Google Held Another Google Creator Summit - This Time In D.C.

Google held another Google Creator Summit where they invited 7 creators on a fully paid expense trip to their Washington, D.C. office to spend the first two days in some larger Small Business Summit and then day three with Danny Sullivan, Paul Haahr and I believe HJ Kim from the Google Search team. I believe they spent a full day with these seven creators, I do not know how they find them or selected the creators. But it does seem Google is doing these mini and really focused events with creators around the world, not just in California.

Last year, Google had an event like this at their main campus in California and that went over swimmingly, but they did it again (and I think also in other locations) but this last one was written up by Tomiko Harvey on her blog over here. Tomiko is a travel blogger with a focus on safety (I didn't realize this, but I was told she sells SEO services (see here) which does put a bit of a spin on things. I should also note, she spoke to several journalists including Bloomberg (and myself, if you call me a journalist). I highly recommend you read it in detail, because she had a bit of a different take on this event than the previous creators did with the event from the GooglePlex office.

Maybe Danny Sullivan changed his style and his presentation, I don't know. But Tomiko walked away understanding that her content was indeed built for search engines, that it was not a problem Google was just going to fix and her problems will be solved, but rather she had to make changes on her end. I am under the impression that there were not allowed to take photos from the slides on day three, with the search team.

I do want to be clear, the first two days of this event was not with the core search team. So I think some of the messaging around advice from the first two days is being mixed with the last day of advice - which is fine and all good - but I want to be clear about that.

The big thing I took from her post was that her content was not written to optimize the time of her reader. She admitted that her content had too much fluff, probably as a way to appease the Google ranking algorithms of the old days. Also partially as a way to give space for ads to show up in the content. She also said that Google searchers use to want long winded content but these days, searchers want the answer fast - so Google changed how their algorithms work to match what searchers want.

Here are some quotes from her piece:

• "I walked away, realizing I was still writing for Google and not my readers, which really stung me because I thought I was doing the right thing."
• "I’m not happy I lost 98% of my traffic, but it forced me to take a hard look at my own content and strategy."
• "I was comfortable. I knew SEO. I understood keyword research. And I got complacent."
• "Google even admitted during the summit that they had unintentionally encouraged long, keyword-heavy content over the years, which led many of us creators to start writing for the algorithm instead of real people."
• "Now, they want to get back to basics, content that’s helpful, clear, and written with the reader in mind."
• "No more stuffing keywords just to check a box or adding fluffy filler just to hit a word count. Google’s AI is advanced enough to understand whether users are actually satisfied with what they find, and that’s what it now prioritizes."
• "Food bloggers have heard the jokes for years. Readers are tired of scrolling past 14 paragraphs about your grandma’s famous pie crust, how she walked 10 miles to find the perfect berries, and how this recipe changed your family’s life."
• "The internet has made it clear: they just want the recipe. But many creators have pushed back because let’s face it, long content means more ad space and better payout."
• "And we’ve been taught that length = SEO gold."
• "But here’s what Google is now saying directly: stop with the fluff. Long, keyword-stuffed stories that bury the actual recipe frustrate users, and frustrated users bounce."
• "That’s not just bad for the reader, but also your rankings. So yes, tell your story, but keep it intentional and relevant."
• "Because in 2025, clarity and usefulness beat nostalgia every time."

But Google also may have admitted things are wrong with search quality, she wrote:

"Before I dive in, here’s something Google admitted upfront at the summit: they know their system has favored larger sites. They didn’t mean to, but that’s how the algorithm evolved.

They told us directly that more traffic has flowed to major publications, and they’re actively trying to correct that. It’s not an overnight fix.

They even said they wish they could flip a switch to balance things out, but it takes months to reverse an overcorrection on their part.

In the video, she said Google told her that it is not Google's responsibility to send creators traffic, they are here to provide users/searchers with the information they want. They also said making changes to Google Search takes many many months and nothing can be fixed over night.

Here is a 25 minute video she made of this experience:

This is well worth a read.

Glenn Gabe also summed it up well on X, which is where I initially found this.

More: "Before you write your next blog post, ask yourself: What is the quality of this page? Are you truly answering the user’s question, or are you just trying to rank?"

"A high-quality page isn’t just long, it’s useful, focused, and helpful. It serves a clear purpose and… pic.twitter.com/J25l2Lhs39

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 6, 2025

And also check out our coverage of the summit from Mountain View from last year if you missed it.

Forum discussion at X and on Threads.

Update: A creator from the Mountain View event wanted me to add a statement from him, so here here Nate Hank's statement:

"I was among the 20 creators who attended Google's October Creator Summit in Mountain View. At our event, Google representatives repeatedly apologized to the creators in the room and very clearly admitted that our sites deserve to rank higher. Google said it understood it needed to make changes on its end, and that the responsibility for fixing it fell on Google, not us (though, almost 8 months later, Google has fixed nothing). From the reports of this latest Creator Summit in DC, it sounds similar to our event in name only. One can speculate if that's because the invited creators are in a different situation, or if perhaps it has something to do with the DOJ's antitrust litigation concurrently taking place the same week (also in DC). But, in my opinion, what's really going on is Google trying to cover up for the fact that it plans to replace publishers' role in the web ecosystem with AI. I'd note that at our event in October Google exec Elizabeth Tucker told us that LLMs have 'fundamentally changed content creation.' However, when I asked for specific instructions on how publishers like us can adapt to the age of AI, Google execs had no real guidance for us. That, to me, says a lot. Google is reshaping the web with AI, while leaving behind the publishers who built the web in the first place."