iGaming Daily

Ivana (00:01.09)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the iGaming Daily podcast with SBC. I'm Ivana Flynn and today I have fantastic Julia and Konrad with me to discuss the next hot topic. Conrad, Julia, please kindly introduce yourselves. Ladies first.

Conrad Bugeja (00:16.138)
Very good. Go ahead, Julia.

Julia Logan (00:18.765)
Hello everyone, my name is Julia Logan. I am the CEO of Zunguz Digital. We are specialized in helping companies in the top competitive verticals such as iGaming. I've been around the SEO industry for more than 20 years, so here I am.

Ivana (00:45.442)
Thank you for joining us and Konrad.

Conrad Bugeja (00:48.586)
Thank you. I'm Konrad, Global SEO Director representing Fair Play Sports Media. been working in iGaming now for around seven years, in SEO for 15 years. And it's a pleasure to join you guys on this podcast to discuss such a timely news event.

Ivana (01:10.07)
I know what a news. if you don't know yet, we are going to be discussing Google and the antitrust lawsuit that Google lost. This is going for a while and we knew that Google is in trouble because of their exclusive deals with other companies such as Apple, which give them status of monopoly. Google is making too much money. Other people that didn't get cut off the pie started to look into it and were not happy. And there we go. Google is being sued.

Through the lawsuit, we learn lots and lots and lots of things that help us as SEOs optimize better or at least to confirm that, yeah, we know what we're doing. So what have we learned so far? We have learned that traffic is important. Links are important. What else would you add? What have we learned through those leaks? Forced or voluntary? Anything that you would like to add to my few points.

Julia Logan (02:02.061)
Well, it's not the first. Technically, this is probably the biggest and most important lawsuit against Google. But we know that there have been several European lawsuits against Google and they had to pay fines as a result. I suppose they have lost them as well, we could say. But why this is important is...

Here is this official declaration that yes, Google is a monopoly, which is something that we've known for quite a while, but you know, a random person who is not a search professional probably doesn't spend much time thinking about that. Although yes, Google it is a verb now, but still.

Ivana (02:56.91)
Absolutely, Konrad, how do you feel about this and what have you learned through the lawsuit so far?

Conrad Bugeja (03:02.378)
So yeah, the lawsuit is there's quite a literature, right? It's between 250, 300 pages. That's quite a lot. And actually it's an interesting, I just came through on some parts, but there's a lot of statistics there, a lot of acronyms. So we have more acronyms now to learn. Yeah, there's some good stuff, of course, that we knew that came out from this antitrust case, like navboost, like click data, traffic, how it impacts the algorithm.

But as well, there's a lot of information around the business of how Google. So for instance, all the DS, how the traffic flows through the devices, through the different Apple agreements. So yeah, it's quite a packed document with a lot of statistics.

Ivana (03:52.078)
Absolutely. Have you been surprised when you learned that they lost? I was not. was like, seriously, we had that coming. I mean, if you have 96 % share of search globally, obviously different share in different markets, but globally, let's say this 96%, you are monopoly. It's not a surprise. So when I heard the news, I was not shocked. Everybody was like, my goodness, they lost. is news. what was your reaction? Was it like, you were like, expect it.

Julia Logan (04:20.455)
kind of expected. It was expected, I would say.

Conrad Bugeja (04:25.876)
Yeah, it is kind of how they operated for a number of years. It's kind of sometimes become status quo. So of course, I'm not a legal expert. kind of certain stuff that are outlined in the ruling, maybe I didn't even think that they were kind of infringing certain acts or causing monopoly. So yeah, we'll see what comes out because it's still not clear what will happen.

from the solid.

Ivana (04:58.138)
But it's happening. Google is monopoly. We all knew it and I absolutely love the Google's reaction to it. I'm going to read it to you. decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we should not be allowed to make it this easy available. I mean, we are the best. We know it and everybody else knows it. Google just, when I read that statement and it's quite long, I'm not going to read all of it. It was like licking their wounds and making sure that

everybody knows that they know they are the best. What does this mean? mean, okay, they are going to be maybe a little bit shaken. Maybe they will lose some deals. Maybe they will not be allowed to have their exclusive deals with Apple and so on and so forth. But what does this mean for an SEO or marketing professional? What do you think is going to be the impact of the decision?

