Google’s frequent algorithm updates produce nonstop fluctuations in organic traffic and rankings. Content audits are essential to identify lost rankings, revive declining traffic, and find new topics.
Here’s how I audit content for better search engine optimization.
Evaluate Lost Traffic
Traffic declines from organic search can occur for multiple reasons.
Over time, new articles push current ones deep into the archives. Updating articles with substantially new info and a new date will likely help regain traffic.
Google’s core updates often focus on searchers’ intent. Many queries imply multiple intents. For example, a search for “backyard barbeque” could suggest a need for information (how to cook barbeque) or purchase options (where to buy a grill). This type of loss is not easy to fix, likely requiring a new landing page or article.
Rankings of competitors’ pages surpassed yours. Shifting from position 1 to 2 can result in huge traffic losses. That, too, is not easy to fix. Closely analyze your competitors’ pages and backlinks to identify what may have led to their ranking increase.
Changes by Google in search result pages, such as adding sections and lowering the visibility of organic results. There’s no fix.
Regardless of the cause, the first step is to know which pages account for the loss. Search Console is an easy and free tool for diagnosing organic traffic drops.
Go to the “Performance” section.
Click “Search results” > “Date” > “Compare.”
Select “Compare last 3 months to previous period” or “Compare last 3 months year over year,” depending on your audit frequency.
Click on the “Pages” and sort by “Clicks difference.”
Click any URL in the first column.
Click “Queries” and sort again by “Clicks difference” to see the search terms causing the biggest traffic drops.
Now search for those queries (keywords) in Google to evaluate what may have caused the decrease.
Search Console is an easy and free tool for diagnosing organic traffic drops. Click image to enlarge.
Even climbing one position on the first page will likely increase traffic substantially. Optimizing the page copy by adding more keywords and creating more internal backlinks will likely help.
To identify these pages, use Search Console’s Performance section again.
Click “Search results” > “Average position” on top of the graph.
Click the filter option (inverted triangle) and select “Position.”
Click “Filter by Position” for “Greater than” 2.
Sort the queries by the number of clicks to see the top (and bottom) performers. Again, a page that climbs even one position will experience a huge traffic increase.
In Search Console, filter “Average Position” for “Greater than” 2. Click image to enlarge.
Identify and improve pages with external backlinks
Pages with many backlinks but few searchable keywords often fail to rank. For those pages, research keywords to help Google understand them.
Semrush’s backlink research tool can identify top-linked pages:
Log in to Semrush and click “Backlink Analytics” under “Link Building.”
Paste your URL and select “Root domain.”
Click the “Indexed pages” tab.
The report is sorted by the number of linked domains for each page on your site. Heavily linked pages are easier to improve, rankings-wise.
Use Search Console for ranking opportunities, or run keyword research tools to find new queries.
Semrush’s backlink research tool can identify top-linked pages. Click image to enlarge.
Lori McDonald is the founder and CEO of Brilliance Business Solutions, a prominent B2B ecommerce development firm. As of February 2024, she’s also the owner of a specialty food manufacturer called Norsland Lefse.
Why would a busy web development executive acquire a direct-to-consumer producer? I asked her that question and more in our recent conversation. The entire audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.
Kerry Murdock: You’re the CEO of a leading ecommerce development company. Why acquire a food manufacturer?
Lori McDonald: We specialize in working with mid-market manufacturers and distributors. We purchased a small manufacturing company to diversify how we make money and to understand our customers better.
It’s been a great learning experience for me and the Brilliance team. We’re just getting started.
The business is called Norsland Lefse. It’s smaller than our target development customers, but it still provides insight and empathy into what our clients experience daily. We closed on the deal in February 2024.
Murdock: Tell us about Norsland.
McDonald: Norsland Lefse is a 40-year-old specialty food manufacturer and distributor in Rushford, Minnesota. Our main product is Lefse, a Norwegian flatbread similar to a potato-based tortilla.
We also make Uffda! Chips, which is a crisp and fried byproduct of Lefse. We also resell other Norwegian and Scandinavian products.
Norsland has about 20 employees. Most are part-time. We’re a little more than $1 million in annual revenue across 270 SKUs. The majority of our sales are on Amazon. We also have a direct-to-consumer ecommerce site, NorslandLefse.com.
The company was small enough that we could afford it, with revenue from ecommerce.
Murdock: Shipping food sounds complicated.
McDonald: It’s been another learning experience! Most of our products are perishable. Lefse is perishable — we don’t add preservatives — as are other items. We store them in freezers and refrigerators. We ship FedEx 2Day with ice packs on most orders. Shipping speed and operational efficiency are critical.
Murdock: You’re an expert in ecommerce platforms and backend systems. What is Norsland’s setup?
McDonald: We don’t have much technology in place, but it’s coming. We manually sync inventory and orders on Amazon. We use XPS Ship to manage shipping; it integrates with Amazon.
We moved our ecommerce site from Wix to BigCommerce, a Brilliance partner. We completed the migration in just three months. It has given us many new capabilities. We also redesigned the site and made it mobile-friendly.
The Brilliance team handled the replatform and design work. I was on the client side, which was fun and educational. I was the customer.
We’re making progress, but we still have a big to-do list.
Murdock: What are the surprises thus far?
McDonald: Right away we did a profitability review of the products on Amazon. We were losing money on some items. I learned how easy it is to lose money on Amazon without realizing it.
We have a lot more orders coming from Amazon than our own site. Growing sales directly on NorslandLefse.com has been a goal from day one. The margins are better, but implementation is challenging. That’s been an eye-opener too.
Our clients at Brilliance could have thousands of SKUs. We have just 270 at Norsland. I now appreciate the complexity of managing margins for many items across different channels.
I’m also more aware of merchants’ daily operational tasks and components. We might have equipment breaking, staff turnover, inventory glitches, supplier price increases — so many things are happening. At Brilliance, working with clients, we perceive our work to be important. But I see now how our clients have much more to worry about.
Murdock: You’ve alluded to plans and goals. Could you address some of them?
McDonald: We’re not looking to expand SKUs. In some ways, less is more. Our two key products are Lefse and Uffda! Chips. We need to ensure we’re marketing and selling those well. We may offer a Lefse subscription so folks can order and have it delivered year-round.
We partnered from the start with Ox Optimal, a digital marketing firm. Brilliance focuses on the technical build and design of a site. Ox Optimal provides expertise in email marketing and Facebook and Google ads.
Murdock: We’re looking forward to following your progress. How can listeners reach you or buy some Lefse?
Google has announced it will no longer phase out third-party cookies in Chrome.
Instead, it’s trying a new approach that emphasizes user choice and control over their web browsing privacy.
Major Policy Reversal
For years, the company had been working towards eliminating third-party cookies, repeatedly delaying the implementation due to various challenges.
Instead of deprecating these cookies, Google will introduce a new experience in Chrome that allows users to make informed choices about their privacy settings.
Anthony Chavez, VP of Privacy Sandbox at Google, stated in the announcement:
“We are proposing an updated approach that elevates user choice. Instead of deprecating third-party cookies, we would introduce a new experience in Chrome that lets people make an informed choice that applies across their web browsing, and they’d be able to adjust that choice at any time.”
User Control At The Forefront
Under this new proposal, Chrome users can set their privacy preferences, which will apply across their web browsing activities.
