Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 23 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Tip: Is GA4 tracking your site searches?
Analysis: Twitter Links are ‘nofollow’ once again. What does that mean anyway?
Vacation Advisory
Next week I will be on vacation. The following few weeks I’m helping a family member recover from what we’re hoping is a routine surgery.
With that context in mind, I will not be publishing a Friday newsletter July 22, 29, Aug. 5 and 26. (I will continue to publish every Tuesday.)
I appreciate your understanding, especially those of you who are paid members. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions if there’s something in the news those weeks you would like to better understand.
Contents
I. Bounce Rate Arrives in GA4
II. Looking for Lunch on TikTok, Instagram Instead of Google
III. TikTok Features to Filter Unwanted (or Mature) Content
IV. Kids Spend Nearly 2.5 Hours Per Day on TikTok, YouTube
V. More Google Analytics 4 Goodies Announced
VI. Facebook May Allow You To Add Up to Four More Profiles
VII. Twitter Launches Custom Timeline Experiment
VIII. Instagram Expands Creator Subscription Tools
IX. Reddit Ungates Previously Paid-Only Features
I. Bounce Rate Arrives in GA4
One of the biggest complaints Google Analytics 4 users have had is the absence of bounce rate.
Last Tuesday in the (paid) analysis section, we talked about how to make a bounce-rate equivalent.
Conclusion: Bounce rate is the inversion of engagement rate.
It just so happened that this Monday, Google coincidentally announced the addition of bounce rate to GA4 with that very definition.
If you’re used to bounce rate in Universal Analytics, it’s not quite the same.
Read more: Google Analytics 4 Bounce Rate Explained
🛠 Why does this matter? You can throw out everything I said and just find bounce rate in your dashboard. Except that you can’t. Yet.
Despite the announcement Monday, bounce rate is not yet visible in GA4 dashboards. I have seen others on Twitter saying it’s not in theirs, either, so I imagine it will be rolled out soon.
•
II. Looking for Lunch on TikTok, Instagram Instead of Google
“In our studies, something like almost 40% of young people, when they’re looking for a place for lunch, they don’t go to Google Maps or Search,” [Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan] continued. “They go to TikTok or Instagram.”
Rand Fishkin believes this is an Alphabet ploy to protect against antitrust action, but I find the statistic believable.
🛠 Why does this matter? If you’re thinking, “We don’t have content that’s typically consumed on Google Maps, so this doesn’t affect us,” hold your horses.
This is about way more than food recommendations.
The bigger story is that the traditional tools most of us are accustomed to using to find content are being supplanted by social media. While that may not sound new, there’s a wrinkle.
We’re not just talking about, “Oh look, my friend Sally is at a hip new restaurant downtown and I have to try it!” That’s been going on for years.
Now it’s:
“What did Joe Biden say about Israel?”
*Goes to Google favorite news site TikTok and searches “Joe Biden Israel”*
“What are the latest fashion trends?”
*Goes to Google favorite fashion site Instagram and searches “summer fashion trends”*
This is happening more with topics like food and fashion than hard news (for now), but it’s a behavior shift nonetheless.
I’ll be the last person to tell you to ditch SEO or any other time-tested audience development strategy.
We do, however, need to be aware that if users can’t find our content – or at least a bridge to it – through non-traditional discovery methods tools, we’re going to lose some of them. Especially if they’re college-age or younger.
And often not to a competitor, but rather to someone whose 30-second vertical video was more fun and informative than a dry, 1,000-word alternative.
•
III. TikTok Features to Filter Unwanted (or Mature) Content
…we're rolling out a tool people can use to automatically filter out videos with words or hashtags they don't want to see from their For You or Following feeds…
…we are working to build a new system to organize content based on thematic maturity…In the coming weeks, we'll begin to introduce an early version to help prevent content with overtly mature themes from reaching audiences between ages 13-17.
This comes as the parents of two girls, 8 and 9, are suing TikTok for showing their daughters content that allegedly led to their deaths.
🛠 Why does this matter? One of the primary concerns about TikTok (and any social network, to be fair) is the firehose of unfiltered content that could reach a (pre-)teen’s screen.
TikTok can now legally show it’s taking steps to combat young users being exposed to mature content.
Speaking of The Youth spending a lot of time on TikTok…
•
IV. Kids Spend Nearly 2.5 Hours Per Day on TikTok, YouTube
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Gerick News(letter) to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.