News SEO: Challenges, Revenue Models, and Unchanging Truths | Barry Adams
Welcome back to The Search Session. I’m Gianluca Fiorelli, and in this episode, I sit down with Barry Adams—veteran SEO consultant and co-founder of the News & Editorial SEO Summit—to talk about the future of news in the age of AI.
Barry believes Google Discover will become an even bigger source of traffic for publishers as AI Mode takes over. He sees AI Mode having a much bigger impact than AI Overviews—and possibly changing the game entirely.
Barry thinks the news space is shrinking—and only publishers with real direction will survive.
If you’re in news, content, or SEO, this episode is full of clear, honest insights you won’t want to miss.
Video Chapters
Transcript
Gianluca Fiorelli: Hi, and welcome to The Search Session. You know we always love to chat with our guests about the latest news—and fortunately, or unfortunately, there’s been a lot of it lately, especially around AI and search.
Meet Our Guest: Barry Adams
Gianluca Fiorelli: But today, I want to talk about actual news—the news industry and the publishing ecosystem. So I thought it would be a good idea to invite someone who's deeply involved in both. He’s an expert in SEO and audience growth, consultant and founder of Polemic Digital, and co-founder of the News & Editorial SEO Summit—which, by the way, I really encourage you to check out. Just Google it! This October will mark its fifth edition. It’s an online event, so no need to worry about travel, hotels, or all those classic hassles. You can attend from the comfort of your home.
That person is Barry Adams. Barry, how are you doing?
Barry Adams: I'm fine, thanks! It's Friday afternoon when we’re recording this, Gianluca, so I'm doing really, really well. How about you?
Gianluca Fiorelli: I’m doing great, yes. It’s Friday—so we're a bit more relaxed, with the weekend just around the corner. At least we get a couple of days off.
We also have to protect our mental health—and hopefully, neither you nor I, nor anyone in our audience, will spend the weekend thinking about AI Search, AI Mode, or the collapsing state of the world and all these wonderful, positive things.
AI Overviews vs. AI Mode - and Their Impact on News
Gianluca Fiorelli: Speaking of which… how has the AI overlord been treating you lately?
Barry Adams: No complaints so far. AI is definitely an interesting one. At first, AI Overviews looked like they could be an existential threat to news and publishing on the web. But I kind of predicted early on that it would be more of a storm in a teacup.
That’s because, in their initial rollout, AI Overviews don’t really summarize news. They’re not triggered by news-specific queries. If there’s a Top Stories carousel in the Google results, you won’t see an AI Overview. That’s a very deliberate decision by Google, because they know the AI Overviews can’t keep up with real-time news updates and developments.
So they basically decided, “Yeah, we’re not going to show AI Overviews for news.” But AI Mode—that's a different story. You can ask AI Mode for news queries. You can ask it to summarize the latest news or to give you an update on a specific news topic, and it will provide a summary of what’s happening.
It will still cite sources, of course, and it’ll give you the option to click through to the news articles it pulled from. I do think the click-through rate to those articles will be higher than the average CTR we currently see from AI Overviews—but still a lot lower than what we get from the Top Stories carousel. Because those Top Stories drive a huge amount of traffic to publishers.
So, in my particular niche—news and publishing—the impact of AI Overviews has been felt, but not dramatically. It’s just another chip off Google’s traffic stream. That said, I suspect the impact of AI Mode will be much more significant, especially when Google starts making it the default search experience—which I do believe they will.
I do feel that when this shift happens, we're probably going to see about half of the Google Search traffic disappear for most publishers. Other channels will step in to compensate—Google Discover, for example, will likely become an even bigger source of traffic for news publishers, especially now that it's rolling out to the desktop version of the Chrome browser.
But I don't think that's going to fully mitigate the impact of AI Mode. The effect of AI is going to be significant. I was a bit skeptical at first, but the more I see it in action, the more I realize how big this shift is. It’s going to be painful for a lot of publishers. We're going to have to find new ways to drive traffic and generate revenue across the news industry.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I can imagine that. And I agree with you—AI Overviews are not having an impact. Because I think Google is very aware of how AI Overviews affect its own reputation, especially when it comes to news. Because of hallucinations—despite Google’s efforts to limit them with techniques like RAG—it’s still hard to control.
It seems as if the classic ranking factors—the ones that usually help a more trustworthy news website or publisher appear more prominently than, I don’t know, some obscure pamphlet on either side of the extremes—aren’t really at play in AI Overviews. And that could be a real problem, especially in terms of image. I think, in this case, Google believes it’s more important to protect its brand than anything else.
Barry Adams: Yeah, I suspect AI Overviews are probably going to disappear and be replaced by AI Mode. And I also think AI Mode is much more robust in its output than AI Overviews.
It’s trivially easy to get an AI Overview to spew out nonsense, basically. You can ask it leading questions or trigger it to produce false information pretty easily.
With AI Mode, that’s much harder. I haven’t yet seen many examples of it giving objectively false information. It seems to be a fundamentally different system—Google performs far more searches in the background, does more summarizing, and leans more heavily on trusted, authoritative sources compared to AI Overviews.
