Google says Bard was updated to improve math and logic responses

Google Bard just got an upgrade today, it now is better at math and logic responses by incorporating Google’s PaLM language models. “Today I wanted to share that we’ve improved Bard’s capabilities in math and logic by incorporating some of the advances we’ve developed in PaLM,” Jack Krawczyk, the Google executive leading up Bard and Google’s AI efforts, said on Twitter.

What improved. Google’s Jack Krawczyk said that Bard can now better understand and respond to your prompts and questions when they are in a multi-step word and multi-step math problems format.

Math improvements coming. Coding is coming soon to Bard, Jack Krawczyk added.

The tweets. Here are his tweets with this announcement:

So what does that mean? Now Bard will better understand and respond to your prompts for multi-step word and math problems, with coding coming soon. This improvement makes Bard even more useful to people using it. 2/

— Jack Krawczyk (@JackK) March 31, 2023

https://t.co/FycdN2l1HQ

— Jack Krawczyk (@JackK) March 31, 2023

Google PaLM. PaLM stands for Pathways Language Model. It is a large language model developed by Google with 540 billion parameters. Researchers also trained smaller versions of PaLM, 8 and 62 billion parameter models, to test the effects of model scale.

More on Bard. As a reminder, Google announced Bard was coming the day before Bing Chat launched but Bard did not open to general users until ten days ago. The response Google received from Bard has been somewhat disappointing and underwhelming compared to that of Bing Chat and ChatGPT’s efforts. Even inside Google, employees urged the company to improve Bard.

But Google promises more is to come and it will get better.

In an interview released today from the NY Times, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, said they intentionally launched a lightweight version of Bard and it will continue to get better and better over time.

Why we care. Mostly, it is fun and exciting to see how these AI assistants and tools improve and are improving rapidly in such a short period of time. Be it ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Google Bard or others, following this space is a lot of fun.

So give Bard another try and see if you find it to be any better today than it was yesterday.

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These 44 hilariously terrible BuzzFeed travel articles were AI-assisted

I know what you’re thinking. “I’m going on a trip to Cape May, NJ and need a true ‘hidden gem’ of a travel guide.” Well, if by some extreme fluke, you see one of BuzzFeed’s AI-assisted content in your search results, here’s my recommendation: avoid it.

That’s because BuzzFeed has published 20 low-quality travel articles under the byline “As Told to Buzzy.” They’re all super formulaic and written in the first-person point of view. Or, do we now have to call it the “first-AI point of view”? (Does AI even have a view?)

Why we care. Multiple articles are calling these “SEO-driven” travel guides. Let’s stop that now. If these pages rank for any competitive terms, Google has failed as a search engine.

No, what BuzzFeed has done here is not “SEO”. BuzzFeed has simply published super low-quality, shallow, AI-generated articles written as a first-person narrative by the AI, about locations that exist in the world. Nothing more, nothing less. If these pages rank, it will be because it lives on an authoritative site, not because it’s any good.

As Told to Buzzy. That is the profile name under which the 44 articles live. The biography of this AI writer: “Articles written with the help of Buzzy the Robot (aka our Creative AI Assistant) but powered by human ideas.” But this is BuzzFeed, so E-E-A-T doesn’t matter, right?

All of Buzzy’s articles I looked at had a note at the top saying a version of “This article was collaboratively written by [insert name here] + Buzzy, our creative AI assistant.” Those collaborators seemed to all be non-editorial staff (from the business and sales side of the company), the Verge reported.

• Fun fact: BuzzFeed has a separate AI quiz writer byline for Buzzy the Robot, author of 26 quizzes.

Hilariously terrible. Some of the lowlights, via Futurism:

• “Now I know what you’re thinking…”

• “A hidden gem”

• And beyond.

this stuff is GOLD, what is everyone worried about!!! pic.twitter.com/3JkqkoEFQB

— Kathryn VanArendonk (@kvanaren) March 30, 2023

Part of BuzzFeed’s core business. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti announced its big ambition in January: to “lead the future of AI-powered content.” If the future is now, I’m not impressed.

AI can make many parts of the content creation process easier (e.g., brainstorming topics, structuring the article). The one thing AI clearly can’t do yet is improve the final product for the unfortunate humans who try to read it.

Yes, you can easily create tons of AI-assisted or AI-generated content about whatever topic you want now. But the question is: should you?

And the bigger question is – how will Google respond? Will the helpful content system catch low-quality, AI-assisted content and prevent it from ranking? Or will Google need to take new action as it did with content farms a decade ago with Panda?

Dig deeper. More coverage on Techmeme.

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Search marketing: Evolving roles, responsibilities, challenges

Search marketers design, run and optimize campaigns – and rely heavily on spreadsheets to successfully do their jobs, according to a new Search Engine Land survey.

Why we care. Although search marketers have several responsibilities and face a variety of challenges related to their roles and the technology they use, our survey shows that the majority of search marketers are satisfied with their work.

The biggest responsibilities for search marketers. Designing, running and optimizing campaigns is the responsibility that falls onto most search marketers, either directly or through their team, according to our survey.

At the director level and higher, 81% of marketers said designing, running and optimizing campaigns was their top responsibility. For managers/staff, the number was 67%.

The next three responsibilities for all respondents were the same (though the percentages varied based on the role):

• Designing and managing internal workflows and processes.
• Researching and recommending new marketing technology products.
• Training and supporting marketing staff on using marketing technology products.

Here’s the full list of responsibilities we asked about:

Search marketers live in spreadsheets. The overwhelming answer: spreadsheets. The question: Which marketing technology tools, if any, do you spend at least 10 hours a week working in?

Clearly, the higher you go in an organization, the more time you’ll find yourself spending in spreadsheets:

• 87% for directors or higher roles.
• 77% for managers/staff.

Spreadsheets beat out analytics, project management, content management, marketing automation and other types of marketing tools. Most of the tools were used similarly by both groups.

