AI Advances! A Look at August Core Update Data

Welcome back to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast!

This week Jared and guest host Brooks talk about what’s happening in the SEO, Google, and AI world, they share the projects they’re working on, and they discuss some very bizarre but successful websites! 

They dive into the news this week, first talking about OpenAI’s release of its o1 model

, which is capable of “reasoning.” 

They share its characteristics and their first impressions after playing around with it and seeing how it works.

Watch the Full Episode

Moving along, they look at an open letter to Google from Healthy Framework, a dating app review site that was battered in the HCU and subsequent updates. What do they think of this letter in particular?

Jared highlights an important question the author asks about affiliate sites, and they talk about whether “helpful content” is really the right way to describe the updates and shifts happening at Google. 

Do you agree with their perspective?

And lastly in the news, they talk about an article highlighting the data available from the August Core Update after tracking 55k sites.

They discuss the data and draw some conclusions. Do you agree with Brooks’ thoughts on brand awareness? What about his approach to his own sites’ performance?

Moving along to their Shiny Object Shenanigans, Jared tells an inspiring story about one of his sites, which went from ranking for 60k keywords to just 33, after all of the updates.

Instead of giving up, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work building up alternative traffic sources. 

How is the site doing now? What was his thought process as he worked on reviving the site?

When Brooks is up, he talks about a new website he’s launched with another local media business owner to allow other people to join their Discord channel and learn from them and one another.

He also explains the tools he used to build it and his plans for the site.

Moving on to their Weird Niche Sites, Jared goes first with a site he uses often called URL opener, which can open multiple URLs all at the same time with just a single click.

This DR23 site ranks for just 128 keywords but gets 39k organic page views per month, according to Ahrefs. 

What’s totally surprising about the site, according to Jared? And what does he highlight in particular about these kinds of sites?

When it’s Brooks’ turn, he shares The Useless Web. He explains how it works and how much traffic this DR74 site gets and keywords it ranks for.

What do they have to say about the stats? Tune in to find out!

And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast! We hope you feel informed and inspired, and that you join us next week for another episode!

transcript

Jared: All right. Welcome back to another week of niche pursuits news. My name is Jared Bauman. We’ve got a couple of wonderful stories we’re going to dive into today. Last week, we talked briefly today. We’ll dive into open a eyes, new release. Of their model. Oh, one or otherwise known as strawberry. We’ll get some data samples back.

We’ll talk about what it means and maybe what it could mean for all of us. We’re going to be going through an open letter to Google. Not the first open letter we’ve seen published to Google. This is a new one based on some of the recent updates. We’ve also got some. Interesting data that’s been crunched on the August core update.

Of course, we have some information and updates on side hustles. We’ve got some weird niches to share with you and we’ve got Brooks Conkle back for a, I believe a second time co hosting. Brooks, welcome. 

Brooks: Number two, man. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for welcoming me back. Appreciate it, man. 

Jared: I was trying to welcome 

Brooks: you, man.

I was trying to welcome you. I was like, welcome to you, Jared. 

Jared: You can welcome me, man. No one welcomes me. I appreciate it. I’ll take the welcome. Yeah, it’s good to have you back. And, um, I think, you know, in general, uh, we, we picked a good week to kind of get together and talk about something. Last time you were on, we were talking all about the August core update.

A lot of today’s topics, um, after we get through the opening, I release are kind of about the August core update. So it’s, it’s good to have you back on and stuff. And, um, Uh, let’s go ahead and dive into the news here. So our first story is this open AI release of, um, of, uh, uh, I’m blanking on it here of oh one, I feel like I’ve got too many, uh, too many different open AI releases here and we moved off the numbering system, um, open AI released what’s called oh one.

And a lot of it used to be known as strawberry if you’re in kind of the developer community. And basically this is the first model with what’s called reasoning abilities. Now I would have. Thought that we could have assumed the last couple models had this reasoning ability here. But, um, in general, this is the first in a series of reasoning models is designed to solve more complex problems and queries.

And so it’s kind of a shift from the earlier GPT models. Um, a couple things about it. It’s expected to perform better in coding. Uh, solving multi step problems. Uh, it’s also slower and more expensive. So this is interesting. Uh, I think we didn’t know this last week or at least we didn’t talk about it. The API cost for developers on, um, 0.

1 is 4x higher than on chat GPT 4. Um, couple of things and I’ve got actually a screen, a little screenshot I can share with people. Um, a key differentiator of this is it’s training methodology. And so it uses reinforcement learning and a chain of thought process, uh, which you’ll see when you kind of, um, uh, prompt this model, it’ll actually walk you through all the steps.

Uh, and then open AI claims this model is more accurate and hallucinates less than previous models, though. It hasn’t completely eliminated those hallucinations. Brooks, have you, um, have you played around with this at all? 

Brooks: Yeah, so I did, um, between yesterday and today I did. Uh, the, the irony of the names is so crazy.

Like earlier you were trying to say O O 1. I’m like, come on guys, uh, they gotta, they gotta help us out, you know? Like, like make it easier for us to, to say or whatever. But, uh, yeah, I would say if, if you’re gonna, if you’re gonna play with it, get ready, get ready to read. Because when you, when you, uh, when you prompt it for the project or whatever you’re looking to do, it’s It thinks and it, it spits out a lot of multi step information.

Like what I’ve seen so far, I’m, I’m pretty, I’m pretty blown away. I have like a project idea that I’m actually like, um, 

using it 

Brooks: for. And so that was the first idea that I had. Um, it’s, it’s interesting what it is. Apparently they completely trained it, trained it completely differently. Like kind of from the ground up from, from what I understand.

And that’s interesting to me. And it’s cool that it’s right inside of our account. Like if you have the paid, uh, paid version. So I guess. Using it on that end. Maybe you would just get like less usage if you use it versus the other stuff. I’m not really sure. 

Jared: Yeah. This is, you know, for those of you who are paying for chat, you’d be the four.

Oh, like it’s a dropdown up there where it says four. Oh, you can drop it down. It does say preview mode for IO and there is an IO mini. The mini is cheaper. It’s, I believe, faster and not as powerful. Um, Brooks, I have to say, I didn’t catch this part of the article. Gotta highlight it after you and I just both kind of threw them under the bus for naming.

Here’s a quote. I’m going to be from somebody at OpenAI. I’m going to be honest. I think we’re terrible at naming traditionally. So I hope this is the first step of a newer, more sane name. that better convey what we’re doing with the rest of the world. I would say, I guess obviously both Brooks and I don’t agree, but I digress.

Brooks: Yeah. We’re missing something, man. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I think you and I are 

Jared: the problem here. Not, not, not the, uh, not the naming convention. Right. Right. Let me share this here. I’ve got the oh one preview up in front and it looks like, um, it looks like, uh, everybody can see it here. So I, I prompted it with a question.

