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Tips Tuesday – Google Ad Lawsuit, Site Traffic from YouTube, Video Strategy

ByMaAnna Stephenson

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips Tuesday – Google Ad Lawsuit, Site Traffic from YouTube, Video Strategy

Tips this week include:

  • A request to let me know if you listen to the Tips Tuesday podcast
  • GA4 course testimonials are live
  • Private GA4 webinars start today
  • The GA4 affiliate program is now open
  • Yoast SEO tutorials are being updated in the DIY SEO course
  • How a change of strategy exploded my video views
  • Can you get site traffic from your YouTube videos?
  • New Google antitrust lawsuit that affects ad revenue
  • A graph that shows just how much Google dominates global ad revenue
  • Microsoft wants to democratize AI for all
  • How the Stable Diffusion lawsuit could impact all Machine Learning AI
  • A private AI search app called Neeva that you’ll want to check out
  • An update on how my new secret YouTube channel is going

Listen to the Podcast

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Subscribe: RSS

BlogAid Happenings

This past week has been full of client site work, making new DIY SEO tutorials, and playing to my heart’s content with AI stuff for both my own secret projects as well as for BlogAid courses.

Zak has a few special needs and I’m grateful that they keep us both on a set schedule of breaks. It’s real easy for hours to pass by when I’m going down the AI rabbit hole. 

And Zak is like, “I’m here for you, mom!” and keeps us both up and moving around and doing fun, playful activities too. Good boy, Zak!

Are You a Podcast Listener?

One of the caveats of running a podcast is that there is no good way to know how many subscribers you have, or if they actually listen or just have it set to auto download.

That’s because podcasts are on a feed and can be syndicated by every podcast app out there. And few to none of them give you any sort of analytics.

So, if you do listen to the podcast, please leave a comment on the blog, or reply to the email you got from BlogAid News with the Tips Tuesday post and let me know that you’re a listener.

I’m serious.

I really do need to have an idea of how many folks actually rely on the podcast to get their Tips Tuesday fix, not just listen to it while they read the post.

I appreciate y’all telling me how entertaining you find it. And I’m so glad to connect with you that way.

But, the fact is, I don’t think it’s reaching too many folks anymore, and it takes a LOT of time to produce. And now that I’m doing more videos for Tips Tuesday, which you’ll hear about it in a moment, I think those have the potential for far more reach.

Plus, after 600+ weekly shows, I’m thinking about taking a break from it.

So, please do let me know if the podcast is your favorite way to hear from me, and get your site success tips. 

Hearing from you will make a big difference in my decision about it.

Site Services Update

The wait list for site services is running into the last of February and first of March.

So, if you are ready for your yearly site checkup, or if you want to do your first audit and get everything squared away for spring, now is the time to fill out the site audit request form.

BlogAid Course Happenings

GA4 Course Testimonials are Live

Thank you to everyone who sent in your kind words about how much you are enjoying the Ultimate GA4 Course for Bloggers.

You can see those testimonials on the GA4 course info page as well as a page dedicated to them.

And please do keep sending them!

You’ll find a link at the top of your Ultimate GA4 course dashboard page, along with links for joining our Facebook group and such too.

Private GA4 Webinars Start Today

The GA4 Affiliate Program is also now open to all course members.

And today I’ll be doing a private webinar for a course member who runs a blogger group.

We’ll be offering special discounts for her group too.

If you’re in the course, see the link at the top of your course dashboard page to apply to become an affiliate.

If you run a group, or know of someone who runs a group for bloggers, be sure to tell them about this super opportunity to help their peeps get going with GA4.

Yoast Tutorials Updated in DIY SEO Course

You may recall last week that I announced the new User Interface was being released in version 20 of the Yoast SEO plugin.

I updated to it and have been remaking all of the Yoast SEO tutorials in the DIY SEO course since.

Most of the settings have not changed. But how to get to them has.

The new look is modern and I’m glad they didn’t wait for WordPress to remake its admin interface, which is sorely in need of it.

But then again, that would break every WP tutorial out there. Of course, they don’t think about that, but we sure do, right?!?

I’ve got all the global settings tutorials done and I’m now working on the on-page Yoast module tutorials.

DIY SEO Course Quick Checks Coming Soon

Besides finishing up with the new Yoast tutorials, I’ve got a few other updates I need to do with the Google Search Console tutorials.

And then we’ll be ready to start our Quick Checks in the DIY SEO course to ensure our foundation is solid.

I don’t know of any other SEO course that offers these tutorials or checks.

And honestly, if your foundation is not right, all the keyword research in the world won’t help you.

