@GuilhemChauvin @natchos85 @GaryVNR Understood, and more power to you. I wasn’t being mean-spirited - just that if it were me, and I were in your position, finding that kind of success with my methods, I would stay silent. But to each their own, I suppose.

@natejhake Keep digging, Nate - the whole thing is a sham. It would be great to interview the businesses featured in the Gemini commercials; you could blow the whole thing up. Though, they probably have NDAs. Watching all the ads, the supposed use cases seemed pretty sus.

@Goog_Enough @searchliaison The grift was up.

@bsphil @natejhake Wow, great find - huge if this is a pattern. So, Google's so-called AI is just plagiarising earlier iterations of pages or deprecated content? Makes sense why they pushed the HCU updates: to decimate small publishers and then plagiarise from them. Google Gemini is a grift!

@natejhake @Okayy_Dan That's what you get when you have a company running on just vibes.

@Okayy_Dan @natejhake 100%! MV's response was the most tone-deaf ever—they chose PR over honesty and solutions. When I posted in the MV Publishers Group about my visibility sinking in search, they never approved my posts. The group existed solely to praise MV, which was incredibly frustrating.

@photomatt @Scobleizer You do not know what is happening. Let those dealing with it educate you on it.

@Okayy_Dan Hahaha... They are content creators, after all, magnifying small blips for content—and hopefully for clients. I bet they were already planning a few seminars and summits around this.

@joshtyler I know many companies that fit this description. Three years ago, after working tirelessly to publish my episode reviews, I noticed they were churning out content at an industrial scale. They also seemed to effortlessly identify supposed niche but trending topics.

Yeah, every single time, they remind us how precarious our online earnings are. I don’t know about shutting down entirely, but let’s just say we’re the weakest link. We’re the first ones they take from to boost next quarter’s profits, and the first examples they use to show they’re taking action against 'platform abuse.' We’re always treated like parasites gaming the system to earn, while they conveniently forget that it’s them who invited us to create for their platforms.

@joshtyler I really admire your tenacity Josh. Truly making lemonade out of lemons served by you know who!

@AWendowskiPhoto @googlesearchc @lilyraynyc @JohnMu Good man! I guess that's what it will take to survive in this post Google search world. May you find more success!

I completely understand why the founders, yourself and some users want it to be paid, and I agree with the reasoning. However, I think what’s truly needed right now is a better alternative to Google—ideally one that’s free and supported by minimal ads, similar to Google around 2016 or even earlier. In my opinion, the greatest threat to Kagi, whether it’s paid or free, is the possibility of going public. Publicly listing would likely lead to the usual shareholder value pressures and an obsession with constant growth, which could result in shifting focus away from users, much like what happened with Google. The issue was never advertisers themselves but rather the demands of shareholders and a toxic fixation on growth driven by short-term thinking.

@Okayy_Dan @ReadySteadyCut @googlesearchc @searchliaison Congrats, must be a nice feeling to see your work being recognised or referenced like that. If only Google would do its part!

@seroundtable How to ruin a once great company, lie and lie all the time.

@Antunes1 Sure.. Next time don't tell it to be humorous. Nice engagement bait though.

Rigged. Tudum wiped out countless independent show and episode reviewers. Since the Helpful Content Update, it’s widely understood that when you search, “Are [any given brand] [products they make] good?” the brand itself dominates most of the first-page real estate. And don’t even get me started on alternatives—how is SEMrush the authority on alternatives to SEMrush? To top it off, Google conveniently includes one of their own properties, Backlinko, for good measure. It’s all a joke.