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Podcast · Field Notes

Ranking AI Slop on Google in 2026

Notes from NGMI Ep. 2 with Tony Yu and Indexsy. A fast, profane SEO/e-com chat about why AI content stopped being a moat, what moves rankings now, and which tactics they call NGMI or GMI.

Show NGMI · Ep. 2 Hosts Tony Yu & Indexsy Runtime 31 min Published Apr 27, 2026
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The 30-second version

TL;DR

AI made written content a commodity, so quality is no longer the differentiator. The new tiebreaker Google leans on is domain authority, which is much harder to fake, so big sites win and small sites get crushed.

The winning play is "parasite SEO": publish on platforms Google already trusts (large publications, Facebook Groups, Reddit, Quora, Medium, LinkedIn), then push real traffic and click signals at it to make it rank. AI overview clicks are inching back up, but publishers are still down badly versus the old "position one gets ~30% of clicks" world.

Spamming AI articles on your own domain at high velocity gets you "clapped" by an algorithmic penalty you don't recover from. Slow, targeted, lightly-edited posting survives.

Key takeaways
Search

AI overview clicks are recovering, but barely

Per Search Engine Land (Apr 24), click-through inside Google's AI experience ticked up roughly 1% to 2% since Dec 2025, with cited pages benefiting most. In absolute terms that looks like a big jump, but historically the top organic result earned ~30% of clicks, so publishers are still way down. The hosts frame AI overviews as "death to publishers, good for end users and brands", and here to stay.

Caveat

Your impression counts are inflated

Rising "search volume" isn't all human. Bots, scrapers, proxies, rank trackers, and even ChatGPT (which runs a search per query) all get counted. The takeaway: don't read too much into Search Console impressions. A chunk of that growth is machines, not buyers.

The core thesis

Content is commoditized, authority is the moat

The blunt claim: with AI, content quality "does not matter at all" as an algorithmic signal. Since everyone can generate competent text, Google falls back on what's harder to game, which is domain authority / size. Small sites are "completely crushed." Large trusted domains win by default.

The only differentiator from Google's point of view is domain authority, 'cause that's harder to game. That's the tiebreaker. It's no longer content.Indexsy (paraphrased)
The play

Parasite SEO: borrow someone else's authority

Instead of fighting to rank your own small domain, publish where Google already trusts the host: large publications (Indexsy's agency angle, with FTC disclosure), plus Facebook Groups, Reddit, Quora, Medium, and LinkedIn posts. The mechanics: get the post indexed, then build backlinks or push real click/CTR signals at it so Google reads it as going viral.

One concrete signal called out: Chrome usage data as a ranking input. Sending genuine traffic (e.g. your email list) to click a link can help lift it.

For operators

The 80/20 for a brand

If you run a store, you don't need the publication game. Spam content on your own blog and seed the "social" layer of Google: search every variant of your money keyword (e.g. "best waterproof shoes," "…for women"), drop genuinely helpful comments in the ranking discussions/forums, and get them upvoted. Scale it with VAs or software. It compounds hard across long-tail queries.

Attribution: it mostly shows up as organic/branded search, so it's tough to measure cleanly. Best proxy: track target keywords in Search Console, estimate clicks via CTR, and back into conversion using your own AdWords data for that keyword.

The warning

Spam your own domain and you get "clapped"

Blasting thousands of AI articles a month at your own URL produces a sharp Ahrefs spike (euphoria, goosebumps), then an algorithmic penalty about a week later that you never recover from. The penalty is algorithmic, not "looks like AI." Safer path: ~one targeted article a day, lightly human-edited, slower posting velocity. Once a domain is burned, buy/use a different one.

Rapid-fire: NGMI or GMI?

Spamming AI blog content on your own domain

NGMI

High-velocity blasting = a one-way ticket to an unrecoverable penalty. Targeted, slow, edited posting only.

ChatGPT / LLM shopping & e-commerce discovery

GMI

E-com through LLMs is going to work. The open question is the ad model: it has to be far better-targeted than Google Ads or trust (and engagement) collapses.

Starbucks "describe your mood / upload a photo" ChatGPT app

NGMI

"Crypto vibes." Not everything needs an AI-vibes layer. Better wins are behind-the-scenes (purchase-history push notifications, revenue optimization), not feeling-based drink picks.

Parasite SEO on trusted platforms

GMI

Still works, and arguably works better now that Google can't tell good content from bad and defaults to ranking large hosts.

Apple / Siri as a commerce layer

JURY OUT

Now open to any LLM and positioned to take rev-share on transactions. The upside depends on whether Siri and Alexa start driving purchases, so hardware and timing still matter.