And I’ll be honest with you: when I started using AI Mode myself, I found it exceptionally useful. And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t have much faith in AI as a technology. I think it’s massively overhyped. I don’t think it’s nearly as useful as many of its advocates claim.
But in this particular iteration—this specific product that Google is rolling out—I can see it becoming the default search experience. It significantly reduces friction. It makes it easier for people to find what they’re looking for, to do research, and to get the information they need, without having to deal with things like cookie consent forms or all the advertising banners we see on websites.
I think a lot of users will prefer the experience AI Mode offers. Their informational needs are still being met—accurately and in detail—but without all the friction involved in visiting websites, reading through content, and creating their own summaries.
Google is still trying to figure out the right monetization strategy for AI Mode. Advertising will obviously be that monetization. But I’m not entirely sure about the economies of AI Mode at scale. I imagine it’s significantly more expensive for Google to generate an AI Mode result than to deliver a standard search result.
That said, Google has the business and financial strength to play the long game. And I think this is their strategy to dominate the AI chatbot market. As an industry, we’re just going to have to come to grips with the fact that AI Mode is very likely going to become the core search experience.
And I’ll be honest—that’s something I’ve only recently come to accept. I used to believe this was just Google experimenting. I didn’t think they’d really undermine the classic search experience. I genuinely thought this might end up as just another vertical—like the News tab or the Images tab.
But now that I’ve seen it in action, I’ve had to change my mind. And I almost hate to say it, but AI Mode is just too good. It will become the core search experience. It’s what users want, and it’s clearly where user behavior is heading. We can’t deny that anymore.
The moment you start playing with it yourself, you realize how powerful it is. It’s much more powerful—and much more useful—than AI Overviews. AI Mode is the future of search.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I believe the same. Especially because AI Mode, as it was announced, is based on Google’s most powerful model—Gemini 2.5 Pro. And it also incorporates the deep search functionality, which came from what I think was the best product Gemini offered. Deep Search was truly astonishing.
It was really good—especially when you wanted to get a quick but deep overview of a topic. From there, you could do your own research, or even feed it your own sources and ask it to find additional ones.
So yes, I also think that AI Mode will slowly evolve. It’s as if Google is testing features in AI Mode first, then gradually introducing similar functionality into AI Overviews. Over time, we might see a metamorphosis—AI Overviews blending into AI Mode and eventually taking over that space below the fold that’s currently occupied by classic search results.
A New Business Model for News
Gianluca Fiorelli: And I wonder—maybe there could be a kind of AI Mode specifically for news? Something like a modern version of the Metro newspaper—the free paper people pick up when entering the subway. It gives you quick headlines to start with, but then most people also have their favorite news apps installed on their phones.
For example, that’s exactly what I do. I usually don’t start reading news through a Google search—unless it’s by chance. If I’m searching for something and a news result catches my eye, I might click. But most of the time, I go directly to the newspapers I follow using their apps. And for the ones I really like, I even subscribe.
So maybe that model—attracting an audience, building loyalty, and monetizing through subscriptions—isn’t outdated at all. Maybe it’s a strategy news sites should double down on, especially now.
Barry Adams: Oh yes—absolutely. Google is a massive source of traffic for publishers. For most of my publishing clients, it accounts for at least half of their total traffic. And I don't want to underestimate that. Like you, I often go directly to the news sites I prefer, but I also regularly search on Google to find other articles—especially in Top Stories and other stories.
If there's a topic I’m interested in and I check my usual news sources but either can’t find what I’m looking for or I’m not satisfied with how they’re covering it, I’ll just go to Google and look for alternative sources.
For most of my clients, the combination of traffic from Top Stories—particularly the Top Stories boxes in regular search results—and the Discover feed (especially for people using Chrome on mobile) adds up to a huge portion of their total traffic. Getting 60 to 70% of traffic from those channels is not uncommon.
The rest tends to come from a mix of direct traffic, email newsletters, social media, and any other channels they might have at their disposal. It’s really important for publishers today to focus on building loyal audiences. That pays off not just by reducing dependence on tech intermediaries like Google, but also by improving your visibility within Google.
If people are actively searching for your brand, that increases your brand footprint. It makes you easier to find, it gives you a better chance to show up in AI-generated answers, and it generally leads to higher conversion rates—whether that’s for subscription paywalls, registration paywalls, or donation models like the Guardian’s.
These are the kinds of business models news websites are going to have to pursue. I genuinely believe that, as a society, we need to get used to paying for news again. For the better part of the last 25 years, we've been used to getting news for free—and that’s a relatively recent development. Before the web, news was never free. You either had a subscription or bought a newspaper at the newsstand. That was just how it worked.
Then the internet came along, and suddenly news was freely available online. But I think that era is coming to an end. We're going to have to get used to paying for news again.
The web, especially over the last 25 years, has really enabled the growth of digital news and media publishing. The low cost of entry made it easy for anyone to launch a news site, which led to millions of news websites globally. But now, with the rise of AI mode and a narrowing of traffic sources—due in part to systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others—we’re seeing the landscape change.
