Marketing Letter - 🔥 Google Gets Clapped Back

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that makes it easy as 1,2,3

Just gotta sign that “Helpful Contract”

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ Google Gets Clapped Back 🔥
→ Writing the Right Way w/ Generative AI🤖
→ Why Facebook Still Matters for Marketers📈
→ How and When to React to Google Updates 👀
→ TikTok Pushing E-Commerce, Longer Videos 🕰️
→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️

In this week's video, I got to share my experience on how we recovered from the Google spam update and how we removed the manual penalty from our accounts. In addition, I also talked about some of the sites that got rejected and approved. Come through.

​YouTube​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ After 2+ weeks, the Spam update is finally done rolling out. The spam update was built around three new policies: "scaled content abuse, "expired domain abuse," and "site reputation abuse," and featured both algorithmic updates and manual penalties. While AI-generated content, expired domain misuse, and authority abuse are the targets named, many caught strays. Plus, the core update- which aims to integrate "Helpful Content" evaluations into the core algorithm- is still rolling along.

→ In terms of the manual penalties, they’re being described as “incredibly harsh” with “insane” drops. Some of us know too well.

→ If you’re done listening to Google’s talking heads, I get that, but FWIW the current line on making changes re: recent updates is: “let the update complete before deciding if there are any fundamental changes you might want to make.”

→ In times like these, it’s worth going back to Mike King’s “evergreen” analysis on How to React to Algorithm Updates. Published 4 years ago, he says it’s best to observe for 2 weeks before auditing, and only then should you assess your roadmap and build a plan of action.

→ If you’ve been clapped by Google, it might provide a bit of relief to know they just got clapped by France, to the tune of about $270M.

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ TikTok keeps pushing e-commerce, making selling “easier than ever.” Video Shopping Ads are now available globally and carousels and product tiles are being made very easily available for your product catalog. There's also a "Shop Now" CTA in the carousel ads. Early returns look solid, according to the release: “With Carousel, you can drive a 2x increase in CTR and 292% CTA ROAS lift for retargeting. With Product Tiles, we’ve seen a 14% CTR Increase and 3.2% ROAS Lift compared to Product Cards alone.”

For these updates and more, check the release.

→ Speaking of TikTok, it’s updated its monetization strategy (the Creator Rewards Program) and brought its Creativity Program out of Beta. According to Social Media Today, “the program is designed to ensure creators get paid for uploading high-quality, longer content, with only videos over a minute long eligible for participation.”

→ Meta is down bad in the EU, offering to (basically) halve Facebook & Instagram monthly fees for its ad-free service.

→ If you’re anything like… well, basically everybody else, you haven’t been paying attention to Threads, but they’ve finally added a “Trending Topics” feature. lol.

→ If Facebook seems less relevant than ever, the data in this piece might convince you not to ditch it just yet:

“- Facebook has a 66.23% market share worldwide among leading social media platforms
- Meta earned $134.9 billion in revenue in 2023
- 64.79% of web traffic referrals originate from Facebook
- Facebook has an average daily user count of 2.11 billion
- Facebook ads have an average click-through rate of 2.5%”

→ YouTube is testing out a crowd-sourced captions improvement: “viewer-suggested corrections to auto-generated captions on desktop.” Crowd-sourced captions on the internet? What could go wrong!

AI Insight 🤖

→ If you’re interested in what’s brewing at OpenAI, Lex Fridman’s interview with Sam Altman is a must-watch (or must-read if you’d prefer to scan the transcript). Sam A claims he doesn't want to make a better version of Google Search, but beat it out more substantively because "maybe there’s just some much better way to help people find and act on and synthesize information." While he admits that he- nor anybody else- has "cracked the code" to AI Search, there are some big clues as to what he sees it as looking like-- including a vision where user interactions aren't sold to advertisers. Again, worth checking out.

→ Here’s a helpful guide on when (and when not) to integrate generative AI into your content-writing practice. For example, brainstorming and ideation, researching and gathering information, expanding on ideas or creating rough drafts, and content improvement are all roles AI can play well. That being said, it's also important to: focus on prompt engineering, use critical thinking and editing, incorporate the human touch, and develop clear expectations.

Jacky Chou​
Founder of Indexsy
hello@indexsy.com
Let's Connect on Twitter👇

​​

1238 Seymour Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 6J3
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​