If Google is having issues crawling your site, or finding errors when it does crawl, your SEO efforts are just not going to work well for you.

That’s why we start with these Quick Checks and why we have a Technical SEO workshop too.

That’s all the happenings around here. Let’s jump into this week’s tips and news.

Video Tips

Try a Change of Strategy

Every Tuesday I would publish a quick video everywhere with an overview of what was in this week’s Tips Tuesday.

It wasn’t really getting any traction.

So, last week I changed strategy and bulk made a bunch of videos that focused on just one highlight from the weekly post.

Holy cow, that worked!!!

Most of them were less than 60 seconds, and that seems to be part of the key to getting the social platforms to put them in front of more eyeballs too.

So, I’m going to keep that up and see if I can also get more conversion from it.

Site Traffic from YouTube

One of the things I really like about Google Analytics 4 is the ability to see video metrics.

That includes whether the video in my posts was watched or not.

And I’m absolutely delighted to see how much site traffic is coming from YouTube as well.

That speaks volumes to doing good SEO on YouTube itself, not just video SEO on my site.

So, don’t think for a minute that YouTube is not a good source of site traffic – it certainly can be!!

SEO Tips

New Google Antitrust Lawsuit

The Dept of Justice, along with 8 states, just filed a new lawsuit on Google’s digital advertising monopoly.

Considering that most ad agencies are Google Ad Partners, I’m seriously wondering how this will affect them.

If your ad agency releases anything about it, please do let me know.

And I’ll keep you posted on what I hear.

See How Big Goole Dominates

If you’re wondering why Google is considered to have a monopoly on ad revenue, take a look at this infographic of the most visited sites in the world.

Number 1 is Google followed by YouTube, which Google owns. 

Just look how much of the ad revenue they control.

AI Tips

Microsoft Wants to Democratize AI for All

Speaking of ad revenue, and revenue in general, Microsoft’s ad revenue from Bing has been going steadily down. And their stock took a heck of a dip when they released their lower quarterly earnings too. But then it bounced back with their announcements about what they plan to do with their investment into OpenAI.

Basically, they want it to be available to everybody.

Search Engine Journal laid out Microsoft’s 3 OpenAI partnership goals as:

  • Supercomputing at scale: Microsoft will put more resources into creating and using specialized supercomputers to speed up OpenAI’s research.
  • New AI experiences: Microsoft will use OpenAI’s models in its consumer and enterprise products and create new digital experiences using OpenAI’s technology.
  • Exclusivity: Microsoft Azure will power all OpenAI workloads as the company’s only cloud provider.

And while all of this sounds like a monopoly, they know that Google’s 20 new AI offerings that are coming this year will be entirely owned and controlled by Alphabet, Google’s parent company.

Can anybody say VCR vs Betamax, if you’re old enough to remember the days of video on tape.

I think it’s a whole lot more like that than PC vs Mac.

Well, maybe not.

If Microsoft is going to include AI in all of its products, then that will give them a big foot in the door with all business users who primarily run on PC and Windows.

And that user experience may float over from the workplace to home too.

Plus, we all know what a horrible track record Google has of releasing things, then tweaking them to the point that they become hard to use, then dumping them while complaining that no one uses the things.

Folks, Microsoft is betting the farm on OpenAI and this may just be a battle they can win.

What do you think?

Stable Diffusion Lawsuit Could Impact All Machine Learning

The first big lawsuit was handed to Stable Diffusion last week. They are an AI image generator.

And the arguments in the lawsuit could impact how all AI Machine Learning is done in the future.

Here’s the thing.

There is no putting this AI genie back in the bottle.

OpenAI trained GPT mostly on books and other hard copy printed material, not on the internet.

But, the same can’t be said of the AI image generation tools. It looks like they grabbed any images they could find from everywhere.

Right now ChatGPT is running on GPT3, which has the training model the size of a pinhead compared to what they have trained GPT4 on, which also includes the internet.

Google has done its DeepMind AI training on any and everything it could get its digital hands on too.

So, I don’t think the release of AI services is going to wait for this lawsuit with Stable Diffusion to be settled.

I think they are going to put it out there and make all the money they can, and pay fines later down the road.

There is nothing about the law that is up to date with any of this. 

So, expect more AI to be released and expect more lawsuits to follow and don’t expect any type of resolution any time soon as to the legality of all of it.

And if you do read the article I have linked for you, be sure to also read the comments that disagree with the article author’s take on the lawsuit.

Mind the License

And all of this is why I keep reminding you to check the license and Terms of Use on any AI tool you use for anything.

If they are assuming the liability for commercial use, then you’re okay to use it.

Private AI Search App – Neeva

Oh, here we go!

