Meeting Title: Google Merchant Center Compliance Discussion Date: 2025-12-19 Meeting participants: Ryon, Danny Valdez, Henry Zhao
WEBVTT
1 00:00:36.460 ⇒ 00:00:40.059 Ryon: One of those things.
2 00:02:30.960 ⇒ 00:02:31.640 Ryon: Hmm.
3 00:03:51.020 ⇒ 00:03:53.389 Ryon: Yep. Beat me to it, Denny.
4 00:04:23.640 ⇒ 00:04:24.460 Danny Valdez: Yo.
5 00:04:24.890 ⇒ 00:04:28.859 Danny Valdez: So, sorry about that. You there?
6 00:04:29.170 ⇒ 00:04:30.459 Ryon: Yeah, can you hear me?
7 00:04:30.460 ⇒ 00:04:33.470 Danny Valdez: Yeah, I hear you now. I was on with, Stuart and Mitesh.
8 00:04:37.380 ⇒ 00:04:40.249 Ryon: Meaning my back? Oh my god, how dare you.
9 00:04:40.250 ⇒ 00:04:43.730 Danny Valdez: Wait, I don’t think you know about this yet. Maybe you do.
10 00:04:43.730 ⇒ 00:04:44.380 Ryon: Hmm.
11 00:04:44.380 ⇒ 00:04:47.670 Danny Valdez: This is another load of fun.
12 00:04:47.820 ⇒ 00:04:59.700 Danny Valdez: So, Stuart and potentially Mitesh’s current theory is that… Google… isn’t letting us…
13 00:05:00.040 ⇒ 00:05:08.220 Danny Valdez: in shopping, on their store, whatever it’s called, the merchant center, because…
14 00:05:09.320 ⇒ 00:05:20.590 Danny Valdez: of our… basically, they were saying that, like, Google, when they were checking to see compliance, they would see our domain and veer off onto other pages on our website, not.
15 00:05:20.590 ⇒ 00:05:22.070 Ryon: That was my theory, by the way.
16 00:05:22.250 ⇒ 00:05:24.359 Danny Valdez: Yeah, not through links, because there were no links.
17 00:05:24.360 ⇒ 00:05:26.039 Ryon: It’s a bot. It’s their bot.
18 00:05:26.040 ⇒ 00:05:41.480 Danny Valdez: Exactly, yeah. So, their theory now, and they said they look at, like, Good Life and Remedy, who are in the Merchant Center right now, I believe, and they said they both do something where they use a different domain for Merchant Center. So, they’re thinking…
19 00:05:41.480 ⇒ 00:05:55.350 Ryon: Stuart this 6 months ago, that they’re using Googlebot to go scan the website and monitor the mentions of certain things, because there’s no way their people are going through and getting this kind of detail. Humans do not get that granular. We don’t. We’re lazy. We just don’t.
20 00:05:55.350 ⇒ 00:06:03.990 Danny Valdez: So here’s… here’s the… what they want to try to push out quickly, which could be not too terrible. It’s a heavy-ish lift regardless.
21 00:06:04.520 ⇒ 00:06:14.540 Danny Valdez: Or it could be really heavy, especially for you, depending. So it’s starting with, they want to set up the LPs on a different domain.
22 00:06:14.830 ⇒ 00:06:19.879 Danny Valdez: Which annoys me, because I’ve spent all this time trying to unimize everything.
23 00:06:19.880 ⇒ 00:06:21.010 Ryon: instead of join.
24 00:06:21.010 ⇒ 00:06:21.340 Danny Valdez: Yeah.
25 00:06:22.080 ⇒ 00:06:25.550 Danny Valdez: So, alright, whatever, if there’s literally just no other option, I guess…
26 00:06:25.550 ⇒ 00:06:26.460 Ryon: Going backwards.
27 00:06:26.460 ⇒ 00:06:29.339 Danny Valdez: fine, we’re going backwards here, we’re gonna have two…
28 00:06:29.630 ⇒ 00:06:37.619 Danny Valdez: And fine, I have to, like, I’d have to set this all up, get a new domain set up on Webflow, copy all the information over, blah blah blah, whatever.