Monetizing a food blog for free meals

NGMI

"Selling your soul for a free meal." The better model is paid sponsored slots, or "eat with the host" guest spots with local-business plugs.

Glossary
NGMI / GMI: "Not Gonna Make It" / "Gonna Make It." The show's verdict shorthand for whether a tactic or bet will pay off.
Clapped / Clap City: hit with an algorithmic Google penalty. Rankings collapse with no recovery.
Parasite SEO: ranking content by hosting it on a high-authority third-party platform instead of your own domain.
AI overview: Google's AI-generated answer box that summarizes results above the organic links.
YMYL: "Your Money or Your Life" niches Google scrutinizes heavily. The hosts note AI overviews often don't fire in some of them.
Full transcript
Read the full episode transcript Auto-generated · speaker labels approximate · 31:29 · click to expand ▾
00:00TonyWelcome to episode two of "NGMI." First one kinda popped off. We got, what, 20,000 views? What's the count at, Jackie?
00:18JackieYep. 20K views, 42K impressions on the tweet, 16K views on the video, like 2.4K on YouTube and some change on Spotify.
00:34TonyListen up, OpenAI, here to be acquired. Or maybe Anthropic. We're down.
00:49TonyThese episodes started with just our weekly walks, Jack and I. Maybe we should do a walk-and-talk podcast one time.
01:02JackieWe totally could. But then we need a camera person literally following us backwards for an hour. That's savage.
01:19TonySo we got Jackie, Thanos of monthly five-figure businesses, two gauntlets, ten gems. We're gonna dive into each one, which makes money, which is NGMI. And me, the most cracked e-com guy on this pod, telling you what's up with AI e-com, while Jackie dives into the SEO stuff.
02:00TonyI'll jump in. We'll do a few SEO news hooks from this past week, then Jackie's business updates, then a rapid fire at the end on what's NGMI and what's GMI.
02:22TonyFirst news hook: "AI overviews and clicks may be recovering." Search Engine Land reported April 24th that CTR within Google AI rose 1.3% to 2.4% from December 2025. Cited pages got more benefit, around 2.1% versus 1% previously. Did you know about this?
02:54JackieIn my niches there's no AI overviews. I'm in not-safe-for-work YMYL niches, so they don't fire. We're unaffected. But in affected industries, going 1% to 2% sounds huge percentage-wise, but historically position one got like 30% of clicks, so you're still down. AI overviews are death to publishers, but good for end users and brands. It's here to stay.
03:56TonyHave you seen overall search queries go up? Been able to track that?
04:01JackieYes. But search queries aren't fully accurate. A lot of it is bots, scrapers, proxies, rank trackers. ChatGPT inflates it too, since they do a search every time. It all gets counted.
04:26JackieSo those idiots on X showing impressions on Search Console are NGMI. They don't know this is happening. Good example: when Google removed the num=100 parameter, impressions dropped 10x overnight because crawlers couldn't crawl that.
05:03TonyHow are you getting brands to rank right now? Are you just pushing them into the overview, and how do we get ranked there?
05:14JackieWe focus on listicles still, "best XY" type articles, highest intent. We rank them not on their main sites but on third-party large publications we have an in with. Publish, build backlinks, send traffic, it ranks. For e-com like you: collection pages, tangential blog keywords, same old.
06:06TonyDo those tangential pages still need high DR?
06:13JackieOn your own site, not so much. On the publications, it needs high DR. Small sites aren't ranking anymore, completely crushed. Big sites win.
06:33TonyHow are you getting Vessi ranked right now?
06:33JackieYou guys dropped a bit, but it's a bunch of listicles, publications we have exclusive rights to. Just have to disclose the involvement so the FTC doesn't clap my ass.
06:54TonyHow does a brand track how much revenue this discovery channel generates — cleanest way?
07:02JackieCheck Search Console for target keywords, estimate off CTR, then reverse-engineer conversion using AdWords data. Vessi would know how "best waterproof shoes" converts per click because you run the ads on it.
07:37TonySecond hook: ChatGPT is becoming the discovery layer for commerce. Starbucks launched a beta app on ChatGPT where you describe a mood or upload a photo and get a drink rec. "Start with a feeling, not the menu." You heard of this?
08:03JackieThat's NGMI, bro. This gives me crypto vibes. Not everything needs an AI-vibes layer. There has to be a better use case than vibes-based recommendations.
08:21TonyYou don't think you'd take a photo on ChatGPT?
08:36JackieNo. Based on historical purchases and time of purchase they could do push notifications, use AI as analytics, a revenue optimizer.