I think we’re headed toward a contraction in the news space. Fewer publishers will survive simply because the economic incentives have shifted. That’s a bit sad, honestly. Journalism has been struggling financially for a long time, especially because Google is the gatekeeper of web traffic. If your news business is web-based, you have to play tag with Google.
Yes, there’s really no way around it—Google essentially owns the advertising stack from top to bottom. So whatever you do, you're ultimately beholden to them. And right now, they seem to be the only ones truly benefiting from this particular scenario.
And I think there’s a bright point here, especially as we move into this new era of AI-driven search engines. Yes, we may end up with fewer news publishers, but I believe the ones that remain will be healthier. I truly believe that.
They'll be better equipped to face common challenges, supported by loyal audiences and—hopefully—profitable revenue streams. They’ll have a clearer understanding of what makes their journalism worth paying for. Because if your content is just interchangeable with any other site’s, there’s no real incentive for people to subscribe or support it.
But if you bring something unique to the table, something distinctive, then people will find it worth paying for—and that puts you in a stronger economic position.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, yes—I totally agree. I was actually about to say the same thing. I remember when I was younger, I used to buy La Gazzetta dello Sport to read the sports news. I was happy to pay for it, especially during those long, boring summer days on the beach. You’d read every single little piece of news just to pass the time.
And I also try not to place the blame entirely on one side. We all know the whole “don’t be evil” thing with Google—it’s more myth than reality—but the publishing industry itself isn’t blameless either. There’s definitely some responsibility there. Over time, many news sites have sacrificed quality in favor of chasing the largest possible chunk of traffic. That’s pretty evident to everyone.
So I completely agree with you—if you want people to stay loyal to you, then yes, you can still offer daily updates or quirky, attention-grabbing stories (people do love those “WTF” headlines, like frogs raining from the sky or whatever).
But alongside that, there needs to be a return to deeper, more substantial journalism: classic investigative reporting, well-researched pieces—the kind of work that truly holds value. That’s what will keep people engaged, lead to recurring revenue, and even convince them to subscribe.
But there’s also another route emerging. One recent example is the deal between The New York Times and Amazon. If Google’s not going to send traffic anymore, publishers need to find new distribution channels—and that might mean collaborating with other tech giants. In this case, it’s The New York Times and Amazon.
News Licensing Deals and the LLM Economy
Gianluca Fiorelli: And then there’s another possibility—what I call “feeding the beast.” Publishers are making deals with companies like OpenAI to let them use content to help train their models, in exchange for compensation or partnership. So what do you think? Are you seeing more of these kinds of moves happening across the news industry?
Barry Adams: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a really interesting situation, especially considering that at the same time, The New York Times has a lawsuit pending against OpenAI for using its content to train large language models.
The deal with Amazon, as Ricky Sutton pointed out on LinkedIn, really highlights the fact that there is economic value in news publishers selling their content to AI systems. And that sets a precedent: if LLMs have been using this content without compensation, then arguably they’ve violated agreements or even broken copyright.
I do think this licensing model—where news publishers allow their content to be used by LLMs—is mostly viable for the largest publishers. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, or Google don’t need to make agreements with every news website. They can strike deals with several thousand, several hundred thousand, or maybe a million if they want to broaden the scale, and still have more than enough content to train their models effectively.
As I said earlier, this will inevitably narrow the field. But if you're a capable, skilled publisher, you should be exploring those licensing opportunities with LLM providers. Because otherwise, let’s be honest—they’re probably going to take your content anyway, so you might as well get paid for it.
And it creates an interesting dynamic, because your preference for a particular large language model might end up depending on the kind of content it ingests. For example, The New York Times produces very different journalism compared to Fox News. And here in the UK, The Guardian is vastly different from The Daily Mail.
If those publishers make different agreements with different LLM providers, you'll likely see divergent outputs from those models. These media brands have very distinct editorial voices: in what they report on, how they frame their stories, and even in their choice of language.
It’ll be fascinating to watch how that plays out—and what kind of impact it might have on the output of the LLMs, depending on which licensing agreements they have in place, but also on the ongoing litigation about LLMs being trained using the content on he web.
Personally, I still believe that using this content to train LLMs, without asking for permission, constitutes a breach of copyright. I don’t think the exceptions in copyright law—like fair use in the U.S. or similar clauses in Europe—really apply in this context. Because these LLMs, especially with tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI mode, are now directly competing with the original publishers—the actual creators of that content. So, it’s not a transformative use, it’s reproducing the content in a slightly different format competing with the original creator.
The problem is, the legal system doesn’t seem particularly inclined to agree with that interpretation. It tends to side with the tech companies, which I think sets a dangerous precedent. Because once again, it disincentivizes content creation at its core. That could accelerate a shift toward an entirely paywalled ecosystem—where very few publishers offer free content and everything is locked behind some form of gatekeeping.
Whether it’s microtransactions, full subscription models, or having to download an app just to access a news site, we may end up losing the open web experience we’ve had for the past 25 years. Instead of simply browsing a website, you’ll have to enter a walled ecosystem just to read the news.