29 00:06:37.780 ⇒ 00:06:53.910 Danny Valdez: It’s not terrible, and they want to only test… started out with two pages, one for TERS, one for SEMA, not a big deal. The pages will be minimal, because there’s all these compliance regulations where you can’t make any medical claims, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, so the pages will be super simple.
30 00:06:54.220 ⇒ 00:06:56.099 Danny Valdez: So that’s not a big deal.
31 00:06:56.370 ⇒ 00:07:01.480 Danny Valdez: The question mark is, if they’re really using bots.
32 00:07:01.660 ⇒ 00:07:10.019 Danny Valdez: to scour the domain and look through other pages. What’s to stop them from doing that
33 00:07:10.370 ⇒ 00:07:14.029 Danny Valdez: Once they go to an intake and see app.triaden.
34 00:07:14.200 ⇒ 00:07:27.389 Danny Valdez: Yeah, like, app.tryeden doesn’t do anything, but a bot could very well try to go to the root site and scour things from there, which would mean, do intakes need to be on a separate domain?
35 00:07:28.880 ⇒ 00:07:36.210 Danny Valdez: Stuart says, no, of course not, because we took out all the compliance… we took out all the bad language in the intake, and I said, that’s…
36 00:07:36.440 ⇒ 00:07:41.080 Danny Valdez: Your whole theory here is that it’s domain-based, doesn’t matter what language is in the intake.
37 00:07:41.240 ⇒ 00:07:46.280 Danny Valdez: What would your… instinct, say.
38 00:07:46.770 ⇒ 00:07:53.729 Danny Valdez: Like, do you think it’s probably fine? I mean, we could try it regardless. We could submit it and see what happens.
39 00:07:55.170 ⇒ 00:08:04.639 Danny Valdez: I feel like if you have to get a second set of intakes up and a separate BASC account or a different domain or something, just sounds like a fucking terrible nightmare for you.
40 00:08:06.910 ⇒ 00:08:21.310 Ryon: I already have a bunch of separate PLA-dedicated intakes that have been live for, like, months, and they’re just sitting there. So, in theory, I don’t really need to worry about them. Would I have to copy them, update them, polish a couple of things, and switch them out to a new centralized
41 00:08:21.440 ⇒ 00:08:23.110 Ryon: Check out, yeah.
42 00:08:23.220 ⇒ 00:08:29.469 Ryon: But, Possible, yeah, completely possible. So, here’s, here’s the,
43 00:08:29.580 ⇒ 00:08:34.179 Ryon: Here’s my two cents on this. I have to actually run here in a few minutes, so…
44 00:08:34.720 ⇒ 00:08:35.370 Ryon: If they’re not gonna.
45 00:08:35.370 ⇒ 00:08:35.799 Danny Valdez: Nobody…
46 00:08:35.809 ⇒ 00:08:36.369 Ryon: meaning I.
47 00:08:36.370 ⇒ 00:08:37.500 Danny Valdez: Nobody’s showing up for this?
48 00:08:38.210 ⇒ 00:08:41.180 Ryon: Yeah, I will drop in a second, but
49 00:08:42.030 ⇒ 00:08:52.510 Ryon: This is my two cents. Is this all possible? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes. But there’s two things I observe. First, good life might be getting a bit of a…
50 00:08:52.920 ⇒ 00:08:58.780 Ryon: middle ground from Google with certain things, because they’ve already sued them.
51 00:08:59.130 ⇒ 00:09:05.620 Ryon: So, Google may be basically saying, like, okay, fine, we’ll… We’ll meet you halfway.
52 00:09:05.920 ⇒ 00:09:10.160 Ryon: Right? That’s because they’re already in court. Or, not in court, but, you know.
53 00:09:10.310 ⇒ 00:09:11.400 Ryon: litigation.
54 00:09:11.680 ⇒ 00:09:14.370 Ryon: So, if we’re observing
55 00:09:14.580 ⇒ 00:09:20.649 Ryon: the rest of the world, and we’re saying, oh, look at Good Life, this is what they’re doing, that must be what’s gonna work. Maybe not.
