Hiya,

Just a few stories for you today, but they’re good ones!

• Bing Beta Bulletin: Bing Webmaster Tools launched a new “AI Performance Dashboard” section in beta last week. It’s a good step forward in AI citations measurement but it comes with some caveats in this early stage:
  • Data is limited to Copilot and Bing Search platforms — no ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.
  • November 2025 is the farthest the data goes back.
  • Only citation appearances are reported — no clicks, CTR, or Avg. Position. Also, citations may be acknowledgment of sources for the content presented and not necessarily links to that content.
  • It shows which pages on your website were cited.
  • The data shows “Grounding Queries” that Copilot used to retrieve the cited content — not the actual user prompts.
  • Still, we’re very excited by this new tool and are already exploring ways it can be used to track SAIO success as well as guide future optimizations. Here are links to more coverage from Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Roundtable.

• It’s been over a week since the Super Bowl. Which ads do you remember, and do you remember the brands the ads were for? Chances are the ad had a celebrity (or more) in it. Tom Fishbourne’s Marketoonist has an amusing take and the accompanying story is a good read about the importance of “fluency” — the accuracy and speed of brand recognition.

• Turning articles into short-form videos sounds like a great idea. (But how do you do it?) Here are some hot tips from SEJ:
  • How-tos, listicles, FAQs and case studies naturally lend themselves to videos.
  • Some tried-and-true hooks include a surprising stat, question, or direct stake.
  • Don’t forget to include related keywords in captions, on-screen text, hashtags, etc. for SEO purposes!

• When you hear the word “elite,” how do you react? What connotation do you glean? In her recent Fortune article, Alexa Beck, co-founder and managing partner of Quick Study, dives into American culture’s paradoxical love-hate relationship with elitism. She gives practical advice on how luxury brands should be marketed to signal status through confidence and authenticity instead of pretense. Luxury brand marketers… you should read this!

Their mission is to “provide free coats to children and adults in need while promoting volunteerism and environmental sustainability.” One Warm Coat is a national nonprofit that holds coat drives and donations to protect people from the cold. They repurpose used outwear to stay as sustainable as possible. We’re sure you’ll warm up to their mission. Visit their website: One Warm Coat.

Scientists still don’t agree on how the sport of curling works.

How and why do the stones curl the opposite direction of their launch? Regular stones don’t do that. Over a hundred years of research cannot explain it.

My perspective? This is modern magic. We’ve explained so many things in our world. We know the sun rises from the rotation of planets. We know deciduous trees unfurl their leaves based on the amount of daylight they receive.

A little mystery is good for us… keeps us wondering… keeps us discovering… keeps us creative. 💭

Keep on swimmin’ y’all!

Natalie

Did you catch the 2 sprinklings of a movie reference throughout the lower half of this edition? 

Well, here are some fun facts about the film!