This pivot comes after extensive feedback from various stakeholders, including regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), as well as publishers, web developers, standards groups, civil society, and advertising industry participants.
Continued Commitment To Privacy Sandbox
Despite this major change in direction, Google remains committed to its Privacy Sandbox initiative. The company plans to continue developing and offering Privacy Sandbox APIs to improve privacy protection and utility for those who choose to use them.
Additionally, Google intends to introduce IP Protection into Chrome’s Incognito mode, further enhancing user privacy options.
Implications For the Digital Advertising Landscape
This reversal is likely to have far-reaching implications for the digital advertising industry. Advertisers and publishers preparing for a cookieless future may need to reassess their strategies.
Google has stated that it will continue to consult with the CMA, ICO, and other global regulators as it finalizes its new approach. The company also intends to engage with the industry as it rolls out these changes.
In Summary
As Google shifts its approach to third-party cookies, here are key points to remember:
Google isn’t phasing out third-party cookies as previously planned.
Users will have more control over their privacy settings in Chrome.
The Privacy Sandbox project will continue, offering alternative technologies.
This change will affect advertisers, publishers, and users differently.
The full impact of this decision on the digital advertising landscape remains to be seen.
Google’s John Mueller was asked in an SEO Office Hours podcast if blocking the crawl of a webpage will have the effect of cancelling the “linking power” of either internal or external links. His answer suggested an unexpected way of looking at the problem and offers an insight into how Google Search internally approaches this and other situations.
About The Power Of Links
There’s many ways to think of links but in terms of internal links, the one that Google consistently talks about is the use of internal links to tell Google which pages are the most important.
Google hasn’t come out with any patents or research papers lately about how they use external links for ranking web pages so pretty much everything SEOs know about external links is based on old information that may be out of date by now.
What John Mueller said doesn’t add anything to our understanding of how Google uses inbound links or internal links but it does offer a different way to think about them that in my opinion is more useful than it appears to be at first glance.
Impact On Links From Blocking Indexing
The person asking the question wanted to know if blocking Google from crawling a web page affected how internal and inbound links are used by Google.
This is the question:
“Does blocking crawl or indexing on a URL cancel the linking power from external and internal links?”
Mueller suggests finding an answer to the question by thinking about how a user would react to it, which is a curious answer but also contains an interesting insight.
He answered:
“I’d look at it like a user would. If a page is not available to them, then they wouldn’t be able to do anything with it, and so any links on that page would be somewhat irrelevant.”
The above aligns with what we know about the relationship between crawling, indexing and links. If Google can’t crawl a link then Google won’t see the link and therefore the link will have no effect.
Keyword Versus User-Based Perspective On Links
Mueller’s suggestion to look at it how a user would look at it is interesting because it’s not how most people would consider a link related question. But it makes sense because if you block a person from seeing a web page then they wouldn’t be able to see the links, right?
What about for external links? A long, long time ago I saw a paid link for a printer ink website that was on a marine biology web page about octopus ink. Link builders at the time thought that if a web page had words in it that matched the target page (octopus “ink” to printer “ink”) then Google would use that link to rank the page because the link was on a “relevant” web page.
As dumb as that sounds today, a lot of people believed in that “keyword based” approach to understanding links as opposed to a user-based approach that John Mueller is suggesting. Looked at from a user-based perspective, understanding links becomes a lot easier and most likely aligns better with how Google ranks links than the old fashioned keyword-based approach.
Optimize Links By Making Them Crawlable
Mueller continued his answer by emphasizing the importance of making pages discoverable with links.
He explained:
“If you want a page to be easily discovered, make sure it’s linked to from pages that are indexable and relevant within your website. It’s also fine to block indexing of pages that you don’t want discovered, that’s ultimately your decision, but if there’s an important part of your website only linked from the blocked page, then it will make search much harder.”
About Crawl Blocking
A final word about blocking search engines from crawling web pages. A surprisingly common mistake that I see some site owners do is that they use the robots meta directive to tell Google to not index a web page but to crawl the links on the web page.
The (erroneous) directive looks like this:
There is a lot of misinformation online that recommends the above meta description, which is even reflected in Google’s AI Overviews:
Screenshot Of AI Overviews
Of course, the above robots directive does not work because, as Mueller explains, if a person (or search engine) can’t see a web page then the person (or search engine) can’t follow the links that are on the web page.
Also, while there is a “nofollow” directive rule that can be used to make a search engine crawler ignore links on a web page, there is no “follow” directive that forces a search engine crawler to crawl all the links on a web page. Following links is a default that a search engine can decide for themselves.
Having trouble getting your website mentioned on big news sites to boost your search engine rankings? You’re not the only one.
Many businesses find it hard to get these links. But what if you could do this regularly, every month?
The trick is to use studies based on current trends that journalists find interesting.
Sign up for our webinar with PureLinq on July 31, 2024, where we’ll discuss “Hacks To Earn 1000+ High Authority Links From US Media With Digital PR.”
Why Attend This Webinar?
Getting authoritative websites to link to yours is key to showing up high in search results. But it’s getting harder to catch the attention of busy reporters and editors.
That’s why creating interesting reports based on data is so useful.
If you make content that fits what people are discussing right now, reporters will want to share your stories.
This can lead to many respected websites mentioning and linking to you, which can help your website rank better in searches.
What You’ll Learn
Join Kevin Rowe as he presents real examples of PR campaigns that have received extensive media attention.
You’ll learn about:
Spotting Hot Topics: How to find popular themes in the media that you can use for multiple successful PR campaigns.
The Go-To Formula: We’ll show you a simple research method that’s been super effective in getting media coverage and how you can use it.
Getting Journalists Interested: Tips on finding and reaching out to reporters who will likely share your information.
Quick & Effective Research: How to create studies that journalists will want to cover in just 1-4 weeks, sometimes only needing 5-10 hours of work.
Success Stories: We’ll examine three examples of this approach, which has generated over 1,000 links from major US news outlets.
One of the most valuable parts of this webinar is learning how achievable these results are.
Rowe will share his secrets for identifying useful media trends and creating a media-ready research study with minimal time investment.
These are practical, actionable strategies you can implement immediately after the webinar.
Who Should Attend?
This presentation is perfect for:
SEO professionals looking to enhance their link-building strategies.
Public relations folks trying to get more news outlets and websites to cover their stories.
Writers who want to make content that people will share and link to.
Anyone who wants their brand to be more visible and respected online.
Live Q&A: Get Your Questions Answered
After the presentation, we’ll have a live question-and-answer session.
You’ll have the opportunity to ask Kevin Rowe your questions and receive advice that fits your situation. Rowe is an expert at attracting brand attention online and making websites rank higher in searches.
Join Us Live
This is your chance to improve your online marketing and search engine rankings. Join us on July 31 to find out how to get trusted websites to link to you regularly.
No problem if you can’t make it! Sign up anyway, and we’ll email you a video of the event to watch when it suits you.
Register today to learn how to use data to boost your online presence and improve your search rankings!
That’s a good question – and one that I’m frequently asked when teaching a live class about engaging audiences through content.
You might mistakenly assume that instructors are supposed to answer questions like that. But my colleagues and I do something different.
We give our students relevant assignments that provide them with the opportunity to discover the answers to good questions for themselves.
This test-and-learn approach is something that you can also apply within your own company, agency, or team. Want to know which generative AI model to use to create trending content?