If you thought attention span of readers was already short, now there are AI search apps popping up that do all the searching for you and give you just a synopsis of them.

Neeva is one such app.

It’s kind of like Google and Bing, but zero ads, and is entirely private.

And I’ve seen others, but this one has the best UI I’ve seen so far.

So, what does this mean for you as a blogger?

These apps are only going to pull in the top 5-10 sources.

And if your blog post is not in the top 5, you may not get seen.

However, we all know from our own searches that the top 5 posts may or may not be the best ones for what we’re seeking.

So, these apps are still relying on the algorithms of other search engines to determine what they present to their users, but that may change down the road.

And we will see in a few months what becomes of Microsoft adding ChatGPT to Bing, and then Google adding Sparrow or one of their other AIs to Google Search.

And I’ll be keeping you posted here, and we’ll be discussing this, and trying these things out, in the DIY SEO course this year too.

How My New Secret YouTube Channel is Going

And finally, I thought you might be curious about how my new secret YouTube Channel is going.

It is heavily reliant on AI. In fact, I’ve been wanting to do it for years, and AI made it possible, so I jumped on it.

I’m using MidJourney, which is an AI image generator, for many of the images shown in the videos.

And I’m using Adobe After Effects for the motion parts of the video.

And I’m relying heavily on ChatGPT to help me with the research of the content itself.

Plus, I’m using Speakatoo for the AI voiceover.

I’m not telling anyone what the channel is because this is an experiment to see if I can grow a channel from scratch with the sort of entertainment videos I’m making.

And I know the metric I’m about to tell you is not a real gauge of growth, but it’s what I’m using at this time.

I wanted to have more views than days the videos had been posted. And that has happened, so that’s good.

The channel has been live for 1 month and I have around 65 views in total. So, now I have twice as many views as days it has been live.

And I have 2 subscribers.

It takes 3-6 months for SEO to catch on anywhere, including YouTube. So, I’m delighted with the little bit of growth I’ve been seeing. 

At some point, it will start to snowball and gain viewers faster.

But, it takes more than good SEO. It takes consistent publishing.

Right now I’m learning a new thing with the video or images or research for every video. So, I can only produce 1, maybe 2 a week. But, I’m trying to be as consistent with it as I can.

And, everything I’m learning will be used in the secret business project that I had hoped to launch at the end of the year, but got postponed due to making the GA4 courses.

I’m not far from circling back to that project. In fact, that will happen when I get the DIY SEO workshops underway.

So, lots to learn and do still. But it’s creative and fun and I’m enjoying it!!!

And I’m glad to see that others are starting to find it and enjoy it too.

Wrap Up

That’s a wrap for this week’s Tips Tuesday.

Thanks for sharing this podcast and post with your blogging buddies, and for leaving comments and reviews too.

Subscribe to all BlogAid Posts via email so you never miss anything!

Be sure to visit BlogAid.net for more tips and resources and I’ll see you online.

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MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English. She helps DIY site owners plus webmasters and designers create sites that are secure, perform well, and get noticed by search engines and readers.

32 Comments

  1. Hi MaAnna,
    I read Tips Tuesday every week but I am not a big podcast listener.
    – Steve D.

  2. Hi MaAnna!
    Yes, I listen religiously every week (Even tho I no longer Blog).
    I’m now a Gold Level Google Product Expert in 10 different products and your podcasts are a Godsend in keeping me informed on stuff outside the Googlesphere! :) Blogging
    I do have my own Google site for my group of Teckies and I always recommend You if someone mentions needing Blogging/Site work.

    I’d personally hate to see the podcast go but completely understand the reasons why it might.

    Looking forward to the day you “unsecret” your latest work!

    Andy

  3. I do not listen to podcasts because I am hearing impaired. However, I read the blog every week. I’m just a hobby blogger, but i heard you speak at a Wordcamp in the Nashville area in 2013 (?). I’ve been a subscriber ever since.

  4. Hi MaAnna

    I don’t listen to the podcasts because I am pretty deaf so in my life I need to read to absorb and write to teach.

    Videos yes because with CCs now its readable with all the graphics to support it.

    But your message is gratefully received though your newsletters, links, and training videos thank you.

    Regards
    Bill

  5. Hi Maanna, I don’t listen to the podcast. I prefer to read your tips. I’m not a huge fan of podcasts in general, as I find I don’t tend to retain the information very well. It goes in one ear and out the other.

  6. Hi MaAnna,
    I wish Mondays were Tuesdays, just so I could get the podcast sooner! I rely on the information you provide and love hearing your voice deliver the information! I can appreciate the time it takes to record a podcast, I’ve done so myself in the past. I’d be sad to see it go as it’s become a ritual on my drive to work.