I really don’t think the free and open web will survive this AI revolution in its current form. The incentives to put informational content behind paywalls are just too strong. You can’t keep giving it away for free anymore—especially now that the old model of trading free content for traffic has been completely upended.
Now, the content itself can’t be given away for free, we need to find ways to be compensated—through subscriptions, licensing deals, or brand loyalty that we can monetize in other ways.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, and I think this is where things get a bit tricky. People often assume that big publishing corporations—like The Washington Post, for example—are untouchable, that they’ll never fail. But that’s not really true. We've already seen many prestigious, long-standing news organizations either fail outright or survive only by merging into larger corporations—often ones that aren’t even related to news.
How Smaller Publishers Can Survive
Gianluca Fiorelli: This situation is going to be especially critical for small, independent publishers. And I’m not talking about bloggers—although bloggers sometimes like to call themselves publishers. I'm talking about the real small-scale, niche publications. The kind we used to find at newsstands when we were younger—like magazines about UFOs or other niche interests. Those kinds of publishers are going to really suffer.
So from your experience—from what you've seen at the big publishers who are usually your clients—what are some of the things these big publishers are doing that could also be applied by smaller, niche publishers? That’s what I’m curious about.
Barry Adams: Yes. I don’t think you need to be a massive publisher to succeed in a post-search world—because really, that’s what we’re talking about here.
I really think you need to go beyond just text in what you produce. If you’re working in a niche—whether it’s UFOs, science fiction, Warhammer 40,000, whatever—you can still be successful, even without a huge operation. But you have to stop relying on search as your main traffic source.
You need to try and build communities of loyal fans. Maybe start a podcast. The beauty of podcasts is that you don’t need a huge number of listeners to make it profitable. And think about short-form video too. Video production is incredibly accessible now—the cost is basically close to zero.
And you can do all kinds of fun things with that. You need to think about social media—old-school platforms as well as user-generated forums like Reddit—as potential traffic sources. It’s really about building a community around what you do. I’ve seen some creators pull that off very successfully.
Search will still play some role in that ecosystem—people aren’t going to stop using it entirely—but you’ll likely see less traffic coming from search to your website. So it’s important to explore other ways to monetize your content.
For example, Google’s been cracking down pretty hard on affiliate content in publishing, but maybe it’s time to revisit that as a revenue stream. If you're becoming less reliant on Google for traffic, maybe we shouldn’t worry so much about what it penalizes and what it doesn’t. Maybe it's time to bring back those affiliate links and try to make money that way—or even become a direct e-commerce partner aligned with your niche.
Ultimately, publishers need to think beyond just the direct output of text-based content. They need to take a broader, more holistic view of what their business is really about: who their audience is, what they care about, and how best to serve them—not just through news, but also through everything that surrounds and supports that content.
What Traditional Publishers can Learn From Creators and Community Builders
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, I think you said the magic word there—creator. I truly believe that some of the most valuable lessons for publishers come from what successful creators are already doing. I follow many for my hobby—you mentioned Warhammer 40,000, for example—and they’re incredibly good at building communities around them and the topic.
It’s that ability to create a community with dedication and consistency. They build trust—that classic E-E-A-T stuff that Google talks about. I mean the real meaning of E-E-A-T.
Barry Adams: Yeah.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Not just some cryptic ranking factor.
Barry Adams: Exactly. And a lot of publishers and journalists—are already doing this. Take Substack, for example. Many journalists have launched their own newsletters there, and they’ve found it to be a really effective way to make money and build a loyal community around that particular type of journalism.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, exactly. And in this case, maybe there’s an opportunity for big news organizations to create real synergies with the personal brands of the journalists they hire.
In the past, because of the generalization of news—and for reasons we’ve already discussed—that kind of individual identity often got lost. Sure, I understand when news are published under Reuters—that’s how wire services work. But in many cases, articles were just published under a generic byline, and it wasn’t always clear who actually wrote them.
Now, we might be returning to a model where people say, “I want to read The Guardian because this particular journalist writes there.” Maybe they follow that journalist’s Substack, they trust their voice, and they want to see more of their work. That’s a powerful connection—and it could be part of a larger strategic shift that news organizations can embrace.
And then there’s what’s happening with Google’s AI Mode. Right now, they’re saying personalization isn’t a core focus—but it will be, and soon. I believe they said sometime this summer.
Search is already personalized to some degree, but it’s going to get even more so—especially with Gemini being integrated into every application of Google: Gmail, Docs, Search history, and more.
So everything we’ve been talking about—building loyalty, growing a subscriber base, and so on—might not be about getting traffic from Google anymore, but about staying visible within these AI-driven experiences. Don’t you think?
Barry Adams: Yeah, absolutely. I suspect that a lot of publishers—especially the bigger ones—will move toward hybrid models. For example, they might keep parts of their content open and crawlable by Google, mainly to attract traffic through channels like Google Discover. Because, as I mentioned earlier, Discover is a huge source of traffic for many publishers, and I think it will remain a cornerstone of their acquisition strategies.