Well, conduct a test and compare the output.
Write Concise Descriptions Of The Most Emotionally Engaging Video Ads Of Euros 2024
You already know how to use Google Trends to identify search terms or topics that are trending now. In fact, many journalists use this free tool to get story ideas.
Over the long Fourth of July weekend, I used Google Trends and saw that the topic “Euros 2024” ranked No. 1 in Trending Searches with more than 1 million queries.
Next, I decided to avoid using OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 for my tests. Why? Because it’s the most popular generative AI model, which means that your competitors are probably using it, too.
That means the content that this tool creates is less likely “to provide substantial value when compared to other pages in search results,” as Google’s long-standing advice recommends.
Why? Because it ranked No. 1 in the Writing category. The tool also claimed it would help me “write tailored, engaging content with a focus on quality, relevance and precise word count.”
I want to create better content, not just content that is different from what everyone else is creating. So, I asked Write For Me to “write concise descriptions of the most emotionally engaging video ads of Euros 2024.”
Here’s what this generative AI tool produced:
1. Unity Through Football
“A diverse group of children from different European countries come together on a pristine football pitch. As they play, the camera captures their joy and camaraderie, transcending language and cultural barriers. The ad concludes with a montage of professional players joining the children, emphasizing football's power to unite nations and foster friendship.”
2. Legacy of Legends
“The ad begins with black-and-white footage of iconic moments from past Euros, highlighting legendary players. It transitions to vibrant, modern clips of current stars recreating these moments, symbolizing the passing of the torch. A heartfelt narration speaks to the continuity of dreams and the legacy carried by each generation.”
3. Homecoming
“A montage of fans traveling from various parts of Europe to the host country, capturing their excitement and anticipation. Emotional reunions with fellow fans, old friends, and family members create a sense of belonging and community. The ad closes with a panoramic shot of a stadium filled with cheering supporters, underscoring the tournament's role in bringing people together.”
4. The Dream Begins
“The ad follows a young aspiring footballer practicing tirelessly, inspired by their favorite Euros moments. Interspersed with clips of professional matches, it shows the child's journey from local games to a stadium filled with fans. The message is clear: dreams start small but can lead to greatness, encouraging viewers to pursue their passions.”
5. Heartbeat of the Game
“This ad features a rhythmic sequence of football-related sounds: the thud of a ball, cheers from the crowd, and the whistle of the referee. These sounds build into a symphony, interspersed with clips of players’ intense focus and emotional celebrations. The heartbeat sound underscores the passion and excitement of the Euros, resonating with fans’ own emotions.”
6. From Streets to Stadiums
“Children playing football in urban alleys, rural fields, and makeshift pitches across Europe are showcased. Their raw passion and joy are mirrored by professional players in grand stadiums, blurring the lines between dreams and reality. The ad concludes with a powerful message: football belongs to everyone, from the streets to the grandest arenas.
Now, it’s perfectly clear why video ads with these descriptions would be emotionally engaging, but it is frustratingly unclear which brands are running these ads during Euros 2024.
So, I’d have to do some double-checking to make sure that ChatGPT isn’t hallucinating.
1. Adidas: "Hey Jude" (Most Engaging)
“This ad features rising England star Jude Bellingham alongside football legends like David Beckham and Frank Lampard. It taps into positive emotions by showcasing the passing of the torch and the enduring spirit of the game.”
2. Irn-Bru: "Get to Germany"
“This ad, likely using humor, aims to create positive feelings and excitement around the Euros being held in Germany.”
3. Budweiser: "Bring it Home"
“This ad uses a patriotic theme, likely aiming to inspire viewers and evoke a sense of national pride for their team's chance to win the Euros.”
It’s perfectly clear which brands are running the most emotionally engaging video ads of Euros 2024, but it’s still unclear which methodology Gemini is using to make this selection.
So, I’d still have to do more due diligence to discover that it’s probably recent articles and posts about new research from DAIVID.
Claude Output
I asked Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write concise descriptions of the most emotionally engaging video ads of Euros 2024.” Here’s what this generative AI tool replied:
“I apologize, but I don't have access to specific information about video ads from Euro 2024, as my knowledge cutoff is in April 2024, and I can't browse the internet for current information.”
“I can, however, offer some general thoughts on what makes emotionally engaging soccer/football ads:”
“Underdog stories of players or teams overcoming adversity.”
“Nostalgic montages showcasing historic Euro moments.”
“Depictions of passionate fans and their connection to the sport.”
“Inspirational messages about unity and international cooperation.”
“Cinematic recreations of iconic goals or plays.”
“If you'd like me to expand on any of these concepts or discuss emotionally engaging sports ads in general, I'd be happy to do so. For accurate information about Euro 2024 ads, I'd recommend checking official UEFA sources or recent sports media coverage.”
Well, Claude’s honesty is admirable. But its knowledge cutoff means that I shouldn’t use this generative AI model for content about fairly recent trends.
Write Short Captions For The Funniest Photos From The 2024 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest
For my second test, I used the Google autocomplete feature to confirm that the phrase, [Nathan’s hot dog eating contest], was a trending search term.
Then, I asked each of the three generative AI tools to “write short captions for the funniest photos from the 2024 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.”
ChatGPT Output
Here’s what Write For Me generated:
“Captions for Funniest Photos from the 2024 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest:”
"When you realize you're only halfway through your 50 hot dogs."
"Eyes on the prize: the ketchup bottle!"
"Training for this by swallowing my pride daily."
"When the bun hits you harder than the hot dog."
"Mustard not? I mustered up the courage!"
"New strategy: inhale, don’t chew."
"Hot dogs: 10, Dignity: 0."
"When you think it’s the last dog but it’s not."
"The face you make when you beat your personal best... by 1 dog."
"Calories don’t count if you don’t chew, right?"
Okay, I admit that many of these captions are funny. But it’s difficult to tell if they belong to actual photos or if this custom version of ChatGPT hallucinated the entire list.
And don’t get me started on getting permission to use any photos that exist. Of course, I could always use DALL-E 3 to turn the text above into images.
Gemini Output
Next, I gave Gemini the same assignment. Here’s what it generated:
1. Mustard Mishap: "Someone's about to be redecorated in yellow!" (Photo of a competitor with mustard splattered all over their face).
2. Relish the Moment: "This is what pure competitive joy looks like." (Photo of a competitor mid-devour with a look of intense concentration and relish dripping down their chin).
3. Bun Bungee: "Is that a hot dog or a bungee jumper? Defying the laws of physics, one frankfurter at a time." (Photo of a competitor with a hot dog halfway down their esophagus).
4. Fountain of Fury: "Looks like someone forgot their manners! (But they're probably winning.)" (Photo of a competitor with a spray of water and ketchup erupting from their mouth).
5. Doggy Downtime: "Even champions gotta rest sometimes. (Just don't let Joey Chestnut see this.)" (Photo of a competitor slumped back in their chair with a belly full of hot dogs).”
Um, okay. These are also funny captions.
But it’s hard to know if they go with actual photos that were posted on July 4, 2024, without using Google Images to conduct a series of relevant searches. And that still doesn’t give me permission to use them even if they do exist.
[Note, these responses were generated a few days before Google announced their support for labelling AI-generated images.]
