This New Tool is Positioned to Disrupt Traditional Search

Welcome to another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast. 

This week Jared Bauman and guest host Morgan Overholt team up to break down the latest headlines around Google, ChatGPT, and SEO. They also share their similar side hustles, along with an important message for content creators. Lastly, they talk about some very weird, annoying, and snarky niche sites they’ve found.

They dive into the news this week talking about Google’s November core update, which is currently in progress and began on November 11. Although there’s usually not much to report until the update is complete, Jared shared an article that did have some initial data.

He talks about organic results in AI overviews and industry-specific changes in queries. For the full scoop, check out the episode.

Watch the Full Episode

Moving along, they talk about a recent study that analyzed 300k keywords to better understand what triggers AI Overviews. The author reveals what types of keywords tend to be featured and what type of difficulty scores (according to Ahrefs) they typically have, among other qualities.

He and Morgan discuss featured snippets vs. AI Overviews. Do you agree? Do you believe there’s a diversity problem, like Morgan says?

Next up on the podcast is a look at ChatGPT Search, Google, and Bing. Jared and Morgan discuss how ChatGPT Search differs as a search engine compared with Google and Bing. 

They discuss how it works and how it pulls its results and how it could disrupt traditional search, and Morgan shares her first impressions of using it as a search engine. Could this new tool trigger a sizable change in the industry?

They discuss one of the results featured in the article that is especially entertaining, and Morgan highlights a positive stat from the new search engine. Check out the episode for a good chuckle.

Jared shares a brand new side hustle that’s already bearing results! He talks about resurrecting a site that was badly hit by the HCU. The site has about 700 well-written articles and an existing list of about 13k, and he teamed up with Thomas Smith to start sending out daily emails to try to drive traffic to the site. 

How is it going after just three days? And what important point does Morgan make about pivoting? Tune in to hear their comments and get the details on his surprising traffic and earnings results.

Morgan shares a quick update on her Upwork book side hustle. 

She talks about her marketing efforts and how many she’s sold so far. She talks about inspiration she has for additional projects and shares a few ideas.

Moving on, Morgan shares her weird niche site first, which she found using a new tool. Tune in to hear more about that.

Her site, Find The Invisible Cow, has a DR of 39 and is getting around 25k monthly organic visitors. The keywords it’s ranking for are quite entertaining, but not more entertaining than the actual game!

Was Jared able to find the cow in the end?

When it’s Jared’s turn, he shares Anthony Rendon Theft Tracker, but who is Anthony Rendon, and why is he stealing money?

Although this DR1 site is not monetized, Jared has a few thoughts about the motivation behind the site. 

And that concludes another episode of the Niche Pursuits News Podcast! Thanks for joining us, as always, as we tackle the most recent events in the space and strive to serve up a little inspiration, too.

Transcript

Jared: All right. Welcome back to another episode of this week in the news with niche pursuits. My name is Jared Bahman. We’ve got a couple of great news stories for you today. Don’t we always, uh, the November core update has started. We’ll touch on some early results about that. Uh, I’m shocked. We already have a few results, but we do bright edge has done a bit of a study on it.

We also have a study that was done on over 300, 000 keywords as it relates to AI overviews. And I will say there are some fascinating things they picked up on that I was not aware of some really interesting things. Coming out of that study. We’ll also touch on search GPT newly released and how it compares to Google versus Bing.

There’s some interesting results that are coming out there. So we’ve got a pretty results heavy type of podcast today for you. We’ve got side hustles, we’ve got weird niches, and we’ve got Morgan Overholt back. Morgan, welcome.

Morgan: Yay. So glad to be back and some of my favorite topics. I’m especially excited for the search GPT segment.

Jared: The search GPT is something I would admit you have brought me up to speed on a little bit. I didn’t even know I had access to it until you showed me where to look. But maybe, uh, I should just, uh, you know, accept that I was a little in the rears on that one. Uh, I’m excited for my side hustle today. This is a side hustle I started three days ago, and I’m already getting, uh, results, revenue results, not just traffic results, revenue results.

So I’m going to dive into that today. It’s a new one, a brand new side hustle.

Morgan: That’s amazing. I still don’t know how you have time to do all these side hustles, but I’m excited to hear about it. You

Jared: know, we just, Making it up as we go. Let’s put it that way. I don’t realize how much time I don’t have either.

But I keep saying yes to all these different side hustles. Uh, let’s dive into our first article. Our first story here. Um, and really it’s, it’s just, we’ll start it from the top. But it’s, it’s this idea that the November Core Update has launched. You know, we try to always talk about Core Updates when they, when they are released.

There’s not usually a lot of news to share. Um, When the core update is in its first week, you know, but, um, in this case, we do have some news to share. I’ll get to that here in a second. Just a quick overview. November core update launched on November 11th, which was veterans day here in the United States.

That was Monday. This podcast goes out and is released on a Friday. So chances are, it’s been live for five, six, seven days. By the time you’re listening to this. This article here in search engine land does not have much, but let me pop over to this article here in, um, where is it? Uh, basically that, that goes through some early results that bright edge found.

I, again, I don’t know how they found these results so fast. Uh, I didn’t deep dive into exactly what they found, but let me just go over some of the highlights that they surfaced. And maybe Morgan, if you have anything to add, we’ll move on after that. Number one, they said that this update seems to be adjusting how closely organic rankings align with AI overview citations.

In other words, high ranking organic content has an increased chance of being cited. In AI overviews, which, you know, many of us have surmised is probably going to happen. Uh, and so this is kind of suggest Google’s core algorithm is further synchronizing organic search results with the AIO content. Um, let’s see another one that stood out to me is, uh, insights from this update suggests that Google is rewarding content that prioritize genuine value and user experience over keyword density or traditional SEO techniques.

I mean, this has been talked about a lot. Um, you know, I, we have an interview coming out with someone who called this, uh, last update, uh, March and then August, the kind of the anti SEO update and also the HCU, the anti SEO updates that would kind of fall suit, we’ll see how that plays out finally, um, bright edge.

Uh, they, their analysis showed increased fluctuations. Especially at lower ranking positions, which they determined were 21 through 30, with more stable positions at the top. So again, kind of signaling that the update is redistributing rankings as it rolls out, but often times we see turbulence at the top, you know, the top 10 results, but this one, according to them, seems to be more pages 3, pages 4, pages 5.

Uh, yeah, that’s about it. You know, four days in, three days in, not a whole lot we can take from it yet. Uh, Morgan, I mean, are you seeing anything on your end? Anything else to, to kind of call out? I’m just surprised to learn

Morgan: there’s a second, third and fourth and fifth page of Google. It’s weird, right? No, I’ll, I’ll jokingly say like, who’s going to notice those changes?

Very few people. Right. So yeah, much to do over nothing.

Jared: I know you claim to not be much of an SEO person, but as an SEO, I’ll tell you one of the more infamous, longstanding, almost dad jokes of SEO. Where’s the best place to hide a dead body? Page two of Google. Cause no one ever goes there. Exactly. Exactly.

Morgan: So yeah, I think this one looks like a, by the way,

Jared: no chuckle.

Morgan: I have heard that one many times before, but yes, it’s true. I, yeah, I don’t feel like no one’s, no one’s going to notice anything in this core update, but you know, honestly, Jerry, that’s kind of refreshing in and of itself because I, I needed a bit of a soft blow, not that I have a whole lot left to lose, but you know, it’s better than like something, you know, Crazy happening.

So I’ll take it.