At the same time, they might place other types of content behind paywalls—content that’s more advanced, more tailored to loyal readers, and focused on brand affinity. Then there’s the expansion into alternative formats: podcasts, videos, short-form videos, newsletters… and many publishers are already doing this.
But what I often see missing is an overarching strategy with a very clear picture of where each type of channel fits in. They are trying different things just to see what works. Publishers really need to define a clear vision: understand their purpose, know who their audience is, and figure out how to serve that audience across all these different channels.
The ones who do that well are going to thrive. The ones who keep chasing clicks without direction, as you mentioned earlier, won’t last much longer. In a few years, they just won’t be around.
Although, having said that, the fact that Discover remains a powerful channel doesn’t bode well for the overall quality of the output. Because Discover traffic—the kind of news that drives a lot of engagement there—isn’t necessarily the best kind of news. It’s more click-bait stuff, you know?
So I think that particular addiction will continue to encourage some websites to go after the cheap click, rather than really focus on what their point of quality or uniqueness should be.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, yes. I agree. I think that maybe the smarter ones will be the ones who are able to create a balance between the two kinds of journalism.
Barry’s Approach to SEO Audits, Client Relationships, and Lessons from the Field
Gianluca Fiorelli: And let’s try to move a little bit away from AI—we’ve already dedicated half an hour to it—and let’s talk about the work. I’ve always been curious to know, when it comes to my friends in the field: what is the first thing you go to see or check whenever you start working with a client?
Barry Adams: Oh, I just use the website. I try to become a user and a reader, and get a bit of a gauge for how it feels to navigate through the site—what the points of friction are when clicking from one page to another, how easy it is to find specific topics, category pages, tag pages that I might be interested in. I look at how the journalism is presented—both visually and in terms of headlines, how those headlines are crafted, and that sort of thing.
It also depends on what kind of engagement it is. If it’s, for example, a purely technical audit or technical consulting for a client, I tend not to dive too much into the editorial side. But if it’s a more holistic, all-bells-and-whistles audit, then I definitely look at the editorial aspects and try to get a sense of what their processes might be.
And then, of course, I engage with the client to understand things like: What are your publishing processes? How is SEO integrated into your workflows? How can that be improved?
I find that different clients have different needs and are at different levels of maturity in terms of their SEO journey. The ones I usually get the most satisfaction from working with are the ones who are quite mature in their SEO lifecycle, who already have decent processes in place and are trying to find that extra 1% or 2% growth—or spot things they might be missing. I find those to be very rewarding projects.
But sometimes, it’s also great to work with a small local publisher or a nonprofit that’s fairly new to SEO and still trying to understand what it actually means for them, what the potential is, and what kind of investment they need to make.
So yeah, because news publishers come in all different sizes and scopes, the maturity levels in SEO also vary across the entire spectrum. There really isn’t one particular approach I use for every single client—every client has slightly different needs.
I will say, though, that I’m one of those SEO guys who likes to do things manually. I don’t use many tools. I’m an old-school SEO in many ways—I still like unpicking HTML code and just looking at the raw data from a crawl to see what kind of output I get from that.
I find it’s very seductive to look at a website purely through the lens of SEO tools and not really see the actual website for what it is and what its purpose is. And that’s a mistake I’ve made myself a few times over the years. I realized that it happens because tools tend to point you in certain directions, tell you certain things—but sometimes those aren’t real problems. They’re just false flags, or mirages, that don’t actually impact the site’s performance in search.
It’s really about trying to nail down what you can meaningfully do to improve a website’s traffic—whether that’s from Google, Discover, or other organic search channels.
And like I said, every website needs a different approach. I still use checklists, let’s be honest—mainly to make sure I’ve covered everything that needs to be checked. But for me, the checklist isn’t the goal; it’s just a means to an end. I allow myself to go on exploratory paths when I work with a website—to find things that go beyond the checklist, to see if I can uncover anything new or interesting.
And my checklist evolves constantly. I keep adding things, removing things—just to make sure I’m looking at every site, every publishing operation, with the right mindset, the right perspective, and without too many preconceived ideas about what might work or not work for that particular site.
Also, I like to do a lot of training sessions for clients—editorial trainings for journalists and editors, but also technical training for development teams. I really enjoy those, because I try to tailor every session to the client’s specific context and how they work.
Give them examples from their own website—and sometimes from competing websites—so they can really see how these best practices work in the real world, in real scenarios, and what the rewards are for doing things slightly differently.
And it’s not about just giving journalists more work to do—although sometimes, yes, it is more work. But it’s really about making sure that when they craft a headline, or when they choose an image to go along with it, they do it with the right mindset. A mindset that gives the article the best possible chance to perform well—not just in Google’s ecosystem, but across other platforms too.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, this is something I do too. Personally, I’m a teacher—I’m a professor in a master’s program. It’s not a classic SEO course or anything like that—it’s a recognized master’s program for copywriters in Italy, and I take care of the SEO part.
