🤖 Google: AI Overviews Ads > Organic Search?

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that is here to break some exciting news:

Thanks, AI Overviews

Here’s what’s good this week, other than Google AI fails… (ok, and including some more of those, too):

→ Too Soon? Rumblings re: The Next Core Update 🤔
→ Reddit Moving In On Even More SERP Real Estate 👀
→ Google: Prioritizing AI Overviews Ads > Organic Search? 🤖
→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️​

In today's episode of Building in Public Day 192, I got to share a local SEO growth hack I recently tested. It worked so well that members of my community started asking me to do it for them. So, I created a service that includes a guest post with a do-follow link, name, address, phone number, schema, and a map embed. This was a difficult service to create, but I've priced it accordingly at $90 per link. Come through.

​YouTube​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ This Scrooge McDuck meets Sundar Pichai mash-up comes from the replies on a post on how Google is “now running a test that allows forums such as Reddit to take up much more space in search results.” Imagine giving MORE SERP real estate to Reddit. lmao.

→ Wired.com’s profile on AI Overviews provides a pretty in-depth look at everything we know so far about Google’s new feature— it’s worth knowing about, for user and marketing reasons, as AI Overviews “are baked into the default search results page” and “you can’t opt out of seeing them or turn them off,” even if you’re just using Google for web links (like a normal person).

→ Another piece from Wired tells us that AI Overviews will “soon have ads.” Some details remain unclear, but we do know ads “will have the opportunity to appear within the AI Overview in a section clearly labeled as ‘sponsored’ when they’re relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview.”

→ In fact, some reports suggest Google will “Prioritize AI Overviews Ads Over Organic Search.” Google has been saying the quiet part loud and made it clear that “the purpose of Search is not to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful but to build more reach, engagement and ROI for advertisers.”

→ We’re a few weeks past the drop of the Site Reputation Abuse update and this piece- Google’s Surgical Strike on Reputation Abuse- answers the big questions:

Were only subdomains hit? Not quite. Was it just coupon codes? Largely, but not exclusively. Is this penalty fair or helpful? Debatable. What are the major takeaways? Well, you should read the piece if you’re curious.

→ For a similar post-mortem on the March Core Update, here’s a look at how Reddit won big while news and affiliate sites took major Ls, and how to make sense of the "45% reduction in unhelpful content" in light of practically zero recoveries from the HCU.

→ Google’s LSA review system has been a mess, but big changes are coming this summer- “ the existing LSA customer review URLs will expire and be replaced with URLs from Google Business Profiles (GBP), centralizing review management under GBP”- and this video looks at whether we can expect a bit of a clean-up here.

→ If you agree that “GA4 is a bust,” this thread lays out some alternatives others have pivoted to.

→ Too soon? Rumblings are coming out re: the NEXT core update. The stated aim: to help sites that “have taken helpfulness to heart.” Insert eye-roll here.

AI Insight 🤖

→ Lily Ray compiled some of the biggest fails of Google’s AI Overviews so far and it’s rough lol:

If I may— lmao.

→ In what is hopefully a slightly more functional venture, Google’s also on the verge of rolling out “AI-powered ads for complex purchases,” testing how “Google’s AI capabilities could enhance ads to provide more tailored advice and recommendations based on a user’s specific needs and context.”

→ If you’re curious about what Google is saying about their new movements into the AI sphere, it’s worth checking out its self-published report re: Google I/O as well as this one: “Ads creativity and performance at scale with Google AI.”

→ OpenAI has been no stranger to the bag fumble lately, but potentially being sued by Scarlett Johansson has to be one of the biggest Ls imaginable. TLDR; after getting rejected by ScarJo twice, Sam A decided on a doppelganger to be ChatGPT’s voice and then tweeted “her.” Oof.

→ In the LEAST surprising AI headline of the week “100% of Digital Agencies Are Using AI.” More interesting, however, are some of the other survey results. For example, 84% of agencies are concerned about keeping pace with AI developments in 2024; 58% are slightly concerned, 26% are very concerned, and 16% of agency leaders are unworried.

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ Even though we know “there are no universal best times to post on social media for every single brand and every business,” knowing the times when each app sees the most engagement, based on overall trends, is still pretty helpful.

Here’s the TLDR;

- Facebook: weekdays between 9AM and midday
- Instagram: weekdays between 9AM and 2PM
- TikTok: weekdays between 2PM to 6PM
- X: weekdays between 9AM and 3PM
- LinkedIn: Tuesdays and Wednesdays between 10AM and 12PM
- Pinterest: Tuesdays to Fridays at 1AM

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

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