67% said churn increased. Remember the Great Resignation (a.k.a., the Great Reshuffle) of 2021? It was real. LinkedIn was inundated with updates about people moving onto their latest and greatest career opportunities. 

While career moves are great for the individual, they proved challenging for 67% of organizations in 2022.

Churn increased significantly (31%) or moderately (36%), according to our respondents. 

Luckily, 33% of survey respondents said they didn’t notice an increase in churn in their organizations in 2022 compared to 2021.

Job satisfaction is high. Despite challenges and the ever-increasing complexity of search, 76% of search marketers are satisfied with their roles:

• 25% said they are “extremely” satisfied.
• 51% said they are “somewhat” satisfied. 

Part of this satisfaction may tie into our previous section – several marketers have changed jobs in the past two years. You would hope those who have changed jobs (or those who haven’t) are currently satisfied where they work and find their day-to-day duties rewarding.

Meanwhile, 13% were either “somewhat” or “not” satisfied with their current role. The remaining 11% were neutral.

Methodology. We surveyed 510 marketers between Jan. 11 to 23; 413 of those provided salary information. Invitations to take the survey were amplified on and by Search Engine Land.

Nearly 67% of the 510 respondents live in North America; 20% live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Others were excluded due to the limited number.

The survey had more than 20 questions related to career roles, salary, technology, job satisfaction and challenges/frustrations. Respondents were given the opportunity to reveal their age and gender.

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How paid placements will evolve alongside AI-powered search

Google’s ad business will celebrate its 23rd year this fall, but not before paid search undergoes massive changes. As traditional search evolves with the advent of AI-powered functionality, so will pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

It’s unlikely Google will sit idly by and take massive revenue hits as paid placements decline. We don’t yet know what they will roll out to capitalize on AI-powered search – or when exactly users will see ads in this AI-powered experience.

We do know there will be fewer advertising opportunities, increased competition and higher costs. But AI will also help advertisers better target consumers – and it could help them optimize campaigns, too.

Here’s a closer look at how paid search will remain relevant, but advertisers must adjust their strategies to reach their targets in this new era.

The new search

AI assistants like Google Bard will help search evolve from transactional to conversational, according to Aaron Levy, vice president of paid search at performance marketing firm Tinuiti.

“Historically, each query would yield a series of answers and that’d be the end of the relationship,” he said. 

“ChatGPT/Bard is asking that we shift from repeating and tweaking searches toward refining with a human-esque conversation. It’s the same task, but a different way of getting there.”

In other words, there’s a new UI on the horizon for search.

“The usual list of links you get will be replaced by a chat box where you can converse with an AI bot and get direct responses to your queries,” said Trifon Tsvetkov, head of growth at online code interview tool CodeInterview. 

“To an extent, this will be similar to the featured snippet functionality we can see now, but with a lot more detail.”

To what extent this experience will overtake traditional search remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, Tsvetkov noted that some portion of traditional search will decline, so businesses should expect their paid search acquisition channels to be negatively impacted in at least some capacity.

That means brands that rely on paid search should also be prepared to evolve.

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The new paid search

This could theoretically be troublesome for search giant Google, which Jon Clark, managing partner of digital agency Moving Traffic Media, noted has built its entire model around paid search.

"But I can't imagine Google's just going to blow up their ad model tomorrow," he added.

Indeed, Tsvetkov noted the odds are good Google will instead create new offering(s) to capitalize on AI-powered search functionality. 

"Fundamentally, these will still be driven by the user's input and online behavior, just like it is now," he added. "One example is referring products and services related to your AI-powered search, such as attraction tickets when asking the AI bot to create a travel itinerary."

Levy, however, questioned at what point a query will be refined enough to deliver a relevant ad experience.

"Are platforms going to deliver an ad on the first question, embed it in the conversation … or as part of a conclusion?" he asked.

"My expectations are they'll be interspersed but closer toward the ‘conclusion' of the chat experience."

That means ChatGPT/Bard will spend time understanding a consumer's preferences and budget before presenting sponsored ads.

"This, to me, feels natural and won't be too ‘in your face,'" Levy added.

In a similar vein, Eduard Dziak, CMO of B2B marketing site B2BDigitalMarketers, pointed to potential in "a more sophisticated version of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising" that is more natural and interactive and presents "a list of organizations that have paid to be featured, along with relevant information such as reviews, testimonials and experience."

With more graphics and information, he said, "I believe it will provide an even better return on investment (ROI) than the current version of paid search ads, which can only provide information formatted in a limited way."

He also envisions search engines incorporating display ads into search results to compensate for the loss of revenue from decreased web traffic.

"These display ads can be seamlessly integrated with chatbots, using images, animations and even pre-selected frequently asked questions by advertisers," Dziak said. 

"This will make the search experience more interactive and natural for less technical users, such as my grandma, who can simply talk to chatbots about PPC or display ads."

The new paid ads

That said, fewer links mean fewer ads.

"Companies need to recognize that if AI is driving more efficient search results that deliver more accurate results to consumers, fewer searches will be necessary, leading to less overall ad exposure," said Rob Silver, executive vice president and head of media at interactive agency Razorfish. 

"This could lead to higher ad costs for sponsored listings and more competition for fewer placements."

Hamza Hanif, SEO executive at web design agency Objects, agreed costs might increase as competition for top results intensifies.

"Advertisers may need to pay more to achieve the same level of visibility on search engine results pages, especially if AI-powered algorithms favor organic search results over paid ads," he added. 

"This is because AI algorithms may be better at matching user intent with organic search results, making it more difficult for paid search ads to compete for visibility."

Zaira Céspedes, junior SEO executive at digital marketing firm GA Agency, agreed.

"Due to the improvement in the accuracy and relevance of organic search results that appear for users, it will become more challenging for paid search ads to stand out," she said. "This can lead to higher costs for PPC campaigns."

