Good lord, the shite I’m seeing on Twitter because Google Search Liaison said they would no longer be updating their account!
Some SEOs are acting like their mum just cancelled Christmas. “This proves Google doesn’t care about the SEO industry anymore!” they’re wailing into the digital void.
Well, no shit, Sherlock. Why the bloody hell should they?
It’s not Google’s job to pander to an industry that was literally built to manipulate their systems.
Welcome to reality- we’re the house’s enemy
Casinos don’t send helpful newsletters to card counters explaining new shuffling techniques. They ban them and upgrade their security.
Sports leagues don’t hold webinars for match fixers about new detection methods.
Exam boards don’t publish guides helping cheaters understand their anti-fraud measures.
Banking systems don’t publish fraud detection methods to help money launderers improve their techniques.
Anti-virus companies don’t share detection algorithms with malware creators.
These industries understand that their adversaries aren’t customers to be served. They’re problems to be solved.
Yet somehow, SEOs expect Google to explain every algorithm change in detail, provide advance warning of updates, maintain constant communication about ranking factors, and consider the impact on our businesses before making changes.
The entitlement is quite frankly gobsmacking.
Our entire job is manipulation
We need to be honest about what SEO literally is.
We study Google’s algorithm to figure out how to make our content rank higher than it naturally would. We (mainly) create content to satisfy search engines as well as users. We build links specifically to inflate authority signals.
This isn’t collaboration. It’s sophisticated gaming of their system.
Google’s mission isn’t “help SEOs make money.” It’s “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Our interests are fundamentally opposed.
We created the problem
The SEO industry has spent decades flooding the internet with millions of pages created purely for search engines, link networks designed to inflate authority, keyword-stuffed content that serves algorithms over humans, and AI content mills pumping out thousands of articles daily.
We’ve made the internet demonstrably worse in pursuit of rankings (read: Who messed up SEO? SEOs did). Google spends billions fighting the mess we create. And we expect them to be nice about it?
The difference between the SEOs whining on Twitter that their livelihood is “being threatened” and the ones that aren’t is that some of us treat Google as exactly what it is – not a business partner who should keep us informed.
Google doesn’t owe you a living. They don’t owe you transparency. They don’t owe you consideration.
They owe their users relevant search results (and yes, with the advent of AI Mode and AI Overviews, it’s debatable about whether they’re serving their users effectively, but that’s not the point of this post). If that makes your job harder, tough.
The sooner you accept that Google owes you absolutely nothing, the sooner you can focus on building sustainable strategies that don’t depend on their goodwill.
No call to action, I’ll be too busy defending myself from all the angry SEOs on social media when I post this…