  7. I am a faithful reader who has enjoyed and benefited from it for many years but don’t listen to the podcast. I’m a blogger, freelancer, and coach, which I do at a desktop computer and I find listening to podcasts while working too distracting to an already distracted mind. :) It’s only a matter of time before AI and ML will use your/my voice for personalized, AI-generated production. I can already use the Overdub feature in the Descript all-in-one video platform to replace words I’ve spoken trained by using the 20+ minute recording of my voice I uploaded. You may be in too deep with your current video stack, but it’s worth a look. Once you get the hang of editing in the transcript instead of the timeline, it gets fun to use.

    1. I agree, Barney. I can’t listen to one thing and work on another either. I’ve thought about training an AI voiceover on my voice, but it just won’t have the Woots! and such, and that’s part of the entertainment value of it that folks like.

  8. Hi MaAnna,

    Even though I love your enthusiasm in the podcast, I rarely listen to it. Reading works best for me.

    I consider Your Tips Tuesday to be one of *the* most important things on the Internet, and I rarely miss it…it’s always filled with information on topics I’m interested in, and it’s usually information that’s hard to find anywhere else.

    Also, unlike some people, you are not not just sitting there at a desk reading what other people say and then regurgitating it into your own blog…you are writing from real-life experience. That’s a big deal.

    Whatever you do, please never stop the Tips Tuesday.

    Thank you.

    1. Thanks so much, Christian. Reporting the news is important, but helping folks understand how it impacts them is even more important. And, we see a lot of fads come and go. Some have not actually been a good thing for us to do, and I hope to help warn folks off of those too. I will be keeping the Tips Tuesday post for sure.

  9. I listen to the podcast every week through Google Podcasts on the day it’s released. It’s become a habit to listen in the car when I’m parked up as there are no other distractions.
    If there wasn’t a podcast I’d probably read the blog post at the weekend, but then I’d miss your mannerisms that can be persuasive! I completed the Gute course, I’m on the DIY SEO course and one day hope to be able to get a consult.

  10. I read Tips Tuesday every week – normally on my PC, sometimes on the phone.
    However, I don’t really listen to podcasts as I am not normally in the car long enough to listen to them.
    Tips Tuesday is terrific and the content very useful for me so I look forward to many more editions!

  11. I think the podcast is beneficial. I listen to it religiously. I think your podcast reaches people who are not subscribed to your blog but subscribe to the podcast through their podcast app. I encourage you to continue with it. I love it.
    Also, you give updates on how backed up your services are, I think this is beneficial to potential customers who may become customers in the future. As I said, you are reaching potential customers you otherwise would not reach through the blog only.

    1. That was my thinking when I started the podcast so many years ago – that I could reach more folks. But, the overwhelming majority of folks contacting me say they do not listen to the podcast.

      I’ll give more time for more folks to respond, but I know only a fraction of the folks who do listen to the podcast will remember to do that, as they are usually listening while driving or such. So, I’m keeping that in mind too.

    1. And the most important think I forgot to mention was thank you SO MUCH for Tips Tuesday. It’s so very useful and I know it too takes up a lot of your time.

  13. I am better at visual learning so prefer that over auditory. Your podcasts are always interesting and fun, but honestly, I usually wake up early and read Tips Tuesday on my phone while I’m in my pjs!

    That said, I really, really like your on the spot last minute videos [whatever you call them] where you pop up on FB to tell us something happening. Sometimes I have to catch them later, but they are informative and usually short–for those of us with fleeting attention spans.

    Maybe make a short, short video highlighting the most important Tip of the Week?? Or not…you know me, I’m a brainstormer with lots of ideas and few which are actually worthwhile and feasible, but every once in a while, I get a win.

    Thanks for all you are doing in the blogging universe to make it better for us. We appreciate you.

    1. Thanks so much for your thoughtful reply, Harriet.

      A long time ago I used to do text posts on social media that highlighted something from Tips Tuesday, but making the graphics was a real chore for me. I had rather make the videos highlighting info in TT instead.

  15. Tuesday morning is MaAnna day – you are my first podcast of the day while walking . I prefer the podcast and will consult the written word if I need reinforcement later or to do some kind of followup. I consume so much via podcasts and have appreciated how dedicated you are to publishing one weekly for so long. I hear other podcasters saying they’ll be weekly, but aren’t committed.

    Since I’m at my desk all day, I prefer and enjoy having quality content via podcast that gets me moving and learning! I hope you can continue with the audio, but I know it’s a huge time commitment.

    Thanks.

Comments are closed.