09:05TonyThey're already doing that. This is more of a ChatGPT push. Do you use ChatGPT or Claude as the homepage on your phone for queries?
09:18JackieYes, 100%. Claude, actually, now.
09:21TonySo why wouldn't you open Claude or ChatGPT instead of your Starbucks app?
09:30JackieThe market could head this way if Siri and Alexa actually help with purchases. The data there would align nicely.
09:52TonySiri makes sense. Can't wait for Siri to get cracked. Who's the new guy, John?
09:59JackieHe's a hardware guy. If you were an Apple shareholder, happy or unhappy with what Tim Cook did the last 10 years?
10:09TonyHappy. Share buybacks, not bad. Not a lot of moonshots, but the market wasn't there for the hardware. The headset didn't work out. The hardware needs to be there for the software layer on top. And the LLM situation wasn't there until the last couple years. Now Siri can pipe in any LLM and take maybe 30% rev-share on transactions through that commerce layer.
11:20JackieDidn't they partner with Google for this?
11:25TonyThey're open now — any LLM can build on Siri. That's crazy.
11:39JackieThey're set up for success. What did the All-In Podcast say: 3X stock price, 10X'd revenue in the last 10 years.
12:02TonyAnother company better the last 10 years was Tesla. If I hadn't sold my 2017 Tesla shares (like $120K) it'd have netted me two to three million. Can't count that, I needed a car. I bought my own shares, supported the bag.
12:52JackieFor the audience: Tony's probably one of the worst investors of all time. He'd have paper-handed the Tesla stock in a minute.
13:08TonyI still have Tesla stock from $34 way back. Not a significant amount (I was poor then) but worth quite a bit now.
13:23JackieAnother insight into Tony: we both played Palantir at IPO, 10 bucks, like 2,000 shares each, 20K. It doubled in a couple days, we flipped half, played with house money. I said I'd hold forever but kept selling. Now I have hundreds left, well, 800-900.
14:24TonyWhat's with you posting your net worth every month on X?
14:31JackieIt's the most transparent thing you can do. E-com guys post "I did 100 million" and it's negative EBITDA with 50K in their pocket. So I flipped the script and report my net worth. People like it.
15:03TonyYou built an app around that, right?
15:09JackieNo, I just tracked my revenue and vibe-coded a display app. It's just HTML, doesn't make money.
15:35TonyDon't you have an app where people sign up and transparently post their revenue?
15:42JackieNo, I don't have one like that. I literally don't.
15:52TonyDamn, I might've just revealed one of his non-gem businesses.
16:01JackieAbsolutely not. But we can go over my businesses if you want.
16:07TonyLet's do some quick hot takes. "AI content doesn't kill sites, low-conviction operators do." Is AI slop good or bad right now?
16:34JackieAI content is fine. Content is fully commoditized now, so the only differentiator from Google's point of view is domain authority — that's harder to game, that's the tiebreaker. It's no longer content. If I posted a blog post that's just the title, I'd outrank most of the internet. Quality does not matter at all.
17:19TonySo how do people game that ranking algorithm? What's a quick method?
17:26JackieIt's called parasite SEO — piggyback off large social platforms. Facebook Groups are really easy to game right now and rank well on Google. So do Reddit, Quora, Medium, LinkedIn posts. It's endless.
17:51TonySo how do you rank those community posts?
18:01JackieAfter it's live, get it indexed, then build backlinks or rank it using CTR methods — send positive signals that tell Google it's going viral.
18:22TonyDo you start it with robot traffic?
18:26JackieIt's gotta be real traffic. One signal is Chrome data — Google uses it as a ranking factor — so if you can send a lot of real Chrome traffic, it helps.
18:39TonySo if we got a backlink up on a Facebook group, can I just send my email list to click that link?
18:53JackieThat would work. Let me pull one up — search "best backlink indexer." Under discussions in forums, that's my business. Click it, bada bing, one-shotted.
19:53TonyHow much real traffic are you getting through this?
19:56JackieHard to estimate — people then go search on Google, so it ends as a branded search, hard to attribute. I have a consumer app in stealth using tactics like this — just hit all-time highs. It comes in as organic but we did no organic efforts.
20:51JackieWe are so back — all-time highs. Did like 600 today, and it was only 9am when I checked.
21:05TonySo affiliate sites, Reddit, Quora, Facebook Groups, Medium — ranking is the same as before, but Google indexes them differently?
21:21JackieGoogle can't differentiate good from bad content, so they have no choice but to rank these larger sites over others.
21:36TonySo what do I do as a business — just spam content on all these blogs?