Claude Output
Then, I asked Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write short captions for the funniest photos from the 2024 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest.” Here’s what it replied:
“I apologize, but I don't have access to specific photos from the 2024 Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, as my knowledge cutoff is in April 2024. Additionally, I can't generate, produce, edit, manipulate or create images.”
“However, I can suggest some hypothetical humorous captions that might be appropriate for funny moments at a hot dog eating contest:”
"When the hot dogs fight back"
"Regretting that 50th hot dog"
"Mid-contest nap: Expert level achieved"
"Ketchup everywhere... except on the hot dogs"
"When you realize it's only been 2 minutes"
"The face of a champion... or indigestion"
"Spectators' faces: Equal parts horror and awe"
"When the bun-to-dog ratio is all wrong"
"Competitive eating: Where table manners go to die"
"That moment you question all your life choices"
“Remember, these are fictional captions for imaginary photos. For accurate information about the 2024 contest, you'd need to check official sources or news reports from after the event.”
Once again, Claude gets high marks for being honest about its limitations.
But unless I want to select some of these hypothetical humorous captions and use them as prompts in Adobe Firefly, then I need to use one of the other options.
Write A 400-Word Blog Post About The Top Omni Channel Retailing Trends Of 2024
For my third test, I used SparkToro to research the audience of 5,000 to 6,000 people who search for the keyword [customer retention] each month.
I used SparkToro’s trending keywords feature to analyze the search terms that have risen in popularity among searchers for “customer retention” over the last quarter.
Then, I selected the trending keyword, “omni channel retailing trends,” for this test.
ChatGPT Output
When I asked Write For Me to “write a 400-word blog post about the top omni channel retailing trends of 2024,” here’s what this generative AI tool produced:
Top Omnichannel Retailing Trends of 2024
“As we move into 2024, the landscape of retail continues to evolve rapidly, driven by technological advancements and changing consumer expectations. Omnichannel retailing, which integrates various shopping channels into a seamless customer experience, remains at the forefront of this evolution. Here are the top omnichannel retailing trends to watch out for in 2024.”
1. Enhanced Personalization Through AI and Data Analytics
“In 2024, personalization goes beyond just using the customer’s name in emails. Retailers are leveraging advanced AI and data analytics to offer hyper-personalized shopping experiences. By analyzing consumer behavior, preferences, and purchase history, retailers can tailor recommendations, promotions, and content to individual customers. This level of personalization enhances customer satisfaction and increases conversion rates.”
2. Seamless Integration of Physical and Digital Channels
“The line between online and offline shopping continues to blur. In 2024, more retailers are perfecting the integration of physical and digital channels. Innovations like in-store augmented reality (AR) mirrors, smart fitting rooms, and mobile app functionalities that enhance in-store experiences are becoming standard. Additionally, services like click-and-collect and in-store returns for online purchases are expected to become more streamlined and widespread.”
3. Expansion of Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce)
“Mobile commerce continues to grow as consumers increasingly use their smartphones for shopping. Retailers are optimizing their mobile websites and apps to provide faster, more intuitive, and secure shopping experiences. Features like one-click purchasing, mobile wallets, and personalized push notifications are becoming essential components of mobile strategies.”
4. Social Commerce Revolution
“Social media platforms are transforming into powerful retail channels. In 2024, social commerce, where shopping experiences are embedded within social media, is set to explode. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are enhancing their shopping functionalities, allowing users to discover, browse, and purchase products without leaving the app. Influencer marketing and user-generated content continue to drive this trend, making social media a critical part of omnichannel strategies.”
5. Sustainable and Ethical Retailing
“Consumers are increasingly demanding sustainability and transparency from the brands they support. In response, retailers are incorporating sustainable practices and ethical sourcing into their omnichannel strategies. This includes offering eco-friendly products, reducing packaging waste, and providing transparency about product origins and manufacturing processes. Brands that can effectively communicate their sustainability efforts through all channels will gain a competitive edge.”
6. Voice Commerce and Conversational AI
“Voice-activated shopping and conversational AI are becoming more prevalent. With the rise of smart speakers and virtual assistants, consumers are using voice commands to search for products, place orders, and track deliveries. Retailers are integrating voice commerce capabilities into their omnichannel strategies to enhance convenience and improve customer engagement.”
Conclusion
“In 2024, the retail industry is embracing these omnichannel trends to create more cohesive and engaging shopping experiences. By focusing on personalization, integrating physical and digital channels, leveraging mobile and social commerce, prioritizing sustainability, and adopting voice commerce, retailers can stay ahead in a competitive market. These trends highlight the importance of flexibility and innovation in meeting the evolving needs of modern consumers.”
Um, okay. This is 498 words long. This content seems designed for publication at the beginning of the year.
The blog post is missing citations from reliable sources, credible quotes, and relevant statistics, as Roger Montti’s article, “Researchers Discover How To SEO For AI Search,” noted back on Dec. 18, 2023.
So, it’s not as bad as a first draft. But I would hope that writers would learn by using this custom version of ChatGPT that they need to craft something a little bit better.
Gemini Output
Next, I asked Gemini to tackle the same assignment. Here’s what this generative AI tool produced:
The Future of Shopping: Top Omnichannel Retail Trends in 2024
“The retail landscape is ever-evolving, and 2024 is no exception. Consumers today expect a seamless shopping experience, regardless of whether they're browsing online, visiting a physical store, or interacting with a brand on social media. This is where omnichannel retail thrives. By creating a unified experience across all touchpoints, retailers can build stronger customer loyalty and drive sales.”
“Let's delve into the top omnichannel retail trends shaping the industry in 2024:”
1. The Rise of the Data-Driven Experience:
“With the demise of third-party cookies, retailers are focusing on collecting and utilizing first-party customer data. This data allows for real-time personalization across all channels. Imagine receiving targeted email promotions based on your recent in-store purchases, or seeing personalized product recommendations on a brand's app. Advanced analytics will not only personalize marketing efforts but also optimize search functionalities and product merchandising on e-commerce platforms.”
2. AI Takes Center Stage:
“Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the retail experience. AI-powered chatbots can answer customer queries 24/7, recommend products based on browsing history, and even assist with in-store tasks. Generative AI can create personalized marketing content at scale, while AI-driven sales automation streamlines processes for both retailers and customers.”
3. The Blur Between Physical and Digital:
“The lines between online and offline shopping are continuing to blur. We're seeing a rise in ‘phygital’ experiences, such as augmented reality (AR) apps that allow customers to virtually try on clothes or visualize furniture in their homes. In-store kiosks can facilitate online purchases and allow for easy returns or exchanges. Additionally, ‘showrooming,’ where customers browse in-store and then purchase online, necessitates seamless product availability and pricing across channels.”
4. Social Commerce Takes Off:
“Social media platforms are no longer just for browsing; they're becoming powerful shopping destinations. ‘Live shopping’ experiences with influencers showcasing products are gaining traction, while social media platforms are integrating smoother buying functionalities within their apps. User-generated content and social proof will continue to influence purchasing decisions, making social media a crucial touchpoint in the omnichannel journey.”
5. Personalization Beyond Products:
“The future of omnichannel retail goes beyond just product recommendations. Retailers are focusing on creating personalized experiences that cater to individual customer preferences. This could involve offering flexible delivery options, loyalty programs with tiered benefits, or the ability to curate in-store shopping experiences through appointments or personalized product selections.”