I did a little research before I put this question in. This is reminiscent of my college calculus class, and I. Got a D in this class. It’s like fourth semester college calculus. Some variation of this question was the only final, the only question on the final of this class. Now I’m sure I don’t have it exactly perfect, but it’s been ingrained in my memory because I did not get this one.

Right. I failed the class. I got a D in it and I had to retake the class. This is like a pivotal moment in my life. So here’s the question I prompted chat GPT 01 with, I said, and again, For those of you mathematicians out there, like, if I have a little bit of it wrong, just forgive me. I’m just trying to make sure we get something to talk about here and showcase.

But if you’re watching on, on screen, you’ll get to see how O1, um, actually processes the information. So the prompt is, I’m standing somewhere on earth. The sun is at an angle of 45. 78 degrees from earth in the sky. It’s 21 days past the summer solstice and my latitude is 50 degrees north. What longitude am I standing at?

Uh, and so, right. Yeah. Kind of gnarly, huh? So it goes through and basically, you know, it calculates number one and it does the math in front of you. Right? So it says calculate number one, the day of the year. So it’s 21 days past summer solstice, and it shows you how it calculates that number to compute the solar declination.

Um, Uh, if I knew how to do this back in college, I’ve since forgotten. I’m not sure I did. Number three, use a solar elevation angle formula. Uh, that’s a lot of math. Number four, convert hour angle to time difference. Number five, convert local apparent solar time. Number six, correct for the equation of time, and it’s got a lot more math.

Number seven, find the time difference from GMT. Number eight, calculate longitude. So it says basically the answer is approximately 41. 8 degrees east longitude. Uh, that took it 56 seconds. So I’d just like to say that if it took AI 56 seconds to do something like that, I don’t know how my college professor expected me to be able to get that right in an hour or two test, but nonetheless, I then prompted and said, What’s the closest major city to this latitude and longitude?

And it came back and said, Volgograd, Russia, um, and, uh, it’s on the western bank of the Volga River, uh, and, uh, and there you have it. So, I mean, you know, uh, aside from all the crazy math, like, interesting how this new model, uh, kind of parses data and how it explains it to us as it goes. 

Brooks: Yeah, heck yeah. I, I mean, I’m definitely, I’m definitely too fresh to give any, you know, crazy, crazy opinions, but I think it’s, It’s amazing in general.

I mean, like, to see, to see it do that multi step, uh, problem, I was just thinking through it as you were describing it, because I hadn’t seen that before, you know, before you just put it up on the screen. I’m seeing it with everyone else. That is, uh, it’s still mind blowing to me. It’s mind blowing to me and this is the, uh, this is the dumbest that it’s ever going to be.

Jared: It’s funny because in math class, I remember growing up, I took a lot of math, um, growing up and in college and stuff. And I, I remember, and this is a really paltry example, but I remember, you know, sometimes you’re at, you’re, you’re there and you’re like, I know the answer, but they’re like, you’re not going to get credit for it unless you show your work.

Yeah. It 

Jared: feels like, That jump with the model from giving you the answer to now kind of showing the work. Um, uh, a couple more details on it. Uh, then we’ll, you know, aside from any of the comments, we’ll move on. Uh, so this O1 has limitations, particularly areas like, and again, I’m pulling from the article here.

O1 has limitations, particularly areas like factual knowledge and browsing the web. Um, but again, to your point, Brooks, I think, uh, this statement stood out, um, or kind of summary of it. Opening up positions. Oh, one as a stepping stone toward future AI capabilities, especially autonomous systems or what they’re calling agents that could make decisions and take actions on behalf of users, which is quite the step forward.

Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. It’s more like, it’s more like how this thing’s operating versus like what it can actually do. It’s like the processes that it’s, that it’s taking, which is pretty, pretty interesting. It’s a, it’s a complex, it’s a complex reaction rather than just a simple like back and forth input response.

Jared: Yeah, it’s, um, it’s gonna be interesting to see what people do with this. I feel like we’re gonna start seeing fruits from this, um, from this model coming out very soon. Coding and, uh, data, data analysis and data process and so many things I’m sure we’re not even thinking of. So, 

yeah, 

Jared: um, well, hey, let’s move along.

Um, I teased it at the outset, like you were here for kind of the First week of the Google’s August core update. And we were just kind of parsing through data, kind of looking at house fresh recoveries and these, these new websites that we’re getting some love for the first time in, in a year or so. Um, we have, uh, we have an open letter to, to Google.

Now, again, this isn’t the first open letter we’ve had where people kind of, uh, brands come out and basically call out Google for what they’ve been doing in the, in the, um, in the SERPs for the past year or so. Um, this one is going to come to us from, uh, I want to go back to the top here. I was deep in this.

Um, Uh, this one comes to us from the folks at Healthy Framework, um, which is like a dating app review site. And um, I mean, it’s a long one. Okay. So I’ll say at the outset, let me, let me give you the cliff notes here. And um, and then we can kind of, kind of drill into what it really means. Um, So they have lost, I believe it was 98 percent of the revenue since the helpful content update hit last September, one year ago, obviously forced them to make some significant cutbacks and downsizing.

So they kind of go through this article and again, I’m just going to try to do cliff notes here. There’s a lot to it. They argue that the update has really favored large publishers, which we kind of know for the data. Um, aggregate review sites like Forbes, Trustpilot, Consumer Affairs, these are the ones that are all benefiting.

And to their point, they say they provide biased or low quality content. Um, they say Google has developed an over reliance on brand awareness as a ranking factor. And I think this is interesting because we’ve talked about this. We talked about it last week. We talked about it in weeks prior. The team points out that small publishers cannot easily build brand awareness in niches Say dating app reviews, or as they like to go on about toasters.

Where users rarely need repeat recommendations. So there isn’t much brand awareness. You’re not going there because it’s a brand. You’re going there cause you just need something. Um, small review sites like theirs are at disadvantage because they provide thorough, honest content, but they don’t generate returning visitors because they kind of give people what they want.

And that’s a potential ranking factor that then could harm their visibility. Um, I thought it was really interesting. Let me see if I can find this here. I’m going to search toaster. Sure. Because I thought this was really interesting. Does anyone have a favorite toaster review team? Um, and I quote here, uh, from the article.

Let’s say you’re in the market for a toaster. You want to hear from people who live, breathe, and sleep toasters, right? Who is your go to brand name for toaster reviews? If you’re drawing a blank, so are we. Toaster is just one example of many. I mean, such an interesting point and I can’t argue with him.

Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s an interesting article. Um. Another, another cry out. I kind of, uh, I don’t know. Is there, is there a date on this article? I’m curious when they wrote it. I just scrolled to the top and I didn’t see a date. Um, I mean, obviously it’s going to be fairly, fairly recent. I just don’t know. I just don’t know the date.