Julia Logan (05:50.069)
I've been saying for a while that we should stop ignoring other options and primarily Bing. Bing has been making quite a lot of progress recently. And if we look at the market share graphs, its share of the market has been growing objectively. So I just hope that this will give them some chance to

grab a bigger share of market. As for Google being the best, I don't think Google is the best. I personally have been... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, of course they need to keep the face in all of the situations. So of course they will say something like that. I don't suppose they have an option to say something other than that. But basically, you know, if we look at this objectively,

Ivana (06:27.81)
that statement by Google, from Google by Google. I'm not saying that.

Julia Logan (06:49.613)
I've looked at some stats today. The rate of approval for Bing has been steadily between 70 and 80 percent from the users. So people are actually pretty happy with Bing's quality as well. basically, if that's another, I wouldn't say nail in the coffin of Google because we're far from that, but

we need an alternative. We do need an alternative with a proper market share. Even if it's like 20 percent, that would of course make a difference. That would already do something to the current status quo. And basically for those who have been in the industry for quite a while,

Google has only been a monopoly for the last, what, 15, 16, 18 years perhaps. So before that, we had a situation where there were multiple search engines. Was it better? Yeah, I think it was because we as users have been given a choice. The search engines have been given the incentive to improve and grow.

and innovate. And I think with Google being a monopoly, they became kind of insensitive to all this potential competition and the need to innovate and the need to actually keep the user's interest in mind. So I think basically if something good comes out of it, it would be bigger market share for other search engines and primarily being.

Conrad Bugeja (08:43.614)
I agree. actually, Julia, the Department of Justice started all of this because it actually thinks this monopoly is actually stiffling innovation. So like this, now it's going to do a part that maybe other tech companies that is removing this monopoly improves basically search quality across in the US basically. It does recognize though, and this mentioned the ruling that Google has a superior quality.

Julia Logan (08:55.265)
Yes.

Conrad Bugeja (09:13.442)
And I know that statement from Google actually now is kind of a PR spin. They're going to try to appeal it. So this might take a number of years. Yeah. So we'll see how now. Exactly. And they have deemed that they are a monopoly actually, and they were deemed a monopoly in online web search and as well as search text ads. And that's actually mentioned and they were actually as well using

Julia Logan (09:19.937)
Of course.

Julia Logan (09:25.175)
But the process has started, at least.

Conrad Bugeja (09:43.198)
the scale to be a better sense engine. Their algorithms were learning because of this volume to be better. So by having this monopoly, they were kind of ruling out any good competitors.

Ivana (09:58.742)
Yes, but were they better? I mean, we know that there was a case of the yellow pages or whatever you call it, where they had to lower their search quality to make sure people come back and search and in the end go through the paid results. I feel it till today, every time I search, need to do follow up searches to make sure that I actually get the answer I want. Because by now, when you search for anything, you get five paid ads above that usually have nothing to do with what you're searching for.

Search underneath is based on extreme amount of links. Many times the result is very spammy. I'm not saying always. We have floods of parasite SEO, no matter how much they try to clean it up, they are not succeeding as much as they would like to. So many times the search is not the quality it should be. And I'm sort of personally excited there's going to be something else. And as well for us as SEOs and any other market here out there, especially in casino when we really, really rely on SEO.

traffic. It's going to be good for us not to rely on Google every time they sneeze and make a new update that your website can drop or completely disappear because Google dislike you and sometimes it's not even any good reason for it or any explanation like, okay, your website dropped because of March update, but you don't know which part of the March update was you don't get follow up and they just wash out all business and we've seen it after March update, especially or helpful content update. People started to lose traffic and

Julia Logan (11:05.783)
Yeah.

Ivana (11:28.11)
There was no guidance how to make it better. There is still no guidance how to make it better. So I think for us it's exciting times coming. Am I being too optimistic?

Julia Logan (11:37.869)
I would only, I would only, you know, I like correcting this term always, not parasite SEO but sponsored media.

Ivana (11:48.406)
I call it, as you may piggyback, partnership, whatever, it's the same result.