Iu Ayala, founder of AI consulting company Gradient Insight, pointed out the potential for greater competition from larger companies with more resources and "an advantage in developing and implementing AI-powered strategies."

At the same time, Silver noted this evolution makes SEO even more important since AI chatbot results increase the prominence of organic search results.

As consumers interact with fewer links, Casey Jones, head of marketing at digital marketing company CJ&CO, expects to see an increased focus on upper-funnel ads in particular.

When planning a trip, for example, AI-powered search will eliminate many necessary queries from traditional search.

"This means businesses will need to invest heavily in building brand awareness so that when AI serves options, people will choose what they're already familiar with," Jones added. 

"When people know what your products and services are about, they'll be able to distinguish and make an informed choice while buying."

Silver agreed.

"Companies need to prioritize brand awareness through elevated content that showcases the benefits and differentiation of their offerings," he said. 

"When one of their ads does appear, it will be that much more important for it to resonate and have an impact with the consumer who sees it."

Meanwhile, because AI-powered search better understands user intent, it will prioritize ads that are even more relevant to a given query. It may even become more selective about which ads to display.

"This means that advertisers will need to create more targeted ads tailored to specific user needs and interests," said Syed Sameem Rizvi, a data scientist at IT company Code Avenue. 

"[And] advertisers may need to create a variety of ad formats in order to optimize their visibility on SERPs."

The new targeting

On the plus side, AI-powered search should yield better targeting.

"AI can analyze large sets of data more efficiently than humans can, without compromising accuracy or relevance," said Oskar Nowik, head of SEO at point of sale software company Epos Now. 

"With this capability, search marketers are able to more accurately predict what their consumers want when they make their queries – resulting in more targeted ads that generate higher engagement rates and improved conversions."

In addition, AI-powered search can yield more accurate insights into search behavior, which will also help target consumers, personalize content and increase efficiency/ROI from paid search campaigns, said Søren Lassen Jensen, a junior digital marketer at cybersecurity firm CyberPilot.

The new optimization

In addition, Hanif expects AI-powered algorithms will help advertisers better optimize their paid placements. 

"By analyzing user behavior and search patterns, AI algorithms can identify which ads are most likely to resonate with users and which ones are not," Hanif said. 

"Advertisers can then use this data to tweak their ad copy, keywords and targeting parameters, improving their ad performance over time."

Ayala agreed.

"One of the main advantages of using AI in paid search is its ability to identify the most effective keywords, ad placements and targeting strategies," he said.

"By analyzing consumer behavior and historical data, AI-powered tools can provide recommendations on how to optimize campaigns and improve conversion rates."

In addition, Nowik noted that AI-powered algorithms could quickly determine the best possible ad placements and the optimal time for consumers to view ads to maximize conversions and minimize cost.

Céspedes said some AI-powered search tools might not provide full transparency into how results are generated, which could be an optimization challenge. 

Meanwhile, Jensen warned algorithms and AI-powered search might not be able to capture all of the nuances within a query, which could lead to inaccurate results or costly mistakes if not monitored closely.

He expects results will be difficult to replicate and monitor due to the complexity of the AI algorithms. 

"This can also lead to skewed data insights, which can then lead to inappropriate decision-making," Jensen added. 

"Also, how will it be facilitated? We already know that the AI bots learn from the previous chats that you have with them."

Levy, however, noted tracking is already "very broken" and he expects it will only get muddier as cookies finally pass and Google rolls out its version of Safari's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP).

"Things will get more complicated and, if anything, rely more on AI modeling to present the most correct view of performance," he added. 

The new keywords/bidding

Finally, expect changes in the backbone of PPC campaigns: keywords.

Nowik believes AI-powered algorithms will help automate the bidding process by detecting which keywords are most relevant so marketers don't have to test combinations themselves manually.

"This helps save time and money since prices for each keyword need not be adjusted based on trial-and-error tests," he said.

In the meantime, Jones expects broad match – which helps advertisers reach wider audiences without extensive keyword lists – will be more relevant than ever. 

This, he said, is good news for Bing because it uses Microsoft's AI model, which prioritizes relevancy and will enhance the performance of broad match in paid search. 

"In the present scenario, Microsoft's language model is better equipped to make Bing's broad match more effective and improve paid search traffic to advertisers," he said.

"This means Bing will have a larger paid search budget compared to Google, which will be a big positive for advertisers."

Levy questioned whether AI-powered search will change auction dynamics from a bidding model to a commission-based/affiliate model, like Microsoft's Hotel Price Ads and Google's Local Services Ads.

"I envision more payment options for advertisers, which could throw things for a loop," he added.

But, Kacper Rafalski, demand generation team leader at software development company Netguru, said it could also lead to increased reliance on automated systems and decreased control over ad targeting and bidding. 

For his part, John McGhee, owner of digital agency Webconsuls, believes keywords will become obsolete in their current form as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads migrate to a conversion-based system.

"Currently, adjusting keyword match types, keyword bids and adding negative keywords are still the primary way to improve relevancy and get your ads in front of the right users," he said.

"In the future, those tasks will move over to adjusting various conversion actions and their values."

That means PPC will use ROI-based bid strategies – and instead of raising a keyword bid, advertisers will adjust the value of a conversion action. 

"With AI expanding touch points massively, signals will replace search queries as the primary method of gauging user intent," he added.

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Should you block ChatGPT’s web browser plugin from accessing your website?

Since ChatGPT launched, the debate around the “fair use” of public website content for AI training – and whether this is plagiarism – has raged.

That debate has only gotten louder and more intense since OpenAI announced ChatGPT plugins on March 23.

One of OpenAI’s plugins is an official ChatGPT-hosted web browser. It will allow their models to read information directly from the internet.

Since we still see daily posts and tweets and prompt examples claiming otherwise, it’s worth repeating here:

The current instance of ChatGPT cannot access anything on the internet.

It doesn’t use a database or store content from websites like a search engine does in an index.