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And maybe I’ll see you on our call next week. Thanks a lot.

Jared: Yeah, again, I’ve said this in many core updates in the past, like we’re now at the point where no news is good news, right? So if you’re at a point where you’re looking at your site’s GSC data finally starting to come in and you’re not seeing any problems, like, wow, what a world we live in where that’s a win nowadays.

Morgan: Yeah, exactly. We’re like, oh, it didn’t hurt. Thank God. Yeah,

Jared: I didn’t, my site didn’t fall off a cliff. Wow, what a win. Um, anyways. Yeah. We’ll leave that one there. Uh, Hey, this next article is in the AH refs blog. It is by let’s see, Luis Lineham Lineham. I hope I said that right. It is titled. I analyze 300, 000 keywords.

Here’s what I learned about AI overviews. Um, I thought this was pretty interesting. We’re getting a lot of data out of AI overviews now that it’s been live for a few months now that it’s, I mean, just a couple of weeks ago, gotten rolled out to the entire world, basically it’s not in beta anymore, there’s some interesting things that she found.

Um, Let’s see here. I’m going to highlight a few things. Morgan, then I’ll turn it over to you. Uh, I know that this is an interesting article. It’s a pretty long read though. So I’m going to highlight just a couple things. Can’t go through the entire article. Uh, number one thing I thought was interesting.

AIO keywords tend to be low volume, long tail queries. With an average length of four words compared to two for non AIO, non, um, A, uh, AI overview keywords. So her example was can dogs have cinnamon? That is being dominated by an AI overview. Uh, long tail, low volume. And then that connects with the next thing.

She said a staggering 99. 2 percent of AIO keywords are informational. So if you’re wondering where all your rankings went as a content website, well, AI overviews might’ve eaten some of your lunch 99. 2%. I mean, that’s almost basically all AI overviews are informational. Uh, she commented using some of the AHS metrics that AI over, uh, AIO keywords have a much lower keyword difficulty KD.

With a median score of 12 compared to 33 for non AIO keywords. Again, supporting that low volume, long tail kind of thing. Usually a lot easier to rank for long tail queries. Doesn’t need as many backlinks, which is what keyword difficulty really is about. And then finally, uh, another observation I thought that was interesting.

AIO, AIO, why I cannot say that, can I? Uh, keywords predominantly attract mobile users with 81 percent of traffic from mobile devices. Um, I mean, what are your, what are your thoughts on this? Uh, you, you’ve, you’ve certainly been using enough of the SERPs to see AA overviews in play now.

Morgan: Yeah, honestly, uh, one of the things that I felt when I was reading through this article was, I found myself wondering, you know, what would have happened The, if what happened that we all thought was going to happen, the thing that we thought was going to steal our traffic, the AI overviews, rather than the HCU was a small publisher, whether or not this would have eventually killed me if the HCU didn’t, right?

Uh, cause I’m looking at this and it’s saying, okay, like the things that are more likely to trigger an AI overview in Google are longer tail keywords. And by the way, the article does specify that’s like three to four. We’re not talking about like. 10 long tail keywords for talking like three to four, uh, strings or three to four word strings rather.

Uh, uh, what, what, what was the other one? Low competition, uh, informational intent. I mean, this is basically a checklist of some of the types of topics that at some point or another, we would definitely target when doing keyword research. So, um, yeah, I mean, and it’s funny too, because like in a way, but in a way I still found it surprising, right.

Uh, but, uh, but on the other hand, it’s kind of what. We probably should have been avoiding all along any way that we kind of saw coming. Like, I remember a time that my team and I downloaded the search grader, uh, document from Google, like literally the document that their actual search graders, um, use to look at and evaluate quality content on the internet.

And in that document, it basically said, you know, try to avoid, or, you know, or I’ll not try to avoid, but there’s, there’s a difference, you know, queries and not no queries, right? I’m talking about K in O. W. As far as a no query is concerned, because these are the types of things that could be more easily answered very quickly, like with yes or no.

It was like a simple definition or something that could be captured by a featured snippet more or less. And so, in some ways, I feel like this is more or less still answering those no queries that we probably should have been avoiding all along. So, in some ways, I was surprised, but then when I really kind of stopped to think about it, uh, maybe lesser.

So, after taking. A little bit of time to sort of let that percolate a bit. It’s interesting though. I mean, the report is fascinating.

Jared: I think you’re exactly right. I mean, we debated this five years ago or around that when featured snippets were the big thing, right? And it was the ongoing debate about do we target featured snippets?

Do we actually target getting those snippets? Because in essence, we’re allowing Google to take our content, surface it on social media. Their property and not give us any traffic as a result of it. And the general consensus, although everyone had their own opinions, the general consensus was to go for the snippet because enough people still click through to get more information, right?

But in essence, we were almost, AI overviews is almost a microcosm of the exact same situation, except there’s even less incentive for people to click through now because AI overviews has not just taken Our answer, but it’s taken all of our answers and put it together into the most succinct best answer out of all of our content.

Right? So it’s almost a continual evolution of what we’ve been fighting against for almost a decade. Now, you know, a featured snippet. I overviews I totally agree with you. I brought it up before. Like, you know, we thought that I overviews previously was what was coming to eat our lunch. And as it turns out, it was the H.

C. U. Cool. Ironically, they’re kind of all connected because in many ways, like the content that we created that now doesn’t get any traffic because the HCU seems to be being used. In AI overviews. So it’s this weird circle, jerk, full circle kind of situation.

Morgan: Yeah, and kind of a good news, bad news situation too.

This article also goes on to say that the AIO keywords also tend to generate eight times less traffic potential, right? Uh, and that’s sort of the bad news. However, the good news is this article also, or the study also found that you only need to appear in the AIO. Gosh, it is hard to say. AIO overview. AIO.

Snippet, oh my gosh, that’s a tongue twister, that you only need a minimum of a 13 referring domains versus the typical like 41, uh, for non AIO SERPs. So, you know, easier to get in there potentially, which again could be some good news. You know, it’s better to have just like a little piece of that pie versus none at all.

Even if that pie is generating eight less, you know, Eight times less traffic potential overall. So that is kind of interesting. So, and it could also be one way to think about it, you know, maybe surface some content that otherwise would not be surfaced. Our next article

Jared: does. Yeah, our next story does touch on that actually.

And in many ways, the previous story touches on it, right? Like the core update seems to be, um, blending or at least, um, shortening the gap between where AI, AI overviews will pull. And where search results pull, historically search results will pull more from strong domains, will pull more from domains that have more backlinks, will pour, pull more from domains that cover that entire topic, uh, uh, more thoroughly and AI overviews have been shown.

I believe I’ve seen Lily wet, Lily Ray, Glen Gabe, a few of these people kind of show results that AI overviews will pull from sites that aren’t even indexed, let alone in the top 100 results for that domain. That general query, right? Well, maybe the gap is narrowing, but for now you’re exactly right. Like it’s much easier to rank as like a DR two site for an AI overview.

I’ll be at getting eight times less traffic, but you never would have gotten any traffic more than likely at that domain level. So it’s this weird kind of. Situation but maybe that’s changing as more core updates to come around and we will talk about that in our next Our next story anything else on this one that stood out to you.

Um, I liked your point about um, Where was it? I had it on the screen. I pulled it down but uh, you know to your point uh The ai overviews as it relates to how long the keyword is Uh, and by the way, technically long tail is not how many words are in the keyword Um Uh, that’s again, math nerd coming out here, but long tail is actually on the long tail of the bell curve.