Julia Logan (11:49.617)
Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. But basically, what that means is we are dealing with a situation where there may be a viable alternative, which is just great. And to be honest, that viable alternative has never really gone away. It's just that, you know.

Because of Google's overwhelming market share, people have stopped paying attention to alternatives. well, I can just refer everyone to my 2018 Brightness Your Talk, or 2019, was it? Brightness Your Talk about why we should stop ignoring Bing. See, I've been calling it back then. But essentially,

Back in 2016, I had a client whose site has been banned in Google and they were targeting the US market and we were doing just fine targeting just Bing. And that was a gambling site actually.

Ivana (12:56.846)
mean, alternatives are going to be good. It's always good to have. I mean, is a saying, don't put all your eggs in one basket. This is exactly it. That's what we're doing for years.

Julia Logan (13:01.239)
Yes, alternatives are always good. And I mean...

Conrad Bugeja (13:08.179)
Exactly.

Julia Logan (13:08.179)
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And besides, don't forget that SEO actually means search engine optimization, not just Google optimization. And I would say it's long past time for all the SEO tools to start working with the data from the other sources, not just Google. Stop looking at just Google and basically I would love to see what's happening in Bing.

Ivana (13:32.716)
Of course.

Julia Logan (13:36.393)
I would love to see when the updates are coming out and being even if they are not quite as destructive as those in Google, but still, you know, I kind of care as I should and every SEO should. So, yeah.

Ivana (13:56.46)
There is a business idea. Let's make a tool for being all the updates, all the rankings, all the extra search volume. You know, I see it. I see it coming.

Julia Logan (14:06.463)
It used to be the case, it used to be the case. All the tools used to include back then MSN and Yahoo and Google. Then they just dropped the others. And I've sent you that link to my tweet that I tweeted a while ago about Bruce Clay's search engine relationship charts. Remember those.

Ivana (14:34.435)
Yes.

Julia Logan (14:37.141)
And basically we had to deal with a bunch of search engines with very complex relationships. This one gets directory results from here. This one gets paid results from here. This one gets organic results from here. And it's all intermixed, inter -crossing. And it was, it

quite complicated. That's why those charts existed, because it was impossible to really fathom what's happening without visualizing it in some way. And it used to change all the time, so it was great. It made life interesting. It gave us some alternatives.

Ivana (15:20.736)
I think we will have interesting life again, not only Bing, but we know that Serb GPT is coming. mean, what do we feel about Serb GPT? When I heard of it first time in May, I was like, wow, that's going to be interesting. That's going to give at least a scare to Google. Google obviously does not like chat GPT because that made a huge mess.

Julia Logan (15:25.846)
Yeah.

Julia Logan (15:39.863)
Yeah, well, because they are not so good with their AI. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Conrad Bugeja (15:41.054)
Thanks, everyone.

Ivana (15:44.319)
Google and AI does not go together. They really slept on their loins for now.

Julia Logan (15:49.761)
But scene is, scene is.

Search GPT is not really a search engine. It's more like a summary engine.

Ivana (16:00.546)
for now, but it's an opening ground of growing something new and hopefully they have ambition to serve us something new. Konrad, what do you think?

Julia Logan (16:05.869)
It's just not... Yeah.

Conrad Bugeja (16:06.814)
Exactly. So all of this, of course, will provide maybe easier entry for new players. So if we're going to remove the part of default, people can change, like having search GPT as their default search engine. Or maybe even users can opt easily to search in Google, but maybe certain queries, can easily change and search on another provider, even maybe Amazon.

because that's actually something in the ruling that was mentioned where search default doesn't include, for instance, Amazon search, for instance, search engine. So in some cases, search GPT will probably answer results in a more direct way where you don't need to read, but we need, of course, to see the product that will be finalized. In reality, what this monopoly...

shows his and the power of default is for instance, the ruling does mention that Bing has the majority of the market share about 80 % on edge. So maybe by having more this education, there will be more different people who use different search engines. But on top of that, as you mentioned Julia, it will become as well a bit more expensive for operations. So the tools as well need to monitor different search engines.

as NSCO we need to monitor multiple search engines. That means more expensive credits on keyword references and so on. I don't think this is gonna change in the short term. I think this is gonna go probably in a peer -stage back and forth. And we'll see what will happen with these challenge contracts now that Google has on the table.

