Jul 19 2024
OpenAI GPT-4o Mini Costs Less & Wallops Competition via @sejournal, @martinibuster

OpenAI rolled out GPT-4o mini, a replacement for GPT 3.5 Turbo that is more powerful than other models in its class. Because it’s hyper efficient, GPT 4o mini will make AI available to more people at a cheaper price through better end-user applications.

GPT-4o mini

GPT-4o mini is a highly efficient version of GPT-4o that is cheaper to run and is fast. Despite it’s designation as “mini” this language model is outperforms GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 turbo, as well as solidly outperforming Google’s comparable model, Gemini Flash 1.5.

Preliminary scores by the open source Large Language Model Systems Organizations shows GPT-4o Mini outperforming Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus and Google’s Gemini Flash 1.5 and reaching benchmark scores that are comparable to GPT 4.5 Turbo and Gemini 1.5 Pro.

Screenshot Of Language Model Scores

Cost Effective Language Model

An important feature of GPT-4o mini is that it’s cheaper to use, 60% cheaper than GPT 3.5 Turbo, which means that companies that make AI products based on OpenAI language models will be able to offer high performance AI applications that cost significantly less. This makes AI available to more people around the world.

According to OpenAI:

“Today, we’re announcing GPT-4o mini, our most cost-efficient small model. We expect GPT-4o mini will significantly expand the range of applications built with AI by making intelligence much more affordable. GPT-4o mini scores 82% on MMLU and currently outperforms GPT-41 on chat preferences in LMSYS leaderboard(opens in a new window). It is priced at 15 cents per million input tokens and 60 cents per million output tokens, an order of magnitude more affordable than previous frontier models and more than 60% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo.

a text and vision model in the Assistants API, Chat Completions API, and Batch API. Developers pay 15 cents per 1M input tokens and 60 cents per 1M output tokens (roughly the equivalent of 2500 pages in a standard book). We plan to roll out fine-tuning for GPT-4o mini in the coming days.”

GPT-4o mini Availability

GPT 4o mini is available today to users of ChatGPT Free, Plus and Team, with GPT-3.5 no longer a selectable option. Enterprise users will have access next week.

Read the official announcement:

GPT-4o mini: advancing cost-efficient intelligence

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Dean Drobot

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Jul 19 2024
Google Confirms Ranking Boost For Country Code Domains via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about a ranking preference given to sites that use country level domain names and explained how that compares to non-country domain names. The question occurred in the SEO Office Hours podcast.

ccTLD Aka Country Code Domain Names

Domain names that are specific to countries are called ccTLDs (Country Code Top Level Domains). These are domain names that target specific countries. Examples of these ccTLDs are .de (Germany), .in (India) and .kr (Korea). These kinds of domain names don’t target specific languages, they only target Internet users in a specific country.

Some ccTLDs are treated by Google for ranking purposes as if they are regular Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), which are domains that are not specific to a country. A popular example is .io, which technically is a ccTLD (pertaining to the British Indian Ocean Territory) but because of how it’s used, Google treats it like a regular gTLD (generic top level domain).

Ranking Boosts For ccTLDs

The question that Gary Illyes answered was about the ranking boost given to ccTLDs.

This is the question:

“When a Korean person searches Google in Korean, does a com.kr domain or a .com domain do better?”

Gary Illyes answered:

“Good question. Generally speaking the local domain names, in your case .kr, tend to do better because Google Search promotes content local to the user.”

A lot of people want to rank better in a specific country and one of the best practices for doing that is to register a domain name that is specific to the country. Google will give it a ranking boost over other sites that are not explicitly targeting a specific country.

Gary continued his answer by explaining the ranking boost of a ccTLD over a generic top level domain (gTLD), like .com, .net and so on.

This is Gary’s explanation:

“That’s not to say that a .com domain can’t do well, it can, but generally .kr has a little more benefit, albeit not too much. “

Targeting Country Versus Targeting Language

Lastly, Gary mentioned that targeting a user’s language has more impact than the domain name.

He continued his answer:

“If the language of a site matches the user’s query language, that probably has more impact than the domain name itself.”

A benefit of targeting a language is that a site is able regardless of the country that a user is searching from whereas the country code top level domain name targets a country.