Uh, actually bell curve. It’s anyways, sorry, you know what not for today, but technically speaking Long tail and number of keywords, uh, number of words in the keyword are not quite the same, but you’re exactly right But it does get more and more dominant like at the seven word length AI overviews whereas they’re for seven percent versus just point five You 4 percent with, um, non AI as it relates to, you know, the length of that.

So like almost a 14 times difference. I think that’s fascinating. So interesting.

Morgan: I do think it’s interesting. And by the way, never feel afraid to correct me there. I am, but a humble blogger and I do not consider myself to be an SEO. So I’m still learning in your presence. I also thought that was interesting.

And here’s one more interesting stat that I wanted to kind of throw out there too, is that this study also says that of the 150, 000 AI overview SERPs they analyzed that 99. 95 percent returned at least one other SERP feature. And we’re talking about like a feature snippet or a video preview or some kind of mixed media of sorts.

And so I also thought that was really interesting, right? Because again, it’s It’s sort of like taketh away, although, you know, personally it feels like they take it away a lot more than giveth, but it does seem to sort of, you know, offer some opportunity for other types of media to actually be displayed in an area that maybe perhaps before this happened, they would not have been displayed.

But there are also some oddities. Like I noticed this a lot personally, actually, especially my mobile device, I should also mention it says that the AI overviews trigger way more on the mobile devices as well. How often that the AI overviews are triggering that featured snippet. And, and I have to say, it feels so bizarrely redundant to me because it just says the same thing.

Uh, so I was a little bit surprised to see that included as one of those cert features that’s being triggered by an AI overview. It’s just like, Why have something in there for what it feels like the same thing twice? I don’t know. Maybe that’s just I couldn’t agree

Jared: more. And we know the difference between an AI overview and a featured snippet.

We know that an AI overview is AI working, whereas a featured snippet is a traditional organic search result pulling from what Google determines to be the best result, right? Like we understand the difference and it’s still weird. It’s still like, why am I seeing this so many times? What about the average user who’s like, What, which one do I trust?

What do I do? I mean, I’ve seen them conflict before, you know, like, uh, in terms of more kind of, I’ll call it like factual queries. I’ve seen them conflict. I mean, it’s a bizarre experience. I don’t know why they’re bothering with it. I don’t know. I just, I guess I don’t understand it. I’m sure maybe somebody smarter than me could be like, well, this, this is why that would make sense, but it seems like it’s wasting a ton of real estate space and SERP space.

And I don’t understand the value behind it.

Morgan: Again, it seems like a diversity problem to me, which I really feel like Google has had in recent times, you know, and I do think they’re finally trying to sort of, uh, adjust that again. Again, that was like my big feedback on the feedback form after HCU hit and all that stuff to Google that I said, Hey, look, you got a diversity problem.

Cause in my personal sites, I’m seeing the same site outrank me a thousand times, and I almost kind of feel like we’re sort of seeing a parallel problem now in the AI overviews when featured snippets are triggered and it’s literally having the exact same result. In fact, sometimes I would even notice.

That would be referencing the exact same website in both the feature snippet and the AI overview. But that’s not the only thing it’s triggering. It also is triggering, uh, 258%, I’m sorry, 258 percent more discussions. Uh, like I said, video previews, I mentioned that, uh, not videos themselves, video previews.

People also asks and that sort of thing, but the bizarre, Stat and all of that is had again. And I threw out those percentages, right? Like 258 percent more, 17 percent more, 6 percent more feature snippets, 849 percent more. It’s just weird. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t get some of these decisions that they’re making on, on some of these, uh, some of these new features in Google.

Jared: Conspiracy theory to your point about the, uh, I think I’m going to read it here. Uh, one of my favorite stats, according to Luis was, uh, 99. 9 percent of AI overview SERPs display at least one other SERP feature. Is that Google hedging their bets? They’re like, we know this AI overview isn’t that great yet.

It’s, it’s, it’s good, but it’s not quite great. So just in case we’ll include another SERP feature, just in case it stinks, we can be like, well, we had another option for you.

Morgan: Just in case it tell you to put glue on your pizza again, they’re like, or cheese or cheese. That’s what it works to.

Jared: The feature snippet said cheese.

So we’re off the hook.

Morgan: Oh, yeah. It’s plausible. What do they call it legally? Like, plausible deniability or something? Yeah. I’m probably getting that term wrong, but yeah.

Jared: You said you weren’t much of an SEO. I’m not much of a lawyer, so I don’t know, but I’ll go with it.

Morgan: That’s, I like your conspiracy

Jared: theory.

I’ll go with that too. All right. I don’t know. It’s, it, it’s, it kind of, it’s kind of funny. Okay. I know you want to talk about this one. So let’s see some time for it. Uh, chat, GPT, search GPT. Uh, let’s, let’s get into this article. Okay. So this is, this is a really, I, again, I thought it was a really fun article.

A lot of deep dives today to talk about this is titled chat, um, search GPT. Uh, Oh my gosh, that’s hilarious. Okay. So search engine journal that the actual, um, uh, uh, at the top of the browser says chat GPT, and that’s what I was reading. So if you’re wondering why I was messing it up. Go look at the browser title, uh, and it’s labeled ChatGPT.

Uh, SearchGPT versus Google versus Bing. Search results review. So that’s what we’re talking about here. Um, uh, and so basically Dan Taylor went through and did a bit of a deep dive. He looked into search, uh, GPT and how it differs as a search engine. So I’m going to go ahead again, just kind of try to summarize this story, uh, and then we’ll get into it.

But Morgan, I know you really have spent some time on search GPT and quite prefer it. Uh, we have a fun story actually about search GPT that we’ll share that, uh, relates to the two of us. But, um, basically OpenAI. Recently launched this search dbt. It’s now integrated into chat dbt. Uh, it’s not really just another search engine It’s actually according to dan here in this this article quite different Uh for starters, unlike google and bing which focus on showing results based on rankings search dbt takes I guess a much broader approach so it pulls content from multiple sources And here we go, Morgan, kind of referencing back to what we were just talking about, including pages that don’t even rank in Bing’s top 100 results.

And so this means it can reference, you know, just a lot more diverse sources, uh, even if they aren’t maybe typically high up in search engine rankings. Uh, that could be a big deal for those people who have smaller sites or sites that aren’t quite as powerful. Maybe that typically wouldn’t have ranked high.

in a traditional Google search. Um, one thing that Dan pointed out is that SearchGPT sometimes references pages behind paywalls or even 404 pages that are technically gone, which is interesting. That can go both ways, right? Um, it could reference content that normally nothing else would reference, but also sometimes stuff that’s just frankly out of date or was deleted because it’s not relevant anymore.

Uh, he went on to highlight this. This relates to our story, or at least our experience of it, uh, Morgan. When it comes to local search results, search GPT isn’t quite on par with Google or Bing. It sometimes misses key location details, like misclassifying business types, for example. Uh, he looked into time sensitive topics, like the latest sports score or, um, line event, live event coverage.

And it did pretty well. It picked up some recent results faster than Google or Bing. Um, which I thought that was crazy. Um, because Google, I’ve always found to be pretty good with, with, with sports. Uh, let’s see, a couple more things he put out and then I’ll turn it over to you for some, some comments as well.

Another fascinating part of this story is how it could change SEO as it relates to disrupting traditional search. So, you know, again, going forward, he kind of went on and talked about how this might shift from simply just ranking to ensuring that your content is actually referenced in a lot of places.

