Marketing Letter - 👀 The MF Who Ruined Search

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that’s here to spill the tea about this mf:

shoutout Niche Twin Mike / @NicheDown​

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ The MF Who Ruined Search 👀

→ Major Moves in Reddit Advertising 🤔

→ An AI-Powered Search Option That Could Beat Google?🤖

→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️​

In today's episode, I can't help but feel excited about the new course I'm launching. It's been a long time coming, and after seeing my revenue take a hit, I knew I needed an alternative source of income. So, here we are. Tune in.

​​YouTube​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

Good news, y’all— no links needed, good vibes only.

→ Zero chance you missed this if you’re as online as I am (but if you’re… y’know, normal… maybe you did), but Ed Zitron’s “The Man Who Killed Google Search” article is creating tons of buzz. For the TLDR crowd, here’s what you gotta know:

- Prabhakar Raghavan stands accused of making Search worse to make the company more money
- he was Yahoo's ex-head of Search, overseeing a 30.4% to 13.4% search engine share decline
- he’s responsible for the "more queries" push @ Google Search
- he also called the infamous "Code Yellow" responsible for getting Google's Search team deeper in bed w/ Ads revenue
- the shift from Exact Match to "Exact Meaning Match" was a giant F-U to advertisers
- tons more, it’s about a 15-minute read

IMO it’s hard to pin this sh*t-show on just one guy, but it’s always fun to have a donkey to pin the tail on. FWIW— Ed Zitron also posted a thread walking through his major points.

→ Speak of the devil, Raghavan recently told Google employees that the “search division faces a new operating reality with fewer resources and increased competition,” and as such Google plans to “shorten project deadlines to accelerate responsiveness.” It's reasonable to expect more Google updates, more frequently, and other weird bumps in the road that will f*** up your SEO strategy. Buckle up.

→ Asking the question “Are Site Migrations Essentially Equal?”, this piece takes a look at J-Mu’s attempt to explain a bizarre domain migration experience which saw “domain name migrations between multiple language versions of the same website turned out vastly different even though the same process was followed for each of three websites.”

AI Insight 🤖

→ If you’re looking for an AI-powered Search option w/ zero ties to Google, here’s a look at Perplexity, a self-described “AI-powered Swiss Army Knife for information discovery and curiosity” that utilizes its own model as well as ChatGPT 3.5. There’s also a premium version that “includes access to GPT-4, Claude 3, Mistral Large, and an Experimental Perplexity Model.”

→ Alright this one is just good content— if you wanna see where generative AI deepfakes are at, watch this interview between Reid Hoffman and, well, Reid Hoffman.

→ Zuck says it’s gonna take Meta “years” to start making money on generative AI, with the general theme sounding something like “the generative AI gold rush is underway — just don’t expect it to create profits anytime soon.” Funny, bc some of us are already cashing in. Guess Zuck is just built different (worse).”

Social Media Round-up 📲

Reddit’s “Dynamic Product Ads”

→ Reddit is “expanding its shopping ecosystem” w/ Dynamic Product Ads. Wondering WTF that means? Well, they’re ads that let you showcase your product via related subreddits, which ideally helps reach the many consumers who turn to Reddit for product recommendations.

To hype this up, Reddit offers some solid stats:

- an average of 40% of new conversations are related to purchase decisions and product categories

- 75% of shoppers say they can have genuine discussions about what products or brands to try on Reddit

- in one use case, Dynamic Product Ads drove a +122% increase in ROAS

Worth looking into FR.

→ SocialMediaToday.com’s analysis of Meta’s 2024 Q1 report. Worth noting that Meta is no longer isolating Facebook’s user numbers, but has amalgamated all app usage into the
“Meta Family Daily Active People (DAP)” metrics, which, FWIW, sits at 3.24 billion (previously: 3.19 billion).

Meta’s growth extends to revenue, too, w/ $36.46 billion for the quarter, a 27% YOY increase.

It wasn’t all growth tho, w/ Reality Labs costing Meta $3.8 billion in the quarter. Those headsets will be catching on any day, for sure… … … …

→ The TikTok ban may actually, finally, be happening— here’s a look at how Meta, Google, Snap, and Amazon all specifically benefit.

→ X is apparently on the verge of announcing a TV app for videos, aimed at bringing “real-time, engaging content to your smart TVs.” According to Yacc, it’ll feature a Trending Video Algorithm, AI-Powered Topics, Cross-Device Compatibility, "Enhanced" Video Search, and "Effortless Casting."

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

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