Something that Gary didn’t mention is that using a ccTLD can inspire user trust from searchers whose country matches the country that the domain name is targeting and because of that searchers on Google may be more inclined to click on a search result that uses the geotargeted ccTLD.

If a user is in Korea they may feel that a .kr domain is meant specifically for them. If a searcher is in Australia they may feel more inclined to click on a .au domain name.

Listen to the podcast answer from the 3:35 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Dean Drobot

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Jul 18 2024
Google Clarifies H1-H6 Headings For SEO via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Gary Illyes answered a question about the SEO value of hierarchically ordering heading elements (H1, H2, etc.). His answer offered an insight into the actual value of heading elements for digital marketing.

Heading Elements

In simple terms, HTML Elements are the building blocks of a web page and they all have their place much like the foundation and a roof of a home have their places in the overall structure.

Heading elements communicate the topic and subtopics of a web page and are literally a list of topics when a page is viewed just by their headings.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which defines HTML, describes headings like this:

“HTML defines six levels of headings. A heading element implies all the font changes, paragraph breaks before and after, and any white space necessary to render the heading. The heading elements are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 with H1 being the highest (or most important) level and H6 the least.

Headers play a related role to lists in structuring documents, and it is common to number headers or to include a graphic that acts like a bullet in lists.”

Strictly speaking, it is absolutely correct to order headings according to their hierarchical structure.

What Google Says About Headings

The person asking the question commented that the SEO Starter Guide recommends using heading elements in “semantic” order for people who use screen readers (devices that translate text into spoken words) but that otherwise it’s not important for Google. The person asking the question wanted to know if the SEO Starter Guide was out of date because an SEO tool had a different recommendation.

Gary narrated the submitted question:

“I recently read on the SEO starter guide that “Having headings in semantic order is fantastic for screen readers, but from Google Search perspective, it doesn’t matter if you’re using them out of order.”

Is this correct because an SEO tool told me otherwise.”

It’s a good question because it makes sense to use heading elements in a way that shows the hierarchical importance of different sections of a web page, right?

Here’s Gary’s response:

“We update our documentation quite frequently to ensure that it’s always up to date. In fact the SEO starter guide was refreshed just a couple months back to ensure it’s still relevant, so what you read in the guide is as accurate as it can get.

Also, just because a non-Google tool tells you something is good or bad, that doesn’t make it relevant for Google; it may still be a good idea, just not necessarily relevant to Google.”

Is It Relevant For Google?

The official HTML standards are flexible about the use of headings.

Here’s what the standards say here:

“A heading element briefly describes the topic of the section it introduces. Heading information may be used by user agents, for example, to construct a table of contents for a document automatically.”

And here:

“The heading elements are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 with H1 being the highest (or most important) level and H6 the least.”

The official HTML5 specifications for headings state that the hierarchical ordering is implied but that in both cases the headings communicate the start of a new section within a web page. Also, while the official standards encourage “nesting” headings for subtopics but that’s a “strong” encouragement and not a rigid rule.

“The first element of heading content in an element of sectioning content represents the heading for that section. Subsequent headings of equal or higher rank start new (implied) sections, headings of lower rank start implied subsections that are part of the previous one. In both cases, the element represents the heading of the implied section.

Sections may contain headings of any rank, but authors are strongly encouraged to either use only h1 elements, or to use elements of the appropriate rank for the section’s nesting level.”

That last part of the official standards is quite explicit that users are “encouraged” to only use H1 elements, which might sound crazy to some people, but that’s the reality. Still, that’s just an encouragement, not a rigid rule.

It’s only in the official HTML standards for heading elements in the context of accessibility that the recommendations are more rigid about using heading elements with a hierarchical structure (important to least important).

So as you can see, Google’s usage of heading elements appear to be in line with the official standards because the standards allow for deviation, except for accessibility reasons.

The SEO tool is correct that the proper use of heading elements is to put them into hierarchical order. But the tool is incorrect in saying that it’s better for SEO.

This means that H1 is the most important heading for screen readers but it’s not the most important for Google. When I was doing SEO in 2001, the H1 was the most important heading element. But that hasn’t been the case for decades.

For some reason, some SEO tools (and SEOs) still believe that H1 is the most important heading for Google. But that’s simply not correct.