That feels like an article we covered recently by Ran Fishkin, you know, on a previous news podcast a couple weeks ago. Thanks So anyways, he just kind of had these, these stories to share and really dove deep into the search results. I mean, a lot of it makes sense, right? This kind of feels like how AI and how chat GPT have been as an experience so far.

What do you, what do you think from having used search GPT so far?

Morgan: May I start with a PSA, by the way, is the same PSA that I offered. So guys, I. Really quick story. I had a famous podcaster reach out to me last week who said he was coming into a visit Miami and asked if I wanted to have lunch with him. So of course I had to jump at the opportunity, right?

I don’t know if you know this guy, Jared, but I decided I wanted to like impress him. So I asked search GPT to recommend a place near his Airbnb where he was probably busy filming a bunch of Amazon influencer videos, uh, just to give you guys some more clues about who this might have been. And I said, Hey, look, I’m looking for a casual spot, like near this Airbnb, you know, that has like lunch specials and that kind of stuff.

And it gave me, I felt some really good recommendations because this is sort of a part of town that I’m not like that familiar with. And I have to say, I felt like it did a pretty good job. And ironically, so I’m at lunch with Jared and we finally met in person. It was so nice, actually. We have some at lunch with Jared and I’m telling him the story.

And it’s kind of funny. He’s like, Oh, I don’t think I have a search GPT. And I’m like, no, no. You do let me show you where it is. So I want to make sure, Oh, there’s a picture up on the screen for the visual. I knew

Jared: we’re going to talk about it here. So

Morgan: there you go. We’re so cute. Come on. That’s enough. And that’s the restaurant behind us.

So search GPT recommended. And I felt like it was a good restaurant. Actually. I asked for a casual atmosphere. It delivered to ask for lunch specials. It delivered. It was like, great. I thought you liked it.

Jared: Did you ask for lunch specials?

Morgan: Yeah, yeah, and it had them.

Jared: That’s what I mean. I was going to say it was a very good restaurant that it found, but I was, I remember the lunch special was like, Oh, this is really good.

Like it had a lot of options and it was a really good price. And I was like, man, this is amazing. Right?

Morgan: I know brought to you by search. And so we’re sitting there and Guys, if you, if you’ve not done this yet, because I’m seeing this with so many of my friends, even people in the tech community, they think that that search is going to be, uh, either like more obvious or it’s just built into chat.

You actually have to open up your chat app and click on that little globe icon. And it’s not even going to stick. Cause sometimes I close it out and open it back up and it like toggles back off. You’ve got to make sure the globe icon is toggled on to actually use search GPT. And I’ll also say as someone who has in the past, Previously kind of hated on chat GPT because I felt like it was stealing from me.

I mean, jury’s still out on some of these AI things, just saying, but I feel like it was stealing from me. I feel like it was hallucinating. I feel like it would never give me good answers for such a long time. And truthfully, I feel like chat GPT still has a lot of those sins. Search GPT is like a whole other ball game to me.

And for the first time. It’s since any of these like AI chatbots have come out, I finally found myself using, like, I downloaded the chat GPT app on my phone. I’ve actually found myself using it for search queries more than I have any other search engine. And that’s huge because it’s only been out for a couple of weeks and Jared, there’s like so much less.

Messing around it just gives me the dang answer. I don’t just scroll for ages I don’t have to like go through all this stuff or you know Do the pogo sticking where I’m going back and forth because I’m not getting the answer that I need It just gives me the answer now. Am I following through with traffic on that?

Maybe not necessarily all the time, right? Well, it’s kind of a zero click situation more often than not But I will also say I do find myself clicking as far as that AI is concerned through the traffic more often in search GPT than I have been in the Google AI overviews. Anecdotally for whatever that is worth, but so far, I have to say, I am a fan of this.

Jared: Well, to your point, I mean, it says, and so if you had a good experience finding a local result. This article says that’s actually like the worst feature of search GPT. But to your point, I thought I found a great restaurant. I thought it did a great job. And yes, to your point, this is where I learned how to use search GPT.

Was that our lunch? Cause I was like, well, I don’t have it yet. She’s like, uh, yeah, you do. And I’m like, I don’t think I do. And she’s like, yeah, give me your phone. Uh, it was fun to meet a person.

Morgan: I showed Jared something for the first time.

Jared: I saw Thomas a couple weeks ago on my trip to New York. I saw you a couple weeks ago on my trip to Miami.

I mean, I just feel like I’m making Spencer jealous left and right. He’s actually sad. He’s like, what the heck? How are you seeing all these other people? I’ve not seen anyone.

Morgan: I told Spencer to come on down. The weather here is lovely. Can I also say I, I could be possibly a bit biased as well, because it’s just nice to see my own sites ranking in search GPT again for the first time.

Not that this is like life changing traffic. I actually have my traffic stats. If you would be curious to hear them on how much GPT traffic I am getting.

Jared: Yes, I didn’t look into it for this, so I should have, but yeah, I didn’t have time.

Morgan: Now, y’all remember my, my demographic on main travel site is quite a bit older, so I don’t think a lot of people are really, even though this exists.

Right. But like, I mean, we’re talking like main, like 60 and up. So, you know, take it for what it’s worth. My main search engine traffic source right now is being hilariously at the 3500 clicks a month. Yahoo. Second 2100 clicks a month. Google third 2000 clicks a month. ChatGPT is the number one AI, uh, generating traffic source for us right now at a whopping 22 clicks per month with Perplexity right behind it, nipping at its heels at 7.

Jared: Is that Claw perspective?

Morgan: I couldn’t get Claw, Claw’s not even registering here, so. But, I, I, look, at least it’s there, it’s there, you know, I’ll take it, it’s better than not being there.

Jared: It’s difficult to look at these sorts of things with two lenses, right? There’s a lens that we have to look at it as publishers and we can’t ignore that.

And we can’t ignore obviously all the conversations we’ve had here on this podcast, but the conversations that happened in the halls and the DMS of pretty much everybody in our shoes, right? The content creators of the world who. Can blatantly point out that like these models are completely built on, trained on, and based on our content.

And it’s just, it’s so hard to not let that influence the way that we then act as users, consumers, technologists, as we experience new technology and improvements in many areas. Not all, but in many areas, improvements in the way that we get our information and get it faster and more relevant and more personalized and et cetera, et cetera.

It’s so hard to navigate those complications on a like daily, hourly, minutely basis, I feel like. And it’s kind of probably the mentally exhausting part of being in this industry for the last, you know, certainly in the last year and a half to two years as we’ve been dealing with these sorts of questions.

Morgan: You know, I, I think I’m almost at the point right now where it’s like, what’s the old, uh, famous verbiage that if I fall, you’re going down with me? That’s kind of how I feel about Google right now. Like, you know what, if you’re going to take on my site traffic with a, a site classifier that doesn’t exist, uh, then you know what?

Um, we’re going to go to zero click. We might as well go to zero click. Let’s go all the way. Then you lose too. That’s sort of how I am starting to more or less feel about it. I mean, it’s not great, but again, that’s just me as a small publisher, right? As a user, I have to say it’s, it’s great. I mean, yeah, again, the areas that you need work, like you said, uh, maps, it’s kind of questionable, um, time sensitive stuff.

Sometimes it answers really well. Sometimes it doesn’t answer really well. And that same article, it referenced both the sports analogy or the sports query that we talked about earlier, having a real time result, but then it also talked about looking for like real time deals on Nike shoes, I think was the brand it was looking for, and that result was not great.

