How Google Ruined Financial Writing (And ChatGPT Might Save It)

This post is off-topic (so I was hesitant to email it out – however, its also Friday!😀), but it might interest any reader who consumes or searches for any financial content as I recently had an eye-opening back-and-forth with the owner of a financial content site filled with “subtly biased content” geared solely for generating Google clicks (rather than for readers).

POST CONTENTS:

If you know something about investing or personal finance, you won’t get much writing work from most financial sites/blogs…
Writing for Google (rather than for readers)…
Everyone (advertisers, websites, users, etc) is in an abusive relationship with Google
- TANGENT: My own experience with Youtube…
- Google’s constant shifting of goalposts (in their favor…), flip flops, and penalizing of non-conforming sites…
- Some useful Google search engine tricks…
An example of a non-financial site focused on providing great relevant content to readers and not solely for Google…
How ChatGPT and AI will impact Google, financial sites, content producers, and writers (HINT: It will hurt most of them, but readers, platforms like Substack, and some writers who write for human readers might be winners)…
Some Final Thoughts…

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If you know something about investing or personal finance, you won’t get much writing work from most financial sites/blogs…

I have been getting emails from Upwork concerning so-called “connects” expiring as I have not used the site (or rather its predecessor Elance) in probably several years to find freelance projects.

While you can find your share of scammy or low-budget projects, you can also find legit and interesting ones (e.g. I have seen analysis projects posted by wealth managers, etc). Aside from earning some extra income (or in my case, some extra USD cash flow to pay some recurring or one-off bills stateside), doing such work helps to gain more experience and practice outside of what you might be doing day-to-day (while getting paid to). Plus, you can learn what other people are doing (e.g. content and newsletter writing insights, etc.).

Needless to say, I have not had much luck getting responses for writing work related to investing or personal finance (albeit I have been fairly selective and not looking every day). At first, I thought the reason was due to me not spending additional money or buying an Upwork subscription. Like everything related to social media or Big Tech, they are probably running algorithms and playing favorites.

Then I finally got a response and had an interesting back-and-forth with a writer who had posted a writing content project for his financial content site. His responses were an eye-opener into the world of writing financial content solely for Google clicks rather than for readers.

To begin with, he wrote back:

Thanks for applying. In all honesty I am wary of hiring writers with strong investing experience. I know that sounds backwards but usually when I hire writers like that there is issues such as following all instructions, content being seo-friendly, grammar, etc.

In other words, much of what you are reading (or rather what Google has directed you to read) has probably been written by people who don’t know much (if anything) more about the financial topic than you do – but they know how to follow directions and use SEO to get clicks from Google users.

[NOTE: For the record, his above response contradicted his posting where he said he wanted a writer with investing experience/knowledge who did not necessarily need SEO experience. 🤷🤷🤷]

Writing for Google (rather than for readers)…

My view of SEO (along with tools like Grammarly, etc.) is different from his. While it might be important to have some keywords or a keyword focus for search engine purposes and good grammar, too much SEO and completely sterilized grammar or writing can kill the writing voice or make it sound like an SEO piece intended to be read by Google for clicks.

And although his particular site is not what I consider to be a so-called “content farm” (eHow, etc.), some blatant SEO titles (e.g. “Is XYZ Legit?” or “Is XYZ a scam?”) and the voiceless non-personal SEO writing style (and pitch-perfect grammar…) CLEARLY alerted me this was a website intended to be read by Google (and to make money from ads, clicks, hidden promotions, etc.) – NOT help me, a human reader, get accurate information about whatever I might be looking for.

Then again, his site was solely intended for Google (emphasis mine):

You seem to be brushing off the importance of SEO too, but usually the website owner knows what approach their site needs. My site is completely focused on getting traffic google traffic directly to priority pages.

My reply was more or less to say that while I found some useful review-type information about some potentially interesting financial tools or products I was not aware of before looking at his financial site, I would probably not return as a visitor (unless a search engine directed me back there on another search query).

I would also be clicking on several other sites and not remember the names of any of them. This is usually me every time I have a computer, mobile phone, or website problem to solve…

Nevertheless, he replied (emphasis mine):

And yes my site is designed to only focus on initial visits. It’s not built out enough to make the site more sticky. My goal is to build up the cashflow with keywords that convert well before worrying about trying to milk traffic.

