Tips Tuesday – GSC/GA4 Integration, New Bing ChatGPT, Gonzalez vs Google

Hello Happy Site Owners and Webmasters!

Tips this week include:

• Google Search Console and Analytics 4 Integration tutorials are live
• Where to get discounts on BlogAid courses
• Internet craziness that so many folks are experiencing
• Why only 18% of SEOs are using their GA4 data
• 20 alternatives to Google Analytics
• AI analytics are here
• Why you should follow the Gonzalez vs Google case
• Ensure you are not hotlinking images from Openverse
• Live demo of WP 6.2
• Why a late inclusion of Gutenberg features is a bad idea
• How the New Bing grabs current content off the web and how IndexNow is part of it
• Links in ChatGPT don’t work
• Why ads have to come to the New Bing
• Why Bing is limiting the number of chat sessions
• New Bing released on smart phones
• Bain teams up with OpenAI to streamline Coke’s processes and marketing and how it will affect you

BlogAid Course Happenings

GSC / GA4 Integration Tutorials are Live

As promised, there are now new tutorials for integrating Google Search Console with Google Analytics 4 in both the DIY SEO course as well as the Ultimate Google Analytics 4 Course for Bloggers.

You’ll have 2 new Standard Reports to show the queries and landing pages.

The Dimensions and Metrics are a bit limited and not available for making custom Explore reports. 

But, the Standard Reports have all you need this integration’s purpose.

I would strongly suggest that you use it as a quick check, and not a substitute for analyzing metrics in Search Console directly, as you get much deeper info about how you’re doing in search there.

That includes your click through rate and such, and that’s super important to track with the coming AI disruption in the works.

Discounts on Both Courses

If you’re a member of any BlogAid course, check your course dashboard for a discount to the other courses.

Become a GA4 Affiliate

Quick reminder that all members of the Ultimate GA4 Course are eligible to become an affiliate.

Please see the link at the top of your course dashboard to apply.

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

Internet Craziness

Have you experienced sites being slow, including your own?

Or your own internet connection being slow for everything?

Or more security checks when you log into sites?

Or maybe other random goofiness online?

Remember last week when I reported that Cloudflare mitigated a record-breaking DDoS attack?

Well, they are not record-breaking anymore, but they are still higher than normal.

And the extra scrutiny of the mitigation process causes a bottleneck that slows everything down.

Think about it like a checkpoint on the highway.

So, be patient and give thanks that your site is still live, and that you can still access things on the internet. Just a few years ago we were experiencing sites being down for 2 weeks over stuff like this. Internet security at all points has come a long way!

Analytics Tips

Only 17.9% of SEOs are Using Their GA4 Data

A super informal poll on Twitter of 300 pro SEOs shows that 41.7% are just collecting GA4 data but making no use of it.

A super low 17.9% are making use of it.

The rest aren’t even using GA4 or didn’t vote.

That’s sad, but not shocking.

SEOs are mainly concerned with how content ranks in search, not necessarily how it converts. You have to be seen first, and getting their clients to the top of Google is what they are paid to do.

Conversion is the job of the content creator and marketing manager.

As DIY site owners, we wear all of those hats.

And we need all the feedback we can get from both GSC and GA4.

Analyzing your data, not just looking at the vanity metrics, is where you find out how to best spend your time and make more money.

It truly stuns me at how many bloggers will spend 20 hours a week cranking out content without ever checking to see how well all of their content is doing, and where they could improve it to do better.

But then, most bloggers are creatives, and they don’t care much for statistics and they find the whole thing overwhelming.

Would a Course Be Helpful?

I’m wondering if a course on how to actionable data from your both your metric sources would be helpful.

We cover both in my courses now, but it’s not like an indepth course on how to make a plan from what you’re seeing.

I’d do a course if I could figure out how to teach it generically, as everyone is going to be at a different place with their content marketing – some are just starting out and are still creating a volume of content, while some have tons of content they need to keep at the top or let go or see what else needs to be written to fill in the gaps.

Those are 2 very different types of analysis plans.

What do you need in such a course?

I’m leaning more toward a beginner type course, as I feel that only 10% of my clients are already masters of it.

Let me know if you’d be interested in such a course, and what you’d expect from it.

20 Alternatives to Google Analytics

You know, Google Analytics is not the only traffic collecting vendor.

The folks at Moz put together a list of 20 alternatives. 

Most of them are paid, and I suspect that GA being free is the main reason folks use it.

