WordPress 6.9.4 dropped this morning. If that version number doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry. You also missed 6.9.2 and 6.9.3. They all came out in the same 24-hour window.

A security patch broke things. So they patched the patch. Then patched it again. Three updates in a day for a platform that powers over 40% of the web.

I’ve been building websites for a long time. I’ve watched WordPress go from a simple blogging tool to the default answer for everything. And I think that’s one of the worst things that’s happened to the internet.

The Problem Isn’t the Attack. It’s the Architecture.

Here’s what kicked this off. Attackers were compromising WordPress sites and injecting fake CAPTCHA prompts. Visitors thought they were verifying they were human. Instead, they were tricked into running commands that installed malware on their machines.

That’s bad. But it’s not surprising.

WordPress is a patchwork. Always has been. The core tries to do everything. Then you bolt on plugins and themes written by thousands of different developers with thousands of different skill levels. Some of that code hasn’t been touched in years. Every one of those pieces is a door. And most of them don’t have locks.

When WordPress pushes a core security fix and it immediately breaks plugins across the ecosystem, that’s not bad luck. That’s a design problem. That’s what happens when there’s no real standard for how code should behave inside the system.

Good Code Doesn’t Need Three Patches in a Day

I have a simple philosophy. Keep it simple, make it look beautiful, and have it work.

That last part is the one people skip. “Have it work” doesn’t mean “have it work today.” It means have it work tomorrow. Next month. When someone else has to maintain it. When a dependency changes. When you push an update and a thousand other things are counting on your code to not break theirs.

Good code is boring. It’s predictable. It does what it says it’s going to do and nothing else. You can read it six months later and understand what’s happening without a translator.

Good code doesn’t need an emergency patch 12 hours after the last emergency patch.

WordPress Doesn’t Reward Good Code

Here’s the real issue. WordPress became popular because it was easy. Install it in five minutes. Pick a theme. Add some plugins. You’ve got a website.

But easy up front and easy to maintain are two completely different things.

The WordPress ecosystem rewards speed to market. Build a plugin fast, get it listed, get downloads. There’s no real quality gate. No one’s reviewing that code before it goes live on a million websites. And when something breaks, the site owner is the one scrambling at 7 AM to figure out which update killed their contact form.

That’s not a technology problem. That’s a values problem. The platform chose scale over standards a long time ago.

What Good Code Actually Looks Like

It’s simple. Not clever. There’s a difference. Clever code impresses other developers for five minutes and confuses everyone else forever. Simple code just works. You read it and you know exactly what it does.

It’s modular. When one thing changes, everything else doesn’t fall over. You can update a component without holding your breath and hoping the whole system survives.

It’s tested. Not just “I clicked around and it seemed fine.” Actually tested. Edge cases. Bad inputs. The weird stuff real users do that developers never think of.

It’s maintained. Someone owns it. Someone updates it. Someone cares whether it still works next year.

WordPress core tries to do some of this. But the ecosystem around it doesn’t. And when your platform depends on an ecosystem of code you can’t control, you’ve already lost.

Stop Babysitting Your CMS

If you’re a business owner and your website is a constant maintenance project, something is fundamentally wrong. Your website should be a tool that works for your business. Not a part-time job.

You shouldn’t need to wonder whether today’s update is going to take down your site. You shouldn’t need to manage 30 plugins just to have basic functionality. You shouldn’t wake up to three update notifications before your first cup of coffee.

There are better ways to build websites today. Cleaner. Simpler. More secure by design instead of secure by endless patching.

The web is still built on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. That hasn’t changed since I started. The fundamentals still matter more than the framework. And a well-built site on a clean stack will always outperform a bloated WordPress install held together by plugins and prayers.

The Bottom Line

WordPress shipping three updates in 24 hours isn’t just a bad day. It’s a symptom. It’s what happens when an entire ecosystem is built on the idea that anyone can build anything without worrying too much about how.

That’s not freedom. That’s technical debt on a global scale.