I kind of wonder if they were, people are, uh, brands are seeing the attention. Yeah. Other brands, like how, They’re like, Oh my gosh, these guys are getting so much. And here we are mentioning House Fresh again right now. Um, may as well go ahead and drop Retro Dodo for everybody. Everyone go out there and give those guys some love.

Um, because those are the brands that wrote these articles and talking about this exact story. The story in this article, like Jared, when I, when I looked through and I read it, it’s not really like, it’s not really a new idea, but it’s like, it’s like another, it’s another, it’s another one of the stories.

It’s like another cry out from a brand saying, Hey, we were doing everything that we thought was right. And we’ve been completely disrupted, completely destroyed. We’ve had to lay off. I mean, like actually, you know what I mean? My heart, my heart goes out. Cause it’s like, they’re like, man, we had to lay off.

Layoff staff, we’re talking about revenue drop. They’re trying to just hold, hold things together. Um, and this is, it’s not like a, a unique story, right? This is like a ton of, ton of brands out there. Like we’ve, uh, like we’ve talked about. So, um, but yeah. I mean, well, well written and kind of like, uh, solidifying all the things that we’ve heard and been, and been seeing is, is like, is, is my opinion on this.

Jared: Well, I went and looked to your point. I mean, the helpful, uh, sorry, the August core update of 2024 finished, I believe it was September 3rd. This was written at least according to the source code, uh, on September 6th. And so yeah, it does appear to be, but I mean, you bring up a good point. Like you have to call it, you have to call it the elephant in the room, I think, to some degree.

Right. And that is that like. If brand awareness is something that Google is paying attention to, one of the best ways to get your brand some awareness when it’s almost impossible because your review site is to do something like writing an open letter. I mean, it’s hard to know it’s, it’s a well written open letter, but you’re right, it plays along with a lot of the other open letters and it’s just kind of, um, using more current data.

They referenced that, uh, data study by Moz, right. Uh, about brand awareness. I think that’s a new finding that maybe we suspected. And if you didn’t hear us talk about that, go back to, I believe it was last week’s podcast where we did go through it. Maybe it was two weeks ago. Um, so they are referencing these new, these new data points, but I think it brings up a larger topic, which is for a lot of people listening.

Are affiliate sites doomed if brand awareness is the new modicum of SERPs? Because to the point of the article, um, you know, how do you be a brand when you literally hang your hat? On being a review site or is this really the transition point we all needed to turn a website into something larger, something bigger, something that stands for more than just what you review?

Brooks: Yeah. Um, it’s a great question. And I think it’s like, it’s like business and it’s like life. I mean, things like things happen and you have to innovate and when things are going, when things are going well, or like something is working and it’s very easy to put on blinders. Uh, and that’s kind of, it. Again, that’s what I feel like has happened to everyone that’s been, you know, hit hard.

Oh, you asked me last time we recorded. You said, hey, you asked me how I fared. Um, so when this age, when this was completely wrapped up, um, I had one site that increased quite well. One that just kind of stayed stable and I had one that was actually, I thought I had made it through everything and it got actually hit directly in this most recent Um, most recent update.

I just found it really interesting. Um, so yeah, it’s, but, I’m, I’m taking the view, Jared, that like, It’s all about, it’s gotta be, we have to raise up outside of just one, one source of traffic and one angle. And so when you say an affiliate site, to me, that sounds very one angled. Correct. I 

Jared: said that on purpose.

You’re exactly right. Like I perfectly chose those words to kind of isolate what a lot of us have done historically, right? Like, Hey, Google traffic, we know how to get it. We know the process. Let’s go, go, go for it. It feels wrong to have it ripped away under the guise of unhelpful content. And I think maybe what this article is getting at is, is, is the underpinning of everything.

Like, and I’m not trying to make some brash, uh, some broad statement here, but like, maybe if we just didn’t have to call it unhelpful content and instead just called it a model shift, maybe it’d make more sense because I feel like this open letter to Google is arguing the same thing that so many have argued, which is my quality, my content is high quality.

And I think what you’re arguing, what I might be saying, what we’re kind of saying is it’s a model shift. 

Brooks: Yep. Just look at the, look at the Google search, like go search anything and look. And, like, they have clearly completely changed their, uh, Like, they’re having to innovate. They’re changing. Like, look at the forums.

On every, on every SERP, there is Quora, there’s Reddit, There’s, there’s, of course, YouTube videos. They own YouTube. That’s fine. There’s, like, you know, an AI overview now. Which is now, you know, they’re playing around with that and putting links in, like, you know, It’s a changing business model. So like everyone else has to change too, you know, and the affiliate game, just one point there on an affiliate website.

Um, a pure affiliate website probably still works. You know what you need to learn now? You need to learn how to like run ads and sell your thing and just like run ads and like run a profitable affiliate, I don’t know, play and just don’t worry about SEO. Maybe your traffic is going to come from a different source.

You know, that’s just a thought for me. I’m not very good at that and I’m learning how to, um, run, run, run paid traffic to bring in, to bring in traffic. 

Jared: Well, my side hustle, I’ll be sharing with you about this exact topic. So nice tease there keep people around. Um, and it’s a, it’s a happy ending by the way It’s got a happy end.

Nice. Well, it’s not an ending but it’s got a happy point that we’re at right now. How’s that? 

Yeah, 

Jared: well, um All right Let’s park that one for right now and move on to our kind of our third article here and uh our third news topic And it really does dovetail nicely. It is um data that we have now coming out of that august 20 24 core update This is from uh, uh Site stats, db.

com from Ian over there. Um, and if you’re not in his email list, he sends out some really cool stuff. He basically went through and track the data from 55, 000 plus sites from Google’s August core update. That’s a large number. Sites that are tracked and are monetized. Sorry. Sites that are monetized with Mediavine, Raptive or Amazon associates.

So Mediavine, Raptive and Amazon, Amazon associates sites. I think we can comfortably say like, that fits the bill for a broad stroke, look at like content websites, uh, affiliate websites. I’m using some niche web niche sites, right? Mm-Hmm, , just some of these terms that are, you know, um, triggering for many people, but like kind of that does in many ways.

It’s a good monochrome for, for, that’s the second time I’ve used that word today by the way. I don’t think I’ve used that word in the last 10, 10 years of my life. And I’ve used it twice in 20 minutes. It’s a good look at maybe the industry that a lot of our listeners live in, right? So again, a lot of data here.

I tried to kind of bring some of it, um, to summary. Um, across 55, 000 plus websites, there was a total traffic gain of 122. 9 million visits between August 15th and September 4th, uh, with an average gain of 2, 226 visits per site. Uh, that sounds really good, but by the way, that represents an overall percentage gain of less than 1%.