21:42JackieSpam content on your own blog plus the social platforms — that's the 80/20. You wouldn't even need third-party publications like me unless you want significant money.
22:04TonyHow would you scale this if you were me?
22:11JackieVAs or software. If I were starting Vessi, I'd search every query — "best waterproof shoes," "best waterproof shoes for women" — go into the social part of Google, comment on each discussion, get them upvoted on your own and other accounts. Even just commenting manually, you'd feel it as a new brand. Our stealth consumer app — we feel it, no ads, 100% organic.
23:10TonyAnd it compounds, right? Lots of long-tail queries.
23:15JackieIt compounds like crazy. By the way — if you're wondering why Tony's talking so much today, we did the old switcheroo to see who'd get more views. Let me know in the comments if you want Tony or me leading. Go easy on him — he's never done this.
23:46TonyAbout to get clapped by your audience trying to feed them SEO content.
23:52JackieIt's fine — your ideas are probably more refreshing, I spam the same shit nonstop.
24:00TonyLet's do a quick rapid fire — NGMI or GMI in one sentence, and why. First: AI blog content?
24:17JackieSpamming thousands of AI articles a month on your own blog is definitely NGMI — one way to Clap City, you're 100% cooked. More targeted keywords work better. I recommend one article a day. Don't do what indie hackers do and blast it — your shit's gonna get cooked.
24:52TonySo better to buy another site and spam it there?
25:05JackieYou could. Or AI content manually edited at slower velocity. Just don't blast your URL — once you get clapped, you never recover.
25:21TonyAre people still getting clapped on AI content from Google?
25:31Jackie100%. It's algorithmic. On Ahrefs it's a super sharp jump — everyone's euphoric, goosebumps — then a week later you get clapped and never recover. Your manager asks what happened and you show metrics that don't align.
25:59TonyYou heard it here first. ChatGPT shopping — NGMI or GMI?
26:07JackieShopping / e-commerce in general, GMI. Other stuff, jury's out. What do you think about LLM shopping?
26:24TonyIt can't exist on ChatGPT itself, but they can harness the data to push it through other apps. You want the commerce/Shopify layer to aggregate data and feed it into ChatGPT two-way. If people search and get spammed with ads, engagement drops off.
27:10JackieThat's what they said about Meta — its ads are behavioral enough that it works.
27:23TonyIt's gotta be really good. On Instagram you're there to be entertained; on ChatGPT I'm there for answers. If the answers aren't trustworthy, I won't use it — same as Google when people gamed it. Number one sushi spot in Vancouver? I'd never go there. I'd only follow a specific food vlogger named — what's your page, Jackie?
28:20JackieDude, Tony's so annoying — when we eat out he tells everyone I'm a food vlogger and I have to leave. He likes getting humiliated once a day, it's a rejection thing.
28:49TonyJackie just gets embarrassed quick. What's your Instagram for everyone coming to Vancouver?
28:56JackieEating Vancouver. Eating Vancouver — .ca as the handle, with the dot.
29:06TonyRanked number one and you don't even monetize for free food. Crazy.
29:11JackieBonus segment — monetizing for free food is the most NGMI thing on the planet. Getting $30 for a free meal, you sell your soul. We should do a segment on monetizing better. You can monetize a food blog well — bring on local business owners as guests, have them show me their favorite restaurants, sponsored slots.
29:59Jackie"Eat with Jackie" — but it's $1,000 for me to show up and I bring my whole crew. It's a natural plug: "Samson shows me his favorite restaurants — by the way, if you need a physio in East Van, go to Movement Room."
30:24TonyYou should do another one called "Move with Jackie." The audience would love that.
30:32JackieNah. Let's keep it tight at 30 minutes. The call-out: go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts, URL in the YouTube description. Follow Tony on X — he got 100 followers from the last episode and claims he didn't feel it. First episode did almost 20K views and Tony asked "is that good or bad?" Podcasts don't go out the gate with 20K views — he just doesn't get it. If you like it, let us know in the comments. Catch you next week.
31:24TonyLet us know what you want us to talk about — drop it in the comments.
These are independent notes and a condensed, machine-generated transcript of a publicly available podcast episode, shared here for commentary and reference. The transcript is auto-generated and lightly cleaned, speaker labels are approximate, and this page is not affiliated with or endorsed by the show or its hosts. Listen to the full original episode on Spotify. Nothing here is professional SEO, legal, or financial advice.
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