How “SEO Copywriting” and “AI Copywriting” Are Hurting Content
Gianluca Fiorelli: And one thing I usually like to say to these copywriters—many of whom are already working and they come in with a whole baggage of things they’ve learned about SEO—is this: “You have to know SEO… but then you have to forget it. Because if you don’t, you’re just going to create low-quality content.”
Barry Adams: Yeah.
Gianluca Fiorelli: So basically, it’s more about using Google, search, and Google Trends than following strict rules like you must write the article like this, with a checklist and bullet points.
At the end of the day, I simply teach them how to find good sources and how to write content in a natural way. And why writing naturally is going to be rewarded—both by search engines and now also by large language models.
Barry Adams: Yeah.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Because it’s natural—it’s about the semantics. You can’t just tell them, “You have to write with this strict structure and everything has to be a certain way.” They won’t get it. It’s not their job to understand that.
Barry Adams: No, exactly.
Gianluca Fiorelli: In the past, that was the classic reason why so many journalists hated SEOs. Because SEOs were trying to force things into their writing—telling them, “This is what we have to do.”
Barry Adams: Yeah, exactly. I say this in every editorial training I give: never let SEO get in the way of journalism. Journalism comes first. Journalism is the thing. What we're trying to do is make sure that great journalism reaches the biggest audience it possibly can.
That’s why we need to cater to the tech platforms—in the form of SEO for Google, Open Graph tags for Facebook, Twitter Cards for Twitter—those kinds of things. But the journalism always comes first.
I think when a website loses sight of that and starts chasing clicks—something you've already mentioned a few times today—that’s when bad habits creep in. So never write with search as your first priority.
Even Google has been saying this for years. And I think there’s some truth in it. Sure, those click-chasing tactics can work, but the websites that rely on them almost always end up getting hit by an algorithm update at some point. Then they watch their search traffic disappear—along with their Discover traffic—because they’re seen as low-quality outlets.
And if you’re just chasing clicks, you’re not doing anything unique and distinguishable. You just become one of many outlets publishing the same kinds of stories. Like we talked about earlier, if you're not unique, if you don’t have a clear selling point—something people would actually pay for—you’re going to have a very rough time in the years ahead.
So, you know, it all starts with the journalism. And that's one of the reasons why I like working with news websites. Generally, I’m on their side—I’m not there to teach them bad habits. I’m there to help them shine even more. I don’t need to teach journalists how to write, which is one of the great things about working with them.
The content is generally already really, really good. And sometimes I get to work with particular types of publishers whose content is truly mind-bogglingly good—like fantastic pieces of analysis and in-depth reviews. There’s no bad habit to unlearn there. It’s more about: what can we do to give this the biggest possible audience that it deserves?
And those are very gratifying projects to work on, because you really feel like you’re broadening the audience for this amazing content that these companies are generating. And that content deserves a bigger footprint in Google, a bigger footprint across the whole web—and even beyond the web as well.
The SEO Wisdom Barry Gained From Working With Clients
Gianluca Fiorelli: Okay—this question may sound like I'm asking you for an anecdote, but in reality, it’s something more. What I’m going to ask you is: do you have a story about a client in the news, where you really, really returned back—not in a negative way, in a positive way—in the sense that you were surprised by them, by how they work and how they were able to make their editorial voice, be shared and seen in the correct way? So, a case where you learned something instead of teaching something.
Barry Adams: I learn from every single client I work with. I never try to close myself off from being proven wrong. Every publisher has their own way of doing things—and sometimes, yes, a publisher surprises me with how they do things, and how it actually works.
I’ll give you an example from several years ago, when I worked with the Daily Mail. And I know some people are going to cringe at that—but you have to give credit to the Daily Mail: they’re very, very good at what they do. They have a very specific brand voice that comes through in all their output, and it works for them—because their audience wants that brand voice. They want to read that kind of content.
Now, the way that the Mail’s brand voice comes through in their online articles is through writing very long headlines—basically entire paragraphs—which goes against everything we’re taught to do as SEOs. You know, the rule of thumb is 65 to 70 characters. In Google’s Top Stories and Google News, you can go up to 110 characters before Google starts really cutting them off.
So that was a learning moment for me as well—realizing, hey, you don’t have to strictly adhere to those limits. You can stretch a little beyond them. And also, we can work intelligently within the different visual formats in which headlines are displayed on Google.
For example, in Top Stories, a headline can be 70–80 characters long before you hit the “dot-dot-dot” cutoff. The actual hard limit is around 110 characters. Technically, the title of an article can be thousands of characters long—but visually, Google cuts it off around 65 to 70 characters. In Discover, headlines are shown across multiple lines of text, which gives you a bit more room to play with.
You can also provide different attributes in an HTML document to Google for different types of headlines. Google will use the Open Graph headline very often in Discover. The structured data headline is generally what Google uses in Top Stories, along with the H1 tag. And then, of course, you have the standard title tag used in the 10 blue links.
Smart publishers allow journalists to provide different headline values for these fields. It’s optional—you don’t have to do it—but it’s encouraged. It gives an article more chances to shine in different environments and contexts.