Listen to the SEO Office Hours Podcast at the 13:17 minute mark:

Featured Image by Shutterstock/AlenD

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Jul 18 2024
Google’s John Mueller On How To Verify An SEO Agency’s Work via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

In a recent session of Google’s SEO office-hours Q&A, the Search Relations team addressed a common concern among business owners: how to determine if an SEO agency is actively optimizing your website.

The Business Owner’s Question

The discussion was prompted by a business owner who asked:

“If I have an agency that is managing our organic SEO on a monthly basis, how can I tell if anyone has been actively optimizing? I have a suspicion that the agency has not been optimized out of site for years.”

Google’s Response

In response, John Mueller, a Search Relations team member, shared his experience collaborating with an agency on Google’s Search Central content.

Key Points from Mueller’s Advice

  1. Regular Meetings: Hold frequent discussions with the SEO agency to review their work.
  2. Progress Reports: Request reports that detail the site’s progress over time.
  3. Future Planning: Discussing upcoming work helps ensure the agency addresses your needs.
  4. Client Education: Clients should have a basic understanding of SEO work to better evaluate the agency’s efforts.

While acknowledging that increased engagement requires additional time from both parties, Mueller believes it’s worth the effort.

This allows you to check if the SEO agency is meeting your needs. However, he notes that you need to have some trust in your relationship with the agency.

Resources For SEO Education

To assist businesses in managing their SEO efforts, Mueller pointed to two valuable resources:

  1. Google’s guide on hiring an SEO provides insights into the selection process.
  2. The SEO starter guide offers a foundational understanding of SEO principles.

Mueller’s Full Response

“This is a great question. When we worked with an SEO agency for some of the Search Central content, we had regular meetings to discuss the work that they did, to look at reports about the site’s progress, and to discuss any upcoming work. This did require a bit more time, both from them and from us, but I found it very insightful. I think it helps to lightly understand the kind of work that an agency would do, so that you can confirm that they’re doing what you expect them to do, and even then there’s a component of trust involved. We have a page about hiring an SEO which has some insights, and there’s our SEO starter guide, which can explain a bit more. And also, perhaps some folks from the SEO industry can comment on how they’d help a client understand how they’re spending their time.”

Previous Discussions On SEO Hiring

This advice from Mueller echoes a similar discussion he initiated last year, where he sought recommendations on what businesses should look for when hiring SEO consultants.

The conversation among industry experts highlighted key factors such as experience, customization, transparency, and adherence to ethical practices.

For more insights on choosing the right SEO professional, refer to our previous coverage of that discussion.

When To Seek Professional SEO Help

For businesses unsure about when to seek professional SEO help, here’s an article that outlines five critical situations that warrant hiring an SEO expert.

These include when Google isn’t indexing your site, during site migrations or redesigns, when organic traffic drops significantly, to reverse manual actions, and when current SEO strategies aren’t yielding results.

This information complements Mueller’s advice by helping businesses recognize when professional intervention is necessary.

Featured Image: YouTube.com/GoogleSearchCentral

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Jul 17 2024
Research Confirms Google AIO Keyword Trends via @sejournal, @martinibuster

New research by enterprise search marketing company BrightEdge reveals dramatic changes to sites surfaced through Google’s AI Overviews search feature and though it maintains search market share, the data shows that AI search engine Perplexity is gaining ground at a remarkable pace.

Rapid & Dramatic Changes In AIO Triggers

The words that trigger AI Overviews are changing at an incredibly rapid pace. Some keyword trends in June may already changed in July.

AI Overviews were triggered 50% more times for keywords with the word “best” in them. But Google may have reversed that behavior because those phrases, when applied to products, don’t appear to be triggering AIOs in July.

Other AIO triggers for June 2024:

  • “What Is” keywords increased by 20% more times
  • “How to” queries increased by 15%
  • Queries with the phrase “”symptoms of” increased by about 12%
  • Queries with the word “treatment” increased by 10%

A spokesperson from BrightEdge responded to my questions about ecommerce search queries:

“AI’s prevalence in ecommerce is indeed increasing, with a nearly 20% rise in ecommerce keywords showing AI overviews since the beginning of July, and a dramatic 62.6% increase compared to the last week of June. Alongside this growth, we’re seeing a significant 66.67% uptick in product searches that contain both pros and cons from the AI overview. This dual trend indicates not only more prevalent use of AI in ecommerce search results but also more comprehensive and useful information being provided to consumers through features like the pros/cons modules.”