Uh, so, you know, not predict, not consistent. Right there. I would say, and I’ve also had a few times where it did in fact, give me a 404. So I got excited, clicked the link, uh, nothing’s there. Right. So yeah, it definitely has some improvements. Um, I will say really great move, like incorporating Bing into this.

I think it’s also like a little jab to Google. It’s pretty funny using Bing, uh, to, to generate some of these, but it’s also really important in the article also touches on this, that that doesn’t mean, even though this is sort of built on the backbone of Bing, uh, rather than Google, that it is always surfacing Bing results, right.

And, or, or is. surfacing being results in the order that they are received. And that’s what the interesting thing is, or the survey did is it actually kind of compared, Hey, look, these were, this is the query. This is what search GPT said. This is what, this is where those items rank in Google. And then there, this is where those items rank in being, and they’re always just a little bit different, but I did notice a bit of a lean toward if things tended to do better in being.

They would tend to show up a little bit more in the search GPT, according to this study. But again, it wasn’t like a 100 percent predictor either. So just, you know, for what it’s worth, keep that in mind. Show. It’s a long article.

Jared: I do recommend reading it. Uh, can I just highlight one funny part or at least my favorite, like off the cuff part that I thought was funny was, uh, I don’t know if you got down far enough, it’s really far down the article, but it was the, That’s holiday destinations, 2025 in search GPT.

And so is this, is this the same one you’re talking about?

Morgan: Uh, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

Jared: It, uh, it said, uh, much like a number of queries in the travel sector, this triggered an image pack above the carousel and the top three that search GPT recommended, again, these are the best holiday destinations in 2025, right?

Like, uh, doesn’t know much about you as, as, as the person. So it’s just kind of aggregating like, Hey, if we don’t know much about this person that we’re Talking to you like what would be kind of the top travel destinations in for holidays in 2025 the top three it recommended uh tulise france, uh cameroon and uh east anglia in england So yeah

Morgan: diverse

Jared: author The author said having worked with a large number of travel companies and supported the industry through events and the institute of travel and tourism I can honestly say this is a very Eclectic list of destinations to consider

Morgan: a lid for every pot on that one.

But can I also say though, in that same thing, it also talked about how those travel queries proportionally speaking, actually tended to produce more like small publisher results as well, which I was really happy to see. So even though it was a bit of an eclectic mix, and I would argue as well, that that’s not how most of us would probably prompt it.

I mean, whenever I’m prompting search, I’m always like, can you recommend travel destinations? In this area or for me and I, or I like these things or whatever. I don’t think most of us are just being like YOLO best travel place. So I can hold that against it. Can I also point out one other funny thing? I

Jared: can see the medium article, right?

Like. Search GPT recommended I go to Cameroon on, on holiday. Here’s how it went.

Morgan: Right. Yeah, basically. Yeah. I let chat GPT plan all of my travel for like, you know, whatever, a period of time I could see the YouTube video now. Uh, but I also wanted to point out at one point in the article, it says that, um, in 2024, Gartner predicted that search engine volume would drop 25 percent by 2026, um, having, and they said in the same article, having played a search GPT, this prediction feels like it could become a reality.

I have to say that I kind of feel the same, at least for a certain demographic, right, especially the younger, more tech, uh, demographics. I’ve certainly reduced my search engine usage, uh, but hilariously, and I think this is kind of a funny note to end on. The Search Engine Journal, or the author of this article, um, also decided to ask SearchGPT about their thoughts on whether or not, you know, they could overtake Google.

And more or less, SearchGPT said that it’s Google’s established infrastructure and user loyalty that’s going to provide Google with a resilient advantage. So, even SearchGPT itself did not necessarily. Uh, have high hopes of overtaking Google in any kind of a significant way. But I don’t know, this is the closest thing that I’ve seen to being something that could trigger a sizable change in the industry and the way that you look at search person.

We’ll see,

Jared: it’s a fascinating article. It’s a good article. It’s not a prospective piece. It is a piece that deep dives into. Search GPT, Bing, and Google. Well worth the read. I think it’s a really good article. You’ll get a little amusement, but you’ll get a ton of information. So with that, we, uh, need to move on.

We’re going to have to hustle through our side hustle section. See what I did there? I’m here all day. All right. Um,

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Jared: Uh, before I get into it, though, you referenced it kind of off the cuff. I’ll just mention it. If you haven’t watched this week’s interview with Morgan McBride, we’ve talked about the HCU, we’ve talked about, we’ve talked about all this stuff, kind of, you made mentioned to, but boy, that interview is, uh, is going nuts.

I, right before I, uh, we started recording today, I looked, it’s like a day old. Sorry, I got like a hundred comments on YouTube. I know that the downloads on the podcast side are off the charts. So, uh, she was at the Google Web Summit a couple weeks ago. Uh, we had Jake Kane on last week. Great interview with Jake.

Kind of going through all the details of it. Morgan brings a very different perspective. Uh, not this Morgan, by the way. Somebody else commented on that. We’re getting a lot of Morgans on the podcast lately. Different Morgan. And she had her own version of being there at the Google web summit. I know you actually know Morgan, don’t you?

Morgan: Yeah, we actually attended, uh, the Washington DC event that she talked about in the interview where they had us go lobby on their behalf and talk about how Google has really been a strong ally for us, small publishers. And yeah, it was really cathartic, like listening to her retell everything, because it does kind of make you feel eased.

It made me feel very used, you know, after, you Being a, that advocate for Google and all that stuff. So, yeah. And by the way, even if you guys have already watched that interview once, like go back and like, look at the comments on the YouTube because it’s like, and take your, bring your popcorn, man. Cause it’s just getting better.

Fascinating.

Jared: Yeah. Uh, Spencer messaged me and he’s like a lot of comments. And I was like, I looked, I was like, Oh boy, I don’t have time for this right now. I got to be, I got to go on to, uh, it’s a good one to listen for any of you who have sites, have something that was hit by the HCU. A lot of what Morgan said, I think, touched at the core of the emotional side of maybe where we’ve analyzed it so much from the tactical side, I think Morgan did as well.

Just such an amazing job of getting into the emotional side of it too. Not that she wasn’t tactical as well, but certainly I think the tough, the part that garnered all the reaction interest has to do with her connection to the emotional side of, of, of the, of the HCU and the subsequent Google updates.

Morgan: And she just ain’t worried about Google’s gonna, whether or not they’re gonna invite her back at this point. She’s just like, whatever, here’s what happened. Like, I mean, it just, she does not like soften anything, which I loved. So definitely worth a listen.

Jared: Okay. Side hustle time. Um, my side hustle that I want to talk about is brand new.

I’ve talked previously about how I’m resurrecting one of my HCU hit niche sites by doing Pinterest. And I’ve gotten within a couple of months, I’ve regained all the traffic and earnings that I had lost from the HCU actually earned more in October. I believe it was that then it had earned at its peak.

Maybe that was September. I don’t know. It’s earning about as much as it did at its peak. So still continuing to do that, but man, that success really got me going. I’m like, I got, A lot of HCU hit sites, right? And what else can I do with another one of my HCU hit websites? Uh, Thomas Smith, who’s another co host on the news segment has been sharing about how he’s been generating a lot of success from email, uh, and basically using, uh, some, I guess the best way to put it is emailing every single day with content that is super targeted at his target market.

