This went viral in SEO last week. If you’re taking Google at face value…I’ve got oceanfront property in Arizona for you.
Remember folks: Google has openly said, dozens of times, that they despise SEOs and anyone who tries to do SEO.
They have openly said links don’t work, then were caught buying their own links, multiple times.
The laundry list of “Google said X but did Y” is too long to fit in a single LinkedIn post without hitting the character limit.
Simply put, Google does not want you to get free traffic. Period. 75% of Google’s revenue is advertising, and you believe they want to help you get more free traffic out of the kindness of their heart? C’mon now 🙂
If you try to rank for “top kitchen trends” with “marble vs grape juice” you are going to get precisely zero visits per month, and that content not gaining any traction is going to bring down the rest of your site.
This advice from Google is grade-A slop nonsense.
Google loves to pontificate an ideal search world where this type of content shows up, but it simply doesn’t. Just look at any SERP for “kitchen trends”…. It’s literally just the same listicles you have always seen.
NOW, with that said, there is a grain of truth in this that you can leverage to create better content than another crap listicles flooding the SERPs.
Remember, Information Gain Score exists. It measures unique information in your content when compared to existing content online.
If you just regurgitate words and add zero new context or value, you are going to struggle to rank.
And a recent study from Cyrus S. found that December 2025 update winners had more proprietary data in their content…
So, what do you do?
✅ You blend the two strategies above. You still target these keywords with the type of content that Google is already showing to users, verifying the intent before wasting your time.
❌ You don’t target “kitchen trends” with a random article about marble vs granite and comparing it grape juice.
✅ But, within that kitchen trends listicle, you add truly new, valuable information.
✅ Survey an audience and bring new data to the table.
✅ Interview the top kitchen designers.
✅ Do something unique that is not present in the SERP.
✅ Add personal stories like these within your intent-matching article to pick up long-tail + AI search prompts
Do this and you will win in 2026.
❌ Write articles that have zero SERP intent and you will get zero traffic ❌
