In an AI World, Is SEO Dead?

[00:00:00] It is Wednesday, May 15th.

[00:00:03] Today search in the AI age how Google's plans might change the SEO industry forever.

[00:00:11] Why you might be overthinking brand safety, the surprising advice Instagram has for your

[00:00:16] Reels and Reddit gets sued by one of its advertisers.

[00:00:21] I'm Tod Maffin, that's ahead today in Digital Marketing.

[00:00:26] There was a time when SEO was simple.

[00:00:29] You just decide on a keyword you wanted to rank for, say personal injury lawyer, and

[00:00:34] you'd spam that on all your webpages.

[00:00:37] But Google caught on.

[00:00:39] So then we started putting our keywords in the footer of our webpages in tiny print

[00:00:43] with the font color the same as the background.

[00:00:46] There was the keywords in the headers trick, the keyword in the meta description trick,

[00:00:50] which actually never worked, and on and on.

[00:00:54] Google had some tricks up its sleeves too.

[00:00:57] Perhaps the one that shook up the SEO industry the most was its pivot to the so-called zero

[00:01:01] click strategy.

[00:01:03] You'd search for how old is Vin Diesel, and it would give you the answer at the

[00:01:07] top of the search results page.

[00:01:10] He's 56 by the way.

[00:01:11] No clicking required, although at least there were some search results pages below

[00:01:15] if you wanted to dive deeper.

[00:01:18] Now the SEO industry may be facing its most challenging period ever.

[00:01:24] Being simply cut out of the loop and replaced by AI.

[00:01:29] Think of it like those zero click summaries, but smarter, more personalized to the searcher,

[00:01:34] and more detailed.

[00:01:36] This has been in testing under the name search generative experience for a year.

[00:01:40] It's rolling out in full in the US this week.

[00:01:44] Wired magazine tested this new version of Google.

[00:01:46] Here's what they found.

[00:01:47] Quote, in response to the query, where is the best place for me to see the Northern

[00:01:52] Google will instead of listing web pages, tell you in authoritative text that the best

[00:01:58] places to see the Northern Lights, aka the Aurora Borealis are in the Arctic Circle

[00:02:04] in places with minimal light pollution.

[00:02:06] It will also offer a link to Nordic visitor.com.

[00:02:10] But then the AI continues yapping on below that saying other places to see the Northern

[00:02:16] Lights include Russia and Canada's Northwest Territories, unquote.

[00:02:20] Not to mention AI sometimes just makes things up.

[00:02:25] Last year, a writer for the Atlantic asked Google to name an African country beginning

[00:02:29] with the letter K. Google's AI, which to be fair was using chat GPT at the time,

[00:02:35] couldn't even come up with Kenya.

[00:02:39] While there are 54 recognized countries in Africa, it said none of them begin with

[00:02:44] the letter K.

[00:02:45] The closest is Kenya, which starts with a K sound but is actually spelled with a K

[00:02:52] sound.

[00:02:53] It's always interesting to learn new trivia facts like this, unquote.

[00:02:59] So how do brands get their content in front of people if Google is simply copying what

[00:03:04] you have on your site and showing that to people?

[00:03:08] Is SEO as we know it today dead?

[00:03:12] No, absolutely not.

[00:03:13] Tom Kapper leads the search science team at Moz, one of the oldest and most respected

[00:03:18] SEO platforms.

[00:03:19] I spoke with him earlier today.

[00:03:21] People have been predicting the death of SEO.

[00:03:22] It's kind of a joke within the industry like SEO is dead for a long, long time.

[00:03:27] Some people might remember when featured snippets came out and again you had this

[00:03:31] sort of suddenly this thing at the top of search results that was pushing the

[00:03:34] organic down and there was a lot of doom saying I would see this moment as quite

[00:03:37] similar to that one where it's going to change SEO but it's not going to kill it.

[00:03:42] So actually people are still looking to Google and similar platforms to find

[00:03:47] businesses, to find services and there are still ways to win at that game or not.

[00:03:52] When Google returns these AI generated results they do come with source links.

[00:03:57] Is there anything that marketers can do to optimize their webpages so that we

[00:04:00] get into these AI generated answers and become a source link?

[00:04:04] It's kind of like you know it's not perfect but at least we can get something.

[00:04:07] Can we do anything to optimize our pages for that?