56 00:09:20.920 ⇒ 00:09:30.780 Ryon: Yeah. It seems like that site, Online Semaglutide, it’s pushing a lot of different domains, not just Remedy. Remedy’s the main one, but it’s pushing a lot… so somebody out there
57 00:09:31.340 ⇒ 00:09:52.109 Ryon: possibly, maybe somebody like you and me just thought, well, fuck this shit, I can start myself, a domain, call it whatever the hell I want, and just call all these people and say, I’ll take the risk of burning these domains, putting you in PLAs, and then sending people through to your intakes. And they don’t really care. Yeah. And so, I think what we’re observing is we’re observing, broadly speaking.
58 00:09:52.230 ⇒ 00:09:53.699 Ryon: people fed up with Google.
59 00:09:53.890 ⇒ 00:10:13.689 Ryon: And so they’re going their own ways. The second thing I would say is, sure, we can make an effort to do this, but Googlebot is very frickin’ sophisticated. It will find a way to connect things. And we really don’t know what Google is doing that is going to…
60 00:10:18.370 ⇒ 00:10:37.119 Ryon: we really don’t know what Google’s doing that is going to make them decide or not decide. Broadly speaking, I told Stuart this 6 months ago. I see us as the payday loans people, right? So back when I first started in the world of SEO and digital marketing, back at an agency, I had a payday loan client.
61 00:10:37.120 ⇒ 00:10:42.470 Ryon: they were earning so much frickin’ money, Daniel. I’m talking hundreds of millions a month just sitting there taking people from…
62 00:10:42.850 ⇒ 00:10:54.979 Ryon: Google and signing them up for payday loans. Eventually, Google gets sued. And they essentially deep-six all of the sites related to payday loans. Yeah. And various people
63 00:10:55.730 ⇒ 00:11:09.370 Ryon: lost their business overnight, but they sued Google, and they pursued it through litigation. They tried to play this game of, let’s try the terms and conditions game of, we’re adhering to your terms, let’s play nice.
64 00:11:09.600 ⇒ 00:11:14.550 Ryon: Google basically, after a year and a half, two years, Basically made it clear, like.
65 00:11:14.670 ⇒ 00:11:19.829 Ryon: We’re ghosting you. We’re not gonna do anything. We don’t want you in our search results.
66 00:11:19.990 ⇒ 00:11:38.799 Ryon: we’re just gonna find any excuse imaginable to say, you don’t qualify. And it might appease some of the legal people a little bit if they feel there’s enough of a case, but long-term, they’re just gonna let the case play out, and the government is gonna say, Google has a right to property, their First Amendment right. You can’t do shit about this.
67 00:11:38.800 ⇒ 00:11:43.499 Danny Valdez: This is what this has seemed like to me for the last 6 months, is they don’t want to be in the business of having…
68 00:11:43.500 ⇒ 00:11:46.180 Ryon: They don’t want this liability, man. They don’t want this.
69 00:11:46.180 ⇒ 00:11:47.449 Danny Valdez: They don’t want it. That’s what makes.
70 00:11:47.450 ⇒ 00:11:54.099 Ryon: I don’t want this liability at all. And so, I’m kind of surprised that we’re still playing this game with them when, in my.
71 00:11:54.100 ⇒ 00:11:54.800 Danny Valdez: Oh, my.
72 00:11:54.800 ⇒ 00:12:17.520 Ryon: I’ve… I’ve already assessed, back when I saw this, one of my clients was making, straight up, not even kidding you, like, $150 million a year. Granted, I think he’s a total crook. He was signing people up for loans that they could not… could not afford, and it was really problematic. The guy was making a ton of money. He went to zero, he tried everything. He tried playing nice, he tried calling Google. Dude actually wanted to, like, pay money so he could try and get a meeting with Sergey Brin.
73 00:12:17.520 ⇒ 00:12:18.600 Ryon: Literally found it.
74 00:12:18.600 ⇒ 00:12:20.289 Danny Valdez: This is what Sergei Brooks!
75 00:12:20.290 ⇒ 00:12:33.050 Ryon: fucking literally founder of Google. He’s like, I want to go talk to this guy. I’m gonna go have a conversation with the CEO of Google. I’m like, dude, you’re fucking stupid. This is dumb. And he… of course, that never happened, right? Never happened. And he basically…
76 00:12:33.570 ⇒ 00:12:48.709 Ryon: came out eventually and just said, like, I’m bankrupt, I’m shutting down, we’re calling it quits, and… Google never did anything about it. You can’t even find a payday loan site in their search results, or if you can, it’s just, like, some mayfly site that lives for a day and then dies.