So here’s the interesting thing about it. Small sites, which is less than 10, 000 monthly visitors, Total traffic decreased by an 8. 5 percent, represented an 8. 5 percent loss in traffic. There were 444 sites that fit that bill, and they lost an average of 8. 5 percent. Medium sized sites, so 10 to 50k in terms of monthly visitors, um, these saw a gain of 2.

1 percent. Larger sites, so 50 to 100, thousand monthly visitors that dropped by 1. 8 percent and then very large sites. So sites, uh, I’m sorry, by the way, I read that wrong. 50 K to 1 million monthly visitors was a larger sites and then very large sites. So over a million monthly visitors, these sites gained by an average of, let’s see here.

I believe it’s less than a percent. Was it less than a percentage point? Yeah. Almost 0. 9%. 

Brooks: Yeah. 

Jared: 0. 9%. Okay. So, you know, I mean, what does that really mean? Well, let’s see winners and losers, 53 percent of sites tracked, saw increases, 47 percent dropped, it kind of matches what Spencer and I said when we were in analyzing this two weeks ago and the initial data, like overall, more people were saying that they won or were flat than said they lost not by a lot, but by little.

And then I think that what it really does point to is, you know, Google continues to favor larger sites. Um, in this update, it wasn’t dramatic, but if you’re less than 10, 000 monthly visitors, Um, you’re gonna, you know, you lost almost 10 percent of your traffic there. So, uh, the rest of the sites, it was all within 2 percent down to 1%, 2 percent increase.

Um, what are your thoughts on this data? I mean, this is a large study, 55, 000 domains, so it’s kind of hard to get nitty gritty about it. But at the same time, that’s a lot of sites to look at. 

Brooks: Yeah, when I, when I first looked at it, to be honest, I was a little overwhelmed. So I had to drop this into, uh, into chat GVT and get like a, I want to get ideas, uh, from that, like a summarization.

And it’s kind of what you said, like you, you summed it up pretty well. It was kind of like, Hey, if you’re a small site, you saw, you saw loss. And in general, the larger sites. Uh, soul, a game, like when you look at percentages on data like this, it kind of, I don’t know. It’s very confusing because a percentage like, well, a percentage of what?

Okay. 1 percent of a million or 1%, you know, whatever. But, um, but I think that idea holds true. Like what we said holds true. It looks like, yes, smaller sites, which makes me think like, I guess the interesting thing to me is I’m like, well, if you’re. A really small site and you lost that traffic. How do you gain, how can you gain that brand awareness in order to grow?

That was like a thought that I had. Um, and again, for me, it just goes back to, man, I think you got to diversify traffic sources. It may, it may not come from, it may not come from Google. Um, but. I don’t want to 

Jared: put, yeah, I think this is a bit of a tough spot to say because of what’s happened last year, historically speaking, 10, 000 monthly visitors would be, I’d say more like a very small site, you know, like generally speaking into 10, 000 monthly visitors to your point, you can do that with ad traffic relatively simply.

You can, um, do a lot of the tactics that have been shared on the podcast for the last couple of months with people. Facebook and Flipboard and Pinterest and all these other sources, even outside of Google. Um, I have to say, I didn’t see if that was just organic traffic though. So that could be a 10, 000 monthly visits on organic traffic.

But even at that, I think that 10, 000 is a relatively small number. And once you got past that 10, 000 monthly mark, you were just in the world of like 1 2 percent ups and downs. Now granted, this is an average, to be clear, an average. So inside of that average is huge swings up and down, fair enough. But if we’re using that 10, 000 monthly visits, As a kind of benchmark, that’s not that small of a site.

That’s that’s sorry. That’s not that large of a site. That’s that’s very doable in the broad scheme of things. 

Brooks: Yeah, totally agree. Definitely agree with you. 

Jared: Um, so really quickly, you had a site go up, you had a site, stay flat. You had a site go down any, uh, any, anything out of what you picked up in the last couple of weeks that, that might have led to that, I mean, Thomas got on and shared A week or two ago about some sites that went up and down.

We had Morgan who joined us last week. She shared about some ups and downs. She saw anything coming out of yours. 

Brooks: I, no, I, I, I don’t know if it’s cause I don’t look for answers or, um, I honestly didn’t even try to figure it out, Jared. I, I was just like, cool, this one, uh, went up, which honestly it probably should have gone up.

It’s my local media site. I, I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know why it dropped in the first place. Really what I did is just kind of more point my finger at, uh, old, old, old crazy Google. And I’m like, ah, it’s just Google being Google again, you know? Um, That’s kind of what I did. I was like, okay, cool. You rewarded one.

You made one stay the same and you, you, you demolished one. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Google. That’s, that’s just kind of the, uh, the attitude that I’ve, that I’ve taken. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, but that’s, that’s what I’m doing, man. 

Jared: Yeah. Well, I think your blood pressure is lower than a lot of people analyzing.

Yeah. It totally 

Brooks: helps. It totally helps. It totally helps keep the, uh, it really does help keep the blood pressure down. I’m checking my pulse right now. Feeling good, man. Yeah. I’m calm. Helps, it helps stay calm, for sure, by doing that. 

Jared: You know, if your blood pressure is good right now, I mean, you’re in the middle of hosting a podcast, you just had a site get rocked by Google, I don’t know, we all ought to follow your methods a little more.

Brooks: Let’s talk, we’ll have a, yeah, we’ll have a powwow with everybody, yeah, for sure. There you go. 

Jared: Uh, you heard it here first. Brooks is going to now start a consulting service for how to manage your emotions through Google Updates. That’s not a bad idea, actually. You might have some customers. 

Brooks: Yeah, sure. Well, I gotta come up with a fun, we’ll have some fun activities and everything.

It’d be great. It’d be great. 

Jared: Yeah, it’s like, uh, you can create a meditation app for SEOs hit by Google updates. 

Brooks: It’s great. I’ll have a whole business for you in the next half hour. Oh, I’m, I’m writing that down. This is funny. It’s good. If nothing else, it’ll be like a funny meme or something, you know, this is your side 

Jared: hustle.

This is what we’re getting into, right? The side hustle section. 

Perfect. 

Brooks: Perfect. 

Jared: All right. Uh, transitions, uh, corny transitions aside. Um, let’s, let’s get into side hustles. Um, uh, I think it’s, uh, obviously well timed the, uh, so I’ll, I’ll share a bit of this kind of dovetails nicely because we were talking about the helpful content update and the August core update and stuff, so I’m going to share a story about a website.

I’ve talked about this a bit on Twitter, a bit of my email list. I’ve never really shared a kind of complete view of it on the new section of the podcast. It does fit a side hustle. This is a site. That was a classic niche site. Um, and it was making about 1500 to 2, 000 a month prior to the helpful content update, um, definitely has some seasonality.