What this means is that, without a plugin, ChatGPT is still stuck in 2021, predicting the next word based on its old training data.

Even the current Bing implementation is (in a simplified explanation) pulling keywords from your prompt, doing a Bing search, feeding in the results that would appear for that keyword, and then asking the AI to “summarize” those results. 

And that’s how plugins are going to change everything. 

Pretty soon, ChatGPT will be able to feed in content from third-party websites for the AI to summarize or manipulate – the same way Bing is doing. 

Many third-party plugins and tools can already scrape content from a website, feed it into a prompt to the OpenAI API, and summarize or manipulate that text.

However, with an official web browser plugin, this usage is about to increase drastically.

You can block OpenAI’s ChatGPT-User bot

OpenAI has given us details about their bot – including how to block it.

It’s worth noting that OpenAI will behave just like any other bot, following the robots protocol. It will assume it can access content unless it’s specifically told otherwise in a robots.txt file.

OpenAI and ChatGPT won’t crawl the web like a search engine. And, as far as we can tell, they aren’t using this data for training (yet?). All requests will be the result of a direct request from a user.

Another fun fact: it does this using the Bing search API. This likely means that if Bing can’t see the content on your website, neither will ChatGPT.

This brings us to a question I have seen a lot lately: 

Should we block the OpenAI bot from accessing our websites? 

The citation/plagiarism/sources/copyright debate has been raging for a while and could easily take 20,000 words to dig into. 

My short answer: No.

Most websites shouldn’t block AI from accessing your website. Let’s dig deeper into why.

Take a wait-and-see approach

We shouldn’t block any new technology until we have enough data to make an informed decision.

Sure, some copyright issues could be at play, but AI plugins could also become a new source of discovery and traffic.

OpenAI says it will cite sources when plugins pull data from third-party websites. This means there will definitely be potential to get clicks from ChatGPT if a user pulls in your content.

Blocking access only means that ChatGPT (or your user) will cite somebody else’s website.

Many people having this debate start with the flawed assumption that if people can’t get the content from ChatGPT, then they’ll have to visit the website.

I don’t think that’s true. The reality is that they’ll get the content from your competitor.

Given how many people are using ChatGPT for content creation these days, there’s a decent chance that if somebody uses the tool to pull content from your website, they might link to you wherever they post the output. You’ll be passing up this chance if you block it.

We need to think long term

I remember having similar conversations about iPhone apps and the app store when it first came out in 2008.

The app store changed the interface of mobile phones. Sure, you could (and still can) do most of what an app can do with a website, but the app store is where people went to find and discover websites.

AI will have a similar effect in changing the internet’s user interface.

This isn’t going to kill search engines.

However, AI will be a new starting point for many web users. That means plugins might be your only opportunity to reach these users. 

We need to start thinking of AI as a new acquisition channel – just like we do with search, social and retail platforms or app stores.

The time to start thinking about your AI and AI plugin strategy was last week. Most marketers are already behind – but it isn’t too late!

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Meta introduces AI-powered brand suitability controls and third-party verification for feeds

Meta has just unveiled new inventory filters for Facebook and Instagram Feeds, now accessible to advertisers in English- and Spanish-speaking markets.

In partnership with Zefr, the third-party verification solution for Facebook Feed is also available, with more Meta Business Partners set to join in the coming months.

Why we care. Ensuring that ads appear next to suitable content helps maintain a positive brand image. Associating with inappropriate or controversial content can harm a brand’s reputation and, in some cases, lead to public backlash or loss of consumer trust.

Additionally, by placing ads in suitable contexts, advertisers can better connect with their target audience, increasing the likelihood of successful engagement, higher click-through rates, and improved conversion rates.

AI-powered solutions. Meta has also developed a multi-stage AI review system to classify content for advertisers, ensuring brand suitability controls are implemented. This system complements existing technology that identifies content that violates or potentially violates Meta’s Community Standards and Guidelines.

How it works. The AI system classifies content, including text, video, and images, within Facebook and Instagram Feeds to determine if it complies with monetization policies. If the content does not comply, ads will not appear above or below it. The models then assign eligible content a suitability category.

Partnership collaborations. Meta has collaborated with industry partners, such as the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), to create controls that align with GARM’s Suitability Framework, which categorizes content as high, medium, or low risk.

Advertisers now have three options to control the types of monetizable content that can appear above and below their ads:

1. Expanded inventory: This default setting displays ads alongside content that adheres to Meta’s Community Standards and meets monetization eligibility criteria.
2. Moderate inventory: This option is designed for advertisers seeking a moderately conservative approach and excludes high-risk content, in accordance with the GARM Brand Suitability Framework.
3. Limited inventory: This option is for advertisers preferring the most conservative approach, excluding content considered high and medium risk, following the GARM Suitability Framework.

In the future, Meta plans to extend these controls to support more languages and make them available to advertisers in additional countries. They will also begin testing these controls on other placements, such as Reels, Stories, Video Feeds, and other surfaces across Facebook and Instagram, to further understand advertiser preferences and improve the technology.

Third-party brand suitability verification. Meta has collaborated with Zefr to develop and test an independent AI-powered solution that reports the context in which ads appear on Facebook Feed.

During early testing, it was discovered through third-party verification with Zefr that less than one percent of the content on Facebook Feed falls into the high-risk GARM suitability category.

Zefr’s AI product evaluates video, image, text, and audio to categorize Feed content based on GARM suitability standards. This solution empowers advertisers to measure, verify, and comprehend the suitability of content near their ads, enabling them to make well-informed decisions to achieve their marketing objectives.

Later this year, Meta plans to extend this verification and measurement solution to more badged Meta Business Partners.

Dig deeper. You can read the announcement from Meta here.

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Event tracking in Google Analytics 4: What marketers need to know

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) rebuilt the platform from the ground up with a new central focus on events, enhancing users’ ability to customize tracking for specific actions across websites and apps.