One on the list that caught my eye was Cloudflare. I honestly did not know they offered any meaningful data. 

But, I will be checking it out, and if it is beyond vanity metrics, I’ll make a tutorial for it.

ChatGPT-Like AI Analytics are Here

Now AI is getting into the analytics game too.

Software company Dealtale has unveiled Marketing Co-Pilot. It’s a tool that you feed your analytics into and it gives you an AI powered chat bot so you can ask questions about how you’re doing.

It’s certainly novel, but it has the same limitations that all AI-powered chatbots have – and that’s the prompt itself.

The answer you get will depend entirely on the question you ask.

And that may have you only collecting vanity metrics, not the usable intel needed for taking action on the data.

It’s not that the info it gives you will be incorrect, it will just be limited to your query.

Now, this thing is a paid service, of course, and it is aimed at enterprise-level businesses.

But I would not be surprised if we see a version of this for Google, or one of those other 20 alternatives before the year ends.

SEO Tips

Gonzalez vs Google Case

If you have not heard about the Gonzalez v Google Supreme Court case yet, you will.

It’s been ongoing since 2015 in lower courts. But it is now having its day in the top court.

It involves Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act, which states whether

platforms can be held liable for content and algorithms to pump up hatred and violence.

That will impact every social platform we use.

The Gonzalez family alleges that a member of their family was killed by ISIS due to what was being promoted online on these platforms.

Why they are suing Google

The reason the case is against Google is because they placed revenue generating ads on platforms that promoted hatred and violence and shared that revenue with ISIS.

Google Could Lose $168 Billion in Ad Revenue

If Google loses this case, they also stand to lose $168 billion in ad revenue, as they will have to scrutinize the content of where their ads are run on Google search, sites that run Google ads, and on YouTube.

And that’s where Section 230 comes into play.

A loss for this on Google will mean all platforms could be held liable the same way.

Additional Reading

If you want to dig deeper into this, it’s all over the web. Here are a few links I pulled up.

• More background information
• Oral arguments last Tuesday

Image Tips

Openverse hotlinked

Are you using images from Openverse?

Be sure that you are uploading them and not just hotlinking them.

If those images are taken off Openverse, yours could disappear too if they are hotlinked, as they are being served from Openverse, not from your Media Library.

And WordPress is looking at taking away the hotlink option, which would be smart on their part.

WordPress Tips

WP 6.2 Live Demo

The next major release of WP 6.2 will roll out near the end of March.

We’ve had 3 weeks of beta releases and I expect Release Candidate 1 this week or next.

The WP dev team is hosting a live streaming event on March 1 to demo what’s new in the release.

Late Inclusion of Gutenberg Features Proposed

Well, here we are, right back to the same hubris of the devs problem we had last year with the WP Performace Team.

Now the Gutenberg dev team wants to be able to get their latest whizbang into any upcoming WP core release even if it comes after the RC freeze.

RC is the Release Candidate. And it draws a line in the sand with what new things will be included in the release. From that date to the final release date, they do nothing but testing and bug fixes.

But the Gute devs are saying there should be no issue with them slipping in something at the last minute that has already been thoroughly tested in the Gutenberg plugin.

Yeah, guys, look outside your cubicles at all of the theme and plugin dev folks who need to test on an RC so they can be ready for it too.

That testing takes time and money and nobody wants to do it 2 or 3 times.

Plus, there are those of us who help get the word out about new features and/or teach courses, and we need that extra time too.

I sure hope this nonsense doesn’t get approved. But I’m not counting on this design by committee approach WP has to get any better with how they develop either.

What I do know is that I won’t test or release a What’s New video about any upcoming release until after it has already been released from now on.

AI SEO Tips

New Bing, Prometheus, and IndexNow

Wonder how the New Bing grabs the most recent and/or relevant posts to answer a search in its integrated ChatGPT?

They use a thing they created called Prometheus to filter through Bing search result rankings.

And guess what feeds it the most recent posts?

IndexNow.

This is the service that Microsoft invented to have sites ping it when the site publishes or updates a post.

You may recall that I recently reported on why you should not use the IndexNow plugin and do it through Cloudflare instead.

You also need to ensure that your site is registered on Bing Webmaster tools and that your XML sitemap has been submitted to it.

These are all things I cover in depth in the DIY SEO course.

AI Tips

Links in ChatGPT Don’t Work

I see some folks putting links into ChatGPT to get that content summarized or use as seed for what they want to write.

Here’s the thing.

