPT rather than what I'm getting in Google's kind of the more classic SERP that we've got. I think you use the two kind of in conjunction with each other. But it does mean that I'm spending less time on Google. 

Jon Earnshaw
I agree with you. I absolutely agree and I do spend a lot less time on Google. In fact on my desktop setup I will have Google there. But I have perplexity. Perplexity is making big inroads and is actually now starting to try and reach ground level students at universities across the world by encouraging them to become ambassadors. For example, there's Claude and if we take these, you know I, you will call on a different surface depending on what we need. And you know what, I think it's less like, it's less about will people still keep using Google, will people use Gemini, Will people use ChatGPT search GPT? Perplexity? People will use what resonates with them. 

Jon Earnshaw
I will go where I can have the best conversation and right now that conversation is probably going to be Perplexity or for a different task I'll build a GPT. So Google I'm probably using 50% and you know what people say, oh but Jon, yeah you're always exploring technology and looking for the latest thing. I will use what gives me the best result and very often that is. 

Andy Francos
One of the big things that I always see on like LinkedIn which does, it does frustrate me when you see a very quick win shortcut way to mass produce content using AI. Right now I use AI for editing. I also use it for ideation and it really does help. But I would not ever right now mass produce content around a particular subject. So for two reasons. Right. So let's take the SEO one and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that that how Google would be able to determine the quality of this. When I say Quality that can be broad, could be many things, but how authentic is it and how useful is it in answering a particular query? So we've got all of this, but also it's about personality as well. 

Andy Francos
So an example I was thinking of was obviously we've had many football chats over the years. Being that I'm a massive football fan and you've always humoured me over the years with things. Right. But if I was going to ask if I wanted to get an opinion of somebody that had watched Lionel Messi play football and he talks, he or she talks about how he could dribble past certain players this goal he scores against Man United in the Champions league final in 2011. I could get all of that from Chat GPT, but it isn't an authentic voice on somebody that has experienced something. Now that's a particular maybe art rather than a functional. But how important is that to know who's written this and like their experiences in crafting this particular narrative? 

Jon Earnshaw
I would. It's hugely important. And you touched on so many interesting areas there, Andy. 

Andy Francos
Yeah. 

Jon Earnshaw
Number one, Google recognised that people want to hear what other people are saying. So let's go back to March. I think it was March 2024 when Google rolled out the spam update, which had three tiers to it. There was expired domain abuse, there was scaled content abuse. That's what we're talking about here. And there's site reputation abuse and that's a whole other area. But scaled content was targeted at people who, thinking, oh wow, I can become a topical authority on football, on Lionel Messi, on goal scoring, by getting ChatGPT to write it all. And that could be very good. But you know what, if I'm reading this, I want to know who's written it? Are they an expert? Are they experienced? Have they written other stuff like that? I want to hear what real people, first person experience have to say. 

Jon Earnshaw
I think that's right. Google thinks that's right. And a lot of people who are churning out, I call it mass produced vanilla AI content at scale are seeing zero results. In fact they are losing their organic visibility. Off the back of that. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, yeah, I 100% agree. And I there is this because again, we are in the infancy with this, right, that somebody could argue, well, why, if I'm getting this an expert view from like ChatGPT, why, what does that make a difference? But surely, I mean this goes to more philosophical argument, but surely that matters that somebody else has experienced that particular event rather than like an LLM producing a, an output. 

Jon Earnshaw
I think it comes down to confidence and trust, Andy. Okay. It's incredible technology. It blows my mind every time that I use one of those LLMs, but I don't think it's there in terms of producing something that we can generally 100% trust and identify. Well, who was it that said that? Because when I'm reading something about the amazing goal scoring prowess and I used to ask you about these sorts of questions, I want to know, you know, the truth behind that. Who actually said that? Is that real or is that just hearsay? Perplexity is actually very good at this because when you do a search and you can ask something very complex, you get amazing citations and pointers to where the information came from. And what we're seeing AI do there is gist and bring together very good information. 

Jon Earnshaw
But the information has to be good to begin with before the AI turns that into something that's consumable. 

