Google Changes FAQ Schema, Word Agents Down 70%, and 2 Really Weird Niche Sites

<p><!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>Welcome back to another episode of Niche Pursuits News, with Spencer Haws and Jared Bauman of 201 Creative. This week, like every week, the hosts serve up the latest SEO news as well as inspiration for listeners.</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>They started by addressing the changes Google announced to the <a href= "https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2023/08/howto-faq-changes"> how-to and FAQ rich snippets</a>. Specifically, Google will be limiting how-to rich snippets to desktop results and reducing FAQ rich snippets, and the roll-out should be completed by next week. </p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>They talk about what this means for niche site owners and content creators, whether FAQs generally drive significant traffic, if this is Google’s attempt to use SGE to provide that information, and whether or not creators should still include them in their content.  </p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>Then Spencer shares a post on LinkedIn from the COO of Word Agents, David Peterson, where he talks about how AI put them out of business, causing them to lose 70% of their revenue. He talks about how Make Lemonade suffered a similar fate, as discussed in a previous episode. </p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>They talk about this unprecedented shift in the way content is created and how it’s having a major impact on content agencies. Whether website owners are using AI to create their own content or taking a wait-and-see approach until the dust settles, major changes are happening and who knows what the landscape will look like in 8 or 9 months.</p> <p><!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --></p> <p>The last news item they tackle is that Google is in talks with the Australian government as it wants to be able to <a href= "https://searchengineland.com/google-content-available-ai-training-publishers-opt-out-430475" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">scrape publishers’ con