Google Search And AI Trends

BrightEdge used its proprietary BrightEdge Generative Parser™ (BGP) tool to identify key trends in search that may influence digital marketing for the rest of 2024. BGP is a tool that collects massive amounts of search trend data and turns it into actionable insights.

Their research estimates that each percentage point of search market share represents $1.2 billion, which means that gains as small as single digits are still incredibly valuable.

Jim Yu, founder and executive chairman of BrightEdge noted:

“There is no doubt that Google’s dominance remains strong, and what it does in AI matters to every business and marketer across the planet.

At the same time, new players are laying new foundations as we enter an AI-led multi-search universe. AI is in a constant state of progress, so the most important thing marketers can do now is leverage the precision of insights to monitor, prepare for changes, and adapt accordingly.

Google continues to be the most dominant source of search traffic, driving approximately 92% organic search referrals. A remarkable data point from the research is that AI competitors in all forms have not yet made a significant impact as a source of traffic, completely deflating speculation that AI competitors will cut into Google’s search traffic.

Massive Decrease In Reddit & Quora Referrals

Back in May 2024 Google Of interest to search marketers is that Google has followed through in reducing the amount of user generated content (UGC) surfaced through its AI Overviews search feature. UGC is responsible for many of the outrageously bad responses that generated negative press. BrightEdge’s research shows that referrals to Reddit and Quora from AI Overviews declined to “near zero” in the month of June.

Citations to Quora from AI Overviews are reported to have decreased by 99.69%. Reddit fared marginally etter in June with an 85.71% decrease

BrightEdge’s report noted:

“Google is prioritizing established, expert content over user discussions and forums.”

Bing, Perplexity And Chatbot Impact

Market share for Bing continues to increase but only by fractions of a percentage point, growing from 4.2% to 4.5%. But as they say, it’s better to be moving forward than standing still.

Perplexity on the other hand is growing at a monthly rate of 31%. Percentages however can be misleading because 31% of a relatively small number is still a relatively small number. Most publishers aren’t talking about all the traffic they’re getting from Perplexity so they still have a way to go. Nevertheless, a monthly growth rate of 31% is movement in the right direction.

Traffic from Chatbots aren’t really a thing, so this comparison should be put into that perspective. Sending referral traffic to websites isn’t really what chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT are about (at this point in time). The data shows that both Claude and ChatGPT are not sending much traffic.

OpenAI however is hiding referrals from the websites that it’s sending traffic to which makes it difficult to track it. Therefore a full understanding of the impact of LLM traffic, because ChatGPT uses a rel=noreferrer HTML attribute which hides all traffic originating from ChatGPT to websites. The use of the rel=noreferrer link attribute is not unusual though because it’s an industry standard for privacy and security.

BrightEdge’s analysis looks at this from a long term perspective and anticipates that referral traffic from LLMs will become more prevalent and at some point will become a significant consideration for marketers.

This is the conclusion reached by BrightEdge:

“The overall number of referrals from LLMs is small and expected to have little industry impact at this time. However, if this incremental growth continues, BrightEdge predicts it will influence where people search online and how brands approach optimizing for different engines.”

Before the iPhone existed, many scoffed at the idea of the Internet on mobile devices. So BrightEdge’s conclusions about what to expect from LLMs are not unreasonable.

AIO trends have already changed in July, pointing to the importance of having fresh data for adapting to fast changing AIO keyword trends.  BrightEdge delivers real-time data updated on a daily basis so that marketers can make better informed decisions.

Understand AI Overview Trends:

Ten Observations On AI Overviews For June 2024

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Krakenimages.com

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Jul 17 2024
Anthropic Announces Free Claude AI Chatbot For Android via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Anthropic announced the release of a new Claude Android app that uses their powerful Claude 3.5 Sonnet language model. The app is available free (with usage limits) and also with paid plans.

Anthropic Claude

Claude is a powerful AI chatbot that offers advanced reasoning, can do real-time image analysis, and can translate languages in real-time. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is Anthropic’s most advanced language model, introduced in late June 2024.

According to Anthropic:

“Claude 3.5 Sonnet raises the industry bar for intelligence, outperforming competitor models and Claude 3 Opus on a wide range of evaluations, with the speed and cost of our mid-tier model, Claude 3 Sonnet.