Conclusion:
“In today's competitive retail environment, omnichannel isn't just a trend; it's a necessity. By embracing these trends and prioritizing a data-driven, personalized approach, retailers can not only survive but thrive in the ever-evolving landscape of commerce.”
Well, the headline is better and it’s 433 words long, which is closer to what I’d asked for. But this blog post is also missing citations from reliable sources, credible quotes, and relevant statistics.
So, I hope writers would learn the same lesson by using Gemini that they learned using a custom version of ChatGPT: It’s not bad, but a human with experience and expertise can do better.
Claude Output
Finally, I asked Claude 3.5 Sonnet to “write a 400-word blog post about the top omni channel retailing trends of 2024.” Here’s what this generative AI tool produced:
Top Omnichannel Retailing Trends Shaping 2024
“As we navigate through 2024, the retail landscape continues to evolve rapidly. Omnichannel strategies have become more crucial than ever, with consumers expecting seamless experiences across all touchpoints. Let's explore the key trends defining omnichannel retailing this year.”
1. AI-Powered Personalization: “Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how retailers understand and cater to individual customer preferences. In 2024, we're seeing more sophisticated AI algorithms that analyze customer data across channels to deliver hyper-personalized recommendations, offers, and experiences.”
2. Augmented Reality Integration: “AR is bridging the gap between online and offline shopping. Retailers are leveraging AR technology to allow customers to virtually try on clothes, visualize furniture in their homes, or explore products in detail before making a purchase decision.”
3. Social Commerce Acceleration: “Social media platforms are increasingly becoming direct sales channels. Retailers are optimizing their presence on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest, enabling in-app purchases and creating shoppable content that seamlessly integrates with users' social experiences.”
4. Sustainable and Ethical Omnichannel Practices: “Consumers are more environmentally conscious than ever. Retailers are responding by implementing sustainable practices across their omnichannel operations, from eco-friendly packaging to transparent supply chains and ethical sourcing information available across all channels.”
5. Voice Commerce Integration: “With the growing adoption of smart speakers and voice assistants, retailers are optimizing their digital presence for voice search and enabling voice-activated purchases, adding another dimension to the omnichannel experience.”
6. Phygital Experiences: “The blend of physical and digital experiences, or ‘phygital,’ is gaining traction. Retailers are creating innovative in-store digital touchpoints and bringing elements of the physical store experience to online platforms.”
7. Unified Customer Data Platforms: “Retailers are investing in advanced customer data platforms that consolidate information from all channels, providing a single view of the customer and enabling more cohesive marketing and service strategies.”
8. Flexible Fulfillment Options: “The line between online and offline continues to blur with the expansion of services like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), curbside pickup, and same-day delivery. Retailers are optimizing their logistics to offer customers maximum flexibility.”
9. Subscription-Based Models: “More retailers are incorporating subscription services into their omnichannel strategies, providing regular product deliveries or exclusive access to content and experiences across multiple platforms.”
10. Advanced Analytics for Real-Time Insights: “Retailers are leveraging advanced analytics tools to gain real-time insights into customer behavior across channels, allowing for quick adjustments to inventory, pricing, and marketing strategies.”
“As these trends show, the future of retail lies in creating cohesive, customer-centric experiences that seamlessly blend online and offline touchpoints. Retailers who successfully adapt to these omnichannel trends will be well-positioned to thrive in the dynamic retail environment of 2024 and beyond.”
Claude’s content is 443 words long, which is longer than Gemini’s, but shorter than the custom version of ChatGPT. And Claude generated 10 trends, while ChatGPT generated six, and Gemini generated five.
But just like the other generative AI tools, Claude’s blog post is missing citations from reliable sources, credible quotes, and relevant statistics.
So, Claude is also good at creating a rough draft. But I’d hope that writers would learn by using ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude that they shouldn’t become a tool of their tools.
AI Is Not Going To Take Your Job
A year ago, Jensen Huang, the founder, president, and CEO of Nvidia, said,
“AI is not going to take your job. The person who uses AI is going to take your job.”
Well, a year later, we’ve learned by comparing the content output generated by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude that it’s still smarter to use generative AI tools to brainstorm or create a good first draft.
In an SEO Office Hours podcast, Google’s John Mueller answered the question of how to get more product rich results to show in the search results. John listed four things that are important in order to get rich results for product listings.
Product Rich Results
Product search queries can trigger rich results that presents products in a visually rich manner that Google refers to as Search Experiences.
Google product search experiences can include:
Product snippets that include ratings, reviews, price, and whether availability information.
Visual representations of products
Knowledge panel with vendors and products
Product images in Google Images search results
Result enhancements (reviews, shipping information, etc.)
John Mueller Answers Question About Product Rich Results
The person asking the question wanted to know how to get more “product snippets in Search Console” which confused Mueller because product snippets are displayed in the search results, not search console. So Mueller answered the question in the context of search results.
This is the question:
“How to increase the number of product snippets in Search Console?”
John Mueller explained that there were four things to get right in order to qualify for product rich results.
Mueller answered:
“It’s not really clear to me what exactly you mean… If you’re asking about product rich results, these are tied to the pages that are indexed for your site. And that’s not something which you can change by force.
It requires that the page be indexed, that the page has valid structured data on it, and that our systems have determined that it’s worth showing this structured data.”
So, according to John Mueller, these are the four things to get right to qualify for product rich results:
Page must be indexed
The page has valid structured data
Google’s systems determine that it’s worth showing
Submit a product feed
1. Page Indexing
Getting a page indexed (and ranked) can be difficult for some search queries. People who come to me with this kind of problem tend to have content quality issues that can be traced back to using outdated SEO strategies like copying what’s already ranking in the SERPs but making it “better” which often results in content that’s not meaningfully different than what Google is already ranking.
Content quality on the page level and on the site level are important. Focusing on content that has that little extra, like better images, helpful graphs, or content that’s more concise, all of that is so much better than focusing on keywords and entities.
2. Valid Structured Data
This is another area that explains why some sites lose their rich results or fail to get them altogether. Google changes their structured data recommendations and usually the structured data plugins will update to conform to the new guidelines. But I’ve seen examples where that doesn’t happen. So when there’s a problem with rich results, go to Google’s Rich Results Test tool first.
It’s also important to be aware that getting the structured data correct is not a guarantee that Google will show rich results for that page, it’s just makes the page qualified to show in the rich results.
3. How Does Google Determine Something’s Worth Showing?
This is the part that Google doesn’t talk about. But if you’re read about reviews systems, quality guidelines, Google’s SEO starter guide and maybe even the Search Quality Raters Guidelines then that should be more than enough information to inform any question about content quality.
Google doesn’t say why they may decline to show an image thumbnail as a rich result or why they’ll not show a product in the rich results. My opinion is that debugging the issue is more productive if the problem is reconceptualized as a content quality issue. Images are content, if it’s on the page, even if it’s not text, it’s content. Evaluate all of the content in terms of how the images or products or whatever might look like in the search results. Does it look good as a thumbnail? Is the content distinctive or helpful or useful, etc.?
4. Merchant Feed
John Mueller lastly said that the merchant feed is another way to get products from a website to show as a rich result in Google.
Mueller answered:
“There’s also the possibility to submit a feed to your merchant center account, to show products there. This is somewhat separate, and has different requirements which I’ll link to. Often a CMS or platform will take care of these things for you, which makes it a bit easier.”