Andy Francos
So the last point I just wanted to raise with AI because we've got a lot more to cover is just how people approach it because like you and me have been just there. Look, we're not going to do everything with AI but then you'll get people. And again, I don't know, maybe it's just the how can I save money? Can I cut costs? How can I do it quicker, like do this. But how can you not be perceived as like a skeptic of AI but you still embrace it. Like were saying, you and I use it every day we use it and we're amazed by the video that you can produce with it in terms of, you know, like there's so much that and we are in the infancy. 

Andy Francos
But how do you be kind of more responsible about AI but also not look like you're not forward facing with it? 

Jon Earnshaw
Yeah, yeah, that's such a great question. And yeah, and let's get this out there. Google's got nothing against people using generative AI to help build content. As long as you say this is what I'm doing and this is why I'm doing it. And you're very capable of getting position one on page one if you take that approach. But it's understanding how to use it. For example, I would first deploy ChatGPT to break down sections. I would then use Claude to actually overlay that and then turn it into something that's human, readable, one chunk at a time. And then, you know what I do? I'd get an expert in the same way that Healthline do. Their content's written by experts, but then it gets reviewed by somebody on top. So here we can apply that double E layer. 

Jon Earnshaw
Get an expert in to actually read this, to verify it, to make sure those citations are appropriate, and then you're on your way to a good start. What you don't want to be doing is pushing out vanilla content without curation or without those essential checks and balances. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, 100%. Great stuff, Jon. That's extremely interesting. On AI integration with Google SERPs and the evolving like customer landscape, in terms of how people are embracing and finding new information via search, in terms of going back to actionable things that kind of the readers can take on. Like what. What would you say makes a best in class, like SEO strategy? That's very broad. But if you were looking and saying there are three things that you need to do and this is not necessarily relevant for the AI discussion, but just what do you need to do in a business, like in terms of the team, in terms of how you communicate with stakeholders and kind of your approach to search, what would you give them as tips? 

Jon Earnshaw
That's such a huge question. I mean, it's massive and I totally get it. It's the question everybody's got on their minds. But as far as I'm concerned, it's number one, recognising that SEO is not a siloed function. SEO and the data within that search landscape is absolutely essential. That data deserves a seat at the board table. That data deserves to be used by pr, by paid search, by social media. There are huge gaps appearing in the search landscape. The answer to how we plug those gaps is all with data. But I'd say for me, fundamentally, it's really understanding what my audience are actually looking for. Where are they looking for it, what are they expecting to see? And then it's taking a look at those landscapes. So it's understanding their journey both from the top of the funnel all the way down. 

Jon Earnshaw
But for me, it's understanding what are they searching for, how are they doing that what does the landscape look like, what makes them click and how can I get my content into that landscape? And it's more than just thinking about what people are searching for on desktop or mobile. But you mentioned were chatting before like TikTok and we'll probably talk about that later, but different people are looking for the same thing in a myriad of different ways through myriads of different services. Insta TikTok people will search on Facebook, etc. So we have to really understand now this is not a one horse race with Google, this is a multi horse race. 

Andy Francos
So again, for those people that maybe aren't too familiar with SEO and they think it's just about keywords, right? And we've had that for years. You know, like what keywords should I use on this page? And like we've talked about, it's a very holistic 360 view that you need across the business. But in terms of working with like a UX designer, how important is UX and SEO in today's kind of landscape? 

Jon Earnshaw
UX is really important. It's, you know, you can have the most amazing content in the world, you can spend millions on your website, but if your UX sucks, then Google's going to understand that, your audience is going to understand that and you are definitely not going to perform really well. It's absolutely critical. And for years it was always believed that you could do whatever you wanted from a UX perspective and somehow bolt SEO onto the top of that, somehow hit that magic SEO button. But UX is critical. I mean, you know, Google launched, you know, or Google started to measure core web vitals, you know, many years ago. Loading, interactivity, visual stability. I'm still stunned these days that I can use websites on my mobile that are visually unstable and that's a bad UX experience. 

