Hiya,

This week’s theme in digital marketing: Humans being the curators, the tasteful eyes, of AI work.

With that said, let’s dive in.

We have a 21st-century gold rush… in content creation. 

While AI provides speed and efficiency at levels never thought possible, it does have a tendency to spew AI slop, or as I like to call it, “fool’s gold”. It means we need higher standards of taste when we work with AI in the content creation process.

Learn how to distinguish the good from the meh ideas when it comes to AI’s usage in content creation. It starts with two questions:

• How Should I Use AI for this Piece of Content? Discuss the three considerations that should be weighed before AI is used: outside circumstances, resources, and the creativity/efficiency dynamic.
• Is This Content Idea Worth Pursuing or Just Fool’s Gold? Then, we’ll learn to distinguish the metaphorical pyrite (fool’s gold) from the gold nuggets surrounding content creation processes in the AI age.

• ChatGPT removed the UTM tracking parameter with the release of GPT-6. Since Oct 10th, ChatGPT-driven sessions have been going into the direct traffic bucket. We noticed some traffic has been gradually coming back this week (Profound said they noticed traffic coming back as early as the 16th), so when/if you see a sudden drop in ChatGPT referrals this month, you know why.

• This Search Engine Journal article is predicting another major Panda-like Google Algorithm Update before the end of the year. Before you start doomsdaying, weigh the insights of this paragraph against your current AEO best practices:
  “Google’s guidance on AI content now says it is critical to manually fact-check and review everything generated before publishing, including titles, meta descriptions, structured data, and alt text, while the helpful-content guidelines have been given new language that defines main content and names the four things quality raters look for – effort, originality, talent or skill, and accuracy.”
  … You should easily survive this predicted update if you are following these guidelines. If not, try realigning your work flow (even if the update never happens).

• Bing Webmaster Tools announced the expansion of its AI Performance section to include a Beta version of what it is calling “Topic Porfolio”. It aims to provide a broader thematic view of how AI “sees” your website. It shows clusters of topics of related grounding queries where your site appears, the approximate size of topic citations, the approximate number of websites appearing in citations for this topic, and the number of distinct queries of this topic. It goes further to identify Top Opportunity Queries with citation ranges based on the topic data it has. Some initial DBE notes/considerations:
  • This data is still based on Copilot data only. We have already been reporting on Copilot Grounding Queries data which can show high volumes of impressions that we don’t see converting into actual clicks (based on GA4 data).
  • A quick review of Opportunity Queries, suggested for a few of our clients, shows many queries that are very broad in nature and/or not necessarily relevant to the products/services that they offer.

• Google Discover may be transforming from a feed of content you might be interested in to a “proactive, hyper-personalized concierge experience that helps users make progress on their goals” (according to a job posting for a Principal, UX, Search Discover). If true, it’s bad news for the news publishers who rely on the current feed for traffic. Whether it will aid consumers in their consumptive journey remains to be seen. 

• After attending the NJ Digital Marketing Conference, I realized there was an overarching theme connecting every panelist and speaker: AI can do so much of our work, but one thing it does not have is taste. That’s where humans come in. We can distinguish what is AI slop (or “fool’s gold”) and we are the crucial eyes needed to review AI’s work.

• LinkedIn, X, and Threads posts containing links got 1/12th the impressions according to Rand Fishkin’s analysis on his own social channels. Other larger-scale studies say the engagement declines for posts with external links are not as dramatic. This is a reminder that native posts are necessary and crucial to a fully-formed social strategy.

The more you spend time in nature, you realize how connected we are to our environment and there are so many ways we need to protect it. The Center for Biological Diversity is helping by guarding endangered species. From legislation to media outreach to scientific analysis, they have their hands in a slew of species conservation efforts. Learn more today: Center for Biological Diversity. 

Best Wishes 🌠

Natalie

We discussed how you are the strategist… the tastemaker… the critical eye of AI. You are the difference between mediocre and “wow.”

With all this intelligent accessibility at our fingertips, wield your power with thoughtfulness and pizazz. 🙂