Welcome to Edition No. 43 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
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As you may remember, I moved from Barcelona to Nashville at the beginning of January. My wife and I are finally feeling pretty settled, and it seemed like the right time to start the newsletter again.
Just a reminder that all paid subscribers received a two-month extension on their subscriptions to make up for the hiatus.
Thanks again for your support, and have a great weekend.
Brad
Contents
I. Bard, Google’s Latest AI Tool, Is in Testing
II. Meanwhile, at Microsoft/Bing/ChatGPT…
III. Google is OK* with AI-Produced Content
IV. Don’t Let This Happen To Your GA4 Account
V. News Sites Getting Less and Less Visibility in Google
VI. Twitter Blue Subscribers Get More Characters
VII. When Embedding Videos, Use YouTube, Not Vimeo
VIII. TikTok Editing is Finally Here (with Limits)
I. Bard, Google’s Latest AI Tool, Is in Testing
It’s “an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA.” (Language Model for Dialogue Applications.)
From the blog post:
Bard seeks to combine the breadth of the world’s knowledge with the power, intelligence and creativity of our large language models. It draws on information from the web to provide fresh, high-quality responses.
When is this happening?
…today [Monday], we’re taking another step forward by opening it up to trusted testers ahead of making it more widely available to the public in the coming weeks. …
We’re releasing it initially with our lightweight model version of LaMDA. This much smaller model requires significantly less computing power, enabling us to scale to more users, allowing for more feedback.
A promotional video for Bard posted Wednesday featured inaccurate information, leaving some to wonder whether Google’s AI tools are lagging. Alphabet shares went tumbling in the aftermath of the error.
🛠 Why does this matter? Google says this will provide search results to more nuanced questions. Whereas “What is 1+1?” has a pretty straightforward answer, the above inquiry – is it easier to learn guitar or piano? – is more nuanced.
An AI-powered tool will, in theory, do a better job giving us the answers we need to this murkier queries.
One problem I notice about the (Google-provided) sample AI results above? There are no citations.
Not only is this bad for users, who don’t know where information comes from, but it’s also problematic for publishers, who may get less and less traffic as AI-driven results dominate the top portion of the SERP, especially on mobile, where screen space is limited.
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II. Meanwhile, at Microsoft/Bing/ChatGPT…
Microsoft has invested about $13 billion in OpenAI, ChatGPT’s creator. This week it announced new plans regarding how it will integrate the most popular and mainstream AI tool in the world into its search engine, Bing.
There are 10 billion search queries a day, but we estimate half of them go unanswered. That’s because people are using search to do things it wasn’t originally designed to do. It’s great for finding a website, but for more complex questions or tasks too often it falls short.
(That sounds similar to Google’s stance on nuanced searches.)
Another highlight: If you like ChatGPT, you’ll love AI-powered Bing search.
…the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.
AI will also be used to make “regular” Bing results more accurate and relevant, according to Microsoft.
There’s a waitlist to access the new Bing, and they’re pretty thirsty about using their products as an incentive for people to move up in line:
We’ll soon be able to create our own versions of ChatGPT, the company also announced: “Companies would be able to remove Microsoft or OpenAI branding when they release chatbots developed with the software.”
Nicole Farley gave the Bing/AI search a test drive: “Microsoft has a long way to go and there are a few kinks to work out, but I could see myself using this regularly.”
🛠 Why does this matter? Google has more than 90 percent of the U.S. share of searches. Bing has less than 5. Could this be a chance to – not even close, but – chip away at the chasm between the two?
I am encouraged that Microsoft, unlike Google (for now?) includes citations in its answers (i.e. 1. cookpad.com):
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III. Google is OK* with AI-Produced Content
Google is making AI more central to its search results (see above). But it’s also softening its stance – or at least the way it presents it – on AI-produced content.
These are two different things.
The former is what Google produces in response to a search query. The latter is what outside sources produce that could show up on the SERP. We have no control over the first, while the second should have a big influence on the way we view and produce SEO content going forward.
Google’s latest stance – which it says hasn’t changed, though I would argue these updated guidelines are much more AI-friendly than in the past – is that so long as AI enhances content that follows E-E-A-T guidelines and doesn’t violate its spam policies, it won’t be penalized in organic rankings, and could in fact perform better when properly used.
[I]t's important to recognize that not all use of automation, including AI generation, is spam. … AI has the ability to power new levels of expression and creativity, and to serve as a critical tool to help people create great content for the web.
…however content is produced, those seeking success in Google Search should be looking to produce original, high-quality, people-first content demonstrating qualities E-E-A-T.
🛠 Why does this matter? Not long ago, Google painted AI as a radioactive tool for SEO. Use it at your peril, but if you were caught, end up in organic search jail.
While they say their content guidelines haven’t changed – and I think that’s fair – the way they talk about AI-generated content has, in my opinion.
I think this will be a good topic for Tuesday’s in-depth analysis, but I’ll share some high-level thoughts.
AI can make for a much faster content creation process
AI can also make a lot of mistakes, and no single tool – and possibly not even a combination of them – can be trusted at this point to create an informative, factual, engaging article that will rank well on search.
Google is open to AI-produced content, so long as it meets the E-E-A-T standards.
AI-only production is probably not a good idea for news sites. At least not from an SEO perspective. You could, however, use “nofollow” tags on your content to prevent Google from indexing it, thus serving your users content you don’t have the resources to produce otherwise without risking a ding on search rankings.
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