Welcome to Part I of Edition No. 63 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Contents
Tip: Pages vs. Screens in GA4
Analysis: Sewer-Dwellers of the Internet
Tip: Pages vs. Screens in GA4
You may have noticed the default “Pages and screens” report in your GA4 dashboard.
I’m here to tell you 1) what those two terms mean, 2) what they have in common and 3) where they differ. (For a more full explanation, check out this blog post.)
What is a Page?
"Pages" in GA4 refer to the individual pages on a website. Each time a user visits a page on your website, GA4 records this as a “view.” (In UA, these were called “page views.”)
What is a Screen?
"Screens" in GA4 relate to the individual screens viewed within a mobile app. Tracking screens is analogous to tracking web pages but tailored to the mobile app environment.
What Do They Have in Common?
They’re the same thing by a different name. Screens are basically pages for apps, and pages are basically screens for websites.
Where Do They Differ?
By now you may realize, if you only have an app, you need not worry about "Pages," because in GA4 parlance, you don't have any.
Likewise, if you only have a website, you need not worry about "Screens."
Only if you have a website AND an app hosting the same content on those distinct mediums will you have different data for these two dimensions.
READ MORE: What’s the Difference Between Pages and Screens in GA4?
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Analysis: Sewer-Dwellers of the Internet
I remember the first time a colleague was fired for plagiarism. I was an editor for a hyperlocal news service called Patch.
This person, in a different region of the company, had used a slightly edited mug shot for a story they pulled from the local TV station’s website...without crediting them.
Mug shots are typically provided by police departments upon request (or without a request as part of a press release). This was something the reporter easily could have accessed on their own.
But they got lazy.
So they took it from a competitor’s website. Since they probably didn’t realize the competitor had edited the photo (I believe by cropping it), they were quickly pegged for having swiped it.
Our company was already under a lot of scrutiny for disrupting the local news ecosystem (mostly in good ways), and this wasn’t about to fly under the radar.
A career media critic – the kind of person who doesn’t have a driver’s license but will scream at you from the passenger seat – shined the spotlight on it as well.
The reporter had no chance of saving their job. Was this a minor offense? One that was perhaps even overblown? You might say so.
But it was still plagiarism.
And for as long as I have been in journalism, this was an instantly fireable offense. In most other industries, too.
Plagiarists typically have to get caught before they’re fired. That is, they don’t brag about it.
Even outside of journalists, plagiarism is typically frowned upon.
Never before, though, have I seen it promoted as a tactic.
When someone I follow on LinkedIn posted a screenshot of this tweet, I immediately went to X to see if it was real. Lo and behold:
This was published about two weeks ago, and Ward, who has been active since, hasn’t taken it down. It follows, then, that he stands by his “heist.”
As I posted on LinkedIn:
Looks like I'll never be using Content Growth, Byword or Kleo.
I can't imagine being proud of openly plagiarizing a competitor and packaging it as a strategy.
I fully support (and do) use AI to supplement content creation, but there must be accountability.
Hopefully Google's algorithm can catch up with these black-hat tactics and drop swift punishments in the form of traffic craters and manual penalties.
Yes there appear to be hundreds – it not thousands – of people who view this as a groundbreaking tactic. Let me tell you why this is bound to fail, while virtual sewer-dwellers like Ward will continue to thrive.
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