To set up GA4 properly, you should think through the events that make sense to track for your site.

This article covers the events you can track by default and how to set up custom events, along with suggested use cases for each.

Built-in events

Out of the box, GA4 includes events for several categories that can be automatically collected, including the following as of the time of this article.

Page view

The page_view event fires whenever a page is loaded or the browser history state changes. This can’t be disabled.

Scroll tracking

The scroll event fires when a user scrolls 90% of the way through a page.

Outbound click tracking

The click event only fires for clicks leading to separate domains.

Site search

This tracks internal search activity if you have the option included on your site. 

The view_search_results event fires every time someone completes a search. 

The search_term parameter will include the actual term that was searched.

Form interaction

This fires form_start at the start of an interaction with a form (i.e., the user clicks inside a text field) and when the form is submitted (form_submit). 

You can fire additional parameters to show form_id, form_name, and form_destination to delineate interactions with specific forms.

Video engagement

Video engagement tracks starts (video_start), completions (video_complete), and watch duration (video_progress) for embedded videos. 

Parameters within the events can indicate the specific percentage or timestamp within the video when an action occurs and the video title and URL, regardless of its visibility on the page.

File downloads

This fires the file_download event for clicks leading to several common file formats, such as text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, executable files, compressed files, video, and audio

Note that, apart from page views, you need to manually enable these events via Enhanced Event Measurement for them to fire. 

To do so, from within the Admin section of your GA4 account, go to Data Streams under your GA4 property and select the stream you’re working from. 

From here, you’ll see the Enhanced measurement option near the top.

Toggle the switch on and select the gear to see the options for measuring specific events. You can then toggle on all the events you’d like to include.

Of course, these built-in events have limitations and barely scratch the surface of GA4’s capabilities. Before discussing other uses for events, let’s cover how you can create new events.

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Creating custom events

From within the Admin section for your GA4 property, navigate to Events. You'll see a Create event button, which you can click to begin the process.

Next, you'll see a Create event screen from which you can click the Create button. 

From here, you can add the event name and customize any parameters to pass additional information through to Google Analytics.

If you want to use an event as a conversion, you'll see a Mark as conversion option next to existing events listed in the Events section. 

Toggle this to include the event in the Conversions report for the future and lump it together with metrics such as Conversion and Conversion Rate when creating custom explorations.

Let's look at a few practical uses for custom events on your website or app.

Internal click tracking

While GA4 records events for outbound clicks by default, internal clicks leading to the same domain or domains included in cross-domain measurement are not tracked. 

However, you may want to track these clicks to answer questions such as:

• How many people click an Apply Now button that leads from a landing page to an application process?
• How many people click a link to a store locator, indicating interest in visiting a location?
• Are people engaging with a carousel on your homepage that links to various internal pages?

Using Google Tag Manager, you can set up an event to target a click on a specific element within your site. 

While the exact approach may vary depending on the site, you could set up a trigger based on an HTML ID, a link URL, object text, or other criteria to ensure you're picking up on the correct click.

Logged-in activity

If applicable to your site, you can fire a sign_up event when users register or login when current users log into their accounts. 

This tracking could help answer questions such as:

• What sources have the highest conversion rate for user registrations?
• How often are existing users logging into their accounts?
• What devices are users most likely to use for accessing their accounts?

Beyond setting up these events, explore setting up user ID tracking, in which you assign a unique ID to each individual and can connect future sessions to the same user when they log in down the road.

Ecommerce events

For ecommerce sites, be sure to incorporate tracking for cart, checkout, and purchase-related activities. 

GA4 recommends the following events which are relevant for common ecommerce actions you'd want to record:

• view_item
• select_item
• select_promotion
• add_to_cart
• remove_from_cart
• view_cart
• begin_checkout
• purchase 
• refund

App engagement

GA4 can track several events related to app interactions, such as when users:

• Update an app.
• Activate in-app purchases.
• Open the app via a dynamic link.
• Click in-app ads.
• Interact with notifications within the app. 

These examples and others are automatically collected, but additional recommended events can be included, depending on the type of app.

For instance, a game may include tutorials to teach new users how to play. 

You can fire events for people working their way through the tutorial, showing how many individuals start the process and how many finish without dropping out. 

Other in-game events can track starting/ending levels, spending virtual currency, unlocking achievements, and posting scores.

Start creating events

This is just an initial list of potential events to create for your site or app, but the possibilities are endless for tracking your particular setup. 

Consider the user actions crucial to your business or clients and how you can correlate events with these activities. 

The sooner you gather historical events, the more robust data you'll have for future analysis.

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How to master Google News optimization to boost content visibility and traffic

Let’s set the record straight. Google News optimization is not only for news sites. 

Any website which regularly invests in timely content can reach engaged audiences and drive quality traffic with a solid Google News SEO strategy. 

Google News-driven results send over 24 billion clicks per month to publishers. Here’s how to claim your share. 

Google News aggregates and amplifies story exposure

Google News is an aggregator that offers somewhat newsworthy local and international stories from numerous sources, categorizing content into topics.

I say “somewhat newsworthy” because what Google defines as “news” is now lax.

The publisher no longer needs to be a dedicated news site. You can get in with your blog if you regularly produce high-quality, original and timely content.

You may get in without knowing it, as Google automatically considers any content in its index that complies with Google News content policies for inclusion.

Ranking in Google News can be a game-changer for content visibility. However, audience targeting and reach can vary greatly depending on the placement.

Partnership placements

The Google News Showcase is a content licensing program in which Google pays participating publishers to curate their best content. 

It’s unique within Google News products because the publisher’s editorial team selects which stories to show readers. 

This selection is displayed in Google Discover and across Google News surfaces in a Sources panel. 

