Google Adds Live Links in AI Search (SGE)! + Side Hustle Updates and 2 Weird Niche Sites

It's Friday, so it's time for another episode of Niche Pursuits News, with your hosts Spencer Haws and Jared Bauman. This week, as always, they bring us the latest in SEO and digital marketing news. They kick things off with a big news item: Google has announced that it's testing live links in the Search Generative Experience. The good news is that it looks like an expanded featured snippet that may drive more traffic to our individual websites. Spencer shares an example of what it looks like currently and he and Jared talk about how Google may be testing different formats to see what users prefer. They also talk about Google's announcement of "new" things you can do with generative AI in search, the fact that AI-powered overviews are faster, and Google's focus on article publish dates. Spencer also shares a look at his SGE and he and Jared talk about whether or not the results they get are relevant and what the future might look like for SGE.  The next portion of the podcast is Shiny Object Shenanigans. Spencer begins by talking about his Amazon Influencer side hustle, which earned around $1800 over the last month. He talks about how he obtained approval into the program for a Facebook page he's been building (and spoke about on a recent episode) and handed over the entire project to his oldest son. Jared then shares an update on his Amazon Influencer program, which is up to 329 videos and brought in $2870 in July. He only started in May, so growth is quite impressive, and he has plans to continue to add more videos and take advantage of this massive opportunity. The next topic is the Weird Niche Site they've both discovered. Jared goes first and talks about Marcas de Whiskey (Whiskey Brands, in Spanish), a whiskey review site that was started last year. It's a DR 9 and ranks for over 50k keywords.  Although it started out in Spanish, it switched over to English and has seen its traffic triple over time, publishing over 1200 articles in a year. Jared talks about how well the author satisfies search intent and how this may be the main driver of traffic. Spencer nails it this week by finding a site that's both weird and very successful: Wheel of Names. This site, a DR 71, gets between 11 and 5 million visitors each month, according to Ahrefs and Similarweb, and traffic is growing. It's ranking for all kinds of "wheel" related queries and is monetized with Google Adsense ads.  All in all, another great episode from Jared and Spencer with lots of interesting news, ideas, and advice. Tune in next week for more! Be sure to get more content like this in the Niche Pursuits Newsletter Right Here: https://www.nichepursuits.com/newsletter Want a Faster and Easier Way to Build Internal Links? Get $15 off Link Whisper with Discount Code "Podcast" on the Checkout Screen: https://www.nichepursuits.com/linkwhisper