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Another day on Facebook, and another email topic is born.

The word of the day is “witch hunt".”

More on that in a moment.

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Why Aren’t They Blaming Google?

I remain confused as to why more bloggers and site owners aren’t placing the blame of the current state of the SERPs on Google.

Repeatedly, I see bloggers and site owners mounting their own moral high horse on a crusade against sites they suspect of being AI.

Not first-hand knowledge (though even if it was, why the fuck do they care when it doesn’t affect them?), but just a suspicion.

It’s happened to me. For sites that are 10 years old with $50K a year in content expenses…and I was asked to prove it wasn’t AI….as if the sites weren’t older than chatGPT.

But it just didn’t pass some rando’s sniff test for AI.

This reminds me of the anti-PBN crusaders.

And it really is about the same thing in the end, isn’t it?

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It’s someone with butthurt over the fact that another site is doing better than them.

Even in recent years, well past the glory days of everyone using PBN links, I’ve seen people in Facebook groups and forums asking how to report competitor sites that they suspect of using PBNs.

If those people spent more time focused on ranking their own site instead of worrying about what other people were doing, then they likely would have seen more success.

Today’s butthurt group of crusaders are anti-AI, both images and content.

And whenever they find a site they deem to be doing better than it should, they sound the alarm so they can all go report it.

This author of this post clearly doesn’t see a valid reason for a site to launch with lots of posts the first week…like maybe the content came from another domain? or maybe sites were merged into a single site? or maybe someone just held all the content to launch with a good amount for the archives? or maybe they ordered a buttload of content from an agency?

Or yeah, maybe it was all AI…but why does it matter?

People are using AI images and content for two main reasons - it’s dirt cheap and Google, Pinterest, etc. have all proven that they love it.

Much like with PBNs, blame Google for making it something that’s a good business decision.

Other bloggers and site owners are not your enemy.

If you can’t rank a site on Google, Pinterest, or anywhere else and you’re mad cause cause other people can, then that’s a YOU problem.

Does shitty content, of any kind, including images, make it harder to wade through the muck to get to the good stuff? Yeah, but this was a problem BEFORE AI content and images.

If these people want to be judge and jury over whether a site should be monetized, then maybe stop blogging and get a job working for Mediavine, Raptive, etc.

These witch hunts seriously blow my mind. Other people’s success is not a roadblock on your own path to success.

Coming up…

Upcoming topics: probably something with my four-letter word commentary that will offend some people.

If you have a topic you want covered just reply and let me know.

Stay awesome,

Shawna

P.S. If you’re looking for high level discussions or tips on things like local SEO and Rank & Rent, I highly recommend Jacky Chou’s Advise community. I’ve been in it for several months and there’s tons of value in it, including a SOP for local SEO.

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