And then, on the other hand, you’ve got publishers who do the exact opposite of what I think good SEO should be—like, for example, LADbible.
I’ve worked with them as well, and they write headlines very much geared towards social and towards Discover—where they’re not explicitly saying in the headline what the article is about, but sort of teasing it in a very clickbaity and emotive way. And, that’s not something I try to encourage, because I have seen websites get punished in algorithm updates off the back of it.
But it seems to work really, really well for LADbible. And I think it works well for them because they have a very strong brand presence. People actively seek out that sort of content. And yes, it might hinder them a little bit in search—it might not work in classic search or in Top Stories—but it works really well for Discover. It drives an enormous amount of traffic for them from the Discover feed.
So, who am I to say that’s bad practice? At most, I can point out the dangers—that they might get hit by an algorithm update—but I’m not going to tell them to drastically revise their editorial strategy. Because, you know, it would be suicide for a company like LADbible to do that.
So, there isn’t one specific method of achieving success in Google. You and I have been around the block long enough to see all kinds of different websites achieve success in different ways. And I think we need to keep an open mind about those things—to learn from every client we engage with, find out how they do things, what’s working for them, what’s not working.
And like I said, I keep learning with every project I do. Every new website I work with has slightly different challenges that they’re trying to meet. And it makes me better with every project I take on. It makes my output better.
If I look at the training and audit reports I send out now versus the ones I sent out five years ago, my quality has progressed by leaps and bounds. And I hope that continues—I hope I don’t get stuck in a rut of always doing the same things in the same way. Because you can’t afford to be stagnant in this industry of ours, where the wheels are constantly churning forward.
Gianluca Fiorelli: It would start to make our own jobs—your job, my job—really boring.
Barry Adams: Yeah, exactly.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And there’s nothing worse than having a job you find boring.
Optimizing Multimedia Content
Gianluca Fiorelli: And we were talking about textual content before, and I also see it as a user of news websites—how much multimedia elements like podcasts embedded in the website, or the video embedded in the podcast, are becoming more relevant. Also the use of so-called street journalists—obtaining the rights to reproduce short videos made by people like me, like you.
It started with the classic, already classic, case of the Arabic Spring. I don’t know if that’s something that exists in English like it does in Spanish?
Barry Adams: Arab Spring, yes. We know that.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah.
Barry Adams: That was 2009, wasn’t it? 2010? Something like that.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yes, around that time—2008, 2010. If I remember well, in the middle. And we should probably count the Syrian war in that as well, because they did the Arab Spring, and it also coincided with the beginning of the war in Syria.
So, how much of your work now—if you do it—is also about optimizing or helping to enhance these kinds of multimedia elements on a big news website? Not just in Google Search, but let’s say on Spotify, if they have podcasts there or YouTube, which is probably the most important channel. I’m not sure—has your work started moving in that direction?
Barry Adams: Not as much as I’d like, if I’m honest. But that’s also because I’ve chosen to focus on my strengths and understand where my weaknesses are. It’s something I probably still need to go and learn more about.
My strengths have been in classic SEO and news SEO, which is very much text-based output. And I know how to optimize for that. I’m still learning how to optimize for video. I’m still learning how to optimize podcasts. And I don’t feel fully comfortable giving advice to clients in those areas, because I’ve got very limited experience with that kind of work.
So, I see it as an area of growth for me as well—especially now that we’re moving into a sort of post-search environment.
And the demand for SEO services is probably going to decrease—or at least change—in certain ways. So it’s always good to add more strengths to your bow, to be able to do more things, and to be a meaningful advisor to clients across multiple channels, not just on the text-based search side.
I see that as a challenge, but also as an opportunity—to grow as a consultant, as a person, and as a provider of services. And I hope I get the chance to work with clients in that space—clients who are willing to take a chance on me, so I can learn from them, and they can learn from me as well. But at the moment, it’s still a fairly limited part of my repertoire.
The Fireside Questionnaire
Gianluca Fiorelli: Okay, so—we’re already at one hour of conversation. Time flies! Let’s wrap things up with a few questions about you. Really simple ones. I’m not going too personal—well, personal, yes, but in a very healthy way.
For instance, for the people watching and listening, maybe not everyone knows this, but you are Dutch—even though you live in Northern Ireland. So, we’re kind of similar, because I’m Italian but I’ve been living in Spain for over 20 years now.
Sometimes—I don’t know if it happens to you—but in Italy, they think I’m Spanish. And in Spain, they say, “No, you’re Italian.” I don’t know if that’s happened to you.
But here’s a question I have for you: how much of the time do you think in Dutch, and how much do you think in English?
Barry Adams: Most of the time, I think in English. I’ve just found that when I’m in a stressful situation I revert back to Dutch. For example, when I go to the gym—I might not look it, but I love going to the gym, I love picking up heavy things—and I count my reps in my head in Dutch, not in English.
But yeah, most of my thinking is in English, because I speak English all the time—every day. With my wife, with my clients... and most of my clients are English-speaking. In my day-to-day environment here in Northern Ireland, it’s English all the time.