ChatGPT does not have live access to the internet. And it’s training doesn’t have access to anything on the internet after 2021.

It doesn’t actually go visit that link that’s put into the prompt. It bullshits its way through the answer based on keywords in the link URL.

If you give it a totally bogus link, it will do the same. Or if you give it a link that has no keywords, like a bit.ly link, it won’t know what to make of it.

That’s why we are excited about using the New Bing that has ChatGPT built in.

It does have access to the current internet and it can visit sites to look at the content.

So, when you hear about folks using ChatGPT, realize there are 2 versions of it, and be sure you know which one they are using for what task.

Ads Coming to New Bing

Microsoft is bleeding money to the tune of $100,000/day to provide ChatGPT.

And running ChatGPT on Bing is costing even more due to the lack of showing ads.

So, Microsoft has told us they plan to show ads on the New Bing chatbot.

I’m betting Google will do the same eventually.

Bing Limits Number of Chat Sessions

This is also why Bing is limiting the number of chat sessions you can do on the New Bing.

I’m guessing there may end up being a paid version of the New Bing, like there are paid versions of ChatGPT, to help offset the costs.

New Bing AI Coming to Smart Phones

No matter what you need to do, there seems to be an app for that.

And Microsoft has wasted no time in getting out the New Bing with AI to smart phones.

You can pick up the app for both iPhones an Android devices.

I just got access to the New Bing on desktop. And I’ll be checking into it and these apps as soon as I can. Plus, I’ll be investigating the new 3 modes they released that control rhe tone of the answers it gives,

One of my clients got access to New Bing and echoed what I’ve been telling y’all. If you’re site is not in the top 3-5 sites listed, you won’t be seen in it.

But she also said it delivered a pretty funky recipe for what she queried.

As much of a threat as publishers see this thing, we all have to keep in mind why Google is, by far, the preferred search engine. It has a far deeper crawl of the web than Bing.

So, while the chatbot integration is cool, I don’t think it will be used much for general search for a while yet.

What it will be used for is competition research and having it help write spinoff content.

And that should be our main concern as content creators.

Bain Teams Up with OpenAI

If you thought auto phone menus were bad now, wait until all customer service is done by AI.

And what if you look up a FAQs page for something you’re looking to purchase or such? Yep, that’s going to be written by AI too.

Companies need to be lean these days, and anything they can hand off to AI is going to save them money.

Bain is a agency that helps enterprise-level companies leverage knowledge and technology to give them a competitive edge, and that includes their internal processes and customer-facing marketing.

And now Bain has partnered with OpenAI to accelerate that process.

Here’s what Bain’s Manny Maceda said:

“AI has reached an inflection point and we foresee a huge wave of change and innovation for our clients across industries. We see this as an industrial revolution for knowledge work, and a moment where all our clients will need to rethink their business architectures and adapt. By collaborating with OpenAI, we’re delighted to have unmatched access to state-of-the-art foundation AI models, so that we can create tailored digital solutions for our clients and help them realize business value.”

Bain’s first AI customer is Coca-Cola.

The soft drink business is insanely competitive and Coke spends a ton of money to stay on top.

It will be interesting to see how Bain and AI help them do that.

I’m interested in seeing how much AI generated marketing they use, and what that will look like.

And here’s what Bain plans to use OpenAI for with their other Fortune 5000 clients:

• Building next generation contact centers for retail banks, telco and utility companies to support sales and service agents with automated, personalized, and real-time scripts, and to improve customer experience.
• Boosting turn-around time for leading product and service marketers by using ChatGPT and DALL·E to develop highly personalized ad copy, rich imagery, and targeted messaging.
• Helping financial advisors improve their productivity and responsiveness to clients through analysis of client dialogues and financial literature, and generation of digital communication.

With big tech and big marketing embracing AI this fast, I think we, as DIY marketers and content creators can expect to see more affordable AI tools trickle down to us.

And I think we can also expect that the site owners who use these AI tools will be able to outperform us in efficiency and be able to create more content, for every aspect of their business, including marketing, faster than folks who choose not to use AI.

Is AI right for you?

(affiliate link below)

Well, there’s only one way to answer that question – jump in and try it and see.

The AI Success Club from Denise Wakeman is a super good place to get started.

You get weekly prompts to help you learn to use AI for content creation and marketing. And you get live sessions and support too.

My DIY SEO course is going to cover AI for content creation this year too.

And it’s never too late to join us.

Wrap Up

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

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