Search-engine-optimized content used to be one of the lowest forms of media. 

Instead of editorial minds coming up with editorial angles on the news or what to buy, the SEO movement handed over that power to Google. Entire teams sprouted up at publishers designed to translate what Google wanted into content. These teams identified which search terms magazines could rank for in Google and then assigned stories based on those terms. These could be “best mother’s day gifts” or “what to wear to a bridal shower” and generally would be filled with affiliate links to products that generated revenue for publishers when people made a purchase from those links.

This was such a good strategy in the 2010s that, even if it made editors die inside every time a corporate SEO person dictated their next list of boring stories to publish, it was difficult to justify saying no. Revenues were collapsing elsewhere in the business, and this was the latest great white whale that was supposed to save it (pivoting to video, after all, had not). 

Yet we, as editors, had gone from simply making the smart, no-cost move to use search terms in headlines without sacrificing quality or editorial judgment to letting Big Tech dictate our output. (This is the difference between a print headline like “Glam Goddess” and a web one like “Kate Moss Got Married in Custom John Galliano Dress.”) It seemed to me, when I was an editor, that flooding sites with SEO stories would only drive away talent from publishing. If that type of article was your priority, you didn’t need big creative thinkers or journalists — or even professional writers! And if the talent leaves, you’re left with a content farm.

What’s starting to replace all that, however, is even worse, thanks to AI. Now, instead of publishers serving as content farms, brands can just do their own farming. So if you thought it was hard enough to find a going-out top on Revolve as things stand, that’s nothing compared to what’s coming.

The practice of GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization — also known as appearing in AI chat results — is a different sort of game that may prioritize recommendations without any editorial intermediaries. It may hand undue power to brands trying to get recommended. At worst, it may drive buyers to scam websites that steal their money. Overall, it seems likely to further confuse the shopping experience even for the savviest users. And it will turn those who aren’t into unwitting victims of shadowy online marketing campaigns. Hopefully we’ll at least get a few decent bridal shower dresses out of it.

As much as I resented having to create content for Google when I was an editor, at least those lists of recommendations had a human touch. Sure, an editor had to sift through a list of affiliate links to find the one offering the biggest kickback to the publisher, but many of the items selected were genuine. A person had sat there and gone through clothes or beauty products and made a selection based on their taste in shoes or experience using mascara. Consumers need help finding products, and editors provide the useful service of culling them.

AI chat may surface those more credible stories if you ask it for, say, the “best flip-flops.” But it surfaces them alongside Reddit responses that may or may not be real, as well as other marketing content made by brands. The Atlantic recently looked into how this works. Basically, AI chatbots look for relevant text more so than popular text, so brands can pay to seed promotional threads that can get picked up by chatbots. A lot of people are familiar with this practice, or “astroturfing,” particularly after it came up in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni legal drama. 

Brands have also started publishing self-serving grifts — I mean, lists. Shopify used its own site for a slew of roundups, like, “10 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business in 2026,” “11 Best Ecommerce Platforms for Your Business in 2026,” “The 11 Best Cheap Ecommerce Platforms for Small Business (2026),” and so on, all with Shopify as number one. ChatGPT then told The Atlantic’s Will Oremus that Shopify was the best way to set up an online storefront. As problematic as Google has been for publishing, at least the company seems hip to this practice and, instead of sending Oremus to Shopify, sent him to a video by the “Baddie in Business” YouTube channel. (A Google spokesperson told him that “Fighting spam is a core expertise for us.”)

This is not to say that Google has made the shopping experience better. Though sponsored results are clearly labeled, other products that surface do so because of careful SEO, efforts to generate reviews, and PR campaigns that result in editorial coverage — all of which is expensive and stacks the deck against upstart brands without the same budgets.

AI is different in that it presents the editor-curated SEO lists as equal to the Reddit posts, which may be real or astroturfed. What may remain of the SEO model is its most insidious aspect: It encouraged the practice of publishing content purely for machines to read. GEO will only encourage a lot more of this, and of course we now have machines that can make all this slop in seconds. Slop begets slop.