[00:04:10] I almost want to say don't try to optimize for it as it is now because this is going to change too rapidly

[00:04:17] and I'm not sure like I say because of the kinds of places where these appear.

[00:04:21] Google says they're driving clicks.

[00:04:24] I want to wait and see on that.

[00:04:25] I'm really not convinced that these results are driving that much traffic to websites.

[00:04:29] So I don't think it's a great use of your time right now to be trying to appear in these results.

[00:04:36] AI of course hallucinates and makes things up.

[00:04:39] What can we do if Google's AI results at the top of the search pages get something about our brand wrong?

[00:04:46] Right now there's not a lot you can do about it.

[00:04:47] Obviously you can robots.txt block the AI.

[00:04:50] Google has a Google Extended User Agent which you can block which means that their model

[00:04:55] can't ingest information from your site but that doesn't mean that they can't hallucinate

[00:04:59] about your brand because your brand is mentioned in all kinds of places.

[00:05:03] Right now I would say there is nothing you can do and that is a problem.

[00:05:06] I wish there were a tag that said no hallucinate we could put in our meta tags.

[00:05:10] Yeah don't mention me or something like this but even then would you take that?

[00:05:14] Probably not right?

[00:05:15] Like you'd rather you don't want to completely exclude yourself from being listed in like

[00:05:19] a list of products or something like this so yeah it's tricky.

[00:05:22] Long term was this the right play for Google?

[00:05:26] I'm surprised I think this is a misstep under investor pressure basically.

[00:05:31] There's a lot of pressure on Google right now to be appearing to match

[00:05:34] and compete with what OpenAI and Microsoft are doing but I don't think this is an

[00:05:39] improvement either for Google or for their users.

[00:05:43] My main worry for SEO is not that SEO becomes an irrelevant tactic or something like this.

[00:05:50] It's that Google may destroy their own moat here.

[00:05:53] There is a danger here to the ecosystem as a whole if Google is making big missteps

[00:06:00] and this looks like it might be one.

[00:06:03] Tom Clapper is the senior search scientist at Moz.com.

[00:06:07] Our whole conversation was about 15 minutes you can watch the whole thing

[00:06:10] unedited in our newsletter today which is at todayindigital.com

[00:06:15] slash newsletter I'm going to give the last word to Wired magazine who today wrote

[00:06:20] quote it's as though Google took the index cards for the screenplay it's been writing

[00:06:24] for the past 25 years and tossed them in the air to see where the cards might fall.

[00:06:30] Also the screenplay was written by AI.

[00:06:39] Brand safety on social media platforms has largely been an effort in keeping

[00:06:43] bad things away from your brand.

[00:06:45] You don't want a neo-nazi post above your Facebook ad of course but some brand safety

[00:06:50] tools even let you keep some space between your content and whole swaths of topic.

[00:06:55] War, politics, crime and so on.

[00:06:59] How much does this actually matter?

[00:07:02] A new report from the Stagwell agency called the future of news ad adjacency study finds that

[00:07:08] maybe we've been worrying too much.

[00:07:11] Stagwell in collaboration with major media publications like the New York Times and the

[00:07:14] Wall Street Journal tested this with 50,000 American adults.

[00:07:18] The research focused on whether ads appearing alongside news topics considered unsafe like

[00:07:25] crime inflation conflict in the Middle East and political stories about Donald Trump and

[00:07:29] Joe Biden influenced consumer behavior differently compared to ads placed next to so-called

[00:07:36] safe topics like entertainment and sports.

[00:07:39] Study participants were exposed to real news stories from these publishers accompanied by

[00:07:45] ads from well-known brands.

[00:07:47] Participants were then asked to rate their likelihood of purchasing from the featured

[00:07:50] brands and their overall perception of these companies.

[00:07:54] Contrary to what we marketers have believed for generations,

[00:07:58] the findings reveal that the nature of the news content, whether deemed unsafe or safe,

[00:08:04] had no noticeable effect on participants' willingness to buy or even their favorable

[00:08:10] views towards the brands.

[00:08:12] Even the cohorts that some people believe to be particularly sensitive to hot topics,

[00:08:17] Gen Z and mothers, had minimal difference.

[00:08:21] Quoting business insider, quote, the report has encouraging potential for advertisers.

