Marketing Letter - 💪 Making the Most of GA4 for SEO

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that makes your digital marketing juggling act easy:

Here’s what’s good this week:
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→ Making the Most of GA4 for SEO 💪
→ Perplexity’s Epic Popularity Surge 📈
→ How Google’s Lost Antitrust Suit Impacts You 👀
→ TikTok & Amazon’s Massive E-Commerce Collab ‼️
→ more, obviously 💬
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But first…

​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️​

In this week's video, I reflect on my journey in building what I believe to be the most dynamic SEO community online. I recognize both the achievements and the challenges that have shaped this experience. While many competitors manage only a handful of posts each day, our community thrives with hundreds of contributions. This robust activity not only speaks to the engagement of our members but also underscores the dedication required to foster such a vibrant atmosphere. Tune in more details.

​YouTube​​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

These AI-generated snippets are still in pretty rough shape… maybe they have “unresolved childhood issues.”

​Nice catch by @seanmarkey …​

→ On the one hand, when Google takes a massive L (like, for example, losing an antitrust case), it’s just fun to watch the dunks pile up. On the other hand, it’s also worth asking how the ruling might affect you as a digital marketer, if at all.

We don't have much precedent in this case, so it's worth considering possibilities and measuring expectations. Here are some reasonable points from the article:

- “it’s extremely unlikely (again, I’m not a lawyer) that core Google search will be broken up or divested in any substantial way”
- because “the court repeatedly asserted that Google held monopoly power that allowed them to drive up prices on Google Ads,” it seems like the solution “could focus on limiting Google Ads pricing in some way or adding transparency for ad buyers.”

TLDR; purely speculation at this point, but as digital marketers, the most relevant changes we’ll see will most likely have to do with “the price and structure of Google Ads.”

→ If you’re looking for something to be mad at Google about, this deep dive into some of the sketchier strategies, like “shifting revenue away from rest of the web to its own properties where it doesn't have to share any of it,” that were uncovered in the antitrust case is a good read.

→ If you think your SEO can be getting more from GA4, this article’s for you. Click through for the DL on linking GA4 with Google Search Console, analyzing organic traffic, and setting up events and parameters to up your SEO game.

→ Google is dropping a new Local Services Ads (LSA) feature that will automatically choose advertisement profile photos. If all goes as planned, local service providers will see gains re: ad engagement and rankings.

→ Google is also “shoving more ads onto the Play Store under the guise of local recommendations,” filling the Play Store with ads presented as “recommendations.”

AI Insight 🤖

→ While many are saying AI has yet to take a dent out of Google Search, Perplexity’s popularity is surging. July saw the search engine answer about 250M queries, which is massive considering the total for all of 2023 was only 500M.

If it gains any ground on Google at all, the credit will largely be due to “pivoting its business model from subscriptions to advertising.” Which, of course, is also why you should be paying attention to this.

→ Here’s an interesting one: Gen AI is taking over product listings on Amazon & sellers aren’t happy about it. AKA, Amazon’s AI will rewrite product descriptions deemed non-compliant.

→ The landscape shifts so frequently it’s hard to keep track of, but as of now Search Engine Journal says these are the top 6 AI Content Checkers: GPTZero, Originality.ai, Copyleaks, Winston AI, TraceGPT, and Hive Moderation.

→ OpenAI may be at the center of a lot of chaos and controversy, but ChatGPT’s mobile app just had its biggest month yet, with $28M in net revenue from the App Store and Google Play in July.

→ AI keeps running into issues re: “stealing” or “shoplifting.” This Wired piece dives into a start-up project, ProRata, that proposes “AI pay-per-use" as a way to solve these problems

→ Is the LLM market due for a shift to SLMs? This piece looks at how “Smaller, Cheaper Models Are Getting Big Attention.”

Social Media Round-up (ft. A Bunch More AI Stuff)📲

→ Continuing to juice its e-commerce efforts, TikTok has integrated Amazon shopping “directly into its platform,” now giving users the freedom to buy products without leaving the app. This could easily lead to higher conversion rates, as TikTok users have proven to have high potential as customers, and this aims to provide them with a “frictionless” journey from discovery to purchase.
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So far, we know that it’ll look something like this:
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- “For You” feeds are where these Amazon product recommendations will be
- the user linking TikTok to their Amazon account will be required for making purchases
- product details, price, delivery estimates, and more will all be shown

→ Wondering how to find & use YouTube Search Trends? Here’s the TLDR;

find them by: Tracking Your Competitors; utilizing YouTube’s Trending Page and Google Trends; Researching Other Social Media Platforms, Niche Publications, and News Websites, etc.

use them to: Identify and Analyze Relevant Trends, Create Relevant Content, Optimize Your Videos, and Engage with Your Audience

Click thru for details.

→ If you’re a Redditor, you may want to be sitting down for this news. Looks like some Reddit content may finally be getting paywalled.

→ ICYMI: YouTube is testing a collab feature that would have Gemini brainstorm content ideas for you.

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

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