In other words, the Google-using readers who find their way to his Google SEO-focused financial site are nothing more than 🐄🐄🐄s to be milked should they decide to return and stick around…

He also made these comments about Google:

As for Google’s reliability, I’ve been doing SEO for a very long time. So I’m well aware of this but I also know that the more established you make a site the more stable the traffic is. Google also relies on a certain level of stablity in the rankings to maintain their market share. So if you build up a strong site and jump through their hoops it’s a very profitable traffic source.

Everyone (advertisers, websites, users, etc) is in an abusive relationship with Google…

With those last comments in mind, here are some comments I screenshot-ed from an article last year about Google’s advertising revenue plunging (I removed the user names or handles of those who made them and the article appears to now be completely behind a paywall):

And:

This comment was from a more recent article about Google:

After reading the above comments, does Google sound like the type of partner you want to have your site and your livelihood depend on???

For the record, I do recall seeing another comment (again, the first article is now behind a paywall) that you can “still make a lot of money” with Google. That comment was probably written by someone who owns financial sites like those owned by the guy I had my recent back-and-forth with.

TANGENT: My own experience with Youtube…

[YOU MIGHT WANT TO KEEP SCROLLING DOWN IF YOU DON’T LIKE READING TANGENTS…]

Now let me tell you about my abusive relationship with Google, or with Google-owned Youtube. Many years ago, I began using Youtube as a video backup site, and other people started watching the videos I had posted on my original channel here. So I put up channels for Malaysia, China, Myanmar, and Taiwan as (pre-COVID) I frequently visited the latter three places.

I don’t do any annoying narration and silly antics that most millennials, etc. Youtubers insist on doing. Just minimum editing and splicing of clips to give you a feel for very specific sights I visited in each country. Then you can decide whether or not to visit these places yourself. There is often a lack of such videos on Youtube for Asia where it can be a hassle to visit a particular sight (only to find out it was not worth seeing if your time is limited).

Then a millennial Youtuber thought it would be funny to film a dead suicide victim in a Japanese forest…

How did Google respond? In typical Google fashion:

They used it as an excuse to F*ck everybody else over…

Instead of IMMEDIATELY booting this guy off all of their platforms to send a clear message to every other user not to film dead people, they used the incident as an excuse to demonetize all channels without 1,000 subscribers and a certain number of hours worth of monthly views. So my China, Myanmar, and Taiwan channels got demonetized. I am now lucky to get a couple of Adsense payments a year – certainly not enough to spend much more time making better content for Youtube (even if it might help travellers visiting these places).

FYI: It now appears that Google is separating Youtube Adsense and website Adsense payments into two separate payments. Since you need to earn $100 to be paid, and most blogs and Youtube channels combined are probably lucky to earn a few cents or dollars a month, most Adsense accounts will probably never make the $100 threshold any time soon. Others will see longer delays for payments…

My best Adsense paying video was probably this one of a real Cuban demonstrating how they make cigars (again, no narration and no political or health lecture about Cuba and smoking cigars – just a real Cuban rolling a real cigar that Cuban embassies make money selling):

Everyone kept stealing the video and uploading it to their Youtube channels. I finally complained to Google about what amounted to copyright theft.

They took care of that alright. They also told me they were demonetizing my video and removing it from their search algorithms because it contained tobacco-related content. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ (Albeit, it does seem to be showing up when you search for “how to roll a Cuban cigar.”)

Google’s constant shifting of goalposts (in their favor…), flip flops, and penalizing of non-conforming sites…

Writing or gearing a site or its content to make Google happy is not always sustainable because they have a bad habit of suddenly tweaking their search engine or rules (my experience with Youtube…) without warning. Next thing you know, something you have been doing for years that was completely kosher under their old rules is now considered dodgy by their search engine, news feeds, Google Finance feeds, etc.

Or Google just boots you off completely…

Several years ago, that happened to many financial sites or blogs when (without warning) they were booted from Google news and finance feeds, or Google Search. Some of these sites may have pushed dodgy stock promotions or were SEO content farms. However, Google had long tolerated them until one day and poof, they were gone…

When I put up my own simple website (focused on investing in emerging markets) over a decade ago, I wanted the site to be useful to readers (and not solely focused on what Google wants – or for that matter, English major editors at sites like Seeking Alpha, etc).

The Drudge Report pioneered news aggregators – further perfected by the Real Clear sites and Citizens Free Press (the latter has no ads). With minimal distracting graphics and sub-headlines, readers can quickly skim such sites.