Personalized placements

Google personalizes content for each individual user based on their interests, sources, locations and past activity on Google Search and YouTube. This algorithm dictates what is shown on:

• “For you” tab on Google News Android and iOS apps, plus the browser version on news.google.com.
• “Suggested sources” in news stand tab.
• Google News app push notifications.
• Google News daily briefing emails.
• “News tab” of the YouTube app on TVs.
• “Subscribe with Google” module in search.

It can deliver a highly engaged audience if your coverage matches the user’s topics of interest.

Location-driven placements

For videos, Google News offers placements in:

• YouTube’s top news.
• YouTube’s breaking news
• In U.S. local news shelves.
• YouTube.com/news 
• The News section in the YouTube app.

Google News articles also have a chance to show:

• On YouTube in the developing news information panel.
• In the news tab in search.
• The headlines section of the app and site.
• Down into the full coverage reports.
• The local news carousel in universal search.

However, the ultimate prize is securing a spot in the top stories carousel within universal search. This will also show if you ask Google Assistant news-driven queries such as “What’s the news?”

None of these placements are personalized. Everyone of a qualifying age who shares the same region, language and location settings sees the same content.

For this reason, non-personalized placements have a higher impact potential. Those within universal search can also offer an easier route to display for highly competitive search terms than attempting to rank position one.

So with all that potential visibility on the line, what should you do to appeal to the Google News algorithms?

It’s not as simple as a few bullet points

The bullet points on the “Ranking within Google News” guidelines are too simplistic and offer little tactical guidance. 

Even though Google does flesh them out in the News Initiative documentation, the added value is minimal. 

However, the documents clarify that much of the ranking system used in Google News is shared with that of Google Search.

For example, with usability. This is all about clean, well-structured, cross-browser and cross-device compatible code that delivers on core web vitals. 

Now that Google News no longer requires AMP for the top stories carousel, usability optimization for Google News and Google Search is essentially the same.

From here on, let’s assume that any point shared by both the Google News and Search algorithms is a given, and instead concentrate on specific SEO tactics for Google News that go beyond what you’re already doing for Google Search.

Branding essentials for Google News SEO

When it comes to the Google News algorithm, the conventional signals of relevance and popularity take a backseat to source authoritativeness. 

Think “E-E-A-T to the max” and curate credibility with these four tactics.

Establish a strong presence in Google Publisher Center

It’s not required to submit your site in Google Publisher Center, but it offers clear benefits:

• Improve discoverability: Become eligible to appear in the Newsstand area of Google News.
• Branding control: Set a publication name, category, language, location and visual style.
• Topic optimization: Google News algorithms heavily utilize the topic layer of the Google Knowledge Graph. Publisher Center allows you to classify content into section feeds to exhibit your expertise in specific topics. Ideally, at least one of these sections will be tailored for local news.
• Grow your following: Readers can follow your publication, greatly increasing the chance your content will be shown in personalized placements. Support this action like you would your social media accounts by adding a Google News follow button linking to your publications on site.
• Convert readers to subscribers: By leveraging the “Subscribe with Google” paywall.

To control the order of articles on your page in Google News, submit content as a feed rather than a section URL.

Highlight author expertise

Include a byline linked to the author’s page, or at least an author box, in every article submitted to Google News. 

The content must work toward establishing expertise and being recognized as an authority in their field. Ensure bios include:

• Author’s full name.
• A professional headshot.
• A meaningful short bio of 2-3 sentences, including relevant professional experience and awards.
• Links to professionally used social media accounts.
• Links to that author’s published articles.

For a real competitive advantage, collaborate with your key editorial team members to have them entered into the Google Knowledge Graph. 

Being associated with Google-acknowledged contributors enhances your publication’s credibility and reinforces Google’s trust in the value of your content.

Provide newsroom transparency

Build trust through an About page. This should include:

• Information on the publication (i.e., mission statement, editorial policies and standards, a brief history and key achievements).
• Information on the publisher, company or funding source behind it.
• Staff information, both editorial and business.
• Headquarters address.
• Non-generic contact information, including email address and phone number.

Invest in a strong social media presence

The impact of social media signals on Google News rankings is contentious. 

But at the very least, brands aiming to gain traction in Google News should invest in regular tweeting to become eligible for the “From Twitter” section in “Full coverage” reports and the Twitter carousel in universal search, which appears on approximately 35% of all U.S. news related queries according to NewzDash.

Technical essentials for Google News visibility

While Google News may include your article or video content without you doing any specific optimizations, the only way to see the channel’s full potential is by having the technical basics of Google News SEO in place. This involves four key actions.

Entice Googlebot to crawl faster

Like any Google surface, your content can not be indexed by Google News without first being crawled. 

But speedy crawling is even more critical in Google News as it works off a short-term index and heavily biases fresh content. Making indexing speed paramount to success.

In addition to crawl optimization fundamentals, get indexed fast by:

• Submitting a news sitemap to Google Search Console and adding the URL to your robots.txt file. Be sure URLs are added immediately upon publication and removed after 48 hours. 
• Using WebSub to notify Google instantly of new content, else content from section feeds will only update hourly.
• Submitting news-focused YouTube videos and article content as a section RSS feeds, website URLs or profile links in Google Publisher Center.
• Embedding videos hosted on external sites (hopefully YouTube to reap the full visibility benefits) in on-site content via an <iframe> tag.

Exceed image expectations 

Images are a key driver of click-through rate (CTR) from Google News. 

On news surfaces, Google may show various sizes of thumbnails or, in some cases, no image due to the article’s available image aspect ratios and resolutions. 

If the article’s image is subpar, it won’t qualify for all positions.

As such, it is essential for news content to contain at least one image that meets the requirements of:

• Resolution: 50,000 pixels minimum when multiplying width and height.
• Aspect ratio: 16:9
• Format: JPEG, JPG or PNG. WebP works well for Google products but can potentially cause compatibility issues with other marketing tools, such as those for email or push notifications.
• Placement: Placed on the page near the article title.