So, the switch to thinking mainly in English happened fairly early on, after I moved to Northern Ireland in 2009. These days, I mostly think in English—except when I’m under pressure or in a stressful situation. Then, somehow, my brain reverts back to Dutch
And my accent’s a bit funny as well. I don’t have a typical Dutch accent anymore. It’s still clearly an accent, but people often can’t quite place where I’m from until they’ve talked to me for a while. Then they pick up on certain elements that give it away—that make it obvious I’m Dutch.
But if you hear me speak English next to someone who’s Dutch and still living in the Netherlands, who’s never left the country, then yeah—it’s very clear that there’s a difference in accent.
And I find that quite interesting. I’ve picked up some Northern Irish bits in my accent as well, which I think is natural. You live somewhere long enough, you pick those things up. You adopt local dialect, local phrases.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Yeah, yes—I know exactly what you mean. In my case, I basically learned Spanish by living in Spain, so I picked up all the little idiosyncrasies of real spoken Spanish.
Now, here’s a question for you—because I know you well. You’re a wonderful person, but sometimes... you’re a passionate person. You have this great ability to be both very caring and just not give a beep about certain things. So, what’s the thing that really sends you into rage mode?
Barry Adams: Oh, I probably have too many buttons that people can push, Gianluca. I’m very easily enraged—but it tends to pass fairly quickly. I think I’m actually mellowing a bit in my old age. I used to be a lot angrier, but the older I get, the more I realize that a lot of that anger is just wasted energy.
What still really pisses me off, though, is a worrying trend I see in wider society: people don’t seem to care about what’s true anymore.
I pride myself on being a rationalist and a realist. I believe there is such a thing as objective reality—something we’re all perceiving through our senses and trying to make sense of. And when people just ignore that—when they stop caring about the truth of that objective reality and start living in their own little reality bubbles—I find that deeply and intensely frustrating.
Honestly, I think that’s the root cause of a lot of my anger: when people reject things that I believe are clearly true and factual—or when they offer alternative interpretations but don’t back them up with facts or falsifiable evidence.
Maybe I expect too much from people. Maybe I need to give them a bit more grace, a bit more leeway. But I care deeply about what’s true and what’s not. And in this era—mainly thanks to social media—we’ve seen the value of truth being diminished. That’s a dangerous trend.
And I don’t think we as a society should be okay with that. We should care about truth. We should care about what’s real and what isn’t. And we should be working toward a society that embraces reality—not one that tries to live in alternate versions of it, built on fables and false assumptions.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Oh, maybe this is just a coincidence—or maybe it's also part of why you enjoy doing SEO for news.
Barry Adams: Yes, and news journalism cares about truth. I mean, it should. Doesn’t always happen, of course, but it should be about finding out the truth and reporting it.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And just one last question. Is there a book, a movie, a TV series, or even a theater piece—something you’ve seen or experienced recently—that you’d like to recommend to our listeners and viewers?
Barry Adams: Oh, where do I begin? There’s so much great culture and media out there.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Something from the last period.
Barry Adams: Well, there’s one science fiction book I always recommend to people—it’s called Blindsight by Peter Watts. I think it was published in the late 2000s. It’s a first contact novel, but with a very different take on that idea. I won’t spoil the core premise, but it really blew my mind.
It’s also a book that demands a lot from its reader. You have to pay attention. Honestly, it helps to have an iPad or a laptop nearby so you can look things up. The writer just drops terms and concepts in there with little or no explanation.
But it’s one of the very few books that genuinely challenged my worldview—how I think about humanity, intelligence, and what might exist out there in the wider universe. It’s probably one of the most significant pieces of fiction I’ve ever read in my life.
Gianluca Fiorelli: That sounds like a revelation more than just entertainment.
Barry, it was really, really nice talking with you. I’m very grateful you spent this time with me—and with all of us. Maybe let’s make a promise to meet again for another episode in the future? And let’s see what happens in the meantime.
Barry Adams: That sounds great to me.
Gianluca Fiorelli: And let’s see what happens in the meantime.
Barry Adams: Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoyed it, Gianluca. Thank you very much for having me.
Gianluca Fiorelli: Thank you, Barry. And thank you to all of you watching and listening. Now comes my classic YouTuber moment—please click subscribe, ring the bell, and give a like if you enjoyed this episode. Bye!
Podcast Host
Gianluca Fiorelli
With almost 20 years of experience in web marketing, Gianluca Fiorelli is a Strategic and International SEO Consultant who helps businesses improve their visibility and performance on organic search. Gianluca collaborated with clients from various industries and regions, such as Glassdoor, Idealista, Rastreator.com, Outsystems, Chess.com, SIXT Ride, Vegetables by Bayer, Visit California, Gamepix, James Edition and many others.
A very active member of the SEO community, Gianluca daily shares his insights and best practices on SEO, content, Search marketing strategy and the evolution of Search on social media channels such as X, Bluesky and LinkedIn and through the blog on his website: IloveSEO.net.
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