Tips Tuesday – AI Search Engines, Product Links in Videos, Meta Limits Links

Tips this week include:

• WordPress is all in on AI
• Emergency WP security release
• Reminder – don’t click links in emails
• Meta limits links
• Promote your Link in Bio page – and how to make one
• Google Pics launches
• Searchers are unhappy with Google AI Mode
• ChatGPT as a Search Engine
• Google’s new AI spam detector
• Check your video comments
• Linked Products in videos – my experience with it

WordPress Tips

WP is All In on AI

One of the newsletters I’ve subscribed to for years to help me keep up with all things WordPress, including people, plugins and news is now 85% AI-related.

So many devs are now using AI to build themes, plugins, and services that also use AI to do their function.

There is no way I would put any of it on my site. That’s because most of them could not get through my security.

And if you think their MCPs and API connectors are secure, think again.

I’d put money on news breaking one day that millions of sites that are using these things have been hacked. It will be due to lack of these devs knowing how to scan their plugins or services for security issues. And don’t you know the headlines will read that WordPress is at fault and not secure.

Emergency Security Release

On Tuesday last week, WP released 7.1.2. 

It was an emergency security release for an issue that was being actively exploited.

I wish to heck that the WP team had the same AI scanner that other folks are using to find these issues. They have a scanner, but obviously it is not finding the same things as others are finding. But, at least they are all comparing notes about it at this point.

Folks, this is our new site security environment and it’s one of the reasons we have minor updates turned on for everything – WP, plugins, and themes, so that they auto update when things like this roll out.

Security Tips

Don’t Click Links in Emails

Quick reminder that you can’t trust any vendor emails you get anymore.

AI is getting slick with their warnings and making these emails look legit.

I got one that looked like my email list service APIs had been revoked. And then I got another about my AWS account. And since they are calling out services I use, info is getting leaked somewhere. 

I’ve also heard of some folks getting emails that look like they are from Meta with a link to download a PDF.

Be sure you don’t click any of those links. Instead, log into your service and check for messages/notifications. If anything needs to be done, the info will be there.

Marketing Tips

Meta Limits Links

We’re in the pay to play era with Meta now.

On the free version of Facebook, they have limited us to 2 links per month in posts or comments. 

But, according to their own dox about it, even the lowest paid tier only gets 2 links.

That doesn’t make any sense.

And, I just heard that Instagram is now allowing links on posts, if you pay for it.

Y’all Meta is cash strapped right now. They’ve lost several big court cases and they’ve thrown billions at failed projects – including their namesake, the Metaverse, remember that?

Promote Link in Bio Page

And you can easily make your own “link in bio” page on your website.

Here’s the one I made for Heartwood Art.

I used a super narrow page template and Post Grid blocks for most recent and category type posts.

Another tip I’ve seen to get around this Meta limit is to DM folks who like or comment on your posts. I’m betting there are automated ways to do this, but I haven’t used them.

Google Pics Launches

Google’s Nano Banana model for creating AI images is now easier to use.

Google Pics is based on that model.

It will soon be available in Workspace as well as a standalone app.

Here’s more on the announcement and who will get it and when.

And it looks like they are targeting the bigger Enterprise customers. So, I don’t expect we’ll see it in our Business Starter Plans any time soon.

SEO Tips

Searchers Are Unhappy with Google AI Mode

The results are in and it’s good news for us.

A study conducted by Arxiv asked 1100 people to use Google. Some used its AI Mode and others didn’t.

Search Engine Land has a nice breakdown of the results.

Of those who used the AI mode, they did less searches and clicked over to deeper info less too.

But the good news for us is that folks assigned to use AI mode had a far lower satisfaction rate. Instead, they turned to Google’s Search rivals like Bing and DuckDuckGo.

This study is no guarantee that Google will reverse course on showing AI results first, or even show them less. But at least now there is hard evidence for what we all know.

AI search results suck.

ChatGPT as a Search Engine

Because of Microsoft’s heavy investment into OpenAI, we all thought ChatGPT used Bing as its Search Engine. 

Nope!!!!

Tomek Rudzki of Peec AI has been doing deep research for lawsuits and found that ChatGPT has been quietly building its own Search Engine.

And it’s not based on just one OpenAI crawler or crawled source either.

Rudzki found:

“In total Peec AI claims that there are minimum eight additional data suppliers besides ChatGPT’s crawler that are contributing content to ChatGPT’s results and these include Bright Data Oxylabs a separate SERP-scraping channel Yelp TripAdvisor, two internal data pipelines used for business listings and Google Maps data, and Microsoft’s Web IQ.”

What this means for us:

“ChatGPT is creating its own crawler and index while using signals from various outside sources; they then test different combinations with live traffic and over time shift more weight toward their own systems.”

As the article says, this will impact shopping/product sites more than written word sites.

And I’m sure that Google doesn’t appreciate its ranking algorithm results and Maps being scanned for a competitor’s AI to use in its own ranking adjustments. 

So, we’ll see where this goes and I’ll be watching to see if it affects written content ranking as well.

Google’s New AI Spam Detector

The AI Slop content is everywhere online.

Worse than that, black-hat SEOs are going back to their old tricks of creating junk sites to promote their main site or product. It’s what works with SEO crawlers now.

But Google is fed up with wasting money crawling all this crap.

So, Google has launched a new AI spam detector called SAFE, which stands for Scaled Abuse Forensics Examiner.

The documentation is vague. They do explicitly say they are going after AI videos mostly, but it also mentions a content detection component too.

They will be labeling all of this AI junk as “synthetic” in origin.

Beyond that, they will be using AI to try to piece together the junk network involved. I’m betting they start trying to root out AI bot comment farms, as that engagement is artificially promoting some videos in the algorithm.

Plus, since YouTube does have a setting to tell it that your video either contains or was made by AI, we’ll see how they enforce this. Maybe they will only go after stuff that it thinks is AI but was not labeled that way.

I’m keeping close watch on this because of the music videos I hope to start outputting early next year. I certainly don’t want to build a channel that gets caught in this net.

Video Tips

Check Your Comments

I check YouTube Studio daily for my Heartwood Art analytics and for any notifications.

And most of the time it shows me comment notifications, but not always.

You definitely want to go to YouTube itself to see all of your notifications, especially when you have new comments.

Engagement is a BIG ranking factor on YouTube. And you even “hearting” or replying to comments helps a bunch too.

Linked Products

A few weeks ago I reported that YouTube and Amazon have partnered up so that you can add product links directly in the video.

I joined that new program and tried it on a couple of my recent videos on Heartwood Art.

On the first one, they didn’t have a product link available for the thing I was showing, but they did have a similar one. I chose not to use that product tag and to just go with my Amazon link in the description.

But, they did have the product for my next video, however, it wasn’t an Amazon link. It was from Lowe’s. And it had a 15% commission. So, I did use that product tag, and I still put my Amazon link for it in the description.

I’m currently editing a new product review video and I sure hope there is a product tag available for it as it is the most expensive one.

I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.