And then using, um, uh, you know, CRM automation sequences and content that is already on the site to kind of fuel that, right. So you’re basically like, Hey, uh, today’s email is all about this. Go read the article or today’s email is all about this topic. Go read the three articles. You know, I mean, I, I’m being very high level on it because we only have a few minutes, but basically that’s the concept there.

And so I reached out to him, he reached out to me. We both started talking about this, this site I have that is, you know, I’ve got like seven or 800 informational articles on it. They’re decent. They are written by someone with a lot of expertise. They’re real world takes. They’re not, you know, not that there’s anything wrong with all the rest of it, but like content that I would be like, man, I do feel like this is better than what you would read for the subject.

In a lot of cases, long story short, he and I were like, let’s do it. Let’s figure out how to work together on this. And so he’s doing the legwork on it. It’s all his systems at play. And we started emailing. I got this. What this niche site had built up an email list of about 13, 000 people. Obviously the amount of people it’s been building since the HCU has shrunk a lot, but it still has several automation sequences that I, that when people join the list, they get, and so it’s still sending emails as people join and they go into a couple of different automation funnels and sequences.

So. In many ways, a lot of the email addresses are dormant because if you were on the list two years ago, you haven’t gotten an email in a while, but at the same time, there are emails being sent out every single day and people opening emails every single day, just not many people join every day because there’s not much traffic to the site.

And so, long story short, um, uh, Thomas sat down, uh, put together a couple emails and started sending out one email per day. Um, we are three days in. So, uh, we have sent out three emails now, that’s it. And I just thought, I just shared, uh, right before we hit record in the podcast, what the results are so far.

And I think all of us are surprised to say the least. Um, if you’re looking at the screen, you can see that the earnings, the site is monetized on raptive. It was earning about 20 a day. Bing traffic, uh, still ranks decently for some topics in Bing, uh, Pinterest traffic, you know, I don’t pin, but it still does have some stuff from, from Pinterest.

Um, so there’s just some stuff out there still for this. Uh, there’s a YouTube account that does send some traffic towards it. So anyways, it was earning about 20 a day and getting about two or 300 page views a day. Well, I mean, as you can see on the screen, uh, We’re only on day three and traffic is up to almost 900 visits a day and earnings are just shy of 55, uh, yesterday.

Um, and so that’s just day three. Like, I mean, I feel like the sky’s the limit here.

Morgan: That’s really impressive. Honestly, it’s kind of, it is really a powerful, um, you know, I don’t have any funnels set up or whatever, but I’ve just been trying to send out like one email a week for my new freelancer files website, right.

That I’ve talked about here on this podcast where I’m sort of rebranding and, you know, trying to get to a different domain and a new platform, et cetera, for my HCU hit website. I’ve got like almost 8, 000, I think a little over at this point subscribers. And even with just that one email blast a week and, and some social media promotion, I’m getting like 2000 clicks a month.

I’m barely even ranking on search engines is way too young to do that. So it’s, it’s, it’s pretty powerful in my mind.

Jared: You know, it’s crazy because, um, it’s proof like you don’t need a really, really big list to make a dent in earnings, traffic, that sort of thing. I mean, obviously like. Where this gets really exciting is when that’s earning, you know, 500 a day.

Like that’s exciting. Um, but this, I mean, even at 55 a day, like that is a multi thousand dollar website. And just from resurrecting and sending it out. And again, it’s just one email. Three days worth. Um, deliverability is pretty high. I was worried about deliverability and resurrecting this old account.

But again, I think because it’s been emailing every single day and it’s been getting emails, albeit in a funnel situation with not many people joining. I think that’s helped. Um, there’s been some unsubscriptions unsubscribes, but not that high. Uh, open rates have been 15, 20, 25%. Uh, click through rates have been surprisingly good on some of them, obviously with that much traffic.

So. Man, it gets me so excited. I’m already starting to think like, Oh, can I use Facebook ads to start to drive new email subscriptions? Right. And just start to drive new subscribers. Kind of like I did with the other site that I’ve talked about. Um, can I, you know, can we get more in the funnel so that more people are getting this stuff, more people are getting the content that apparently they like clicking over the website, driving those, those, um, those rapid burnings up, can we add, you know, more affiliate products and stuff?

I mean, we, we know, right. Sky’s the limit here, right? You just, you find a topic that people like, you get people interested and you go for it, sky’s the limit. So anyways.

Morgan: Just remember people, your content is still valuable. Your content is still valuable. It’s just like a who moved my cheese situation, right?

Somebody moved the cheese. You just got to get the content out in a different way now, whether it be newsletters or social media or, you know, what have you. So yeah, I think this is just proof in the pudding. We just gotta, we just gotta pivot and adjust. Not, not to underplay, not to downplay anything that’s happened.

It’s been traumatic and terrible and it shouldn’t have happened, but it just proves to me that it is still useful, still valuable, and we can still make money on it.

Jared: Exactly to your point. I mean, this is just a site that was sitting there that Google hates and because the model used to be Google for it.

And I haven’t had the time because I’m so busy at my agency or working on other projects. This one’s just kind of sat there and what a missed opportunity. I wonder if anybody else listening has that. So, uh, well, uh, let’s see what, turn it over to you. Let’s let you fill us in on your side hustle of the week.

Morgan: Mine is super fast. I just wanted to give you guys an update. I’m a book. I have a book here. It’s right behind the visual podcast. I’m showing it off. It’s in my KDP book. These are my author copies, but it is officially live as a 10 day Upwork jumpstart guide and workbook. Um, and it’s just on the Amazon KDP program.

And basically what I did is it took all the blog posts that Google no longer wanted to show anybody and I reworded them a little bit, put them into a book. I published that sucker. And I got to tell you, I’ve not even heavily promoted it yet. Just literally. Basically a post on most of my social media platforms like a single post and I’ve not even seen a newsletter Advertising it yet, which is crazy and I already sold like 14 copies.

So I mean, I’m pretty excited by those results already Um, I really feel like if I start heavily promoting it with a newsletter, um, maybe writing some targeted articles about it You know best upwork book or whatever it is gonna be And and directly promoting it to people and incorporating it into some of the posts on my new website So that when I’m sending newsletters, they’re seeing that they can actually purchase that book.

I, I think there’s a lot of potential there and you know, and actually it’s honestly inspired me to do even more, you know, beyond just the workbook, maybe making some planners and things, you know, I happen to listen to this great podcast called niche pursuits and there is a podcast recently about a guy that just just specializes in side hustles and that was one of the things that he’s doing and he’s doing Low to no content books where it’s all just like, you know, workbooks and that kind of stuff.

So it’s kind of, it’s really got the wheels turning. I’ve got to say, and especially for somebody like me with a graphic design background, uh, to see that you can easily generate like 140, 150 bucks, you know, without even barely advertising the thing, I’ve even advertised it properly yet, you know, uh, and it’s first week is like incredible.

So to me, that tells me there’s really some. Opportunity and potential there. So, and I’m really excited to see where it’s going to go. So if you guys, again, you know, it’s kind of funny, Jared, I feel like our side hustles today are sort of the same thing, right? What pre purposing your content, your content does value.

Yeah. So like whether, whether you do a book or newsletter or both or whatever you do, just, just remember your content is still valuable and that’s the lesson here in this side hustle segment today.

Jared: Yeah, and I like what you said, because it’s like, once you start diving in on a topic, like, maybe you’re going to repurpose your content for an email newsletter, like I did, or maybe you’re going to turn it into a book like you did, what what followed was, then you realized all the other doors that opened because you were doing.