So if you caught it in the, um, like the winter time, uh, it does better in the winter time than it does other seasons, but it’s kind of, it was kind of your classic niche site. informational content, um, some review content, et cetera, got pummeled by the helpful content update in, uh, September, 2023, and then got pummeled again by the March core update of 2024.

Um, and so that dropped it down to where it was making less, well, less than a hundred dollars a month. So 1750, 1800, 2, 000 a month and a like. 76 a month. Um, actually checked right now. So this is not a recovery story. This site has not recovered from the August core update. As a matter of fact, it went even worse.

It now may, it now ranks since the August core update for a total of 33 keywords. 

Brooks: Crazy. This is a site 

Jared: that used to rank for at 1. 60, 000 keywords earlier. And it’s now so unhelpful that it’s down to 33 keywords. Uh, again, I use the air quotes, but. Like I said, this is not necessarily a, uh, a bad story. So I shared in, uh, April and May how I was going to start, um, sending alternate traffic sources to this website.

So we just gotten done. I just gotten done hosting the Alt G conference where we had a bunch of people come together and talk about all different ways to generate traffic. That was in April. So I’m like, cruel. This is cool. It’s gonna be the site I focus on. So, um, started a Facebook page for it. Uh, started a likes campaign for it.

Uh, started, um, posting regular content on Facebook for it. Uh, trying to drive some traffic from Facebook. Over to the website. Um, but the main point of the Facebook page was to build an easy email newsletter and to build an email list, right? And then start sending out content via email every single day to then drive people to the website and earn money via ads.

Um, we were already on Raptive at that point. And, um, then, um, in the summer, I think it was July, June or Ju June, I think it was June, we started doing Pinterest as well. Visual niche, uh, so very good for Pinterest, uh, you would think. And so we started that process. So anyways. Took a while to get the Facebook page going.

It’s now up to over 15, 000 likes took a while to get the email list going. It’s now got over 10, 000 subscribers and took a while to get Pinterest going. Um, it’s now up to producing the bulk of the page views come from Pinterest. So, um, in August, we got to the point where I was making 558 in the month of August and through the first 18 days of September, it’s already made 1, 045.

Nice. Nice. So it’s on pace for September, you know, fingers crossed things keep going, but if it kind of kept on this trend, um, it’d be, it’d make a roughly 1, 750 this month, uh, from a variety of sources, right? That’s all from Raptive. Um, it’s not making much in terms of affiliate revenue or like that. Um, and, uh, and whatnot, but we’re basically back to where we were, uh, pre HCU.

And I can. unequivocally say that none of that is from Google because it ranks for nothing. It hardly even has any keywords left. 

Brooks: Yeah, 33 keywords, apparently. That, um, Props to you, man. That’s really cool. So even the 558 a month, that’s a solid, uh, that’s a solid, uh, rental, like a, like a little simple rental property here in my town in lower Alabama.

Um, I, I, I convert everything to like, uh, like real estate property and I just kind of see it like that. 1750 a month is no joke. That’s a high end, that’s a high end house here, rent. That’s a high end rental property. Yeah, that’s a swanky joint. What made you decide to not say forget it and just scrap this project that went basically to nothing and like do all this um, uh, diversification?

Like What, you know, when, when, when should someone say, ah, forget it. Or like, man, I’m going to buckle down and like get these other traffic sources. Like, how, how did you go through that, that thought process? 

Jared: Well, the site had, I think around 300 articles on it. So it had this good base of content. And one of the things I was really inspired by was, Hey, you know, If you have a website with a lot of content on it and you believe that it’s halfway decent, which it was, um, it was decent content, then that gives you the underpinnings for a newsletter, right?

Like you can basically create a lot of that content and say like, Hey, here’s this article on blah, blah, blah. You know, you can give a one, a one or two sentence kind of tease or synopsis and then send people to the article. And if you have an email list that is interested in that topic and the content aligns, like it just makes, it’s like, okay, cool.

Like, I can at least give this a go. Um, what’s funny is that I think the email list represents like the biggest long term value, you know, 10, over 10, 000 people on the list and you know, they engage and we can continue to market them, but the right now, the bulk of the traffic, the majority of the traffic that’s going to the website and thus earning the money.

From raptive is actually from Pinterest and as a visual niche, Pinterest is a place that, you know, we’re two or three months in on that. And, uh, and, and following a process that we use with, with some of our clients at two and creative at the agency, but it’s, that’s where the bulk of the traffic is coming.

But I feel like I love having, you know, again, going back to what you said, like multiple sources of traffic this time. And I felt like going back to your question that this was a niche was viable in multiple, multiple avenues, multiple areas. 

Brooks: No, that’s awesome. I mean, like, you are like the poster child for people that are like, what do I do?

Like, you’re the poster child for that with this example website, because you’ve diversified it. And I would argue and say, cool, this is probably a more solidified brand. I don’t even know the site or whatever, but it’s probably a more solidified brand now than it probably was. With 300 articles, but on, you know, on the website, but what’s cool is you do have that content.

I like, I feel like so many people are just forgetting that they have that, that big base of content and they’re like, Oh, I’ve lost all the traffic. I’m like, man, you’ve done all this work. Like you own this corpus of content, you know, just. Take a deep breath and figure out, you know, and get creative. And that, that’s what you did with that site, which is, which is awesome.

That’s super cool, man. 

Jared: It’s cool. You know, and I think to your point, like, um, there’s multiple legs for it to stand on, you know, so it’s not all relying on one source of traffic, uh, and there’s multiple legs that it could expand upon. I mean, it’s only one revenue channel right now, which is, which is wrapped of ads.

Like there’s so many other things that. Could be expanded upon that are niche specific and whatnot. So, you know, 

you 

Jared: bring it up. I’m glad you did. Cause I feel the same way. Like a lot of these websites that people are sitting on, it does take time to kind of transition and stuff. But, um, at least I didn’t have to write 300 articles with the content, right?

Like I was sitting on that and I got to kind of use that to, um, then, and, and, and I’ve talked about it, but like, you can use that content. And feed AI with prompts to help you write, um, you know, the emails and the email prompts to get people to go visit and obviously, you know, to do all sorts of different things with publishing on social media and stuff.

So yeah, hopefully it’s an encouragement. Um, hopefully it helps give people an idea that all hope isn’t lost with a website that Google hates. Google hates this website. 33 keywords from 60, 000. I mean, they couldn’t hate it anymore. I couldn’t get. Slapped in the face any more by Google than what this one did.

And clearly the content isn’t that unhelpful because, um, you know, but we talked about it. Model shift, model shift. We’re going with model shift. 

Brooks: Exactly. Look at you now. Look at me now, Google. That’s what you tell Google. Look at me now, Google. Yeah, that’s awesome. 

Jared: Well, what do you got for us? 

Brooks: Um, yeah, so I was going to update you on the last time I was on.

