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Google Loyalty Down, Stock Photos?, NotebookLM Podcasts

Greg Sterling

Google Loyalty Down, Stock Photos?, NotebookLM Podcasts

Google Loyalty Drops 16 Positions

Brand Keys' 2024 Top 100 Brand Loyalty Index is out. This is essentially a promotional tool for Brand Keys' consultancy and normally I wouldn't write about it. However, it shows an interesting (and meaningful) decline in Google's consumer loyalty over the last two years – a drop of 16 points. Google went from #9 in 2022 to #25 this year. That's the biggest decline of any company in the top 100. By the same token, Google-owned YouTube has gained 15 positions since 2022, going from #21 to #6. Interestingly, ChatGPT has moved up nine positions since last year – it didn't appear in 2022 – from #49 to #40. Brand Keys says it uses multiple consumer inputs and evaluations to rank almost 1,500 brands. Consumers rate brands based on how well they meet both emotional and rational expectations within specific categories. The firm is measuring engagement and brand loyalty and argues the results predict future behavior, including purchase intent and advocacy.

Brand Loyalty Rankings for Selected Tech Companies (2022-2024)
Source: Brand Keys

Our take:

  • Despite the narrative of Google search quality deterioration, there's been no discernible impact on traffic or market share.
  • Yet this loyalty decline does seem to correspond to lots of anecdotal evidence. I don't think it's meaningless.
  • Google's brand is one of the world's most visible and presumably resilient. And it's possible the company will rebound next year.

SEO: 'Unique Photos' vs. Stock Photos

In Near Media's user research in the healthcare vertical we found that consumers often had a negative reaction to stock images. They wanted to see real photos of doctors, clinics and their staffs. We have not necessarily seen this to the same degree in other verticals but have counseled people to replace stock photos with actual images of their businesses. An isolated test and case study from Joy Hawkins and SterlingSky suggests there may be more nuance here. Joy's team replaced stock photos with "unique photos" (which she says can include AI) on a number of pages and found it had no impact on ranking. She says, "In fact, some rankings dropped after replacing stock photos!" The conclusion of the test is that Google appears to be valuing quality and relevance vs. the uniqueness of images by itself. Quality matters. And regardless of their ranking impact there are multiple reasons to use high quality, professionally taken photographs, including branding, engagement and differentiation.

Our take:

  • To fully understand the ranking impact of stock images vs. unique photos, there would need to be a larger controlled test.
  • However, the finding that simply replacing stock photos with unique images isn't going to improve rankings is likely valid.
  • On balance, it's still better to use real images, unless they're bad/low quality. This test probably establishes real images aren't a magic ranking boost.

Will NotebookLM Survive?

NotebookLM (formerly Project Tailwind) was introduced in July last year, following Google I/O as a kind of technology showcase (Google Labs). Built on top of Gemini, it's intended to be an educational and information management tool, to help people understand and gain faster insights from a body of disparate facts, content and articles. It's actually quite useful but had not captured the imagination of audiences – until now. The addition of "Audio Overviews" (previously "deep dive conversations") has made the product go viral. For those who haven't experienced it (listen below), it will take a single slide deck or multiple documents and turn them into a conversation between two natural sounding voices. It's truly impressive. In fact it's the most impressive demonstration of Google's AI capabilities I've seen so far. Gemini, the foundation for NotebookLM's podcast feature, is not a hit among consumers or most businesses. This is. Obviously this AI voice feature can and will be deployed in other contexts and products. But the question in my mind is: will NotebookLM survive or in 18 months join the Google Graveyard?

Listen to Audio Overview of David's write-up of our EU Hotels User Research Part 2
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EU Hotel Search Research
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Our take:

  • Because there's no direct revenue or strategic importance associated with NotebookLM its chances for long-term survival are modest at best.
  • The average lifespan of discontinued Google products is just under six years but that includes outliers like Google Toolbar that lasted roughly 20 years.
  • Most products killed by Google are gone within just a few years, often 2 years.

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