You went down, went through the first door, right? Like, you got that book live, and then that opened your eyes to all these other opportunities, which, any one of those could turn into something very real and very tangible, but would you have known that, would you have gone after that, had you not gone through that first door, which is repurposing your content for the book, you know?

Like, it’s hard to see Three, four steps down the road, sometimes leaning into the first step prompts and opens up the real door. The real opportunity.

Morgan: Right. Yeah. And one door closes, another door opens, you know, the same question, would I’ve ever pursued this had the HCU not hit? No. I would’ve never even thought about it.

So, you know, yeah. And maybe, maybe I’ll be better off on the other end. We’ll see.

Jared: Yeah. I said on this week’s podcast with Morgan, because we were talking about where she’s going now as a result of what

Morgan: happened. Other Morgan.

Jared: Other Morgan. Thank you. Other Morgan. All right. Timmy Morgans, Timmy Morgans. Um, but where she’s going, right?

And she was talking about how she’s got all this stuff that she started, and a lot of it is a positive, but you know, in the grand scheme of things, pales in comparison to the brand she had built with Google traffic, right? And I was saying like, it’s going to take years for us to wait for the big results to come in because big things take years.

Right. And we’re all in the early days of repurposing, pivoting all this stuff. And there’s so many things to be positive about, but because we haven’t had time on our side yet, no one has those big, big, big results yet. But it doesn’t mean they’re not coming. You know, it doesn’t mean they’re not coming.

Morgan: Yep, absolutely.

Jared: Well should we move into the final segment here and that is our weird Niche segment who’s going first i’m going to just look at the agenda morgan You’re on you’re going first on this one. Okay, so somehow you You end up first on the list here. So I’m going to go ahead and share your weird niche.

Why don’t you walk us through it?

Morgan: All right. So this weird niche, niche is brought to you by search GPT. Of course, I, uh, you know, it’s funny cause I just asked search GPT. I literally told it. All right. So I’m, I co host this podcast every once in a while, and we do a segment about weird niche sites. And with the, with the often funny angles.

And this is one of the ones that recommended to me and I absolutely love it. It’s called find the invisible cow. com. Uh, and find the invisible cow. com is basically a browser based game. It does, it only works in desktop. It does not even work in mobile, which is, which is really funny. So don’t try to load on mobile.

Won’t do anything except tell you it does not load and it is ad monetized. So it’s got display ads all over it. Um, so it probably is actually earning a decent amount of money, especially considering the fact that it’s going to generate a. Decently long session time. It, as far as traffic is concerned, uh, SEMrush has it at a 35 DR.

24. 9K monthly organic views, which is amazing. And again, it doesn’t take into account, you know, like, anything else like social or what have you. Um, again, desktop only. And, oh, you’ve got it pulled up on Ahrefs. Even bigger. So Ahrefs has it on 64 DR. Let’s see here, but lower traffic though. It’s saying 7. 7 in a draft.

I always wonder what’s, what’s actually accurate, man. It’s like none of them are accurate, but yeah, probably the keywords. The keywords are hilarious. It’s like find the cow, invisible cow, find invisible cow. Who’s looking this stuff up?

Jared: I like this one though.

Morgan: The moo cow game. Now this will require, this demo will require some audio, which I know we were not 100 percent sure whether or not it will work on the podcast.

So I am prepared to, uh, To provide a proximity of that reenactment for you guys. You’re very welcome. Feel free to like clip this out and use it as your new ringtone. But basically if you click start game here on the browser pulled up. I think you should try to find the invisible cow, Jared.

Jared: Okay, I This is the first time I’ve even clicked on this, so I don’t really know what to do.

Here’s what it says. Drag your mouse, or finger, which by the way implies that it should work on mobile. Uh, but it doesn’t. Drag your mouse around to find the cow. It’s hiding behind the shouting. So I just adjusted my volume down a bit just in case that has a bearing on the recording Although I don’t think it does and you want me to hit start game.

Morgan: Let’s go find that invisible cow.

Jared: Okay, this is we’re doing this live

Morgan: I

Jared: I never saw anything.

Morgan: So, okay So the it’s basically like, you know those games where you’re like hot cold. You’re colder. You’re hotter. You’re colder. You’re hotter Okay The cow starts mooing more loudly if you’re getting closer to the cow.

You’re, all you’re doing is a blank screen and you’re just moving your mouse all around the blank screen and you’re trying to find where the cow is mooing the loudest or saying cow the loudest. Then your cursor changes into like a pointer finger and then you click and then you find the invisible cow.

Um, that’s the whole game. And in case you guys can’t hear this on the podcast, it literally sounds like cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow, cow. And it gets like louder and softer depending on where you are on the screen.

Jared: I now have a, I was prepared

Morgan: to provide the audio.

Jared: I now have a full screen interstitial that I cannot get out of.

So, uh, not exactly winning the user experience game here.

Morgan: Yep, and yeah, it still ranks fine for fine cow, moo cow game, or whatever that keyword was. Still working. Do you want to try the fine name? Oh, and there’s also a hard mode. This is basically the whole game, but there is a hard mode where the cursor will not change to the pointer finger.

The cursor doesn’t change at all. You just have to click around and then find the invisible cow. Jared, do you want to try that find that invisible cow just one more time? Let’s see whether or not you could find him.

Jared: I will try again now that I know better the rules By the way, the cow guy is so annoying I will try

I think I might have found him. I’m not sure what happens when you find him

Morgan: Yeah, he pops up on your screen a little cow pops up on yours. I saw your cursor change, but you moved it too fast Aw, zero points for Jared.

Jared: I never found the cow, but I did get close, I think, because he got a lot louder.

Morgan: Yes. I don’t know if this wins the award for like the most annoying, uh, weird niche site that I’ve brought to the podcast.

I mean, definitely the most annoying I’ve brought for sure. Undoubtedly. I’m not sure the most annoying, but yeah, it ranks.

Jared: I can’t think of one more annoying. Let’s put it that way.

Morgan: You’re welcome. Cow, cow, cow, cow. I’m

Jared: having nightmares about cows now. Uh, for those of you listening in your car with your children, thank you.

We brought you a child friendly, very child appropriate, and now child annoying, uh, weird niche for you. I can just see my three year old shouting that if you ever heard this interview in the car.

Morgan: You’re welcome, parents.

Jared: You’re welcome, I know. Uh, well, mine is not nearly as annoying. But, um, perhaps more weird?

I don’t know. That was pretty weird, though. That was pretty weird. I don’t know who plays Define the Cow game. My weird niche also, um, Yeah, pat yourself on the back. That was weird. That was weird and annoying. Mine is far less annoying. How’s that? I’ll just go with mine’s less annoying. Uh, this was shared with me, Uh, let’s see.

I got the notes here. I’m trying to give people a little bit of credit. Luke Ward. Thanks, Luke. Uh, tagged me on Twitter. This is Anthony Rendon. Theft tracker. So, uh, who is Anthony Rendon? Well, I had to go look him up. Anthony Rendon is a baseball player for the Anaheim Angels. Apparently this guy, uh, signed a big contract and he has basically been injured a lot.

And so, uh, this is this guy. Tracker with this one page website. And by the way, it’s hilarious. It’s well, I think it is a tracker that I, uh, basically shows you all sorts of stats on how much money he is literally stolen from the angels as a result of being injured. So, um, uh, let’s see, let’s just kind of dive into some of these things.

