✅ Is AI Generating More Engaged Traffic?

GM nerds,

Welcome back to the newsletter that’s got it all figured out:

Get on my level.

→ Shorter YouTube Vids, Longer TikToks 👀
→ Looking Into Google’s AI Search Leaks 👀👀
→ Is AI Generating More Engaged Traffic? 👀👀👀
→ Reddit Marketing Just Got Even Harder 👀👀👀👀🤯
→ more, obviously 💬

But first…

​Today's Video 🗣️🎙️​

In today's video, I’m launching a suite of free local SEO tools designed to help beginners improve rankings and attract backlinks. I aim to provide valuable resources while strengthening my presence in the local SEO space. I’ll also share recent analytics and pricing strategies for our tools. Join me as I break down these key developments and how they can benefit your SEO efforts. Tune in!

​YouTube​​

What’s Going Down @ Google 📊

→ Did anyone catch how Reuters published an AI-generated article on Google and Reddit expanding their partnership, which caused Reddit stock to spike ~10%, only for the world to eventually realize the article was based on the February 2024 partnership expansion, causing Reddit stocks to crash back down?

Lots to unpack there, but lmao.

→ Leave it to Google to always find a new way to hurt a small business. This time, we have a LinkedIn post titled “When Google Hijacks Your Booking System.” TLDR; watch out for Google Assistant.

→ In a time of great skepticism re: AI Overviews, Google is once again using its unmatched room-reading abilities and expanding AI Overviews and Knowledge Panels in YMYL queries, offering more medical and health-related answers. Speaking of AIOs, Google has been testing them in the middle of the Search Results page. And Google is also doing some low-key gaslighting, saying they updated AIOs in May, when that simply didn’t happen.

AI Insight 🤖

→ On the topic of Google and AI, here’s a solid breakdown of Google AI Mode that covers a lot of interesting impressions, including:

- "Commercial & Informational keywords have the longest AI Mode Outputs"
- "Inline citations = content marketing goldmine!"
- "Previously buried page 2 results now occasionally appear as citations"

And way more. The general point? "The rules of SEO are being rewritten." So figure them out— or at least read my newsletter while I do.

→ And, beyond AI Mode, here’s the scoop on a massive leak showing “various AI Search Options AI Mode,” including things like “Fantasy Sports Researcher, Neural Chef, Smart Kitchen, Lsi, Golden Compass, Spark, Fact-checker, About This Image, Airport AIO,” and many more.

→ Some big data re: AI & e-commerce from Adobe that suggests AI generates more engaged traffic::

- 39% of US consumers used generative AI for shopping and 53% plan to do so
- 47% use AI for product recommendations and 43% use generative AI for seeking deals
- traffic from AI sources to US retail sites in February rose 1,200% from July 2024
- between Nov. 1 and Dec. 31, traffic from generative AI sources increased by 1,300% compared to the year prior (up 1,950% YoY on Cyber Monday)

Pretty big numbers, NGL.

→ How’s this for a headline? “AI Slop Is a Brute Force Attack on the Algorithms That Control Reality.” Click through if you want to read about exactly what that headline promises. Don’t if you don’t.🚨 When Google Hijacks Your Booking System 🚨

→ This week’s edition of big tech platform doing something literally nobody is asking for: Instagram Experiments with AI-Generated Comments on Posts.

Social Media Round-up 📲

→ Bloomberg is reporting that Oracle and TikTok are getting close: “A proposal was circulated within the Trump administration last week that would have Oracle work with U.S. buyers to vouch for the safety of users’ data. That would include guarantees that an updated US version of TikTok would not contain a back door that China’s government could exploit.”

→ YouTube’s report on the “untapped potential of short-form video” is part of the platform’s recent push toward short-form video. The report does share some interesting facts though. According to Ipsos, “online users are 98% more likely to trust the recommendations of creators on YouTube vs. those on other social platforms.” Also, “creator-led content is delivering 12x impressions and 17x engagements compared to brand-owned content and YouTube Shorts is playing a big part in this growth.”

→ Speaking of YouTube— podcasters rise up, we’re getting our own sidebar.

→ Right on cue— just as YouTube is pushing shorts, we’re seeing longer videos get more views on TikTok. According to Buffer’s analysis of over 1M TikToks, videos longer than a minute tend to get more views and watch time: “86% of videos posted on TikTok are under a minute… and yet videos longer than 60 seconds tend to get at least 43.2% more reach and 63.8% more watch time than shorter videos.”

→ Reddit advertising isn’t easy, and it just got harder for annoying people. “Hide an Ad” lets Redditors block all ads from any advertiser for a year at a time. Luckily, there is a limit on how many advertisers a user can block, so you just have to be less annoying than your competition.

Also

→ For those of you who care about Bing, new Webmaster tools just dropped, including data comparison features and Search Performance UI enhancements.

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

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