While John Mueller listed four ways to get product rich results, Google Search Experiences, it’s not always as easy as 1, 2, 3, and 4. There are always nuances to be aware of.
Listen to the Google SEO Office Hours podcast at the 7:00 minute mark:
In its earlier days, Google relied heavily on plain text data and backlinks to establish rankings through periodic monthly refreshes (then known as the Google Dance).
Since those days, Google Search has become a sophisticated product with a plethora of algorithms designed to promote content and results that meet a user’s needs.
To a certain extent, a lot of SEO is a numbers game. We focus on:
We might also include third-party metrics, such as search visibility or the best attempt at mimicking PageRank. But for the most part, we default to a core set of quantitative metrics.
That’s because these metrics are what we are typically judged by as SEO professionals – and they can be measured across competitor websites (through third-party tools).
Clients want to rank higher and see their organic traffic increasing, and by association, leads and sales will also improve.
When we choose target keywords, there is the tendency and appeal to go after those with the highest search volumes, but much more important than the keyword’s search volume is the intent behind it.
There is also a tendency to discount any search phrase or keyword that has a low or no search volume based on the fallacy of it offering no “SEO value,” but this is very niche-dependent. It requires an overlay of business intelligence to understand if these terms have no actual value.
This is a key part of the equation often overlooked when producing content. It’s great that you want to rank for a specific term, but the content has to be relevant and satisfy the user intent.
The Science Behind User Intent
In 2006, a study conducted by the University of Hong Kong found that at a primary level, search intent can be segmented into two search goals.
A user is specifically looking to find information relating to the keyword(s) they have used.
A user is looking for more general information about a topic.
A further generalization can be made, and intentions can be split into how specific the searcher is and how exhaustive the searcher is.
Specific users have a narrow search intent and don’t deviate from this, whereas an exhaustive user may have a wider scope around a specific topic(s).
Lagun and Agichtein (2014) explored the complexity and extent of the “task” users aim to achieve when they go online. They used eye-tracking and cursor movements to better understand user satisfaction and engagement with search results pages.
The study found significant variations in user attention patterns based on task complexity (the level of cognitive load required to complete the task) and the search domain (e.g., results relating to health and finance may be more heavily scrutinized than sneaker shopping).
Search engines are also making strides in understanding both search intents. Google’s Hummingbird and Yandex’s Korolyov and Vega are just two examples.
Google & Search Intent
Many studies have been conducted to understand the intent behind a query, and this is reflected by the types of results that Google displays.
In the presentation, Haahr explains basic theories on how a user searching for a specific store (e.g., Walmart) is most likely to look for their nearest Walmart store, not the brand’s head office in Arkansas.
The Search Quality Rating Guidelines echo this in Section 3, detailing the “Needs Met Rating Guidelines” and how to use them for content.
The scale ranges from Fully Meets (FullyM) to Fails to Meet (FailsM) and has flags for whether the content is porn, foreign language, not loading, or is upsetting/offensive.
The raters are critical not only of the websites they display in web results but also of the special content result blocks (SCRB), a.k.a. Rich Snippets, and other search features that appear in addition to the “10 blue links.”
One of the more interesting sections of these guidelines is 13.2.2, titled “Examples of Queries that Cannot Have Fully Meets Results.”
Within this section, Google details that “Ambiguous queries without a clear user intent or dominant interpretation” cannot achieve a Fully Meets rating.
Its example is the query [ADA], which could be the American Diabetes Association, the American Dental Association, or a programming language devised in 1980. As there is no dominant interpretation of the internet or the query, no definitive answer can be given.
A 2011 paper looked at the potential for using community-based question-answering (CQA) platforms to improve user satisfaction in web search results.
The study collected data from an unnamed search engine and an unnamed CQA website, and used machine learning models to predict user satisfaction. Data points used to try and predict satisfaction included:
Textual features (e.g., length of the answer, readability).
User/author features (e.g., reputation score of the answerer).
Community features (e.g., number of votes).
The study found that factors such as the clarity and completeness of answers were crucial predictors of user satisfaction.
Due to the diversity of language, many queries have more than one meaning. For example, [apple] can either be a consumer electrical goods brand or a fruit.
Google handles this issue by classifying the query by its interpretation. The interpretation of the query can then be used to define intent.
Query interpretations are classified into the following three areas:
Dominant Interpretations
The dominant interpretation is what most users mean when they search for a specific query.
Google search raters are told explicitly that the dominant interpretation should be clear, even more so after further online research.
Common Interpretations
Any given query can have multiple common interpretations. Google’s example in its guidelines is [mercury] – which can mean either the planet or the element.
In this instance, Google can’t provide a result that “Fully Meets” a user’s search intent, but instead, it produces results varying in both interpretation and intent (to cover all bases).
Minor Interpretations
A lot of queries will also have less common interpretations, and these can often be locale-dependent.
It can also be possible for minor interpretations to become dominant interpretations should real-world events force enough public interest in the changed interpretation.
Do – Know – Go
Do, Know, Go is a concept that search queries can be segmented into three categories: Do, Know, and Go.
These classifications then, to an extent, determine the type of results that Google delivers to its users.
Do (Transactional Queries)
When users perform a “do” query, they want to achieve a specific action, such as purchasing a specific product or booking a service. This is important to ecommerce websites, for example, where a user may be looking for a specific brand or item.
Device action queries are also a form of a “do” query and are becoming more and more important, given how we interact with our smartphones and other technologies.
In 2007, Apple launched the first iPhone, which changed our relationship with handheld devices. The smartphone meant more than just a phone. It opened our access to the internet on our terms.
Obviously, before the iPhone, we had 1G, 2G, and WAP – but it was really 3G that emerged around 2003 and the birth of widgets and apps that changed our behaviors, increasing internet accessibility and availability to large numbers of users.
Device Action Queries & Mobile Search
In May 2015, mobile search surpassed desktop search globally in the greater majority of verticals. Fast forward to 2024, 59.89% of traffic comes from mobile and tablet devices.
Increased internet accessibility also means that we can perform searches more frequently based on real-time events.
As a result, Google currently estimates that 15% of the queries it handles daily are new and have never been seen before.
This is in part due to the new accessibility that the world has and the increasing smartphone and internet penetration rates seen globally.
Mobile devices are gaining increasing ground not only in how we search but also in how we interact with the online sphere. In fact, 95.6% of global internet users aged 16-64 access the internet through a mobile device.
One key understanding of mobile search is that users may not also satisfy their query via this device.
In my experience, working across a number of verticals, a lot of mobile search queries tend to be more focused on research and informational, moving to a desktop or tablet at a later date to complete a purchase.
According to Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines:
“Because mobile phones can be difficult to use, SCRBs can help mobile phone users accomplish their tasks very quickly, especially for certain Know Simple, Visit in Person, and Do queries.”
Mobile is also a big part of Google Search Quality Guidelines, with the entirety of Section 2 dedicated to it.
Know (Informational Queries)
A “know” query is an informational query, where the user wants to learn about a particular subject.
Know queries are closely linked to micro-moments.
In September 2015, Google released a guide to micro-moments, which are happening due to increased smartphone penetration and internet accessibility.
Micro-moments occur when a user needs to satisfy a specific query there and then, and these often carry a time factor, such as checking train times or stock prices.