Claude 3.5 Sonnet sets new industry benchmarks for graduate-level reasoning (GPQA), undergraduate-level knowledge (MMLU), and coding proficiency (HumanEval). It shows marked improvement in grasping nuance, humor, and complex instructions, and is exceptional at writing high-quality content with a natural, relatable tone.”

Claude By Anthropic Android App

The Claude AI chatbot app is currently available for iOS and now it’s available from the Google Play store for Android users. Downloading and signing up is easy. Once signed in and verified users can start using Claude absolutely free. I downloaded it and gave it a try and was pleasantly surprised at its ability to help create a ramen recipe from scratch. A cool feature of the app is that it can continue chats from other devices.

The official announcement described various ways it’s useful:

“Use Claude for work or for fun. Whether you’re drafting a business proposal between meetings, translating menus while traveling, brainstorming gift ideas while shopping, or composing a speech while waiting for a flight, Claude is ready to assist you.”

Download the Claude by Anthropic Android App from Google Play:

Claude by Anthropic

Read the official announcement:

Claude Android app

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Jul 16 2024
CMOs Under Pressure: The Unseen Challenges In B2B Marketing via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A recent study of 121 B2B CMOs and marketing leaders has uncovered current marketing industry challenges.

The study by Bospar, CMO Huddles, and Redpoint examines the concept of an “underground recession” in marketing departments and its implications for professionals in the field.

Key findings include:

  • Budget constraints and their impact on marketing strategies
  • Changing deal cycles and their effects on revenue
  • Staffing challenges and increased pressure on marketing teams
  • Evolving CMO roles and job market trends

Read on for a data-driven exploration of the current state of B2B marketing.

Marketing Industry In A “Hidden” Recession

Despite positive macroeconomic indicators, including a 9.34% increase in the S&P 500 since the beginning of 2024, marketing departments are experiencing a different reality.

The survey found that 69% of respondents believe their industry is in a recession, while 61% feel that the overall unemployment rate doesn’t accurately reflect the situation in their sector.

Key Challenges Facing CMOs

The study identified four main trends making the job of marketing leaders increasingly difficult:

  1. Budget Cuts & Revenue Declines: 77% of marketing leaders reported flat or reduced budgets, with 38% experiencing cuts of at least 3%.
  2. Longer Deal Cycles: 54% of respondents noted extended sales cycles, impacting revenue timing and marketing budgets.
  3. Staffing Cuts & Layoffs: Half of the surveyed companies experienced layoffs, with 41% seeing cuts within their marketing departments.
  4. Pressure to Deliver More with Less: 69% of marketing leaders were asked to do more with reduced budgets in the past year.

Personal & Professional Toll on CMOs

The pressures of the current economic environment are reportedly taking a toll on marketing leaders.

67% of respondents reported that the past year’s challenges have impacted their overall well-being.

Many experienced adverse effects, including reduced exercise (80%), less time off (70%), and weight gain (40%).

Declining Job Prospects For CMOs

The study also highlighted a concerning trend in the job market for CMOs.

LinkedIn data shows a 62% decrease in CMO job postings in the United States from February 2023 to February 2024.

This decline is partly attributed to companies consolidating marketing responsibilities under other C-suite roles.

Adapting To The New Reality

Despite these challenges, industry experts emphasize the need for CMOs to adapt and evolve their strategies.

MarTech entrepreneur Jon Miller suggests that “the old playbooks just aren’t working anymore, and it’s time for a new playbook (and new technology) that aligns with modern buyers.”

Drew Neisser of CMO Huddles recommends four key areas for CMOs to focus on:

  1. Role expansion beyond traditional marketing duties
  2. Metrics expansion to demonstrate marketing’s full value
  3. Idea concentration to maximize impact with limited resources
  4. AI implementation to drive innovation and efficiency

Why Does This Matter?

This study shows what’s happening in marketing beyond the rosy economic headlines.

It matters because:

  • It explains why your job might feel harder lately.
  • It shows we need to get creative with our strategies.
  • It highlights why proving marketing’s value is so important right now.

What Does This Mean For You?

Here’s what you should keep in mind:

  • Learn skills that clearly show your worth, like data analysis.
  • Get ready to do more with less – focus on what really matters.
  • Look for ways to expand your role in the company.
  • Network more – it could help you find new opportunities.
  • Keep learning about new trends and tools.
  • Take care of yourself – everyone’s feeling the pressure, not just you.