To avoid being limited by image quality and outperform competitors, work toward the following:

• Ensuring 1,200 x 674 pixels resolution.
• Adding 4:3 and 1:1 aspect ratio versions.
• Setting max-image-preview:large or use AMP to encourage a larger image preview rather than a thumbnail image.
• Posting original, sharp images.

Technology can aid certain requirements, such as automated cropping to the additional aspect ratios and warning messages for non-compatible formats, but not the actual content of the image.

Don’t allow your article to get lost in a sea of sameness.

A standout image can compel a reader to click on your story over a competitor’s, resulting in Google News algorithms driving more visibility for that story and other stories.

Ultimately, you must train your editorial teams on the “why” behind image requirements for Google News SEO because it impacts visibility in Google News and beyond (i.e., Discover, universal search and many other niche ecosystem touchpoints).

Eliminate any date confusion

Google states they don’t “depend on a single date factor because all factors can be prone to issues.”

Leave no room for interpretation. Show a single, user-visible date and label it appropriately with text like “Published” or “Last updated.”

Do this on a dateline in between the headline and the article text in a clear format.

07/03/2023 could be read as either March 7th or July 3rd, depending on your location.

7th March 2023 or Jul 3, 2023, on the other hand, leave no ambiguity.

Minimize the presence of other dates on the page.

Although it may be unavoidable within the article body, you control it in surrounding elements, such as not including the publication date of related articles.

And as a final fallback, add “datePublished” or “dateModified” structured data, including the date and time.

Be mindful of using the correct time zone and take daylight saving time into account. 

News-specific structured data

Use NewsArticle structured data markup (the appropriate choice over Article or BlogPosting) to help the indexer clearly understand the content and show your desired headlines, images, and date information in Google News.

But don’t stop there. Additionally, as appropriate, add markup for:

• Author to connect your brand entity to your author’s entities and the authority they bestow.
• NewsMediaOrganization over the more generic Organization.
• VideoObject to help videos appear on news surfaces.
• Speakable if you target the U.S. English-speaking market and seek to be a first mover on news played through Google Assistant.
• ClaimReview to apply a label to published stories with fact-checked content, such as round-up stories that contain multiple fact-check analyses.
• FAQ as FAQ rich results are often featured within full coverage reports in Google News.
• LiveBlogPosting that provides closest-to-live coverage of an event through continuous updates for a limited period. This provides a red “LIVE” label in the top stories carousel and can boost rankings over non-live content for breaking news topics.

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Content essentials for Google News rankings

Once you have the branding and technical fundamentals, take it to the next level with Google News content optimization techniques.

Consistent topic coverage

While reporting on news as it happens is essential, effective Google News optimization requires planning news stories into your editorial calendar. 

Leveraging relevant trending topics allows you to win visibility on news-related search terms that trigger the "Top stories" carousel. As such, keyword research remains critical.

Google Trends is an excellent resource beyond the trending now section. 

In explore, select the "News search" option to identify topics with consistent news interest, such as celebrity names, or when predictable topics, such as annual events, will take off.

Plan continuous coverage of the topics for as long as relevant. 

For breaking news stories, this means steadily publishing new, relevant information at a cadence that matches the story. 

For topics with predictable longevity, this means publishing or refreshing an article every few days during that period. 

This topical expansion can include news reports, interviews, opinion pieces, data journalism, photojournalism, live coverage, etc. Consistently plan ways to explore fresh angles.

Resource constraints? Syndicated reportage is preferable to no coverage. 

Google asks for originality and promises to feature the publication that broke the story, but analysis highlights how freshness often wins over originality. 

Utilizing indexable syndicated content can drive significant organic sessions, but it should supplement original content, not replace it entirely.

And remember, blindly chasing trending topics isn't a solid strategy. Evaluate its relevance to your editorial goals before investing resources. 

Because more than ever, news publishers are restricted by the need for E-E-A-T. A publication will typically only achieve top stories visibility for topics that they regularly cover.

For example, ESPN is an authority in sports, but if they publish on an unrelated technology trend, they will not have the topical authority to be seen in Google News.

Focus on freshness

Google states:

"The URLs used for web location sections should regularly link to fresh content. Since we look for content less than 90 days old, the site needs updates regularly."

Yet, XML sitemaps are limited to the last 48 hours.

A quick sampling on Google News surfaces will often be heavily biased to under 10 hours in the non-personalized and two days or under in the personalized placements. 

It's clear: the more recent the content, the higher chance of it being surfaced.

So when you see a piece of content bringing in significant sessions start to drop off, refresh it by doing a substantial update to the content. 

This could include adding fresh text, rewriting key elements (i.e., the title or subheading) or swapping out images or videos.

To get the page recrawled quickly, ensure the refresh triggers an update to the publication date on page and the last mod date in XML sitemaps and link the story from a prominent location such as the homepage or category page.

If you don't regain traction through republishing but know the user interest in the topic remains trending, publish a new article from a different angle to appeal to Google News's desire for diversity of content.

But don't be fooled. Freshness is not only about the publication date of an individual piece of content. They also factor in the overall brand. This is evidenced by numerous comments directly from Google:

• Within the Google News video content guidelines, they state that Google News is more likely to include content from YouTube channels that are updated regularly.
• In the News on Youtube help documentation, they comment, "our systems use various signals that may include channel quality and channel coverage of recent and relevant news events." 
• In a Google Search Central article, they mention sites that benefit from "having a consistent history of producing original news-related content."

So regular, relevant publishing is key.

Headlines matter

While Search results often display the <title> tag, Google News may use this, but more often will take the <h1> to use in the snippet. 

As such, it's vital to use relevant, entity-focused keywords in the headline and convey as much of the story as possible. 

Essentially, treat your on-site article or YouTube video headline similar to how you would a title tag – knowing they don't need to exactly match to rank, but there should be a strong correlation.

Google was uncharacteristically specific on headline requirements:

"Article titles should be at least 10 characters and between 2 and 22 words" and "Headlines should not exceed 110 characters." 