Jon Earnshaw
So looking to see what people think of your site, where are they clicking, where are they falling off, what's working, what's not working? You know, think of your website and your content as a living breathing mechanism. It's an ecosystem of which UX is a vital part. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, 100%. And I found that personal experience over the last five, 10 years, especially that if you are looking at having a go to market strategy with a new product or if you are revamping the website that like, or an app like you have to be involved right at the start. And to really talk about like discoverability of key content like this, it's essential. There's no point in having an amazingly written piece by an expert with video, with everything that's 10 clicks deep in the site that can't be found. Like that's the key point. If this is important for a user, why have you buried it 10 clicks deep? So again, I think working with UX from my side is essential and I think that's definitely something readers can take away from that. 

Andy Francos
That if you are in SEO and you're kind of working in silo, you have to be at the table with product and working with the UX designer. Okay, so if somebody was starting a career in SEO and again obviously very different from when I joined you, how should they, like what should the first kind of year look like for somebody wanting to start a career in SEO. 

Jon Earnshaw
Other than pay close attention to your webinars and your videos? Okay, some of the stuff that you and I used to do and used to talk a lot about is still so relevant. You know, page theming titles, internal linking, all of that. Then we've got these layers of algorithmic signals, double E quality, helpful content review. There seems to be so much of this, but there is a huge community out there. There are people like you who are spreading knowledge. And I think if I was just starting today, I would roll my sleeves up, learn the basics, learn the fundamentals, look at the history of Google and its algorithms, understand why those algorithms were rolled out. For example, those core Updates. What's the purpose of those? What does Google want the SERP to look like? 

Jon Earnshaw
And how can I shape my content, my user experience, my ecosystem that is best suited for my audience first and search engine second. So you know, tuning into, you know and there are so many great podcasts and webinars and SEO experts out there. But I would start to say follow those and maybe you'll put a link in the below or whatever. But you know, following people like you, who've been doing this for years, Andy, that have got real expertise, know what works and what doesn't work because in SEO there is a lot or there are a lot of myths and stuff people talk about that simply doesn't work. And there are people out there who do spout a lot of nonsense. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, I mean I definitely agree that it is essential to surround yourself with I think people that have had a lot of experience. Obviously if you don't have expense that's totally. You have to get there somewhere. But I think it's just to make sure that you're looking at case studies and what certain people have achieved that you can then kind of absorb. Right. And I think it's, I always think it's essential to talk about mistakes that you've made as well because if you don't, you're never going to learn or develop. And I've known over times how I've had to evolve when something hasn't worked out as you do but you kind of dust yourself down and you move on again. 

Andy Francos
And there are like a great example, I mean I can talk about the Cazoo stuff that I did that was probably the best kind of results that I'd ever achieved and, but it's not all smooth sailing. You get a lot of arguments internally. You like we. I guess the one thing I would maybe say is what if somebody's starting, especially if they go to a startup like Kazoo was a very well funded startup that had a lot of like media spend obviously in terms of that could push the brand sponsored literally every sport on in the uk. So brand awareness was really huge and it was in a time obviously with COVID lockdowns that people were obviously turning to ecom to buy online. 

Andy Francos
But like I said, I think it is to make sure that you do surround yourself talking to people that have had those experience and those ups and downs and that you're constantly trying to learn and push yourself. I always found it's about the curiosity. 

Jon Earnshaw
As well, yeah, I was gonna say, Andy, you used to ask so many questions. 

Andy Francos
Here he comes again. Yeah, yeah. 

Jon Earnshaw
But then, you know, very rapidly you built this incredible knowledge set. I remember you teaching me for example, about canonicalisation when it just when the canonical tag was invented. I remember you standing at the front of the room sketching this out on the board and I was thinking, God, that's amazing knowledge. We used to share knowledge in those days and you can't know it all at the start. So you can look at a page, optimize that. And if you haven't got any understanding, for example of double 8 and quality signals, then with all the will in the world, it's not going to work without all of those ingredients. So ask, ask, learn. 

Andy Francos
I think that's great advice, Jon. And I think as well, I would say if you are starting and you're so this whole thing, when people say SEO takes time so it can do. Right. And the whole, it depends and all of this. Right. Because if you have a roadmap strategy that you're, your development, you're saying like the basic stuff that you need to do from a tech side. Right. So XML sitemap, like you said, canonical tags. If you've got broken links, you want. I find internal links that people, I think find. A lot of brands completely ignore the importance of that. So it'd be things like that would look at. But it does depend on the products like engineering backlog as well. Because if you're like, well, we've got these. 

