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History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. So said the famous satirist and writer Mark Twain. And it is definitely repeating itself when it comes to Internet search.
For those of us long enough in the tooth to remember the early days of the Internet in the mid 1990s, search was initially dominated by portals like Yahoo and AOL. Then followed a slew of dedicated search engines like Alta Vista, Lycos and Ask Jeeves.
The problem was the portals and the search engines were poor at giving people relevant results for their search queries. Instead, they just listed websites that paid them the most money.
Then came Google - a simple search bar with no clutter, results based on merit rather than advertising dollars, and giving the user what they actually wanted. The rest is history.
Fast forward 25 years and Google is starting to resemble the search engines that they once wiped out. Most of the first page of Google's results is simply adverts.
The premium real estate on the search pages is now taken up by their new AI Overview, which means the actual results, including your website and all the blood, sweat and tears you put into ranking it on Google over the past decade or two, are getting a lot less clicks.
Don’t take my word for it though. Go and look at your clicks from Google for the past couple of months. I’ll wager they are down. This is not unique to the funeral profession and is going on in every sector on the Internet. Google is not what it used to be for driving clicks to a website.
The reason, as I alluded to in my previous blog post Searching for a funeral director, is the existential threat of AI to Google’s business model.
Because more people are using sites like ChatGPT to search for information, Google feels it has no choice but to integrate AI heavily into its search results, which means lots of textual information for users to read, but no actual website links to click.
Apart from adverts of course. Google has doubled down on them in the search results.
Why? Because traffic is down to their search engine overall, so they’re making hay while the sun shines. It’s also how they make 99% of their money as a company and always has been.
Eventually the first page of Google’s search results will just be adverts and AI, as Google chases its tail for more dollars while user numbers continue to drop, in a perpetual negative feedback loop.
That is why I started this article by saying that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. What we are witnessing unfold is the 1990s search engine playbook to a tee. To recap, it didn’t end well for anyone involved.
The problem for independent funeral directors is adverts on Google are not cheap. Wherever you are based in the country, you are competing against a mix of the Co-op, Dignity, Funeral Partners and a myriad of direct cremation firms like Pure for new business. And they have much, much bigger budgets.
It just isn’t sustainable for independents, which is why I think Google is increasingly not much use to funeral directors for generating new business.
Instead, join Funeral Guide and level the playing field with the big boys.
We generate clicks to your website from people looking for a funeral director, and our listings traffic is going up not down.
Plus it's a fraction of what you would have to pay Google to get the same results. Why not give it a try?