Um, He has missed 451 games. I don’t know baseball very well, by the way. So I’m just going off what this says. Like if this is wrong, I apologize, but I think it’s right. Uh, it seems right. Uh, he’s missed 451 games since signing his contract with the angels. He’s played in 36 percent of the games. So apparently since signing the angels have played 708 baseball games, which by the way, is like five years with the games.

They play like 150 games a year. Played seven, eight games. I have no idea. Yeah, I don’t know. Sorry. Two bad. Two baseball fans, uh, two non-baseball fans here, but he, uh, the angels have played seven, eight games since signing him. He’s played 257. That’s only 36% of the games. So according to this, there’s a nice little bar graph here.

He has stolen $167 million from the angels, and apparently it’s going up every minute. There’s a little live updating chart that says, heads up Rendon has earned $478 while you have been on this site. I’ve only been on it.

Morgan: Whoa.

Jared: Yeah. It’s going up by the minute. Um, I guess I probably was on it, uh, just in anticipation of this podcast.

So maybe I’ve been on it for like what, 45 minutes or so. That’s a nice, healthy hourly rate. I like this. Um, according to this, he has earned 843, 000 per hit, 211, 000 per at bat, 7. 6 million per home run. Um, uh, you know, it goes on with more 1. 472 million per RBI. Bye. Uh, and I love this down here, injury history, and it’s got a couple of his injuries and how long it’s sidelined them for.

So here he hurt his oblique for 20 games. Uh, if you look at the injury history, it gives you a little bubble that explains it. Each injury is rated on a scale of 0 to 5 based on how valid or legitimate of an injury it was. Um, most of Tony 10 games, I, uh, IL trips injured. Injured list trips are because in his words, there are just too many dang games in a season.

So I love this. I guess he pulled his hamstring this year, missed 68 games, 68 games. Their rating was, well, that didn’t take too long. That didn’t take long to recover from. Um, anyways, so they have all these fun stats and I think the site is hilarious. It is not monetized. It’s like a DR one. Um, I guess the final thing to share would be that it does have a little link here that says created by and a little link on X.

And if I go over to this tab, um, it’s legend, Vin RBI at VIN RBI. Uh, he’s got a Twitter account. It looks like dedicated to this website. Um, but it’s interesting. He’s got something pinned here from early near March 4th. Just sold my first mobile app company for 500, 000. So the guy must be whoever created this sounds pretty legit if you ask me.

Morgan: I like what did his bio say? I don’t think go back to that. It said, I am the number one Anthony Rendon hater. Is that what it said? Did you see that?

Jared: Yeah, I didn’t see it, but I believe you let me see. That was his whole

Morgan: bio. I’m the, I’m only here to be Anthony Rendon’s number one hater.

Jared: You must have a personal vendetta with the guy.

Morgan: Right? This, this is, this might be the snarkiest niche site that we’ve brought to the podcast. This is like dripping with snark. Ouch. I’d say poor guy, but you know, I’m sure he’s like drying his tears with his a hundred dollar bills. Clearly. I mean, I’m almost afraid to ask questions about this, by the way.

I know so little about baseball. Like it’s that thing with like the little round white one, right? Like I think that’s like the, what was what we’re talking about? I know nothing about this at all, but yeah, clearly a guy’s getting paid well, so good for him.

Jared: Yeah. I mean, they signed these big contracts, no doubt.

And, um, I’m pretty sure they’re guaranteed. So if you’re hurt. You know, they’re, they’re, they’re paid. They pay out. I know baseball has contracts that are a little bit more favorable for players than say football and some of the other sports. So it’s bound to happen. Uh, I’m more into the economics of baseball as you can tell than the actual game itself.

Uh, But I did play it a lot as a kid, so I know a little bit about it. I never heard of this guy though. But yeah, I agree with you. Snarkiest weird niche ever. And hilarious. Uh, I don’t think the guy makes any money on it. Maybe it gets a few Twitter followers. I think the guy just really doesn’t like this Rendon guy.

As you pointed out in his bio, I think he just made a really funny website that tracks stuff. Um, just to have fun with it. And I think that’s it. Not intended to make money. Not intended to rank. Just intended to be kind of something for fun.

Morgan: I mean, again, I find it oddly aspirational. I hope I get to the point in my life where I’ve sold enough businesses where I can sit around just making apps about people I hate.

Jared: Let’s be clear though, whether, whether you’ve done it or not, this would be like, I, I, I, there are hundreds of journalists who would love to stumble on this and use this as a feature point to write an article that very possibly could go viral. So, uh, little PR here. I mean, not that he cares, but he could probably pick up some pretty doggone good mentions and backlinks.

Morgan: Well, honestly, you could probably expand this if he could, you know, widen his scope to hating other people in other sports, you know, and cause he’s already got the code to do so, right. He could go through and start tracking all these other things. I will say, you know, it for the first time in many years, I got kind of suckered into doing a fantasy football league this year.

I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what I’m doing there either, but like, I’m just clicking on things basically, but I am always surprised by just how often these guys get hurt. I mean, we’re on like, I don’t know, a lot of weeks at this point into the season again, forgive my ignorance and sports people, but, and these guys are just constantly hurt and constantly out and then they’re on bi weeks and I’m like, how much are these people getting paid is to like, I don’t know.

I’m sure it’s hard work and all this stuff, you know, whatever. But I mean, like they’re getting paid really well. Like considering how much time they’re actually spending on the field. Oh, just like, A non sports person, you know, just speaking on something she has no idea, uh, knows nothing about, but yeah, it is interesting.

It’s interesting.

Jared: I mean, we had Jake Kane on a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, interviewing about the Google web summit. And I know one of his sites that he’s publicly shared his ballpark savvy. com. He’s had that website for a long time. And it’s all about all the ballparks for baseball players. Like, I mean, I feel like Jake could, you know, very easily do something like this.

Um, uh, he could do something about ballparks kind of like this, you know, like the biggest rip off and all like, these are PR pieces. I know this is just a website because the guy’s having fun with this one guy and the angels, but you know, if you are, If you are someone like this type of stuff would be great.

And how could you take this idea and then apply it to your niche? Because it could be PR gold. Right. And then you could use all that to, um, help your overall brand, which probably wouldn’t actually do the very thing that this website was created to do. You know,

Morgan: it’s actually makes me feel like maybe every once in a while we should have a very specific category, you know, or maybe, maybe like an end of the year award ceremony for like, The snarkiest niche that was brought to the podcast this year, the most annoying or like the truly weirdest, which I still say would be the checkbox checker.

You know, that was still probably my running favorite, but this, this again, to me, it’d probably be the snarkiest.

Jared: It’s going to be hard to overcome the checkbox side is the weirdest of all weird niches, but I agree with you. It’s funny. Spencer and I are putting together just the building blocks of the year end podcast, uh, kind of been going back and forth, you know, we did that last year and people liked that a lot and it was just a very basic one.

We’re kind of thinking like, how do we expand on that? So maybe you’re right. I mean, we should kind of. Give some awards out on weird niches.

Morgan: Oh, nice. I like it. I like it.

Jared: Well, that brings us to the end here. Morgan, another great episode. Thanks for joining again, as always. On the back, I’m getting to meet you in person.

That was fun. Good to have you on. Always good. Always some good news topics to cover, of course. Great weird niche, though. I hope to never see your weird niche site again, if I’m being honest.

Morgan: Oh, just wait till I bring that next time.

Jared: Have a great weekend, everyone. Enjoy. We’ll see you again next week. Thanks again.

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