Our meme of the week: Major ouch!

📰 News & updates

Google unplugs “Notes on search”: It’s ending May 2024.

Google updates Merchant Center product data specifications: A whole bunch of changes, including new product data specification attributes for AI-generated content in Shopping Ads and free listings, new loyalty program attribute, new minimum price attribute, and more.

Google CEO on the evolution of search: Sundar Pichai says Google Search will continue to evolve in the direction of Search Generative Experience.

🔝 SEO

HARO has been dead for a while: Like anything, it used to work. But like anything, marketers ruined it. 

The sea of sameness problem in content marketing and SEO: Wil Reynolds decided to stop thinking like an SEO. He rationalized that great content has benefits beyond search traffic; it helps with brand uplift, gets shared, and can be boosted with paid. He decided to make something truly unique and helpful. And it worked! (Initially, his blog post declined from #3 to #10, but later on, it went back up to #1.) Funnily enough, he still had to leave about 10% of the original “copycat” post at the bottom to prove to Google it was thematically relevant.

💻 Digital marketing

Best of Ahrefs’ Digest (March 2024): Meta, but these are my favorite articles from the Digest in March 2024. ICYMI.

Distribution is king: “Long-term enterprise value—that is, building a big business—is only possible by having a differentiated way of getting that great product to a customer. The channel through which users receive and access content matters most.”

Till next time ;)
Cheers,