77 00:12:48.850 ⇒ 00:12:51.660 Ryon: They have no incentive at all.
78 00:12:52.060 ⇒ 00:12:59.320 Ryon: to work with us. They are a 100 billion company, earning
79 00:12:59.970 ⇒ 00:13:04.540 Ryon: fuck tons of money from everywhere else. They do not care. They do not care.
80 00:13:04.540 ⇒ 00:13:08.760 Danny Valdez: Yes, which I fully agree with, and the only thing that complicates that
81 00:13:08.880 ⇒ 00:13:13.020 Danny Valdez: Is it, why are these couple of random companies…
82 00:13:13.220 ⇒ 00:13:17.409 Danny Valdez: skirting through. The one that maybe makes sense is if there’s litigation on the one.
83 00:13:17.410 ⇒ 00:13:18.989 Ryon: That’s why I…
84 00:13:18.990 ⇒ 00:13:39.030 Ryon: is there’s litigation on the books, this is a middle ground. They know… Google gets sued every frickin’ day, dude. They saw this one agency, this guy lost his shirt suing Google, it’s hilarious. This one agency in Arizona back in, like, 2010, decided to file a suit against Google, basically, because all of his clients lost their SEO traffic, and he was a link…
85 00:13:39.030 ⇒ 00:13:58.709 Ryon: he was LinkBuilder, like, he paid for links, it was shitty, toxic links, and he was totally gaming the system. He lost his total shirt because he sued Google, he lost miserably because they showed that his clients were literally violating their terms, and they basically just said, not only do you have to pay your
86 00:13:58.710 ⇒ 00:14:05.650 Ryon: your attorney fees, you have to pay the court fees, you have to pay your own attorney’s fees, you have to pay Google’s attorney’s fees.
87 00:14:05.650 ⇒ 00:14:06.010 Danny Valdez: Yeah.
88 00:14:06.010 ⇒ 00:14:30.579 Ryon: you have to pay out whatever damages that you potentially caused them, and he went bankrupt, and it was chaotic. But the reason why was all Google had to do was they just had to point to their terms, and then let a judge say, yeah, technically this is in violation of your terms. And if it’s anywhere near nebulous, Google will favor their constitutional right of their right to property, and the judge is not going to fight the Constitution on this. It’s not, it’s, like, literally the first frickin’ article!
89 00:14:30.720 ⇒ 00:14:53.599 Ryon: people have a right to property, and they’re not gonna do anything about it. So, I think they’re appeasing these people because they’re letting the case go through the courts, and it’ll end up being what it’ll end up being, and it’s probably going to end up in their favor, and that’s what’s happening. And yeah, there are people who can burn bridges. I mean, I just got something on my phone today on LinkedIn that I thought was absolutely crazy, so…
90 00:14:53.600 ⇒ 00:15:01.490 Ryon: A while back, when I worked at Study, we were using a service called SERP API, another one called ValueSerp, and SERP Wild, a bunch of different services, right?
91 00:15:01.490 ⇒ 00:15:07.429 Ryon: These services Nefariously, utilized cellular
92 00:15:08.590 ⇒ 00:15:25.379 Ryon: networks, like the modems across the towers that we all see, right? Yeah, yeah. They were pinging Google search results through these cellular networks, right? They were pinging Google search, and they were scraping crap tons of Google’s content off of these SERPs, right? And I actually.
93 00:15:25.380 ⇒ 00:15:25.780 Danny Valdez: Okay.
94 00:15:25.780 ⇒ 00:15:40.939 Ryon: this system at my own old company that literally did this. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of insight for people that would never have been possible elsewhere. And it was geo-focused, geolocated, the whole things. So, I just got news today. Google’s suing them.
95 00:15:41.420 ⇒ 00:15:47.040 Ryon: Straight up. They’re gone. And, you don’t mess with him.
96 00:15:47.210 ⇒ 00:15:47.930 Ryon: Did you just do it?