Because users can now access the internet wherever, whenever, there is the expectation that brands and real-time information are also accessible, wherever, whenever.
Micro-moments are also evolving. Know queries can vary from simple questions like [how old is tom cruise] to broader and more complex queries that don’t always have a simple answer.
Know queries are almost always informational in intent. They are neither commercial nor transactional in nature. While there may be an aspect of product research, the user is not yet at the transactional stage.
A pure informational query can range from [how long does it take to drive to London] to [gabriel macht imdb].
To a certain extent, these aren’t seen in the same importance as direct transactional or commercial queries – especially by ecommerce websites. Still, they provide user value, which is what Google looks for.
For example, if a user wants to go on holiday, they may start with searching for [winter sun holidays europe] and then narrow down to specific destinations.
Users will research the destination further, and if your website provides them with the information they’re looking for, there is a chance they will also inquire with you.
Featured Snippets & Clickless Searches
Rich snippets and special content results blocks (i.e., featured snippets) have been a main part of SEO for a while now, and we know that appearing in an SCRB area can drive huge volumes of traffic to your website.
On the other hand, appearing in position zero can mean that a user won’t click through to your website, meaning you won’t get the traffic and the chance to have them explore the website or count towards ad impressions.
That being said, appearing in these positions is powerful in terms of click-through rate and can be a great opportunity to introduce new users to your brand/website.
Go (Navigational Queries)
“Go” queries are typically brand or known entity queries, where a user wants to go to a specific website or location.
If a user is specifically searching for Kroger, serving them Food Lion as a result wouldn’t meet their needs as closely.
Likewise, if your client wants to rank for a competitor brand term, you need to make them question why Google would show their site when the user is clearly looking for the competitor.
This is also a consideration to make when going through rebrand migrations, as well as what connotations and intent the new term has.
Defining Intent Is One Thing, User Journeys Another
For a long time, the customer journey has been a staple activity in planning and developing both marketing campaigns and websites.
While mapping out personas and planning how users navigate the website is important, it’s also necessary to understand how users search and what stage of their journey they are at.
The word journey often sparks connotations of a straight path, and a lot of basic user journeys usually follow the path of landing page > form or homepage > product page > form. This same thinking is how we tend to map website architecture.
We assume that users know exactly what they want to do, but mobile and voice search have introduced new dynamics to our daily lives, shaping our day-to-day decisions and behaviors almost overnight.
These micro-moments directly question our understanding of the user journey. Users no longer search in a single manner, and because of how Google has developed in recent years, there is no single search results page.
We can determine the stage the user is at through the search results that Google displays and by analyzing proprietary data from Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yandex Metrica.
The Intent Can Change, Results & Relevancy Can, Too
Another important thing to remember is that search intent and the results that Google displays can also change – quickly.
An example of this was the Dyn DDoS attack that happened in October 2016.
Before the attack, searching for terms like [ddos] or [dns] produced results from companies like Incapsula, Sucuri, and Cloudflare.
These results were all technical and not appropriate for the newfound audience discovering and investigating these terms.
What was once a query with a commercial or transactional intent quickly became informational. Within 12 hours of the attack, the search results changed and became news results and blog articles explaining how a DDoS attack works.
This is why it’s important to not only optimize for keywords that drive converting traffic, but also those that can provide user value and topical relevance to the domain.
While intent can change during a news cycle, the Dyn DDoS attack and its impact on search results also teach us that – with sufficient user demand and traction – the change in intent can become permanent.
How Could AI Change Intent & User Search Behavior
After reviewing client Search Console profiles and looking at keyword trends, we saw a pattern emerging over the past year.
With a home electronics client, the number of queries starting with how/what/does has increased, expanding on existing query sets.
For example, where historically the query would be [manufacture model feature], there is an increase in [does manufacturer model have feature].
For years, a regular search query has followed a fairly uniform pattern. From this pattern, Google has learned how to identify and determine intent classifiers.
To do this, Google must annotate the query, and an annotator has a number of elements from a language identifier, stop-word remover, confidence values, and entity identifier.
This is because, as the above image demonstrates, the query [proxy scraping services] also contains a number of other queries and permutations. While these haven’t been explicitly searched for, the results for [proxy services], [scraping services], and [proxy scraping services] could have significant levels of overlap and burden the resources required to return three separate results as one.
This matters because AI and changing technologies have the potential to change how users perform searches. It is in part because we need to provide additional context to LLMs to satisfy our needs.
As we need to be explicit in what we’re trying to achieve, our language naturally becomes more conversational and expansive, as covered in Vincent Terrasi’s ChatGPT prompt guide.
If this trend becomes mainstream, how Google and search engines process the change in query type could also change current SERP structures.
Machine Learning & Intent Classification
The other side to this coin is how websites producing different (and more) content can influence and change search behavior.
How platforms market new tools and features will also influence these changes. Google’s big, celebrity-backed campaigns for Circle to Search are a good example of this.
As machine learning becomes more effective over time – and this, coupled with other Google’s algorithms, can change search results pages.
This may also lead Google to experiment with SCRBs and other SERP features in different verticals, such as financial product comparisons, real estate, or further strides into automotive.
Here’s what we don’t know about Prime Day 2024. Amazon says the event was global but famously provides no revenue details. We’re left with estimates by Adobe and others of U.S. purchases.
Thus we don’t know the worldwide volume or the impact on Amazon’s income since most of the purchases are presumably with third-party marketplace sellers from which Amazon earns a commission — $1 billion of purchases at a 20% commission would be $200 million of earnings to Amazon.
Less clear, too, is the bottom-line effect of Prime Day discounts on third-party merchants who tell Practical Ecommerce that Amazon takes roughly 50% of every transaction with sales commissions, FBA fees, and advertising costs.
Certainly Prime Day is good for consumers and Amazon, which carries little inventory risk and earns fees and commissions no matter the selling price. Amazon is mostly a service provider, after all, and most of that is from its cloud computing division, not marketplace activity.
Nonetheless, here’s our recap of Prime Day 2024.
Prime Day 2024 Recap
Adobe Analytics is popular among large U.S. online retailers. It has long been a credible source for Prime Day data. For this year’s event, Adobe says it tracked 1 trillion U.S. web visits, 100 million SKUs, and 18 product categories. All told, per Adobe, U.S. consumers spent a record $14.2 billion during July 16 -17, up 11.8% from a year earlier. (Amazon stated only that the 2024 event was “the biggest ever.”)
Other Adobe findings:
49.2% of purchases were on mobile devices, up 18.6% from 2023.
Sales of back-to-school goods (backpacks, lunchboxes, supplies) increased by 216% from last year, presumably owing to the event occurring a week later than in 2023.
Electronics sales increased 61% due to “product refresh cycles” wherein consumers upgrade their devices.
Housewares, furniture, and appliance sales were strong, with increases in kitchen appliances (up 76%) and cookware (up 26%) leading the category.
Categories with the top discounts from list prices were electronics (23% off), apparel (20% off), home goods/furniture (16% off), television (16% off), and toys (15% off).
Other Metrics
Numerator is a U.S.-based data and analysis firm. For its Prime Day 2024 report, Numerator tracked 93,513 U.S. orders, 35,588 households, 188,000 items purchased, and 7,311 verified buyer surveys. The report included:
Household spending: Under $100 (34%), $100-$200 (43%), $200+ (23%)
The top-selling item was the Amazon TV Fire Stick, followed by Premier Protein Shakes, Liquid I.V. Packets, Glad Trash Bags, and COSRX Snail Mucin Serum.