Andy Francos
I'm just saying to make it easy, 10 things and six months pass and only three have been done. Like you're going to take time. Like there's no two ways about it. You can't just say, well, we've done A and B, but C will leave for a bit. I find that sometimes prolongs the kind of implementation. 

Jon Earnshaw
I agree that can be really frustrating. But that at the same time is an opportunity for the smaller business, the more agile business. 

Andy Francos
Yeah. 

Jon Earnshaw
Who can, for example, imagine we're all sitting around looking at a result, for example, I don't know, best men's fragrances. And we're looking at the I O and we are not in it. The big business can't shape that content rapidly and inject it into their ecosystem. The smaller agile business can look at the conversation, look at the questions, think about that conversation, create content, connect in their ecosystem and then get visibility. They can adapt and join the conversation. 

Andy Francos
So yeah, anyone starting in SEO join an agile business.

Jon Earnshaw
Where you can actually make recommendations and see things happen within days. That's the idea. 

Andy Francos
And another thing, which again, I don't think is more for a new entrant to the category, but I think educating of what SEO is and what the value it brings to key stakeholders. And this only comes when you have experience, especially like when you're presenting or you need to talk to C Suite, like if you can talk about the benefits of lowering customer acquisition costs, like reaching new audiences, like all of these things that have an impact on the bottom line, but also to understand what really goes into to SEO. I think that's a crucial part. But that's where I guess you need a mentor that can actually go and have those conversations to make sure that SEO is at the table and they realize how important it is. 

Jon Earnshaw
That's so true, Andy. And to get that seat at the table, as you said, the degree to which you are accepted will depend upon the language that you use. And that comes with experience, as you mentioned, for example. So if you find yourself at the C Suite table and you know there's an issue with canonical tags, that's probably not the thing to bring up in that environment. But there's other things that you mentioned about reducing customer acquisition costs, you know, increasing traffic, generating revenue. Hell yeah, that's what they want to hear. But you can save the canonical stuff for another time. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, I've been told that many times. So great stuff. So, yeah, a couple more and yeah, just. And I'd love your kind of concluding thoughts as well in terms of where we see everything going, but Google's had a, has had a difficult year in terms of. And we won't go into detail in terms of the Department of Justice, in terms of how they have been a monopoly in search and how they've obviously paid Apple especially to be present as a default on their. On iOS. Can you ever see Apple launching a search engine? Like there's been a lot of rumours and talk about it. Yeah. I mean, and it's so easy to say, but like it's, it would be an absolute, even for the size of Apple would be a. Maybe they'll be arguing it's a ridiculous category because Google's. Google owns it. 

Andy Francos
So why would you look at developing a search engine and they might look more integration like they've done with ChatGPT. So yeah. Do you ever see that being a reality? 

Jon Earnshaw
If you'd have asked me 10 years ago, Andy, I said I cannot wait for Apple to build a search engine. But today I don't think that, I don't think they're ever going to build their own one. They are doing some far more interesting things. For example with Apple intelligence, true multidimensional three dimensional search. I mean that's the only reason I bought the latest iPhone. So I could actually start to see this AI forward intelligence that can search through my emails, my calendar, my phone, my notes, build a picture and give me the information I need when I want to need it in that micro moment. So I don't think they'll build. They're doing something probably more important than that. They are taking all of this information in your own ecosystem and enabling you to find what you want like that in the right moment. 

Jon Earnshaw
Might they buy perplexity? Yeah, I would if I were them. 

Andy Francos
I think it again goes back to the evolution of what it means to search for something. Right. Because we, if we think it would be they've made some name up and you have an old classic website, you go and search, you get results. Right. Whereas they have you with the iPhone that you can then literally search on there. And then it's kind of like do you even need to leave the device because you have the tech there that you don't need to go and search in another, in a browser or anything like this. So it could just be that there's more emphasis on that as opposed to launching a search engine. 