97 00:15:48.070 ⇒ 00:15:56.469 Ryon: Yeah. Like, if they decide they’re going one way or another, you’re, like, the guy trying to turn the Titanic. We’re going for an iceberg, you’re gonna hit it.
98 00:15:56.830 ⇒ 00:16:03.790 Ryon: You know? So, I don’t think Google has any incentive to do anything about this. I’ve had conversations with Mitesh about this before.
99 00:16:03.790 ⇒ 00:16:07.550 Danny Valdez: I think Stuart and Mitesh said they were also going to be sending illegal
100 00:16:07.920 ⇒ 00:16:11.759 Danny Valdez: letter threatening litigation? Good luck, I already did that.
101 00:16:11.760 ⇒ 00:16:13.270 Ryon: They did that 6 months ago.
102 00:16:15.770 ⇒ 00:16:17.090 Danny Valdez: I don’t know, but this is only…
103 00:16:17.090 ⇒ 00:16:25.129 Ryon: And if they do, which they will, if they do which they will, again, this goes back to my argument to begin with, that,
104 00:16:27.730 ⇒ 00:16:29.359 Ryon: Courts take forever.
105 00:16:29.980 ⇒ 00:16:39.639 Ryon: they’re gonna sit on that letter and be like, okay, well, you’re not gonna see anything for 3 to 6 months, so what do you want me to do? It’s gonna take 3 to 6 months for them to get anything from a judge, the… or an arbitrator.
106 00:16:39.640 ⇒ 00:16:57.610 Ryon: Right? The arbitrator’s gonna say, okay, fine, put them up for a temporary time being, and then… yeah, it’s… there’s not gonna… it’s an unfortunate world we live in. I’ve always believed that maybe we should go another way. And the truth is, Facebook’s gonna do the same thing, but they’re doing the same thing because a girl died on their watch, and they got sued wrongful death for it, like.
107 00:16:57.860 ⇒ 00:16:59.830 Ryon: 9 months ago? So they shut it down.
108 00:16:59.830 ⇒ 00:17:01.310 Danny Valdez: On… on what? What did some.
109 00:17:01.310 ⇒ 00:17:08.499 Ryon: He was getting prescribed, something from somebody who was similar to us,
110 00:17:09.280 ⇒ 00:17:20.760 Ryon: And she injected herself, didn’t know the dosage, didn’t know what she was doing, just saw the ad, and then she overdosed, and her family sued wrongful death, because they saw the ad from the vendor on Facebook.
111 00:17:20.869 ⇒ 00:17:24.710 Ryon: And, it was very tragic, of course.
112 00:17:25.599 ⇒ 00:17:30.640 Ryon: But the reality is that,
113 00:17:32.370 ⇒ 00:17:46.979 Ryon: these platforms do not want to take the liability of being seen as the person who is at cause or fault, for any damages associated with that. The same was true with the payday loans that I told you about. The reason why was eventually the U.S. government ended up actually having to sue these people.
114 00:17:46.980 ⇒ 00:18:03.519 Ryon: Because they were handing loans out to people that were defaulting on the loans, and it was causing, like, an enormous amount of credit defaults. So they were… their thinking was, holy crap, this is 2008 all over again, right? So they were just like, shut this shit down. We’re not gonna be cause… we’re not going to be someone who’s seen a fault for the economic decline of the country.
115 00:18:03.960 ⇒ 00:18:08.509 Ryon: But anyways, I just don’t think they want to play ball. It’s really sad, but I don’t.
116 00:18:09.430 ⇒ 00:18:19.769 Danny Valdez: No, I don’t think they do either. And honestly, I don’t even think it’s sad. It makes sense to me. If I was Google, I wouldn’t want to be suddenly in the business of prescription medication. That’s, like, not…
117 00:18:20.390 ⇒ 00:18:23.650 Danny Valdez: This kind of happened almost on accident.
118 00:18:24.010 ⇒ 00:18:29.560 Ryon: Anybody can find anything on the internet. Just don’t be the person who’s the last person holding wherever they found it, you know?