[00:08:26] Ad rates run much higher on sports and entertainment stories,

[00:08:30] and so if it is indeed the case that hard news doesn't actually hurt brands,

[00:08:36] then ads on news would be a cost-effective addition to a portfolio, unquote.

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[00:09:47] Instagram says you might be working too hard on your brand's reels,

[00:09:51] making them longer than you should.

[00:09:54] The company says reels longer than 90 seconds can actually hurt your reach.

[00:09:59] The information came from a presentation that Instagram's content team showed at a creator

[00:10:03] event in New York last week.

[00:10:05] One slide in particular listed things that can help distribution and things that can hurt it.

[00:10:10] What helps?

[00:10:11] Driving authentic engagement, considering when your audience is online,

[00:10:15] uploading the highest resolution, and posting your content at the same time as other platforms.

[00:10:22] We'll come back to that.

[00:10:24] Engagement bait, reels longer than 90 seconds, videos with third party watermarks,

[00:10:30] low quality videos, and content that you didn't make.

[00:10:34] Most of these are evergreen advice points, but the one that stood out for me was the

[00:10:38] one about posting at the same time as when you post your updates on other platforms.

[00:10:42] Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today speculates this might be due to broader

[00:10:46] branding and generating all the discussion at one time.

[00:10:50] The one about the 90 seconds is also a surprise.

[00:10:54] Quoting Andrew's piece,

[00:10:55] It begs the question why would Instagram even let you post reels longer than 90 seconds if

[00:11:00] people don't want to watch them?

[00:11:02] To clarify, the current maximum posting length for reels created within the app

[00:11:08] is 90 seconds, but you can upload longer clips.

[00:11:12] Instagram has been experimenting with 3-minute and 10-minute reels uploads,

[00:11:17] though evidently those experiments haven't been going great given that it's advising

[00:11:22] people not to do so.

[00:11:23] Either way, it's a relevant note which could impact your posting approach.

[00:11:32] A Reddit advertiser is taking the company to court claiming Reddit sold ads without

[00:11:37] being able to show that real people were clicking on them.

[00:11:41] Quoting the Register

[00:11:42] The complaint was filed this week in a US federal court in Northern California on

[00:11:46] behalf of Levelfields, a Virginia-based investment research platform.

[00:11:50] It says the business booked pay-per-click ads on the discussion site starting September 2022.

[00:11:56] As the name suggests, the advertiser pays a little bit for every click on one of its ads.

[00:12:02] That arrangement called for Reddit to use reasonable means to ensure that Levelfield's

[00:12:07] ads were delivered to and clicked on by actual people rather than bots and the likes.

[00:12:13] But according to the complaint, Reddit broke that contract.

[00:12:18] Specifically, this company asked Reddit for the IP addresses of everyone who clicked on the ads.

[00:12:23] Reddit did provide a click log, but it didn't have any IP addresses.

[00:12:28] Levelfield says either Reddit has them and isn't giving it to them for some nefarious

[00:12:33] purposes or they don't even have the IP addresses which would be even worse from

[00:12:38] a security standpoint.

[00:12:40] In a financial disclosure filing, Reddit said,

[00:12:43] To help advertisers understand if their reach was effective, we offer solutions

[00:12:47] such as Oracle Moat-Verified Viewability,

[00:12:50] Audience Verification through NC Solutions, and Double Verify for Fraud.

[00:12:55] While we invest in efforts to detect and prevent inauthentic content or invalid traffic,

[00:13:00] including investments in proprietary technologies to detect and address content and vote

[00:13:04] manipulation, we may be unable to adequately detect and prevent such abuses.

[00:13:10] Levelfield is asking a judge to certify its claim as a class action.

[00:13:15] According to a recent Juniper research study,

[00:13:18] more than $1 in $5 spent on ads last year was lost to click fraud.

[00:13:29] And that will bring us to another episode of

[00:13:31] Who's Copying Who?

[00:13:33] And today, TikTok is copying Instagram again and Instagram is copying Be Real again.

[00:13:41] First, TikTok is getting ready to release a new collaboration function in the app.

[00:13:45] If the backend code is anything to go by, it'll let you tag collaborators on a post

[00:13:50] which will then show their profiles on your post in a little pop-up window.

[00:13:54] So far, the code reveals that creators will be able to invite up to five other accounts

[00:13:58] to make a collaboration post.

[00:14:00] You will be able to approve collaborator listings.