I say "was" because, in January, they removed the 110-character limit for the headline property in the Article structured data documentation, saying:

"There's no hard character limit; instead, we recommend that you write concise titles as long titles may be truncated on some devices." 

It's likely the best practice guideline has been forgotten in the update.

Witty puns or lengthy lead-in style headlines that work well offline will only confuse search engines that rely heavily on headlines to determine ranking. 

They are also less likely to win the click when directly competing for the user's attention on a surface like Google News. 

Focus on making headlines clear and compelling, using the active voice and present tense to increase CTR.

Understand the impact of Google News optimization

Just submitted a publication? Don't expect an immediate impact. 

Google News takes up to four weeks to review content after your first submission.

Once you're in, start by confirming how many URLs submitted to Google News are crawled and indexed from an article and video perspective.

This data is available in the indexing reports when you filter to your Google News sitemap.

When you then move on to try to understand how that content is performing in Google News, you hit challenges.

Google doesn't report its impact under clear line items but splits reporting over multiple sources or includes it in nondescript referrers and many other touchpoints.

As such, Google News surfaces don't receive as much credit as they deserve.

Nevertheless, use your data to understand topic coverage and hone your strategy.

Key takeaway

Don't try to be everything to everyone. Focus on your editorial specialties to establish E-E-A-T.

Put in place a strong technical foundation, then strategically publish on relevant trending topics to leverage the vast visibility of Google News.

The post How to master Google News optimization to boost content visibility and traffic appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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How to build a values-based agency that drives results

One of the best things about starting your own business is that you can set it up to reflect your values.

As a leader, you set the stage for:

• How the company will operate.
• The types of people you will hire.
• The clients you choose.
• How you partner with clients.

Our mission is centered on a fierce commitment to our values and passion for inspiring others. We are committed to earning the trust of our colleagues, communities, and clients by serving them authentically, graciously and humbly. Generosity is so central to who we are that we recently started a nonprofit.

It’s very different than many agencies that focus on creativity and “the work” in their purpose or mission statements – we want to be known for who we are more than what we do.

Want to build your own values-based agency?

Here’s how to ensure the values you set are infused within your organization.

Behavioral interviewing paired with insights

A solid values-based agency starts with hiring the right people and asking them the right questions.

My team asks questions about the candidate’s aptitude, abilities, and client management skills. 

As the person ultimately responsible for culture, I like to ask questions that give me a sense of who the person is. 

These include: “Have you ever been asked to do something that went against your sense of ethics?” and “What’s a common misconception about you?”

• We also use tools like StrengthsFinder to understand what makes the person tick and how they will fit with the rest of our team.

Protecting our values and shared culture means thinking more broadly than just who the prospective employee is. 

New hires must share the team’s values, complement our existing skillset and enhance the overall team and client experience.

In other words, we want people who can elevate culture while adding new skills to the team.

Having an infinite mindset

Short-term – or finite – thinking can lead people to compromise values they may otherwise hold strongly. 

As an agency leader, you must sometimes focus on short-term needs, like ensuring you have enough money for payroll. But if you’re the type of finite leader who hires and fires based on short-term needs, you’ll build a different culture than you might intend.

Ethical fading, or losing sight of ethical connotations of decisions, can creep in when people are only focused on the near term. Use an infinite mindset whenever possible to build a strong, high-performing, values-based agency.

An infinite mindset means focusing on a greater purpose and acknowledging that the goal of a business is to keep playing the game. The priority is building high-trust teams, understanding that you’ll often need to flex and adapt to stay in business, and respecting your worthy rivals.

Agencies may exhibit finite thinking when they lay people off quickly after losing a client or are solely focused on selling the agency.

Investing in leadership training and development

Most agencies ensure their people are great marketers and are up to speed on the latest tactics. That’s a given and should certainly be part of the marketing training curriculum.

However, investing in leadership training and development at all levels helps ensure your team knows what you truly value. As an agency leader, I see my role as developing the next generation of great leaders, not just the next generation of great marketers.

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Now that you know how to ensure values are engrained within your organization, how do you ensure that you're driving and getting the results for your agency by leading with values? 

It comes through receiving benefits in three key areas.

1. Employee retention

Digital marketers have a lot of choices regarding where to work. While the old perks like pool tables or happy hours used to matter, remote work has changed what drives employee satisfaction and retention.

The ability to leave home to pick up kids and perform some work off-hours. Believing in the company's values and having systems that allow employees to feel connected to their colleagues. These are all important.

Employee turnover is disruptive both to the company and its clients.

Our turnover is less than half of the norm. I attribute this to leading our people with clarity of our values and setting them up as best as possible to lean into them. 

Are we perfect? No. But with values and purpose as a focus, it helps keep employees around longer than the norm.

The alignment of values is key to building a mutual foundation of trust between employees and an agency. It also helps make bonding easier among employees.

2. Client satisfaction

Clients appreciate values such as transparency, humility, and gratitude.

Building trusted relationships and managing their accounts by a strong values-based group leads to higher client satisfaction and retention.

Of course, the marketers must be managing accounts well – that's table stakes. 

Building deep relationships builds a shared commitment and vision. It helps create an "us" mentality with the client and agency as a team, as opposed to the common "them" or "vendor" relationship.

One other benefit of building deep relationships? As your client partners leave for other companies, there's a good chance they will bring you.

3. Increased innovation

Values-led organizations tend to create psychological safety. This means a safe environment exists for individuals to share their thoughts and ideas with leaders. 

Innovation must not be limited to new strategies and tactics – it can be new processes or feedback on what types of services the agency should start or stop offering.

Innovation can be team-based, as well. This can lead to employees being heard and feeling valued, something which will also play into retention

I hope that these views on building a strong values-based culture help you strengthen your agency to drive the results you seek.

The post How to build a values-based agency that drives results appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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