119 00:18:30.590 ⇒ 00:18:35.850 Ryon: Literally, that’s exactly what they want to be. Like, I’m sure there’s deep, dark parts of the internet. I don’t ever go to any of them, but like…
120 00:18:36.200 ⇒ 00:18:59.370 Ryon: Those people don’t care. All right, Henry, you walked into a situation where we’re talking about an issue with Google and PLAs and all that fun. I’m just gonna give a quick update, because I actually have to run to another meeting. I was hoping Joseph would join this meeting, because he’s working with Danny and I to build out parts of the platform for us, because Danny and I are pretty busy on some other big projects. We built out cohorts.
121 00:18:59.370 ⇒ 00:19:13.620 Ryon: they are a first step. They are by far nowhere near what we need them to be, but, what we’re probably gonna end up doing later is needing products, product groups and product mapping inside of,
122 00:19:15.420 ⇒ 00:19:26.360 Ryon: the platform so we can put… bucket people into cohorts by what they’ve actually bought, and then we can kind of navigate and see their traffic patterns and such that way. Is there a way for,
123 00:19:26.480 ⇒ 00:19:33.799 Ryon: a lookup table to be connected automatically to, like, I don’t know, the BigQuery job that’s gonna export to an API, or something like that, make it more automated.
124 00:19:33.800 ⇒ 00:19:35.240 Henry Zhao: No, I don’t think so.
125 00:19:35.240 ⇒ 00:19:36.220 Ryon: No? Okay.
126 00:19:36.350 ⇒ 00:19:38.700 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I think I’ve looked into that before, yeah, I don’t think there’s a way.
127 00:19:38.700 ⇒ 00:19:42.249 Ryon: How are we going… how are we importing order data now?
128 00:19:42.530 ⇒ 00:19:44.179 Ryon: Like, order information.
129 00:19:44.180 ⇒ 00:19:53.599 Henry Zhao: group segment, but if you need a lookup table that’s dynamic, we can do it in BigQuery, so that we can probably add a dash to either Tableau, or Looker Studio, something like that.
130 00:19:53.600 ⇒ 00:19:56.659 Ryon: What if we just simply,
131 00:19:56.850 ⇒ 00:20:02.860 Ryon: in segment, like, group the products and add a field for, like, this is personalized seminar, this is personalized tours, and then that’s just…
132 00:20:02.860 ⇒ 00:20:06.720 Henry Zhao: Yeah, we already have that mapping in BigQuery, so we would just grab it from BigQuery.
133 00:20:06.720 ⇒ 00:20:13.379 Ryon: Okay. That would save us a lot of time, because then if we create cohorts, it’s going to be based on what people buy, not based on what,
134 00:20:13.650 ⇒ 00:20:16.729 Ryon: You know, where they’re navigating, which is nice, but it definitely.
135 00:20:16.730 ⇒ 00:20:18.249 Henry Zhao: Yeah, I can create cohorts in BigQuery.
136 00:20:19.000 ⇒ 00:20:28.820 Ryon: Okay, cool. And then, I’m gonna have Joseph, if I can get ahold of him today, work with Danny and I to build a landing page lookup table.
137 00:20:28.820 ⇒ 00:20:39.729 Ryon: And also a product lookup table for the intake, so we have those two in there, and then that’s basically gonna make Danny and my job, like, way easier. We can just start building our… Yeah.
138 00:20:39.730 ⇒ 00:20:45.399 Danny Valdez: The page stuff is easy, I just have a few formulas I could give him about how the pages work, so that’s no problem.
139 00:20:45.930 ⇒ 00:20:46.680 Ryon: Cool.
140 00:20:46.930 ⇒ 00:20:47.960 Ryon: That’s it.
141 00:20:48.640 ⇒ 00:20:52.009 Ryon: Have to jump to another session.
142 00:20:52.730 ⇒ 00:20:54.310 Henry Zhao: Okay, we can talk more about this on Monday.
143 00:20:54.310 ⇒ 00:20:55.230 Ryon: Okay, cool.
144 00:20:55.230 ⇒ 00:20:56.760 Henry Zhao: So we can have something by Christmas.
145 00:20:57.080 ⇒ 00:20:57.800 Ryon: enthusiast.
146 00:20:57.800 ⇒ 00:20:58.210 Henry Zhao: Alright, thanks.
147 00:20:58.210 ⇒ 00:20:59.470 Danny Valdez: I hope later.