🧠 Google Search Becoming More Personalized?

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that is stuck between dunking on & trying out this advice:

HMU with the results, fam.

Here’s what’s good this week:

→ The DL on GEO 👀
→ Brand Voice Fundamentals 🗣️
→ Printing Money w/ Facebook 💰
→ Google Search: Becoming More Personalized? 🧠
→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​This Week's Video 🗣️🎙️​

In this week's video, I focus on the key aspects of on-page SEO and why it’s essential for achieving big results with minimal effort. I share how aligning content with user intent can significantly boost search rankings. Drawing from my own experiences and insights, I provide practical strategies for beginners and those looking to refine their skills. Tune in for more!

​YouTube​​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ Pour one out for Ads Creative Studio, which will properly shut down in Q1 2025. Many saw this coming, considering new account creation has been disabled for nearly a month, but new projects will be halted on Jan 17 2025 while we can expect a full sunset by the end of March.

→ New Google Ads addition: a new "conversation started" column specifically for message assets such as WhatsApp messaging, allowing you to “configure an ad asset or button with your responsive search ads in Google Ads” in both Search and Performance Max campaigns.

→ Here’s an update on the manual Site Reputation Abuse actions Google’s been taking:

“Most manual actions have been applied at the directory level, but it seems there are some sites where urls mixed into the site have been impacted… So just be aware that Google can target urls mixed in with the rest of your content.”

→ Some SEOs and data analysts are noticing that Google's search results may be becoming more personalized after the new core update, noting a “statistically significant shift in positional change variance between our internal QPAPs and the AHREFs query-page rank tracker” which “suggests a need for further investigation into the potential impact of increased personalization in Google SERPs.”

→ A new feature called Page Annotation has arrived on the iOS Google App. When using the Google App native browser, users can "extract interesting entities from the webpage and highlight them in line."

AI Insight 🤖

→ ICYMI: GEO (generative engine optimization) is a thing now. A big thing. So, check out this article on 5 GEO trends shaping the future of search. TLDR; the major trends include the evolution of entities and entity optimization, LLMs and RAG, multimodal search, and the dominance of personalized, predictive search experiences.

→ This piece on how to monitor brand visibility across AI search channels, including tips on how to use AI search for Black Friday and holiday shopping, tracking brand mentions, using topics instead of keywords, digital PR and content strategy, and tons more.

→ Is ChatGPT Search living up to the hype? Click through for some commentary that never really commits to an answer, except that ChatGPT Search is out-performing AI Overviews without being a real threat to usurp Google Search (yet).

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ Reddit has started focusing on international users for ad growth while hinting that its search feature is about to take a major step up. Specifically, India and Brazil are in Reddit’s sights.

→ Respect to @publisherinabox for continually making Facebook marketing dominance look like child’s play. TLDR; link shares are still the real deal when executed properly (good content, across multiple pages, etc.), and “you can run the same post on the same page over and over and over again, and continue to earn good income.” Beyond this, the thread goes into how multiple layers of FB posts (ads on your website from direct traffic, bonuses from Facebook, affiliate income from links in the article, etc.) can generate income for you.

→ I’ve often dunked on both Threads and Bluesky for being super irrelevant, for both users and marketers. So, does Threads copying a Bluesky feature change that, or prove the point further? Hard to say, but it’s happening regardless, with Threads fashioning its own spin on Bluesky’s ‘Starter Packs.’​

→ If you’re struggling with the fundamentals of developing a brand voice on social media, here’s a solid overview. TLDR; document your company’s background and mission, research your target audience, analyze your current voice, define your brand personality, define your brand voice— and two more. Click through for the full scoop.

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

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