Consumers want discounts, according to Pacvue, an ecommerce advertising platform.
“Shoppers are still feeling the effects of inflation and are hungry for deals,” Melissa Burdick, president of Pacvue, told Practical Ecommerce.
For once, Amazon didn’t dominate the site with its own products. “Interestingly, it’s one of the first years that we have not seen Amazon devices dominate the Prime Day home page, with Apple products owning the main landing page,” she said.
Advertisers allocated more money this year due to increased competition, according to Burdick. Compared to 2023, this year’s Prime Day saw a 30% higher total managed spend starting from the pre-event phase, with a 47.5% increase on the event’s first day. On the second day, average spend increased by 24% compared to the same day last year.
“In the lead-up period to Prime Day, brands increased their spend by 15% from last year,” Burdick said. “We’ve also seen brands reallocate ad budgets from August to support their Prime Day efforts.”
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
A couple of years ago, I spat into a little plastic tube, stuck it in the post, and waited for a company to analyze markers on my DNA to estimate how biologically old I am. It’s not the first time I’ve shared my genetic data for a story. Over a decade ago, I shared a DNA sample with a company that promised to tell me about my ancestry.
Of course, I’m not the only one. Tens of millions of people have shipped their DNA off to companies offering to reveal clues about their customers’ health or ancestry, or even to generate tailored diet or exercise advice. And then there are all the people who have had genetic tests as part of their clinical care, under a doctor’s supervision. Add it all together, and there’s a hell of a lot of genetic data out there.
It isn’t always clear how secure this data is, or who might end up getting their hands on it—and how that information might affect people’s lives. I don’t want my insurance provider or my employer to make decisions about my future on the basis of my genetic test results, for example. Scientists, ethicists and legal scholars aren’t clear on the matter either. They are still getting to grips with what genetic discrimination entails—and how we can defend against it.
If we’re going to protect ourselves from genetic discrimination, we first have to figure out what it is. Unfortunately, no one has a good handle on how widespread it is, says Yann Joly, director of the Centre of Genomics and Policy at McGill University in Quebec. And that’s partly because scientists keep defining it in different ways. In a paper published last month, Joly and his colleagues listed 12 different definitions that have been used in various studies since the 1990s. So what is it?
“I see genetic discrimination as a child of eugenics practices,” says Joly. Modern eugenics, which took off in the late 19th century, was all about limiting the ability of some people to pass on their genes to future generations. Those who were considered “feeble minded” or “mentally defective” could be flung into institutions, isolated from the rest of the population, and forced or coerced into having procedures that left them unable to have children. Disturbingly, some of these practices have endured. In the fiscal years 2005-2006 and 2012-2013, 144 women in California’s prisons were sterilized—many without informed consent.
These cases are thankfully rare. In recent years, ethicists and policymakers have been more worried about the potential misuse of genetic data by health-care and insurance providers. There have been instances in which people have been refused health insurance or life insurance on the basis of a genetic result, such as one that predicts the onset of Huntington’s disease. (In the UK, where I live, life insurance providers are not meant to ask for a genetic test or use the results of one—unless the person has tested positive for Huntington’s.)
Joly is collecting reports of suspected discrimination in his role at the Genetic Discrimination Observatory, a network of researchers working on the issue. He tells me that in one recent report, a woman wrote about her experience after she had been referred to a new doctor. This woman had previously taken a genetic test that revealed she would not respond well to certain medicines. Her new doctor told her he would only take her on as a patient if she first signed a waiver releasing him of any responsibility over her welfare if she didn’t follow the advice generated by her genetic test.
“It’s unacceptable,” says Joly. “Why would you sign a waiver because of a genetic predisposition? We’re not asking people with cancer to [do so]. As soon as you start treating people differently because of genetic factors … that’s genetic discrimination.”
Many countries have established laws to protect people from these kinds of discrimination. But these laws, too, can vary hugely both when it comes to defining what genetic discrimination is and to how they safeguard against it. The law in Canada focuses on DNA, RNA, and chromosome tests, for example. But you don’t always need such a test to know if you’re at risk for a genetic disease. A person might have a family history of a disease or already be showing symptoms of it.
And then there are the newer technologies. Take, for example, the kind of test that I took to measure my biological age. Many aging tests measure either chemical biomarkers in the body or epigenetic markers on the DNA—not necessarily the DNA itself. These tests are meant to indicate how close a person is to death. You might not want your life insurance provider to know or act on the results of those, either.
Joly and his colleagues have come up with a new definition. And they’ve kept it broad. “The narrower the definition, the easier it is to get around it,” he says. He wanted to avoid excluding the experiences of any people who feel they’ve experienced genetic discrimination. Here it is:
“Genetic discrimination involves an individual or a group being negatively treated, unfairly profiled or harmed, relative to the rest of the population, on the basis of actual or presumed genetic characteristics.“
It will be up to policymakers to decide how to design laws around genetic discrimination. And it won’t be simple. The laws may need to look different in different countries, depending on what technologies are available and how they are being used. Perhaps some governments will want to ensure that residents have access to technologies, while other may choose to limit access. In some cases, a health-care provider may need to make decisions about a person’s care based on their genetic results.
In the meantime, Joly has advice for anyone worried about genetic discrimination. First, don’t let such concerns keep you from having a genetic test that you might need for your own health. As things stand, the risk of being discriminated against on the basis of these tests is still quite small.
And when it comes to consumer genetic testing, it’s worth looking closely at the company’s terms and conditions to find out how your data might be shared or used. It is also useful to look up the safeguarding laws in your own country or state, which can give you a good idea of when you’re within your rights to refuse to share your data.
Shortly after I received the results from my genetic tests, I asked the companies involved to delete my data. It’s not a foolproof approach—last year, hackers stole personal data on 6.9 million 23andMe customers—but at least it’s something. Just this week I was offered yet another genetic test. I’m still thinking on it.
Some companies say they can build a picture of what a person looks like on the basis of DNA alone. The science is questionable, as Tate Ryan-Mosley found when she covered one such company.
The company that gave me an estimate of my biological age later reanalyzed my data (before I had deleted it). That analysis suggested that my brain and liver were older than they should be. Great.
From around the web:
Over the past few decades, doctors have implanted electrodes deep into the brains of a growing number of people, usually to treat disorders like epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease. We still don’t really know how they work, or how long they last. (Neuromodulation)
A ban on female genital mutilation will be upheld in the Gambia following a vote by the country’s National Assembly. The decision “reaffirm[s the country’s] commitments to human rights, gender equality, and protecting the health and well-being of girls and women,” directors of UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO, UN Women, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a joint statement. (WHO)
Weight-loss drugs that work by targeting the GLP-1 receptor, like Wegovy and Saxena, are in high demand—and there’s not enough to go around. Other countries could follow Switzerland’s lead to make the drugs more affordable and accessible, but only for the people who really need them. (JAMA Internal Medicine)
J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate, has ties to the pharmaceutical industry and has an evolving health-care agenda. (STAT)
Psilocybin, the psychedelic compound in magic mushrooms, can disrupt the way regions of our brains communicate with each other. And the effect can last for weeks. (The Guardian)
