The metaphor would hold up a bit better if Google’s updates had actually improved surfacing of useful content for and users.

I giggled uncontrollably like the English schoolboy I once was and still am 50 years later

James Joyce has entered the chat

Unlike the author, online business do not regret the SEO bloat they've carried, because the SEO game has helped pay the bills for decades.

The recent "pressure relief" events signal that it's time to to cut losses from SEO and embrace the new game: LLM optimization. Today you can still influence LLMs by feeding content to their crawlers. But this will be soon be replaced with pay-to-play as OpenAI et. al. seek to monetize their trillion dollar infrastructure gambit.

There will be a landrush: the first few businesses to successfully influence ChatGPT for viral success will have advantages that won't be available when ChatGPT's attentions are divided. But in a decade, ChatGPT will be schilling for the same corps who dominate search rankings today -- the same ones who have the budget for Super Bowl ads, followed by other high margin firms (the law offices of Ambulance & Chaser). When there's little growth to be had from large clients, LLM Companies will start to build up the LLM equivalent of "local SEO" where models will be fine-tuned to serve information about a state, city, borough or neighborhood (giving less profitable entities a chance to pay to influence a smaller region.)

Whatever companies do in this landrush might be interpreted as "sardines upon peanuts" by the author of this article. But it's just the cost of doing business.