I’ve talked about domain flipping, which is still, still rolling. I’m still doing it. I’m still trying to get to a hundred. I haven’t sold one yet. I just, I just bought a few the other day of like dot chat because someone sent me a deal, like a coupon deal. So it’s like, Hey, we should chat dot chat or whatever.

So I have some of those. I’m still in the market. So people have leftover domains that they’re not going to renew. Send me a message or something. In the last, in the last 48 hours. I launched a website. I used, um, I actually used, I actually used Card. Have you ever heard of Card? Card. co? I think it’s like, yeah, yeah.

I’d heard of it for years and I’d never used it. Um, but this past year, I finally, like, opened an account or whatever, and went there. So, uh, I used Card, which is basically like a single, you can build like a single page website. Um, and you can see an example right here if you want, so it’s LocalMediaCrew.

com is what I just built. And I’ll, I’ll tell you what it is, and I’ll tell you why I built it, why it’s my bike. My, my side hustle right now for this week. I built it because I run a local media brand and I’m always like connecting with people and people are like wanting to start a local media brand or they’re like, Oh, I run a newsletter up here.

I honestly didn’t have a real great way, Jared, of like connecting those, those specific people. I had a, I have a little like Facebook, a mini Facebook group where I would like kind of collect people or I have a little spreadsheet where I would just put their emails, but I wasn’t keeping in touch with everybody.

Well, so this guy, I met a guy named Andrew, um, and we’ve been like, we’ve been chatting a good bit or whatever. And, and he runs a local media site that’s six hours from me, also in Alabama, a small world. It’s kind of, it’s kind of crazy. He’s in Huntsville, Alabama, which is North Alabama. And so we’re like two Alabama boys.

And I was like, look, man, let’s just launch this thing. And we’ll just let people, let people that want to join us, like me and him chat all the time. And so I was like, anyone that wants to join our chat, This is it. This is the brand. Uh, they can join the crew. They can join the local media crew. So it is our own little private mini discord channel.

Very similar to how like niche, the niche pursuits community works. The discord channel is amazing for that. And so that’s what, that’s what we have. We just have a little mini discord channel for like local media, uh, creators. And so I also use Thrivecart, which I’d never used either. I just, I just purchased a license for that like three days ago.

So I was able to like. Tangibly touch all these tools. Um, which is exciting for me to like expand my own, my own toolbox. You know what I mean? So yeah, so that was built with card and then thrive cart. And then, so yeah, I guess technically it’s open for business. 

Jared: How was your experience building with card?

You know, I, they’re known for simplicity, right? And super ease of use, 

Brooks: super simple, super easy to use. I feel like I built now, why WordPress site? Um, Yeah, I didn’t even have to, like, launch WordPress or use up one of my, like, website spaces at my hosting company. And I already had the account paid for. Uh, it’s super inexpensive and it’s also, like, um, I think you get, like, 20 or 15 or 20 or something with my plan.

So I have all these slots. I was like, why not just build it there? So, um, That’s what I did. And I think it’s perfectly fine for what it is. Like we only need a single page, just a single page site for it. 

Jared: Um, what are the, like, what are your plans for it? Do you have any plans? You’ve got it up. I mean, you said it’s just a little while ago, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Brooks: It literally went live a little while ago. Um, I’m going to. Reach out to the people where I’ve collected all of these emails these you know These people that are like all around the country and maybe other parts of the world I’m just gonna say hey, we’re hanging out in here. It does it does cost you some money It’s like it’s 49 bucks a year is what we set it to be.

I I feel I don’t know I feel completely good with that Um and some of the stuff that me and just that guy have learned from each other andrew

Priceless just me and him like sharing ideas. And so I’m just like, Oh my gosh, like, so I’m just trying to find that place. Yeah. So that would be my first step. We’ll just be to reach out to those people. And then as I come across people, I’ll just say, Hey, join the, join the crew. Join the local media crew.

Jared: Is Andrew in the niche pursuits community? I feel like I’ve seen him in the disc. Yeah, that 

Brooks: is where, that is where I met Andrew originally actually, or we had, we had crossed paths before. Yeah. Andrew’s his last name is Smith. Yeah. So he’s in the niche pursuits community. Yeah. Um, and yeah, so, and we connected in there as well.

So yeah, he’s, it’s like this whole internet world, man. People are bouncing around and meeting, meeting each other all over the place. Well, I can vouch 

Jared: for Andrew. He shared a killer tip. Going back to the exact website I just shared about he shared a killer tip to help me out with Facebook ads That’s really helped.

So that’s a good guy right there. 

Brooks: Do you remember what it was? Do you want to do you want to say it publicly or not? Oh, 

Jared: it’s so good I can’t even share it publicly. 

Brooks: See look that is oh my gosh. That’s yeah That’s probably some of the same stuff I’m talking about. Now if 

Jared: Andrew wants to share it publicly he can but I’m not sharing that because that’s how good it was.

Brooks: Leave it, leaving that one for Andrew. Yeah, he, he, uh, I know we gotta move on, but he specifically is, like, he was running some specific, uh, ad types that, uh, I was like, oh, cool. I was like, yeah, I’ll try that. I’m still running the same ad. I’ve been running it, I don’t know, I’ve gained over a thousand subscribers from my local newsletter.

Like, literally twenty It’s the only ad I’m running right now. I don’t even have a variation. It’s like, I’m averaging like 23 cents an email subscriber. Like for local email. Without giving it too far 

Jared: away, I’m pretty sure you and I are following the same piece of advice from Andrew. Yeah, that’s a good guy right 

Brooks: Thanks Andrew.

Thanks buddy. Appreciate it. Yeah. 

Jared: He didn’t even know he’s going to get so much love on the podcast today. Well, that’s great, man. I mean, you’re building the community. At the end of the day, you’re building the community and you know, I think that’s, that’s super interesting because you’re You’re doing the local play, and then you’re doing the community play, and it’s fun to see, you know, it’s fun to think about where it could go.

Brooks: So, yeah, but the goal, it’s like super simple, relaxed, organic community, right? Like, where’s it gonna go? I don’t know. Like, are we gonna do giant group cohorts? I don’t know. Like, I’m gonna let it just, like, grow organically, like, whatever, you know, Whatever happens with it happens. Hopefully people just that want the value will come in and hang out with us and, and talk local newsletters.

So, 

Jared: well, very cool, man, you are, uh, do it. I mean, you just launched that site today. If right, you got it off the ground really quickly. So, uh, fast, fast, fast. 

Brooks: Yeah. So it’s funny. I was, um. I was going to talk about something else and then it was four hours before our call. I was like, wait, like maybe I can just get this.

Maybe I can just get this live and then I’ll, this’ll be my, this’ll be the side hustle. So yeah, that was it. 