[00:14:03] You can also decline invitations from posts that you don't want to be a part of

[00:14:08] and you can remove yourself even if the post with your brand name has already gone live.

[00:14:13] You'll be able to invite other accounts to collab up to four times each month.

[00:14:18] So yeah, it's basically a photocopy of Instagram's collaborative posts function

[00:14:21] with a couple of small tweaks.

[00:14:23] It's not out yet, but looks like it'll be coming pretty soon.

[00:14:26] Also, Instagram is turning to an app that's sort of dormant for inspiration

[00:14:31] and it's not the first time.

[00:14:33] They're working on something called Peak,

[00:14:35] which will let users share a quick unedited unfiltered picture of themselves.

[00:14:39] This is right out of the Be Real app playbook, of course.

[00:14:43] The photo then shows up in their friends inboxes

[00:14:46] and those friends will be able to view it only once before it disappears.

[00:14:50] And finally, Google is launching a new feature that will show you search results

[00:14:55] from the world wide web.

[00:14:59] Here's how this groundbreaking feature works.

[00:15:01] You type in something you're searching for

[00:15:03] and Google will show you a list of web pages.

[00:15:07] I know, right?

[00:15:09] With those search terms in it.

[00:15:12] And if you're thinking right now,

[00:15:14] come on, that's how you do it.

[00:15:17] And if you're thinking right now,

[00:15:19] come on, that's how Google works right now.

[00:15:22] Is it?

[00:15:24] Because nowadays when you search Google,

[00:15:26] you get all sorts of crap at the top.

[00:15:28] Videos, knowledge panels, images, Reddit posts from 2009,

[00:15:32] sponsored carousels, map locations,

[00:15:35] soon AI summaries and maybe somewhere at the bottom, web pages.

[00:15:41] Maybe.

[00:15:42] So Google is bringing back the web search,

[00:15:45] a clean simple list of web pages with a lot of junk removed.

[00:15:50] Specifically knowledge panels, featured snippets,

[00:15:54] shopping modules and these new AI summaries.

[00:15:58] You might have to go hunting for it.

[00:15:59] Sometimes it's a filter along the top.

[00:16:01] More often than that, it's buried under the more link.

[00:16:04] I will say this, the grumpy old man in me is please.

[00:16:10] Please.

[00:16:14] So some interesting family news,

[00:16:15] we have a new addition to our family, a puppy.

[00:16:18] Puppy that, well, listen, I have never had a puppy before.

[00:16:22] I've never had a dog before I met my wife

[00:16:24] and she came with our previous miniature schnauzer who died last October.

[00:16:29] And I missed all of the puppy stuff.

[00:16:32] We never had dogs when I was growing up.

[00:16:33] We were a cat family.

[00:16:35] Let me tell you something.

[00:16:38] Puppies are another thing entirely.

[00:16:40] People who own dogs, who own puppies and train them from the beginning,

[00:16:43] well, I guess understand this.

[00:16:45] I had no idea.

[00:16:47] The big fight right now, we have a cat,

[00:16:50] is to prevent the puppy from eating the cat's poop out of the litter box.

[00:16:57] It's just, it's gross.

[00:16:58] It's gross.

[00:16:59] He's also, she's a dashing and miniature schnauzer cross.

[00:17:04] So she has a lot of like terrier kind of in her.

[00:17:07] She's really good at finding things.

[00:17:10] I didn't expect this Christmas ornaments from behind the sofa.

[00:17:14] This morning she walked up to me.

[00:17:15] I could see something white in her mouth.

[00:17:17] She dropped it on the floor.

[00:17:18] It was an ear pod, air pod.

[00:17:20] What do they call those? Air pods.

[00:17:21] It was an air pod that she'd picked up that I'll be, you know, I'll be honest.

[00:17:26] I actually lost that like a month ago.

[00:17:28] She found it.

[00:17:29] I'm so glad she didn't swallow it.

[00:17:30] She seems to just want to bring it to us.

[00:17:32] So it's kind of, and my wife is the expert in all of these things.

[00:17:37] We just got the new puppy two days ago

[00:17:39] and this morning my wife left for a business trip for three days.

[00:17:43] So it's me, the cat, and this new puppy.

[00:17:48] Please send thoughts and prayers.

[00:17:50] I'll see you tomorrow.

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