Featured Image: Ground Picture/Shutterstock

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Jul 16 2024
Google’s Web Crawler Fakes Being “Idle” To Render JavaScript via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

In a recent episode of the Search Off The Record podcast, it was revealed that Google’s rendering system now pretends to be “idle” to trigger certain JavaScript events and improve webpage rendering.

The podcast features Zoe Clifford from Google’s rendering team, who discussed how the company’s web crawlers deal with JavaScript-based sites.

This revelation is insightful for web developers who use such methods to defer content loading.

Google’s “Idle” Trick

Googlebot simulates “idle” states during rendering, which triggers JavaScript events like requestIdleCallback.

Developers use this function to defer loading less critical content until the browser is free from other tasks.

Before this change, Google’s rendering process was so efficient that the browser was always active, causing some websites to fail to load important content.

Clifford explained:

“There was a certain popular video website which I won’t name…which deferred loading any of the page contents until after requestIdleCallback was fired.”

Since the browser was never idle, this event wouldn’t fire, preventing much of the page from loading properly.

Faking Idle Time To Improve Rendering

Google implemented a system where the browser pretends to be idle periodically, even when it’s busy rendering pages.

This tweak ensures that idle callbacks are triggered correctly, allowing pages to fully load their content for indexing.

Importance Of Error Handling

Clifford emphasized the importance of developers implementing graceful error handling in their JavaScript code.

Unhandled errors can lead to blank pages, redirects, or missing content, negatively impacting indexing.

She advised:

“If there is an error, I just try and handle it as gracefully as possible…web development is hard stuff.”

What Does This Mean?

Implications For Web Developers

  • Graceful Error Handling: Implementing graceful error handling ensures pages load as intended, even if certain code elements fail.
  • Cautious Use of Idle Callbacks: While Google has adapted to handle idle callbacks, be wary of over-relying on these functions.

Implications For SEO Professionals

  • Monitoring & Testing: Implement regular website monitoring and testing to identify rendering issues that may impact search visibility.
  • Developer Collaboration: Collaborate with your development team to create user-friendly and search engine-friendly websites.
  • Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest developments and best practices in how search engines handle JavaScript, render web pages, and evaluate content.

Other Rendering-Related Topics Discussed

The discussion also touched on other rendering-related topics, such as the challenges posed by user agent detection and the handling of JavaScript redirects.

The whole podcast provides valuable insights into web rendering and the steps Google takes to assess pages accurately.

See also: Google Renders All Pages For Search, Including JavaScript-Heavy Sites

Featured Image: fizkes/Shutterstock

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Jul 16 2024
CWV & Google Page Experience Ranking Factor Updated via @sejournal, @martinibuster

The June 2024 Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is out and it shows that websites in the real-world experienced an averaged across the board improvement in all Core Web Vitals (CWV) website performance scores. Some of the improvements are attributable to a change in how Interaction To Next Paint is measured, which will be good news to websites with dialog modals (popups).

CrUX Dataset

The CrUX dataset consists of actual Core Web Vitals performance scores as measured in Chrome browsers when visiting websites. The data comes from browsers that were voluntarily opted in to report website performance metrics. The CrUX dataset is publicly available and is used by PageSpeed Insights, third party tools.

CrUX Influences Page Experience Ranking Factor

The CrUX report is used for Google’s Page Experience Ranking Factor. The data is publicly available and can be used for evaluating performance, including competitor performance. CrUX is important because it is one of the only metrics that a website publishers can check that have something to do with a website ranking factor.

According to Google’s overview documentation:

“The data collected by CrUX is available publicly through a number of Google tools and third-party tools and is used by Google Search to inform the page experience ranking factor.”

While the influence of the Page Experience Ranking Factor may be on the lower side, it’s still important for reasons outside of algorithms like improving conversions and ad clicks.

June 2024 Dataset

The dataset for June 2024 has been published and it shows that Core Web Vitals (CWV) website performance scores have incrementally risen across the board by modest percentages. This shows that website performance continues to be a focus for websites. Most of the popular content management systems are doing their best to improve, with WordPress making positive improvements with each new version that’s released.

The following scores are for origins. Origins are the entire website, which is different from Pages.