If you’re running a business on WordPress, take a hard look at what you’re actually getting. And if the answer is “a site that breaks every time there’s an update,” maybe it’s time to build something better.

Keep it simple. Make it look beautiful. Have it work.

That’s not a tagline. That’s the standard.

I never wanted to be a leader. That was never the plan.

I wanted to sit in the corner and build stuff. Write code. Solve problems. Put my headphones on and disappear into the work. That's what made me happy. That's what got me into this 25 years ago.

But here's what I learned. To build anything worth building, you can't do it alone. And that means being vulnerable enough to admit you don't have all the answers. It means looking at someone on your team who is better than you at design, or project management, or talking to clients, and saying "I need your help."

That's not weakness. That's how good teams actually work.

And once I figured that out, everything changed. Because suddenly the team wasn't just a group of people working on the same project. It was a group of people filling in each other's gaps. Making each other better. And that's when the work started being fun in a way I didn't expect.

People Make the Team

Every person on a team brings something different. That's the whole point.

Someone brings calm when the deadline is breathing down your neck. Someone else brings energy when the project feels like it's dragging. There's the person who catches the details everyone else missed. The one who asks the question nobody wanted to ask but everybody needed to hear. The one who makes you laugh in the middle of a long week and reminds you that this is supposed to be enjoyable.

That mix is everything. You can't manufacture it. You can't put it on a job description. But when you have it, you feel it. Our team at Red Barn is proof of that. The work moves faster. The communication is easier. People aren't protecting their turf. They're building something together.

And when that's happening, the stress doesn't disappear. But it changes. It stops being the kind of stress that wears you down and turns into the kind that pushes you forward. Because you know the team has your back. And they know you have theirs.

That's when work and fun become the same thing.

Trust Changes Everything

Here's the thing about deadlines and pressure. They don't go away. Ever. If you're building something that matters, there will always be a moment where the timeline gets tight and the stakes go up.

What makes the difference is the team around you when it happens.

When the team trusts each other, nobody wastes time looking over shoulders. Nobody burns energy second-guessing the plan. When someone says "I got this," the rest of the team believes it and moves forward. That's how good work gets done.

I'm not talking about ping pong tables and free snacks. I'm talking about the kind of fun that comes from being part of a team that actually functions. Where people show up, do great work, and have each other's backs. That's fun. Real fun.

Growth Is Great Until It Isn't

Red Barn has been growing. And I'm proud of that. We've taken on bigger projects, pushed into new areas, and built out the team to match.

But growth has a way of showing you things you didn't want to see.

When the team is small, everybody pulls their weight because there's nowhere to hide. You can feel the energy in the room. Everyone knows the mission and everyone is rowing in the same direction.

As you grow, that changes. Not always in obvious ways. Sometimes it's subtle. A meeting that didn't need to happen. A task that took three times longer than it should have. A conversation that went in circles because the team wasn't aligned. A process that suddenly needs a process.

And sometimes you realize the team isn't operating the way it used to. The rhythm is off. Communication breaks down. Things slip through cracks that didn't used to exist. The collective momentum that made everything click starts to feel harder to maintain.

That's not about pointing fingers. That's just the reality of growth. Teams change shape, and not every version of the team moves at the same speed.

Efficiency Is a Team Sport

When I talk about efficiency taking a hit, I don't mean some number on a dashboard. I mean the team feels it.

Work gets redone because communication wasn't clear. Projects stall because alignment wasn't there from the start. Decisions take longer than they should because the team isn't in sync. Energy that should be going into building great work gets burned on friction instead.

That stuff adds up. And it doesn't just slow things down. It kills the energy. It chips away at that trust I was just talking about. It makes the fun disappear.

When a team falls out of rhythm, everything gets harder. Not because the work changed. Because the way the team operates changed.

Protect the Culture

The longer I do this, the more I believe that culture isn't something you build once and forget about. It's something you protect. Every day.

That means being honest when something isn't working. It means having hard conversations before small problems become big ones. It means building a team that cares about the work and about each other, not just the output.