Jared: It wouldn’t be the first time, and I’ve shared this before where I’m like, there’s a motivating factor to coming on and having to share about stuff every week. And, um, not that like we don’t always all have like, But I know I’ve been to the point where I’m like, I really want to talk about this this week, so I got to get that done so I can talk about it.

Brooks: And so you go do it 

Jared: totally. 

Brooks: Yeah. 

Jared: Um, well, it’s time for us to transition into our weird niches. I will call out. I felt this was a good point of the podcast and I don’t know, Brooks, if you watched last week’s podcast for all last week, it was right about this time when I noticed. Cause our recording software and the way this all works, we can see each other, which is a little off putting to stare at yourself talking.

But, um, I noticed in my background, if you see my 201 sign that, and again, we’re mid recording last week, that the one had fallen over, hanging out inside. So I’m like, well, what are you going to do about it? You know, I’m not going to get up in the middle of podcast and go fix it. So I just left it and I decided, I was like, well, I wonder if anybody will notice.

And sure enough, they did. Several people commented on the YouTube that were like, dude, what happened to your two Oh one sign? So, uh, well done. Those of you who are very observant, it’s fixed. And I’ll pay more attention to that now. I guess we’re a hundred, I’m hundreds of podcasts. And I think that’s the first time that’s happened.

Brooks: Oh, I’m sure I have something funky in my background. I don’t know. Yeah. 

Jared: They call it like an Easter egg though. Right? Like he’s like, yeah. So Kudos to you. If you noticed it’s fixed now and now we’ll transition into the weird knit, but every time we make this transition, I’m going to always, I think, natively go back and check in my, in my rear view there.

Yeah, good times. Good times. All right. I’ll go first here. So my weird niche is one that I use. probably every day. And I thought, why am I not sharing this here on the podcast? Um, I did come up with this one. I’ve been relying on people a lot lately. Um, and, uh, uh, but, but this one is, is from me and it’s called URL dash opener.

com. Um, it is the world’s I don’t know. I think it’s probably the world’s simplest site and it’s what it is what it says. It does like enter URLs one per line or separated by commas or separated by space and it will open all the given URLs in one click. And, um, this is really nice. Like I find that I’ll get like a Google doc of maybe reports from someone on my team, or maybe like a new project.

Like I got a new project delivered that we’re going to the client with today. Uh, or earlier this week, sorry. And I wanted to look at all of them, but I wanted to just look at them all quickly to see, you know, trends and look at it from a high level. And so anyways, there’s so many uses for this. You can just drop all the URLs in, press, click and open.

Not complicated, right? Not difficult. I’m not a programmer, but I can guarantee that wasn’t difficult to make. And that’s what it does. Now you might say like, well, how is this website doing? Um, uh, well, I have it up here on the screen in terms of Ahrefs. It is a dr 23. So nothing special, which makes sense, you know, probably wouldn’t pick up a ton of backlinks, but this is what I find hilarious.

It ranks, and now going back to actually my example of my niche site, my, my, my website from earlier, this website ranks for only 128 keywords. And yet Ahrefs estimates 39, 000 monthly organic page views. That has got to be the most page views From the fewest keywords that has ever existed in age refs. Uh, you know, um, URL opener ranks number one, they own so many number one positions for every variation of URL opener you can imagine.

Um, and, uh, I mean that, you know, we all know that age trust tend to under report in terms of other types of traffic as well, social traffic, uh, direct traffic and whatnot. This is probably generating between 50 to a hundred to a hundred, over a hundred thousand page views per month. I guess the last thing to really go into is the fact that it doesn’t have any monetization that I can find.

It’s only a one page site. Going back to your one page site example, no ads. So I don’t even think they’re making any money unless I missed it off this off anything on this. What, um, so 

Brooks: I guess not. Yeah. So you’re kind of, so the question is like, what’s the, you know, what’s the purpose, what’s the goal, do you know who’s behind it, like any idea?

I didn’t 

Jared: look, um, yeah, I should have, right. Like I should have tried to figure it out a bit. I didn’t, um, I mean, yes or no. It, it, um, 

oh, go ahead. 

Brooks: But w what, I feel like I’m missing out on the use case. I know you’re saying you use it every day, so you drop URLs in there and it just opens them. So why not just.

Like, why do you need the tool to open the URLs? It just saves me 

10 seconds. 20 seconds. 

Brooks: I guess I need to, I guess I need to test the tool and then I’ll know. Um, is what it sounds like. Yeah, I’m trying to think of other use cases. Like, I guess in my 

Jared: position, I use it a lot because I get like a lot of URLs given to me at once maybe.

Um, okay. Uh, uh, the, you know, so if you get a lot of URLs or like, let’s say that you’re grabbing stuff. Maybe you’re, you’re, uh, you’re doing some research and so you’re grabbing different, uh, Articles that you want to have, you know, for like a content update and you’re like, Oh, cool. That’s got some good stuff in it.

That’s got some good stuff. That article ranks. Well, you just put it in a little list, pop it in. And then when you’re done, you can open them all. Um, maybe you’re going around Ahrefs and you’re grabbing URLs to like look at for competitor analysis or for keyword research or something, put them all in here and then bam, at the end, you can open them all.

So again, I want to be clear, not life changing, but saves you 20 seconds, 30 seconds. I probably use it. Um, maybe every day’s been dramatic. A lot. Most days. Yeah. 

Brooks: No, that’s cool. I mean, that’s, I feel like, even little tools like that, I don’t even know exist. I feel like, if I can make it a part of my repertoire, like make it a part of my habits, Oh, this is amazing.

And then I start using it every day of something I didn’t even know I needed, you know, and, and that’s why I was asking you a few more, a few more pointed questions about it. So I’m going to test it, man. I’m going to test it out. 

Jared: I’m trying to think of other use cases, but those are the ones I probably use it for the most is, 

Brooks: well, I mean, that’s what it is.

It’s in the, it’s in the title URL opener. It’s like, if you need to open URLs, you know, um, 

Jared: yeah, I wouldn’t recommend going here if you’re just trying to open one URL. Let’s put it that way. Yeah. 

Brooks: Okay. All right. I’m not going to save you much 

Jared: time, but yeah. 

Brooks: Multiple, multiple URLs, drop them in and open, open them.

Okay. All right. 

Jared: Cool. Another in the long line of the continuation of like these little tools that people make that, and we feature the ones that are successful, but even success can be, I mean, how, how hard was this to make? Obviously not hard. And you know, over time it’s done well. So, um, yeah, but boy, they should drop some ads on it.

Like everybody else does. And at least make, you know, their three to 5k a month. 

Brooks: Yeah. Yeah. Um, Yeah, no, that’s cool. No, that’s a cool tool. Well, you’re um, your tool is really useful And mine mine is apparently useless Because it’s it’s the useless web. com Was is is the web is the weird weird site that I found weird niche site And it’s, it’s pretty much what you think it might be.