These are the average origin scores:

  • Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
    This is a measurement of how fast the main content of a page loads. It specifically measures the largest image or content block that’s visible in a browser (viewport).
    63.4% (↑ 2.0%) had good LCP
  • Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
    Measures how long it takes for web page layout to become stable without elements jumping and shifting on the page.
    77.8% (↑ 0.5%) had good CLS
  • Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
    INP measures how long it takes for a web page to become responsive to user interactions
    84.1% (↑ 1.1%) had good INP
  • Percentage Of Sites With Good CWV
    This is the percentage of sites that had passing scores across all three Core Web Vitals metrics
    51.0% (↑ 2.3%) had good LCP, CLS and INP

Changes To INP Measurements

Chrome made changes to how long it takes for a page to become interactive (Interaction to Next Paint – INP) is measured, making it more accurate. This may have helped to increase the scores of some sites that were inadvertently ranked lower for INP because the metric failed to account for some kinds of popups.

The Chrome team explained:

“The Chrome team has been continuing work on improving efficiencies in Chrome’s handling of the Core Web Vitals metrics and recently launched some changes to INP which may have contributed to the positive trend this month. The most notable change is to better handle use of the basic modal dialogs (alert, confirm, print). While technically these are synchronous and block the main thread—and so are not recommended if there are alternatives—they do present user feedback for an interaction. They were previously not counted as presentation feedback for INP, which could result in very high INP values for sites that did use these. From Chrome 127 the presentation of the modal will mark the end measurement time for INP and so should lead to improved INP times for those sites.”

Read the June 2024 CWV Announcement

The 202406 dataset is live

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ivan Dudka

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Jul 16 2024
The Reason Why Google Uses The Word “Creators” via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s SearchLiaison responded to criticism over how they refer to website publishers with an answer that reflects not just changing times but also the practical reasons for doing so. The answer reflects how important it is for digital marketing to maintain the flexibility to bend with change.

Change: There Isn’t Always A Motivation

The discussion began with a tweet by someone who objected to the use of the phrase “creators” instead of other terms like businesses or publishers because the word creators minimizes the fact that there are businesses behind the websites.

This is the tweet:

“Notice the term “creators” in this piece. This is an example of Google’s successful effort to change the narrative. In the past they have used “publishers”, “businesses”, and just “web sites”. But “creators” minimizes business impact. And clearly some are falling for the trap.”

Keeping Up With The Pace Of Change

SearchLiaison’s response reflected something that is commonly misunderstood, which is that everything changes, including fashion, customs, norms and even speech. Those who lack self-awareness on this point will blink and miss it when the page turns on their generation and another one steps forward to take take their place at the center of the world.

This is especially true for SEO, where Google typically is a brand new search engine every five years.

This is SearchLiaison’s answer:

“We used to say “webmasters” in the past, and that doesn’t really speak to so many people who have an interest in appearing in search results. That’s in part why we have tended to say “creators” more — though not exclusively — for years now. It’s not a particularly new thing. It’s also why Search Central got its new name in 2020, the whole “webmasters” isn’t really that inclusive (or used) term: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2020/11/goodbye-google-webmasters

“Publishers” tends to be heard by and used by those involved in news publishing. Businesses often just think of themselves as businesses. SEOs tend to be SEOs, and if you use that term, you exclude those who don’t think of SEOs but want to understand some of the things we share.

So “creators” tends to be the catch-all term we used, as imperfect as it is, because sometime you really need one term rather than “Here’s what creators and SEO and businesses and brands and news publishers and etc etc should know about something….”

All that said, I am seeing more of a need to use creators as less a catch-all and more to refer to people like Brandon who really do view themselves as content creators first-and-foremost. The work they do can be much different than an SEO, or a content marketer, or a local business and so on.”

And in a follow up he continued:

“We do say web sites when talking about web sites. But “web sites” isn’t a term that’s workable when addressing the people who are involved with web sites and have questions about their content appearing in search results.”

Ephemeral Quality Of Digital Marketing

It’s not just Google that changes, people change as well. Demand for certain products peak and then disappear. Ringtones used to be the hot affiliate product and then it was not. Technology drives change as well, as we’re currently seeing with AI.

Google’s choice of the word creators is a small marker of change. You can roll with it or simply roll your own.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Mix and Match Studio

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