And it means remembering why we're here in the first place.

I got into this because I love building things. I still do. I'd still be happy in the corner writing code if that's all it took. But building something real takes more than one person. It takes a team that trusts each other enough to be honest about what they're great at and where they need help.

Work should be fun. Not every minute of every day. But overall, if the team isn't enjoying what they do and who they do it with, something is wrong. And it's worth fixing.

We're building something at Red Barn. And I want the team to feel that. To know that the trust is real, the work matters, and yeah, it's okay to have a good time while you're doing it.

Because the best teams I've ever been on? They were the ones where the work and the fun were the same thing.

5 months ago, someone posted a leaked creator brief on Reddit that confirmed what a lot of us in the SEO industry already suspected.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/comments/1nm6daz/fyi_geos_ugly_campaign_of_intentional/

A company called Search Party, a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) startup that just raised $3.5 million in venture capital, sent outreach to top SEO creators offering paid sponsorships and long-term equity. In exchange, those creators would push a very specific message to their audiences.

The brief said, word for word:

“GEO is the future. Traditional keyword-first SEO is becoming outdated.”

That’s not a hot take. That’s a script. With a check attached to it.

This is the post I’ve been wanting to write for a while. Let’s talk about why they did it, why it matters to you, and why the data says they’re completely wrong.

Why They Did It: You Can’t Sell a Solution Without a Problem

Search Party came out of stealth in October 2024 with $3.5 million in funding and a product to sell. The problem? Businesses were already spending money on SEO. If SEO works, nobody needs what they’re selling.

So they created the problem.

This is the oldest playbook in tech marketing. You can’t sell a painkiller without pain. You can’t sell a life jacket to someone standing on dry land. So you have to convince people the ground is underwater.

Here’s how the operation worked, based on the leaked brief:

Phase 1: Paid creator partnerships. Starting October 7th, they launched sponsored content deals with SEO influencers. These creators would produce content “introducing Search Party to the market and helping define what generative engine optimization means.” In other words, paid advocates framing the narrative in Search Party’s favor.

Phase 2: Creator Advisory Board with equity. For select partners, they offered long-term equity in exchange for “consistent feedback, product shaping, and ongoing advocacy” over a two-year engagement. Not just a one-off sponsored post. A two-year commitment to push the brand.

The talking points they wanted amplified:

• “AI agents replace manual GEO complexity”
• “GEO is the future. Traditional keyword-first SEO is becoming outdated.”
• “[Our platform] helps brands influence how they show up in LLMs”
• “This isn’t another SEO tool, it’s a new model”

These aren’t organic opinions from independent creators doing their own research. These are coordinated messages, paid for by a VC-backed company, distributed through trusted voices to their audiences, most of whom have no idea the content is sponsored.

This is not illegal. The FTC requires disclosure of paid partnerships. But disclosure gets buried. A small “#ad” tag at the bottom of a post doesn’t undo the psychological weight of a trusted voice telling you your SEO strategy is obsolete.

And Search Party isn’t alone. They’re the one who got caught. The broader GEO software category, tools that claim to help you “optimize for AI,” has a collective financial interest in making you believe SEO is dying. The GEO tools market is growing fast, and every dollar that moves from SEO budgets to GEO subscriptions is a win for them.

Meanwhile, 81% of marketing leaders reported pulling funds away from SEO to spend more on social and influencer marketing, exactly the outcome these campaigns are designed to create.

Why It Matters: Real Businesses Are Making Bad Decisions Based on Paid Narratives

I work with HVAC companies, plumbers, roofers, and electricians. These are small business owners running crews, managing jobs, and trying to figure out where their next customer is coming from. They don’t have time to sift through whether a LinkedIn post is sponsored or genuine. They trust the people they follow.

When a trusted voice tells them SEO is dead, some of them believe it. And then they make decisions based on that belief.

They pull back on the content they’ve been building. They stop investing in their Google Business Profile. They start chasing the next thing: some new tool, some new strategy, some new subscription, because they’ve been convinced the thing that was working for them is no longer worth the investment.