I attempted to do the same. But with low traffic, having the time to keep the front page updated was difficult. So I did what Drudge has at the bottom of his page: I now have a front page of largely static links to useful resources for emerging and frontier market investors.

The problem? Google hates aggregator sites and penalizes my site for being one (and might even view my site to be a link farm). In other words, being helpful to readers gets you penalized.

Some useful Google search engine tricks…

I typically have my (ad-blocking…) browsers set to use Brave Search (“a private, independent, and transparent search engine”) to avoid all the sponsored links, ads, and SEO garbage that now clutter almost EVERY Google search result.

I will ONLY use Google for very very specific searches that Google is still good at doing (until they figure out how to ruin these searches with their sponsored results and other clickbait).

FOR EXAMPLE: Searching for COMPANY NAME “investor relations” will most of the time, bring up the IR page for most foreign stocks (so I don’t have to click through their consumer or corporate pages to find it) and specific queries such as FILE:PDF or SITE:URL OF THE WEBSITE can still yield decent search results.

Why EVERYONE else is not doing the same (using ad-blocking browsers + more transparent search engines with fewer garbage results or very specific search queries) remains a mystery to me as EVERYONE else is complaining about the same problems I am having:

DKB Blog

Google Search Is Dying

(There is good discussion on this article on Hacker News and Reddit) Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit, who can’t be bothered to build a decent search interface. So instead we resort to using Google, and appending the word “reddit” to the end of our queries…

Reddit is currently the most popular search engine. The only people who don’t know that are the team at Reddit, who can’t be bothered to build a decent search interface. So instead we resort to using Google, and appending the word “reddit” to the end of our queries.

An example of a non-financial site focused on providing great relevant content to readers and not solely for Google…

If you are ever planning to visit Taiwan (and need information in English), I highly suggest checking out Nick Kembel’s Facebook group Taiwan Travel Planning or his website. He recently made an interesting post (“So here’s a little history about me and my website for anyone that cares…”) on his Facebook group about how he started his website and Facebook group with some good content writing or website management advice in the comments section that are relevant for financial sites as well.

While he did mention in one of his comment replies about the need for SEO and keywords to satisfy Google (emphasis mine)…:

When I first started to monetize, I did a lot of research on SEO and keywords. For keywords, I pay a little money every month for a keyword research tool called Keysearch. It tells me how many people are searching for a term every month, and how hard/competitive it is to rank for that term. My traffic is very high because I rank for some very difficult but high volume terms like “taipei night markets” and “things to do in taipei”. To rank for hard terms like that, you have to produce a lot of related content about your niche, to show Google that you are an expert on this topic, and also getting links from other websites helps a lot. In the beginning, it’s better to try to rank for lower competition keywords, like more niche/specific things that fewer people search for, but also fewer articles about them, which is probably what you’re already doing now.

… the reply he made to one of my comments was very interesting (emphasis mine):

All I know is that ad pay is still booming on better networks like Mediavine and AdThrive. And I hadn’t heard of Substack. But to be honest, my time is limited, so I can only really focus on one thing, and I ignore several others that some bloggers consider essential, like posting on Instagram, making videos, writing newsletters, etc. For me, I just do my site and this group, and that takes virtually all my available time. And it’s going incredibly well at the moment! As for affiliate links, like your friend’s site, they can sure be lucrative! The best thing to do as a blogger is provide more personal info and recommendations, then the readers will trust you more and actually click the links. A lot of sites just throw the links up without any real info, then no one clicks them.

His last two sentences are worth noting and are much more difficult to achieve and consistently do right than just trying to make Google happy.

How ChatGPT and AI will impact Google, financial sites, content producers, and writers (HINT: It will hurt most of them, but readers, platforms like Substack, and some writers who write for human readers might be winners)…

I asked the financial site owner why he doesn’t just use an AI tool like ChatGPT to help generate SEO content for Google to read instead of going through the trouble, hassle, and expense of hiring and paying writers to do it.

His reply (emphasis mine):

AI might be the answer for my site’s content down the road but at this point I think it’s likely still got issues. My site’s content isn’t simply about providing pages for Google to rank well, it needs to actually convert sales. I don’t trust AI to write the subtly biased content I need.