Uh, it’s, it’s useless. It’s a useless web and it’s the only thing there are some ads and a button. Do you want 

to click 

Brooks: the button? Definitely. Yeah, you should definitely click the button. I was pretty interested when I saw what websites it goes to. So let’s, let’s see what, let’s see what happens. Click 

Jared: it.

Click, click me, please. I did. Oh, I got to show the new tab. Sorry. Open in a new tab. 

Brooks: Okay. I gotcha. Okay. 

Jared: Yeah. It shares here in Riverside on a new 

Brooks: tab. Okay. 

Jared: Uh, Oh, and is it doing that thing where it’s not sharing the tab now? They got to fix it. I’ll get it. I’ll get it shared here. Give me a sec, folks. It’s not me.

It’s the, the, the, the tool, the software we use is not a click on all cylinders of late in this one function. Here we go. That’s right now. Crazy. 

Brooks: There’s actually more than I thought. Like I thought it was just cycling through the same. Kind of a few websites, but I just click four on my end and no, it’s all random.

It also, but yeah, it’s just going to give you a random 

Jared: useless site. Is that kind of the construct kind 

Brooks: of, kind of that’s it, but mixed mixed amongst these for sure, um, are all are definitely sites that this site owner also runs and operates. So it’s not just sending you to other sites. So I click, I click to the about section, and I saw it’s this, uh, it’s this guy, it’s a smart guy, his name’s Tim Hallman, so shoutout to the, shoutout to this guy, uh, who’s apparently like lives in Australia or something, so it’s got his website here.

Uh, he, he I think makes all kinds of random stuff. So the site, uh, I don’t think, there’s no, there’s no way he runs all these. If he does, I’d be like, shout out to, shout out to this guy. Um, like all the sites that you click through. But I do know that, for sure, some of them that I, that I went through, when I got to them, One was like, well, I don’t know.

It was a, it was a bunch of random stuff. I’m not even gonna like name them out. It was just puzzles and just weird stuff. There was like long, scrolly, weird tools and stuff. Yeah. Which one is this? 

Jared: Donut kitten. 

Brooks: There you go. Donut kittens. 

Jared: That combines two of the most popular things on the internet. Donuts and kittens.

Brooks: So. I think what I want to know is, um, what is that? What I want to know is, did he like, cause the design of this one I’m on, I’m on something called sliding dot toys. It looks very similar to his style. I don’t know if this is his though. No, I don’t think it is. I don’t think it is. He says the 

Jared: bottom here that he created the useless web site in 2012, all locked up inside during a hurricane.

Now, years later, I’m emailing around and trying to track down the stories of these sites. Really to show that the creators of all these weird and wonderful websites come from all walks of life And that everybody can create so if you’ve got a site in the useless web, and I haven’t reached out Feel free to give me a bell.

Is that give me a call in australian? 

Brooks: Maybe? Yeah, I think so Give me give me a bell. Yeah, I think so. Uh, as far as I know this site gets traffic. Uh, I don’t uh, I’m, not a hs. Uh, I don’t know if you have it pulled up I’m looking at like uber suggest and looks like literally like hundreds of thousands. Uh, let’s see here.

I’ll pull it up Yeah, yeah Because I’m looking at domain authority, authority of 63, so I don’t know what the DR is. 

Jared: I got it right here and just have to share the screen again. Thank you. Let’s get that bug fixed. DR74. Crazy. Oh my goodness, it’s the day of low keywords, high traffic. What the heck? Look at this.

So, um, it’s on the screen right here. We’ve got basically that ranks for 1, 800 keywords and generating an estimated monthly organic traffic From Ahrefs of 243, 000 monthly page views. That is insane from so few keywords. 

Brooks: It’s crazy. So crazy. 

Jared: Whoa, look at this. Useless websites. The search term ranks for 24, 000, uh, sorry, generates 24, 000, uh, estimated searches per month.

Brooks: Yeah, a lot of searches for random websites, useless web, useless websites, the use web. Yeah, there’s a lot of, uh, Uh, lot of searches around that apparently for useless, useless stuff out there on the internet. 

Jared: Take me, take me to a useless website. That exact term is apparently put into Google 5, 500 times a month.

Brooks: Yeah. Isn’t that, isn’t that crazy that someone like literally, like, Search that, right? Take me to a useless website. And then the, the useless web gets the, uh, gets the click in the ad, the ad view. 

Jared: This must be the follow up. Here’s a search term that gets 600 pages, uh, uh, searches a month. Take me to another useless website.

Brooks: The follow on. Exactly. Yeah. I already went to one. Yeah. Take me to another one. 

Jared: Oh, it’s so good. Oh my gosh, I mean, I, wow, I’ve been, this is the day of getting proven wrong. I thought that I’d found the site that ranks for the most traffic to the fewest keywords. And this site just, I think ratio wise blew it out of the water.

This is amazing. 

Brooks: Oh man. Oh. Wow. Yeah, it’s crazy to know all these sites that exist out there. I’ve really enjoyed hearing y’all do that and talk through these. I’m just like, this is, this is crazy. Like what, what are all these things? It’s a big web out there. It’s a big web, really big web. 

Jared: And you know, to your, well, I’m all, what I’m actually thinking is that Spencer, And I accidentally stumbled upon a goldmine of search traffic when we started doing the weird niche segment because apparently people love looking for useless websites online.

It’s kind of what this segment’s all about. But to your point, like, I mean, that guy’s got to be making some amount of money with even just those minimal amount of ads if he’s getting that amount of traffic to the site. I mean, that’s a lot of traffic. 

Brooks: It’s um, especially, I mean, even if you didn’t have to keep it updated or whatever, yeah, it is a, that’s a profitable, that’s a profitable, uh, venture.

Just that simple, that one site for sure. 

Jared: Well, um, what a fun week. That was fun. We, uh, we’ve got serious and, uh, we had a lot of fun in the process. Uh, Brooks, thanks for. Coming on, um, number two in the books and apparently your heart rate and blood pressure doesn’t move a bit by being a podcast host. So I think you’re in the right spot.

Brooks: Oh, man. I don’t know. I’ll freak out later. Yeah, I’m good now. 

Jared: What we want is next time you’re back on, I, I want to see a, uh, I want to see a profitable business around, uh, Google Core Update Counseling Services. 

Brooks: Oh yeah, I wrote down the, I wrote down the, the meditation app for the SEO. I made a note of that.

I don’t know. We’ll do something with it. We’ll do something with it. 

Jared: Yeah. Well, if you don’t, someone listening probably will, to be honest with you. So if nothing more, good meme. Hey everyone. Thanks for joining us this week on the podcast. Um, we hope you enjoyed it and we’ll see you again next week to talk about all the breaking news that we have from the week.

See you guys.

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