Can They Really Get Rid of Parasite SEO? 🤔 (no)

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that’s got the low-down on Google (the publisher)’s exciting new content strategy:

(h/t @CyrusSheperd)

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ Reddit Cheats on Google w/ OpenAI 👀

→ ROI Wars: YouTube vs. Facebook ⚔️

→ Can They Really Get Rid of Parasite SEO? 🤔 (no)

→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️

On this Week’s video, I got to share my findings and thoughts on Google AI overview. And from the findings, it seems that the current trend is not looking good for buyer intent keywords. Google may be showing direct e-commerce sites for certain search queries, potentially leading to a decrease in click-through rates for affiliates. Therefore, affiliates may need to adjust their strategies in light of this change.

​YouTube​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ The March core update started a few months ago, but its impacts are still causing new headaches on the daily. Here’s Semrush’s recent analysis by Mordy Oberstein, after the fact.

This report discusses at length how “the current way of assessing helpfulness within the Google algorithm is founded on the HCU,” making some sense of Google’s fun new buzzwords- and the wild claim that it “effectively removed 45% of unhelpful results from the SERP” in the process.

→ Travel content publishers have been pretty concerned with Google’s recent shenanigans, and turns out they’re not wrong. Here’s a case of a travel writer living in Bali getting fully bumped from the top of the SERPs because her content isn’t as “helpful” as the “idiotic auto-generated responses” Google’s dropping.

→ You heard it here first: Parasite SEO will never die.

→ If you would prefer not to let Google use your content for AI Overviews, here’s an in-depth guide to keeping them from using your content by utilizing Google Search controls.

AI Insight 🤖

→ Looks like Reddit is two-timing Google— OpenAI and Reddit just signed a training data deal. Here are the 3 biggest elements of the move:

- “OpenAI will access Reddit’s Data API, which provides real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit”

- “This partnership will also enable Reddit to bring new AI-powered features to redditors and mods. Reddit will be building on OpenAI’s platform of AI models to bring its powerful vision to life”

- “OpenAI will become a Reddit advertising partner”

Maybe this will be what ends Reddit's SERP dominance. Stay tuned for the next update.

→ Everyone’s been taking shots at the rancid state of Search lately, but the shade is a little shadier coming from its newest rival: Perplexity. Perplexity’s CEO roasted Google, saying: “There’s ads, there’s panels, there’s links, all sorts of things in one single UI; it’s pretty complicated… When you don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to do, you keep changing it.” Fire.

→ This week’s edition of AI headline of the week: “Why the OpenAI team in charge of safeguarding humanity imploded.” Some news cycles really make OpenAI sound like a soap opera, man.

→ On a more practical note, OpenAI is introducing a feature: “interactive tables and charts along with the ability to add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive into ChatGPT.”

→ Steve Liu at SearchEngineLand just shared some insight into the question of “who will win the AI wars?” Interesting think-piece on why each of the major players still has some work to do.

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ The team at MarketingCharts.com unpacked a recent Hubspot report on Social Media Trends that came up with some killer insights.

In terms of B2C marketing, YouTube trails only Facebook in use, while it trails both Facebook and Instagram re: B2B marketing. And yet, among polled marketers:

- 23% say YouTube brings them the most engagement, ahead of Facebook (22%)
- 27% say YouTube has the best audience targeting tools, ahead of Facebook (26%), and way ahead of Instagram (19%)
- Finally, YouTube rose 11% YOY from 14% to 25% to overtake Facebook as the platform offering the highest ROI, which dropped to 22%

While the margins are narrow, YouTube is on the rise in many important categories, while Facebook seems to be on a slight decline from its dominance.

→ YouTube announced some fresh ad offerings, like branded QR codes and more, at the annual Brandcast. Hot topics included creator influence and the platform’s strong viewership metrics.

→ The X.com rebrand is complete, here’s a dive into the migration details.

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

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