Julia Logan (17:56.491)
Yeah, I just wanted, yeah. Yeah.

Ivana (17:56.786)
think even if it takes time, of course, it will take time. Nothing happens overnight. But now is the time to really start to think of it that Google might be dethroned. I don't think they're going to lose all their market share, but people will simply start to look into new things. And I think search GPT will be a threat because chat GPT is already big and people know about it and a lot of people love it. And they don't go to Google anymore. They go to chat GPT and just check there. So maybe.

search GPT is the scarecrow for Google.

Julia Logan (18:27.821)
I just wanted to add, when we think of search, we probably should stop thinking just of search engines. Search is more than just search engines, and there could be different interfaces. There could be different approaches. So search GPT doesn't have to be a search engine, but it could still be search. And then we as SEOs would still have to take that into

our workflow and optimize for that as well and keep that in mind. So instead of being SEO as in search engine optimization, the process is becoming all kinds of search optimization.

Ivana (19:17.004)
do that. We already do ASO and we already optimizing for apps, which is obviously growing and apps are, for the new generation need to have it. And you're learning how to optimize for Reddit and Quora and you're learning how to work with other things like Telegraph that is growing. So I think we are slowly, slowly getting there, but the mindset will have to change. there's a whole generation that is Googling and is not searching.

Julia Logan (19:18.305)
Yeah, well, sort of, yes, sort of.

Julia Logan (19:28.13)
Yeah.

Julia Logan (19:41.163)
Yeah.

Conrad Bugeja (19:42.398)
Yeah, and as well, sometimes there's kind of that friction, right, for a user to change the default or to change the interface to switch from Google to Bing. So the adoption as well is on Google's side, right, because people sometimes don't like to change. But as I mentioned before, this is a kind of a good ruling because it is going to do a part for innovation and this kind of by default entry point.

are all going to be challenged. So probably we're to see more innovation and more maybe, as Julia's mentioning, easier access for information. Maybe do I need to search on Google to buy something? Maybe I can go directly to Amazon, if it's my favorite shopping place and marketplace. So I think it's going to disrupt a lot. And this will as well provide a ripple effect, maybe even with other tech companies. Of course, we are referring just in the US, because this is a US ruling. I think Google will make

a lot more extra effort now that they don't change how they operate in the EU.

Ivana (20:48.256)
Okay, we are almost out of time. So last closing thoughts, what we should really think of when thinking of Google and search and of this antitrust lawsuit and what to come. Is our work going to change? Is our job going to change? Is our job going to disappear? Is Google dying? Closing thoughts.

Julia Logan (21:10.113)
Our work is always changing, so nothing new here. Google, I don't think they're exactly dying just yet. I don't think they're gonna be so fast to die. There definitely are changes coming up. There definitely will be new things to adjust to. There definitely will be new approaches that we will need to adopt, but...

basically is just part of the process. And I think it's quite positive.

Conrad Bugeja (21:47.54)
Yeah. So I think Google is still going to be a strong player in the market and potentially I might see them for now still have the strongest product. Of course, there is a lot of spenders, a lot of information. But yeah, we need to keep in mind we need to diversify traffic. Actually, that helps in general. But we need to start keeping open mind how this will change and there will be

I think different entry points for users to search in the future.

Ivana (22:22.526)
Disruption is always good for growth and is always good for new opportunities. So I really hope that it will be good for us. I think if anything, SEOs will be more in demand because they will be more to optimize. So if you are looking into getting in SEO, it's still a good niche to get into, right? It is still a carrier to consider. Very good. Thank you so much. I mean, obviously we don't have all the answers for the antitrust lawsuit and we don't have all the answers of what's going to happen in future.

Conrad Bugeja (22:39.785)
Definitely.

Ivana (22:51.586)
We don't have a crystal ball, but we'll definitely follow up when we have more information. For now, thank you both for joining me and sharing your thoughts.

Julia Logan (23:00.845)
Thanks for having me.

Conrad Bugeja (23:02.516)
Thanks for the invite. Thank you.

Ivana (23:03.843)
Thank you.