Tips Tuesday – Namecheap Acquired, AI RSL Compensation, Stunning Meta Finds 

Tips this week include:

• Tracking newsletter effectiveness
• What do you want to see in Tips Tuesday?
• The surprising things we saw in our great AI SEO session
• How to make money with Meta – new tutorial
• The other stunning Meta things I found
• AI Mode may become Google Search default
• Site traffic is the only metric that counts
• Original CrUX Dashboard retirement
• GSC harmful content flag
• New AI crawl compensation standard in the works
• How to make short videos for sharing and engagement
• WP and WP Engine court case update
• Namecheap acquired by private equity firm

BlogAid Happenings

Tracking Newsletter Effectiveness

It takes a LOT of time to produce what you see in Tips Tuesday. It’s actually a fraction of the industry news I read and test each week. I filter all that down to what I think you would be most interested in knowing to help you have a fast, secure site that makes you money, and for how to get more eyeballs on your content.

Earlier this year, you heard me laminating about the lack of tracking email opens. I know how much it costs me to send emails, but by sending the whole Tips Tuesday post via email, I have no way to track whether folks are actually consuming the info or just scanning it. 

So, I am going back to emailing newsletter subscribers a summary of what’s in Tips Tuesday.

While I may not be able to track email clicks fully, I can still get a better indication of who visits by watching my site metrics. And I can see how long they dwell on that post.

While I know many of you appreciate this post being delivered fully to your email, I’m positive that you can also appreciate why I need to see metrics in a better way too.

What Do You Want to See?

Please keep in mind that some of the info in Tips Tuesday is for content creators and some is for webmasters. 

Let me know what you would like to see more or less of in Tips Tuesday, or what helps you the most.

• Do you just want to see headlines and brief summaries with links to more info, or do you enjoy hearing my thoughts on it to help you understand what it means and how it will affect you?
• Do you want more how-to tips or trend info or such?
• Would you like it to only be about WP sites or do you enjoy the expansion of the SEO sections to include social platforms too?

All comments welcome.

You can leave them on this post, in our Facebook groups, or contact me directly.

DIY SEO Everywhere Happenings

Great AIO SEO Session

We had a GREAT live session last week in the DIY SEO Everywhere course where we covered the changes to AIO (AI Overviews) in Google Search.

We all participated in seeing the changes brought about by the new FastSearch algorithm, including just how lightning fast those changes appear in AIO.

And we saw the new AI Mode tab that Google is experimenting with too. (More on that in a moment.)

The real surprise was how much we saw Facebook links listed in Search.

What was no surprise was seeing the top ranking authority that YouTube videos give you, including lending more authority to blog posts. But we saw videos from Facebook listed as well.

How to Make Meta Money

This week, our lesson will be on the changes that Meta recently made to their monetization program on Facebook. (Sorry for reporting last week that it was across all of their platforms.) 

I’m excited about it because this is an extension of the goals we set for making more money with AIO and other platforms.

I added the info to the course yesterday. We won’t meet live this week as we want to ensure everyone has a chance to go over the changes and see how they can implement them. 

The Other Stunning Meta Things I Found

While I was poking around in Meta Business Suite through all this I found a couple of things that stunned me. They involved who had what type of access level to my pages, including me not being listed as having full access. Plus, even though all of my pages are set as Business pages, they didn’t all appear as Business Assets.

So, we will most definitely be doing a live mastermind on Meta Business Suites in a couple of weeks.

Join Us!!!

Are you ready to get in the money and capitalize on all the opportunities that are becoming available for us?

Jump into the DIY SEO Everywhere course and join us on this adventure.

SEO Tips

AI Mode May Become Google Search Default

As I previously mentioned, in our last DIY SEO Everywhere course workshop, we saw the difference between Google’s AIO and the new AI Mode tab. The latter looks more like the AI interface that you see in the dedicated AI link for Gemini, and not like the summary interface for AIO that has been appearing at the top of regular Google Search.

Google has recently stated that the AI Mode may soon become the default in Google Search.

I hope not. It’s awful.

Site Traffic is the Only Metric that Counts

AI Search makes it so that we will never again have a reliable way to track how our content ranks in any search engine anymore. See this update on The Great Decoupling for more.

That means we have to rely on tracking our site traffic and the referrals even more closely.

EZ Metrix makes that so fast and easy to do.

There is no custom report in GA4 that comes close to how quickly you can see real traffic to your site, or any platform that supports GA4, like Shopify.

And the EZ Metrix course shows you how to drill down with just 1-2 clicks to get super deep insights into what is working and what is not working too.

Original CrUX Dashboard Retirement

Google announced that they are retiring the current CrUX Dashboard that is based on Looker Studio.

It will be deprecated at the end of November 2025, and there is already a new Dashboard to use.

