Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 72 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
As promised, I have updated the newsletter format. Let me know what you think.
GA4
Conversions are now called key events (for real this time)
Google has let this feature slip multiple times in recent months, only to roll it back. It basically means this: what were “Goals” in UA were called “Conversions” in GA4. Those “Conversions” are now being called “Key Events.” It’s the same exact thing under a different name.
If this feature were a movie character it would be Leonardo DiCaprio in “Catch Me If You Can.”
It’s gradually rolling out, and you may not yet see it in your property
I recommend using this for your most important events, like purchases, sign-ups, account creations or other things that will have a big affect on your bottom line
Marking too many things as key events would dilute the value of the feature. If everything is key, nothing is key
To enable this, click the “Mark as conversion” button next to any event under Admin > Events. (Again, this is not a new feature)
I imagine as this rolls out the text will change to “Mark as key event”
Collect user-provided data without a user ID
This is a big deal because it means you no longer need to send specific user IDs to GA4 to collect user-specific data across devices.
This is to send first-party data – like email address, phone number, name and address – that you collect on your website to GA4 so it can more easily identify the same user across different devices and sessions
It must be sent in the approved hashed/anonymized format
If you’re not collecting any of the aforementioned data on your website, you won’t be able to use this feature
You must link your GA4 account to your Google Ads account to take advantage of this feature
It is intended for properties with web – not app – data streams
It may take a month for the new data to show up after activating this
Benefits
Enhanced conversions: Google will more easily be able to track a converting user’s behavior across devices.
You determine which events are conversions – or “key events” – in your admin dashboard.
More demographics and interests information
How to set up
1. Enable user-provided data collection in GA4
Admin > Data collection and modification > Data collection > Turn on “user-provided data collection”
2. Configure collection of user proivded data in your Google tag
Via gtag.js OR
Via Google Tag Manager OR
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SEO
Core Web Vitals Don’t Affect Your SERP Rankings Much
If you have a low score, don’t panic: “What really matters is what your real users are experiencing.” -Rick Viscomi, Core Web Performance team
“You can think of Lighthouse more as a worst-case scenario.” -Viscomi
Regarding the Google bot’s perspective on speed when crawling pages: “For the most part we don’t really care if it’s fast or slow.” -Google’s John Mueller
The ranking team “are using core web vitals … we do use this in our ranking system. … The details we tend not to go into.” -Mueller
“Site owners sometimes over-fixate on the metrics themselves. … They see this as, they’re doing this for their search rankings and probably a lot of those incremental changes are not really visible in search.” -Mueller
Google may be testing a Search Console app for Android
This would make it easier to track your organic search progress from your phone
It makes sense that Google would test this in Android before iOS, though hopefully it would eventually be available on both, if they go through with it
Google’s March 2024 Core Update is Still Underway
The spam update was completed last week
Both of these updates are expected to significantly curtail cheap, AI-generated traffic from topping SERPs
Elizabeth Reed is now leading search at Google
She’s bullish on SGE: “With SGE, we are able to serve a wider range of information needs and answer new types of questions, including more complex questions, like comparisons or longer queries.”
SGE is when you get AI-generated answers at the top of your search results.
Many content sites are concerned about how this feature can (and likely will) cut down on clickthroughs since most of the information a user needs will be available directly on Google.
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Social Media
Threads: 'We're testing live scores, starting with NBA games'
This will eat into one advantage X still holds over threads – real-time news/updates. Sports is a logical place to start
Instagram is testing comments on specific photos or videos in carousels
They’re also considering increasing carousel maximums from 10 slides to 15
This would make it more clear on which part of a carousel someone is commenting on instead of all comments being bunched together
Instagram: ‘We’re simplifying the hashtag and search experiences on Instagram to make it easier to see everything in one place’
Ron DeSantis outlaws social media for under-14 kids, even with parental permission
Fourteen- and 15-year-olds in Florida can have accounts with parental permission
Deleting YouTube videos could hurt your future reach
X is testing the ability to edit DMs
LinkedIn is testing a TikTok-esque video feature
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Miscellaneous
Adobe’s new AI-powered podcast tools
In the long-run, it doesn’t matter for view when you post evergreen videos on YouTube
If you use the Elementor plugin on WordPress, it’s vulnerable to attacks
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