That’s a real business harm.

According to Search Engine Journal, organic search remains responsible for over half of all website traffic. And for local service businesses specifically, the stakes are even higher. When someone’s furnace goes out at midnight, they’re not asking ChatGPT. They’re Googling “emergency HVAC near me.” That search goes to whoever shows up in the local pack. That’s SEO. That’s a real customer with a real problem and real money.

The businesses that abandon SEO based on a funded narrative aren’t just wasting their subscription dollars. They’re ceding ground to competitors who kept their heads down and kept building.

As one independent analysis put it, the real risk for small businesses isn’t losing search visibility to AI. It’s overreacting to scare tactics and wasting budget on “GEO packages” that don’t deliver.

Why They’re Wrong: The Data Doesn’t Support the Narrative

Let’s talk about what’s actually happening in search, not what a VC-backed startup needs you to believe.

Google is not dying.

Google still controls 89% of all U.S. web traffic. That’s not a dying platform. That’s a monopoly. And Google search grew by 21% in 2024, the same year everyone was telling you AI was going to kill it.

ChatGPT is not replacing Google search.

Semrush data shows that only 30% of ChatGPT prompts are similar to how people use search. The rest is chatting, writing, brainstorming. People using ChatGPT to plan a recipe or debug code are not the same people who were going to Google “best HVAC company in Burlington.” These are different behaviors, different use cases, different audiences.

AI Overviews are not a traffic apocalypse.

Yes, AI Overviews show up in about 13% of Google searches. Not 60%, not 80%. Just 13%. And blog posts and news articles make up the majority of sources cited in those AI Overviews. Meaning the content you’ve been creating for SEO is now also feeding AI responses. That’s not a threat. That’s an expanded distribution channel for the same work.

The SEO industry itself is growing.

The global SEO services market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.2%. Companies don’t pour billions into a dying channel. 91% of marketers in 2024 said SEO had a positive impact on their website performance and marketing goals.

Google still dominates AI traffic too.

Google drives 345 times more traffic to websites than ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity combined. Read that again. 345 times more. GEO optimizes for a channel that sends a fraction of a percent of the traffic that Google sends.

Now, to be fair: search is evolving. It always has. AI is changing user behavior at the margins, especially for informational queries. Young people are using TikTok as a discovery tool. Zero-click searches are a real thing that reduces traffic to some websites. These are legitimate trends worth paying attention to.

But none of that is “SEO is dead.” What it is, is SEO evolving, the same way it has evolved through every major algorithm update since I started building websites in 1999. Panda. Penguin. Hummingbird. Mobile-first. Core Web Vitals. The people who declared SEO dead at each of those milestones were wrong every time.

As one sharp observer put it: “Imagine claiming that photography died when film cameras became obsolete. Digital photography didn’t kill the art form. It transformed it.”

What Good GEO Advice Actually Looks Like

Here’s where I’ll give credit where it’s due: there are legitimate things happening in AI search that are worth understanding.

Benjamin Houy, who actually built a GEO platform and then shut it down despite having paying customers, said something worth remembering: the best way to show up in AI-generated answers is to be an authoritative source on the topic you care about. Create real content. Earn real mentions. Build a real reputation.

Sound familiar? That’s SEO.

The fundamentals haven’t changed. Build something worth finding. Help real people with real questions. Show up consistently. The channel that surfaces your content has changed shape over the years. The underlying principle never has.

You don’t need a $3.5M funded subscription to do that. You need to actually know something, actually say it clearly, and actually be useful.

The Bottom Line

Search Party got caught because someone posted the brief. But there are dozens of companies running similar playbooks right now that haven’t been caught. Every time you read a LinkedIn post, a newsletter, or a YouTube video from an SEO creator telling you “SEO is dead, here’s what to do instead,” ask yourself who’s paying them and what they’re selling.

That’s not cynicism. That’s how you protect your business from making expensive decisions based on someone else’s marketing budget.