Even worse than surfacing a recommendation based on machine-generated, machine-read slop is surfacing scam websites. The Guardian reports that criminals are cloning websites by actual brands and getting these fake sites to surface in chat results. Consumers who can’t tell the difference (the deepfakes are very, very good) place orders from these sites, only to have their money stolen for orders that never arrive.

While this would seem likely to inspire readers to place more weight on publisher-generated lists — I’d rather shop from Glamour’s ghost site than ChatGPT’s maybe-scam recs — GEO is not likely to help publishers. While the New York Times and Condé Nast struck content licensing deals with OpenAI, these are unlikely to affect whether or not a user goes to a publisher site, clicks an affiliate link, and then makes a purchase. 

So publishers are not only getting screwed once more, they’re also propping up this whole GEO ecosystem — arguably lending a halo of legitimacy to the fake Reddit posts. If there are winners in all of this, it may be creators and newsletter writers, who have their own audiences who trust their recommendations over any magazine or chatbot.

The Normalization of Lauren Sánchez

I previously predicted that Lauren Sánchez would shift from rage bait to just kind of… there. The same way Kim Kardashian went from being rejected by the Fashion Establishment to existing at its beating heart center. That seems to now be happening with Sánchez.

With her wedding and the Met Gala behind us, fashion publications are writing her up like she’s just any old celebrity wearing a notable (or not notable) dress. She was photographed in Paris wearing a vintage John Galliano Dior dress and Harper’s Bazaar wrote it up, concluding, “Surely, we’ll see more of Mrs. Bezos’s eye-catching style on the fashion show front rows. Watch this space!”

WWD did an item on her shoes, reporting, “The children’s book author wore the style in blush beige patent calf leather, which blended into her skin and further elongated the leg.” “Page Six” noted that the 2011 Chanel clutch she carried is selling for $31,000.

These outlets are surely writing her up because she clicks, but it’s a good illustration of how a public figure can use fashion to neutralize their image. Eventually, these stars become people who “step out” wearing this or that more so than a symbol of any number of societal ills.

Amy Griffin Defends Herself in the Whole ‘The Tell’ Mess

Billionaire Goop investor, venture capitalist, and Met Gala regular Amy Griffin’s legal team has filed documents aimed at getting a lawsuit related to her memoir The Tell dismissed.

After the book became an Oprah’s Book Club pick, shot to the top of the bestseller list, and launched Griffin on a publicity tour any author would dream of (spots on The Drew Barrymore Show and the Goop podcast, an essay by Reese Witherspoon for Time, etc.), the New York Times investigated her story of recovering memories of horrific sexual assault by her middle school teacher through MDMA therapy — and the story hasn’t gone away since it came out last year.

A former classmate of Griffin’s, Joleene Altum, said stories in the book resembled abuse she had endured at their Amarillo middle school and that she had met with Griffin in Palm Springs before the book came out. Altum then sued Griffin for stealing her story.

In a new filing (People had the exclusive on it, though Griffin hasn’t commented publicly on all of this), Griffin’s team disputed that she stole Altum’s story. The filing also said that the Palm Springs meeting never happened and that Altum has no proof that it did. It also disputed that a talent agent Altum believed Griffin hired to speak with her for research ever did any such thing.

Interestingly, Griffin hasn’t seemed to receive quite the same fan response that her publisher’s other hit memoir, Strangers by Belle Burden, has after journalists started looking into her story. Fans defended Burden after The New Yorker published a straightforward article with information Burden left out of the book about her finances and prenup, which were a focal point of her narrative.

I don’t know how this memoir mess ends, but Griffin seemingly has infinite resources compared to Altum. The Times reported Altum was working for $21 an hour as a home health aide for an Alzheimer’s patient last summer while Griffin was in Venice for the Bezos wedding.

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