Welcome to Part II of Edition No. 61 of my weekly newsletter, providing practical analysis in the world of digital content strategy.
Friday Five
I. GA4: You Can Finally Schedule Email Reports
II. Undo, Redo, More Editing Tools in Reels
III. Google Search Console Launches robots.txt Report
IV. Is Google Creating an Echo-Chamber Feature?
V. GA4 Changes ‘Conversions’ To ‘Key Events’…Then Back Again?
VI. Other Important Updates
I. GA4: You Can Finally Schedule Email Reports
Google Analytics 4 now allows administrators to schedule up to 50 standard and custom reports for email delivery from the Report dashboard.
Scheduled reports reflect specified date ranges and any applied filters or comparisons, and can be sent daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.
Administrators can manage, edit and delete scheduled reports, including handling errors and adjusting settings for frequency, format and active period.
🛠 Why does this matter? This is wonderful news for those of you whose team members or bosses want reporting updates on a regular cadence.
This is available in Looker Studio, but who wants to build out a whole new dashboard when all the data you need is available in Reports?
Chalk this up as a win for Team Efficiency.
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II. Undo, Redo, More Editing Tools in Reels
Instagram rolled out some “key updates” this week:
“We’re testing the ability for you to scale, crop and rotate individual clips. Change your mind? Save time while you’re editing with undo and redo features, coming soon.”
“We’re also adding 10 new English text-to-speech voices to choose from, available in select countries.”
“We’re making it easier to edit your in-progress reels by giving you a streamlined view of all your saved drafts.”
“New photo filters are here!”
🛠 Why does this matter? In the race to keep up with TikTok, Instagam is doing everything it can to enhance its central product: Reels.
This also makes it easier to edit clips within the app itself instead of using a third-party tool, like CapCut. That’s not to say that you don’t need any other tools to create great Reels, but it’s certainly easier to do so.
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III. Google Search Console Launches robots.txt Report
Google Search Console's latest update introduces an enhanced robots.txt report, offering detailed insights on how Googlebot interacts with a website's robots.txt file.
The report helps users identify and fix issues related to the robots.txt file, ensuring better website crawling and indexing.
It provides a more user-friendly interface for monitoring and troubleshooting how directives in the robots.txt file affect site indexing.
🛠 Why does this matter? This update will help SEOs understand how their site is crawled and indexed by Google, and optimize it accordingly. Understanding and managing robots.txt file issues can lead to improved website visibility in search results and prevent unintended blocking of important content from search engines.
Please note: robots.txt files are suggestions, which Google (and other “spiders”) may choose to override.
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IV. Is Google Creating an Echo-Chamber Feature?
“To help you more easily keep up with searches or topics you come back to a lot, or want to learn more about, we’re introducing the ability to follow exactly what you’re interested in.”
“Starting later this year, we’ll also make it easier to find and visit your favorite sites. For example, if you’ve searched for something a few times, like DIY instructions for a backyard project, and keep returning to the same web page, our systems will recognize that and bring the site to the top of the search results page.”
“In the coming weeks, we’ll bring the perspectives filter to desktop Search, so you can choose to exclusively see content from people on social media platforms, forums and other communities.”
🛠 Why does this matter? I love the “follow” feature, but the update I want to talk about is the second one above.
I do like the idea of seeing websites I rely on more frequently surfaced on my SERP. What concerns me is the same thing that has made Facebook (and other social media platforms) an untenable place to interact online.
If Google consistently surfaces a user’s preferred websites as opposed to a more diverse offering of content, does it become another online echo chamber? And will there still be room for “emerging” or lesser-known sources to get organic Google traffic?
I’ll be keeping a close eye on this as it rolls out.
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V. GA4 Changes ‘Conversions’ To ‘Key Events’…Then Back Again?
Sometime between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, Google Analytics 4 documentation indicated that “conversions” (which were “goals” in UA) would now be called “key events.”
The backlash – from the GA4 power users I follow – was swift and harsh.
Hours later, as I was drafting a blurb on the switch for this newsletter, the same link that documented the change was a 404:
I then checked my GA4 admin panel to find “conversions” alive and well:
So are they changing or not? Stay tuned.
🛠 Why does this matter? Originally I would have said this doesn’t matter that much, except that this is the third different term used to describe basically – “goals” in UA weren’t a perfect analog – the same thing .
That’s still true. A name change with no update to the feature itself is still a name change.
But if GA4 walked back that change less than 24 hours later, presumably because of all the negative feedback?
That means they’re listening much more attentively than for which we may have given them credit. After all, the “bounce rate” metric wasn’t originally included in GA4, and now it is.
Kudos to Google for being open to feedback, though I would rather be spared the whiplash.
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VI. Other Important Updates
Google’s November Core, Reviews Updates Continue
Bing’s Chatbot is Now ‘Copilot’
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Any other important updates this week? Let me know in the comments.
I self-edit this newsletter, so please don’t be shy about emailing me if you spot a mistake.
See you next week for a practical tip and an in-depth analysis in the world of digital content strategy.