The CrUX report gives us a 9-month view of Core Web Vitals at a glance.

The old dashboard was on LookerStudio and it cannot hold up to the strain of requests, especially on Tuesdays, as that’s when new data is reported.

For those of us who have a custom CrUX report in our EZ Metrix setup, it will stop working in December and there is no way to replace it with this new report. So, you’ll have to go to the new Dashboard to see that info. Luckily, it’s not something we check often, and that is why it was offered as a bonus in EZ Metrix to begin with.

GSC Harmful Content Flag

Last week, one of my clients emailed me with a screenshot of a security warning she saw in Google Search Console.

It said that Google had detected harmful content on her site and that it was posting a warning to all visitors.

I know seeing such things are scary, but the best thing you can do in this situation is to not panic. And definitely don’t make any changes to your site.

The GSC warning said the issue was on the login page. So that’s the first place I tested.

I got a splash screen from Cloudflare asking me to prove that I was human. This is different from the Turnstile protection we have on our login pages. It would not even show that login page until passing a challenge on the splash screen.

That told me that the login page was likely under attack and Cloudflare was mitigating that attack exactly as it should.

And that challenge is likely what the Googlebot ran into and decided that it was harmful in some way.

Finding nothing else wrong with the site, I asked the host to run malware and other such checks on the files. They were all clean.

So, I asked the client to click the button on the warning to have Google review it again.

By the time they did, the attack was over and there was no longer a splash screen.

And Google decided all was well again.

I think we’re going to run into more incidents like this as AI is creating more huge bot waves of all kinds to hit our sites. That includes AI crawlers, AI searches, AI Agents, and then hackers using AI bot agents too.

That’s precisely why I have been monitoring the security situation so closely and why I cannot sleep without my site being at a superior host like Iridium and on Cloudflare with the 30+ settings configured properly.

And it’s why my clients don’t panic. They get expert help to investigate and resolve the issue instead.

Plus, while GSC is not all that helpful anymore with determining rank, perhaps it would be a good idea to check it at least monthly for things like this.

It’s very likely that Google will resolve these false flags on their own, but it’s good for us to know that it is happening.

New AI Crawl Compensation Standard in the Works

Do you think we’ll ever get paid for AI training on our data, especially when they use it as an answer to a prompt?

Well, the current lawsuit judgements are favoring content creators over AI.

Plus, the cost of AI crawl bots is staggering to both the AI companies and the hosts of the content they are scraping.

All of that may lead to a tipping point that helps the new Really Simple Licensing (RSL) protocol to become standardized and adopted.

See my post on Substack – Is Really Simple Licensing the Answer for AI Crawler Compensation? for details.

Video Tips

How to Make Short Videos for Sharing and Engagement

The nice folks over at Social Media Examiner have a good post/video with actionable tips and examples on how to make short-form videos that boost sharing and engagement.

A lot of these tips boil down to one thing – edutainment.

If you’re having fun in the video, the audience will too.

I do so many straight up education videos that get right to the point that I literally forget to add in some entertainment videos now and then.

Even a blooper will do well with your audience, and maybe get you way more engagement than something you carefully crafted.

And that makes the platform’s algorithm love you – it doesn’t care what your video is about. 

I’m going to try to find a way to lighten up and publish some just-for-fun vids now and then too.

WordPress Tips

WP and WP Engine Court Case Update

The suit that Matt brought to WP Engine and then WPE’s counter suit are still in the courts.

Some allegations have been thrown out and some are still active, but awaiting clarification.

See this Search Engine Journal article for the latest updates and what is still at stake.

Domain Tips

Namecheap Acquired by Private Equity Firm

I’m not at all happy to hear this news.

The private equity firm CVC Capital is purchasing a controlling stake in our favorite domain registrar, NameCheap.

Richard Kirkendall, who is the original founder, will retain a large stake. That is one saving grace as he is our champion when it comes to domain registration prices and rules that govern the industry.

While NameCheap made $400 million last year, this deal values the company at $1.5 billion because it also includes all of NameCheap’s other holdings, such as Namebase and Stencil.

What I know is that every firm purchased by private equity changes into a bottom-line focused business.

One of the perks NameCheap has always offered is free WHOIS privacy. In fact, that’s one of the big topics Kirkendall was so vocal about, especially when he poked at GoDaddy about their prices for it. (GoDaddy is the #1 registrar, NameCheap is #2.)

I’m betting free privacy registration is the first thing we’ll kiss goodbye as this deal settles.

And while NameCheap is known for inexpensive domains, they may not live up to their name for much longer.

I just hope they don’t turn into another GoDaddy who always asks, “Do you want fries with that?” no matter why you go onto their site or contact them.

We’ll see how it plays out.