I’ve been building digital marketing for home service contractors for 25 years. I’ve watched the “SEO is dead” cycle repeat on a near-annual basis. Every time, the businesses that kept their heads down and kept doing the fundamentals came out ahead.

SEO is not dead. Shortcuts are dead. Gullibility is expensive. And some people are betting real money that you won’t notice the difference.

Now you know.

Stephen Quick is the CTO of Red Barn Media Group, where he’s spent 25+ years building digital marketing solutions for HVAC and home service contractors. He started his career during the first dot-com era and still believes the best technology is simple, beautiful, and works.

Have questions about your SEO strategy? Contact Red Barn Media Group.

I’ve been building websites since 1999. In that time I’ve watched a lot of technologies get called game-changers. Most of them were just new ways to do the same things.

AI is actually different. But not for the reason most people think.

The conversation in our industry keeps framing AI as a threat. Who’s going to lose work. Which roles are going away. Who survives. I understand why the conversation goes there but I think it’s asking the wrong question.

The right question is: what can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

What We Used to Spend Time On

Building a website for a contractor has always involved a lot of mechanical work. Structuring pages. Writing boilerplate. Formatting content. Generating variations. The work that fills hours but doesn’t require the kind of thinking that actually makes a client’s business grow.

That work had to get done. We did it. But it was never the part of the job that moved the needle.

The part that moved the needle was always the strategic layer. How do we structure this service page to convert a homeowner who’s comparing three contractors? What does the UX look like on mobile when someone’s standing in front of a broken furnace at 8pm trying to find a phone number? Where are we losing people in the funnel and what do we test first?

That work requires judgment. Experience. An understanding of how homeowners actually behave when they’re making a buying decision about something they don’t want to spend money on.

AI can’t do that. But AI can handle a lot of what used to eat the time we needed to get there.

What This Actually Looks Like

We code everything at Red Barn. No CMS. No page builders. No templates. That’s been true for twenty-five years and it’s not changing. But the way we build is changing.

AI handles more of the mechanical output now. That’s not a threat to how we work – it fits how we work, because we understand the code well enough to evaluate what gets generated and build on top of it. We’re not handing the wheel over. We’re moving faster through the parts of the job that were never the point.

What that frees up is real.

More time in the UX layer. More time thinking about page structure, user flow, where friction lives and how to remove it. More time actually running tests instead of talking about running tests. More time on the strategic decisions that compound over months – the ones that determine whether a client’s site generates leads or just exists on the internet.

That’s where we want to be spending our time. AI is helping us get there.

The Developers Who Are Going to Struggle

There are developers in this industry whose entire value proposition was production speed. They could spin up a WordPress site in two weeks. They knew the plugins. They could assemble something that looked like a website fast.

AI is faster. That’s just true. If your competitive advantage was output volume, the math has changed.

But that was never the job we were doing. The job was always outcomes – more calls, more leads, more booked jobs for the contractor trying to grow their business. Production was just the cost of entry.

The developers who understood that are in a better position now than they’ve ever been. The ones who were just producing output are going to have to figure out what they actually know how to do.

What Clients Are Actually Paying For

This is worth saying directly.

When a contractor hires Red Barn, they’re not paying for code. They’re paying for twenty-five years of understanding how homeowners find and choose a contractor. They’re paying for the UX decisions that turn a visitor into a phone call. They’re paying for the A/B tests that tell us what’s actually working instead of what we think should work. They’re paying for the judgment that knows when something is wrong with a site before it shows up in the numbers.

AI doesn’t have any of that. It can generate a page. It can’t tell you whether the page is built to win.

That’s the work. That’s what we’re here to do. And we have more capacity to do it now than we did two years ago.

The Bottom Line

AI didn’t disrupt what we built Red Barn to be. It cleared the path to it.

The mechanical parts of web development are getting faster and cheaper. That’s good. It means the value shifts to exactly where it should have been all along – strategy, user experience, testing, and the deep understanding of what makes a home service business grow.

We’ve spent twenty-five years building that understanding.

We’re just getting started.