Jon Earnshaw
There's already so much information out there and so many people are trying to catalog that. But you know what Apple is trying to do with Apple intelligence is cut straight through that. I mean there are some wonderful examples of how you can use it but we haven't got time to go into that. But really this ability not just to search through one surface but to search through multiple surfaces in an instant, bring the answer together in the context of where and when you are and provide you with the answer that you need. It's a conversation. That's where it's all headed. 

Andy Francos
I totally agree. And on the kind of again looking at that attention like grabbing from. Because that's essentially the name of the game, right? It is TikTok being. There's been a label about it being a search engine. Again I wouldn't use the term search engine but it's where people will go to find and discover like information like so it is utilising the attention of that person. So how do you, how would you approach in terms of brands, in terms of working with TikTok? 

Jon Earnshaw
I think TikTok is really important. You can get five people in a room, Andy, of different ages and you can ask each of them. We're all going out to a restaurant tonight. Let's find out what it's like. I'll go to TripAdvisor. My son might go to, I mean, he might go on Insta. Somebody else will go to TikTok. It doesn't matter. You know, the information's out there. These are just surfaces or windows to that information. And let's think the search landscape has fundamentally changed now. We're starting to see lots of examples of social media within there. Social media, organic and SEO need to align or social media has a big job to do in filling those gaps. So, yeah, don't ignore TikTok. 

Andy Francos
And just to conclude in terms of one of the so and again, this is a huge subject that you've done many talks on and I would encourage anyone listening. I will put links in the email and also anything that I put out on LinkedIn in terms of, to Jon's content around core updates and the kind of unique position that PI has, in my opinion, where you can really zone in on movement, you can be alerted straight away when you see certain things. And I've always found it extremely helpful when you want to look at obviously competitive movement with regards to core updates. I just want to say on the core update side, like, personally I would never have chased updates or thinking, what can we do for this? 

Andy Francos
Obviously these are huge changes in Google's landscape that take many months of like, data into account. So I've always thought like, if you do something two weeks previous, it's not really gonna have much of a difference to when the update launches. There's, there's so many different variables that come into play over a longer period of time, which I think sometimes is tough for people to, when they see, right, we've seen a drop, how can we respond quickly to this? And sometimes it's like you can't. You just have to go back to kind of the drawing board, really assess and ask difficult questions as to why you're in this position. Have you looked at doing mass AI content? Have you bought any links that you shouldn't be doing? There's all of these things that really you should do. 

Andy Francos
But in terms of the work you do at PI and your commentary that I've seen on LinkedIn. Like how do you kind of look at the core updates and communicate that as well with clients? 

Jon Earnshaw
Well, this year has been a big year for core updates. Four core updates in 2024. Which is, which is unheard of. You're right in what you said, Andy. You know, if there's been a core update and you have suffered as a result of that, first of all, you need to make sure that is the core update and core updates are not all the same. They're targeted at different things. So you've got to understand if that is you, there is no recovery, no instant recovery. All you've got to do with a core. And let's remember, core is partly helpful content, but it's also double eat. It's about sending the appropriate signals, but it's about putting the customer first. Because I tell you what, I have seen far too many sites in 2024, Andy. Get obsessed with these algorithmic signals. Oh, experience, expertise, authority, trust. 

Jon Earnshaw
Send the signal signals. And then you read this content and it's, it stinks. To be honest. It's over optimised. It's got so many links. For example in the first paragraph, because I think I need to make all these connections. Is it good for the user? Is it good for your reader? If it's not, then don't do it. Put your audience first. You can't react instantly, but the work you do on a daily basis, the good practice that you put in place, the education within the business, understanding how you demonstrate experience of an author, for example, get those things right and then you won't have to worry about core updates. There are other updates, of course. 

Andy Francos
Perfect. Jon, that is fantastic. Thank you very much for your time. That was really useful and it's great to see you as always. What we'll do is I'm sure this will go down extremely well. I'd love to have you back on in the future and we can talk to see how 2025 is shaping up and again how the search landscape continues to evolve. So thank you very much. 

Jon Earnshaw
Thanks for having me, Andy. It's always a pleasure. So good to see you and let's get that coffee being soon. 

Andy Francos
Yeah, sounds good, mate. Take care. 

Jon Earnshaw
Thank you.