[“Subtly biased…” also tells you everything you need to know about these types of personal finance and especially financial product review sites these days. The regulations are probably much looser or non-existent for writing articles in the personal finance or financial product review space than say, doing so-called “stock promotions”…]

To see what ChatGPT is capable of in the investing space, check out these two recent articles on other Substacks:

10 Questions with ChatGPT (Asian Century Stocks)

Discussion with the AI chat bot on topics related to Asian equities

I Let ChatGPT Answer Questions About the Japanese Economy to See if it Can Replace Me (Konichi-Value)

I tried out the internet’s most hyped-up AI-chatbot to see if it has a chance to replace me in writing about investing in Japan. My conclusion, very likely!

Konichi-Value

I Let ChatGPT Answer Questions About the Japanese Economy to See if it Can Replace Me

ChatGPT is the very hyped artificial intelligence chatbot, that is touted to be the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public. It was built by OpenAI, the San Francisco A.I. company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, the breakthrough image generator that came out this year…

From the above articles and my own experiments using ChatGPT, I see it as:

A potentially useful research tool to assist with writing financial-related content OR to generate a skeleton of content (by asking it questions) that still needs to be checked, added to, and sourced for anything other than an SEO article for Google, etc.
Doing significant damage to Google’s search and ad business as they don’t have a near monopoly or exclusivity over AI technology as they do with search (unless they get politicians and regulators to restrict or kill it – this is always a possibility given the power of Big Tech…).
Writing SEO content for Google and other flawed search engines and thus eliminating most of the low-level SEO work that often gets outsourced (via Upwork, etc) to the Philippines and India.
Forcing many content outsourcing-generating businesses to scale back, rethink their business models, or go out of business.
Eliminating or severely impacting most SEO content sites that are “completely focused on getting google traffic” and are not sticky enough for actual human readers to want to stick around or return to.

As for #4, I am sure the better-managed businesses (like those who write term papers for school, thought papers for smaller businesses, etc) are already offering clients a service where writers who actually know something about the topics they are writing do the work. They would also need good content or workflow management software to ensure detailed briefs from clients (to personalize the final output) for a writer beyond what Google keywords to focus on.

Of course, such infrastructure is more expensive, and these writers need to get paid more – even if they are in the Philippines or India. However, moving away from SEO garbage content for Google in favor of less but better content for readers and better-paid writers would be a positive.

As for #5, I don’t believe ChatGPT and other AI tools will kill Google Search and Google’s Adsense advertising business (along with SEO content sites) this year or the next. But 5-10 years down the road?

Google Search is clearly broken, they don’t seem interested in fixing it (as they continue to milk traffic), and neither do the people (like the person I recently had the back-and-forth with) who “still make a lot of money” with Google.

Likewise, ChatGPT and other AI technology are still not perfected yet. There is a risk it could become as broken as Google Search. But unlike with search engines, there is no monopoly or oligopoly in control of the underlying technology. This can give us hope that such technology could be a way out of the Google SEO advertising search engine matrix.

Some Final Thoughts…

Writing platforms like Substack and their human writers who write for other humans could become long-term winners. HOWEVER, there still needs to be:

Better search engines or tools to search the entire Substack universe for very specific posts are still needed (as the current Substack-wide search function still leaves something more to be desired). Google also penalizes writers who don’t write for Google (aka SEO) and does not seem to particularly like Substack (e.g. I don’t think any Substacks are in their news or finance feeds). However, the ability to search individual Substack newsletters is reasonably robust. In my case:
A better way to get the word out about a particular Substack newsletter or post that does not involve the human writer focusing on drowning out their voice with SEO for Google or navigating social media algorithms that are just as biased. I have even seen some Upwork project posts from other Substack writers trying to find ways to grow their Substacks (I try to reach out to them just to say let me know if you learn any good tricks…).

I have seen more and more articles, anecdotes, or comments about small businesses (with smaller budgets) dumping (at-least) social media altogether in favor of old fashioned email marketing. So I still think old fashion “word of mouth” (ironically, how I learned about Google Search back in the late 1990s…) or email marketing (Drudge Report more or less started out as an emailed newsletter…) are the only two things still working (or not yet hopelessly broken…).

Finally, IF you do find just this post (or my Substack or my website) useful or interesting, feel free to share or subscribe. Just DON’T ask me to write for and jump through endless hoops or between ever shifting goalposts for Google…

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How Google Ruined Financial Writing (And ChatGPT Might Save It) was also published on our Substack.