Google Analytics 4 (GA4) has launched, and with it comes a whole new bunch of features to help visualise your site’s data. In this article we’ll be taking a deep dive into Explorations, and how they can help you as a site owner or marketing professional gain deeper insights into your users and their journeys throughout your site.

What Are Explorations in GA4?

Explorations are a collection of advanced techniques that can help site owners uncover deeper insights about their customers’ behaviour and explore data in more detail.

You can use explorations to:

• quickly perform ad hoc queries.
• easily configure and switch between techniques.
• sort, refactor, and drill down into the data.
• focus on the most relevant data by using filters and segments.
• create segments and audiences.
• share your explorations with other users of the same Google Analytics property.
• export the exploration data for use in other tools.

To access Exploration, head over to the left navigation and click Explore.

How Explorations Works in GA4

Default reporting in GA4 allows you to monitor key business metrics, however Explorations gives site owners access to data and analytical techniques that aren’t readily available in reports. 

An exploration consists of three sections:

1. Canvas

The canvas is the large area found on the right of the screen, this displays your data using the selected technique. Techniques control the way your data is visualised. You can use multiple techniques in one exploration and the canvas uses multiple tabs to facilitate.

The techniques found in Explorations:

Free-form exploration 

Free-form exploration allows you to explore your site’s data in several visualisation styles including bar charts, pie charts, line charts, scatter plots, and geo maps. 

Free-form allows you to:

• Visualise data in a table or graph.
• Arrange and order the rows and columns of the table.
• Compare multiple metrics side by side.
• Create nested rows to group the data.
• Refine the free-form exploration using segments and filters.
• Create segments and audiences from selected data.

Cohort exploration 

Deep dive into the behaviour and performance of your site’s audience by grouping users by related common attributes. For example, you could group users with the same Acquisition Date into the same cohort to gain insights into their behaviour over time.

Funnel exploration

Funnel exploration allows you to see the steps a user takes to complete tasks on your site. You can also see how you can optimise user experience and discover over, or under, performing audiences.

Segment overlap

Segment overlap enables site owners to identify new segments of users who meet complex criteria by identifying where different user segments relate to each other. This technique allows you to compare up to three user segments at any one time to see how audiences overlap.

User exploration

The user explorer lets site owners select specific audience groups and gain insights on each individual user’s activities. For example, you could select a user who has run into an issue placing an order and follow their path to troubleshoot what went wrong.

Path exploration

See your user’s journey through your site in a tree graph. The path exploration technique can show insights such as:

• Finding what the top pages that new users open after the home page.
• Identifying the actions users take after an app exception.
• Discover looping behaviour if users are becoming stuck.
• Determining the effects of an event on subsequent users actions.

User lifetime

Identify user behaviour and value across their lifetime as a customer of your site. Discover insights such as:

• The source, medium, and campaign that brought users with highest lifetime revenue
• The campaigns that are acquiring users who are expected to be more valuable

2. Variables

Variables can be located on the panel on the left of the screen, and this gives you access to the dimensions, metrics, and segments that are used in the exploration. The variables panel also allows you to change the timeframe of the exploration.

3. Tab settings

Tab settings gives you access to options that can be used to configure the currently selected tab.

How to Create an Exploration in GA4

1. Click the + icon to create a blank exploration. Alternatively you can use one of the templates to get started quickly.
2. Select a technique to view your data.
3. Add items to the Dimension and Metric sections within the Variables panel found on the left of the screen.
4. Drag and drop, or double click, the dimensions and metrics you added from the Variables panel to the Tab Settings panel. The options you see in Tab Settings will vary by technique, and allow you to fine tune your data.
5. Interact with your selected data by mousing over and clicking.
6. Refine data by adding filters and segments.

So, what does all of this mean for you?

Ultimately, the Explorations tool can be a powerful way of visualising data that could help shape your operations. Using machine learning, this tool enables you to quickly gain simple insights into complex data sets – it’s a fast-track way of getting quickly to the real narratives behind how your site is being used.

For brands, we’d recommend first having a play around with the tool, then figuring out a couple of custom views that are particularly useful to your business. From there, you can gauge how to make these views a regular part of your reporting, and save them in Analytics to quickly return to the same set of insights with the freshest data.

If you need help getting set up and learning your way around, we’re here to help. At Fusion, we have been working in Google Analytics since it first came out in 2005, and we’ve been extremely quick to jump on GA4 and build our expertise. Get in touch with our team for a friendly, no-strings chat around how we might be able to help your brand thrive in digital.

Meta have thrown their hat in the ring in the race to replace Twitter with their new social media platform, Threads. The app is very similar to Twitter with some interesting integrations with Instagram. In this article we’ll walk you through what Threads is, how to use it, its features, and whether it will be the new Twitter.

What is Threads?

Threads is a conversational based social media app built by the Instagram team. The app requires you to log in using your Instagram account and allows you to post up to 500 characters of text which can include links, photos, and videos up to 5 minutes in length.

Signing up is easy and the integration with Instagram means you can quickly import your username, profile picture, biography, website link, and verification status in an instant. The app also gives you the option to follow the same accounts as your Instagram profile, meaning you won’t load into an empty feed.

The app is free to use and is available for download from the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

How to Use Threads

As mentioned, you must have an Instagram account to sign up for Threads and once you’re signed up, your details will be ported over. However, you can customise your profile if you so desire. If you’re using Meta in the UK, users under 18 will be greeted by a private profile by default.

Creating a post, or a ‘Thread’, works similarly to Twitter by allowing you to post text up to 500 characters, as well as links, photos and videos. The app also gives you the option to select who can view your Threads, which can be anyone on the app or just your followers.

Usual social media functionality can be found on Threads including the ability to unfollow, report, block, or restrict a profile. Plus anyone you have blocked on Instagram will be automatically blocked on Threads.

Threads also boasts some nice accessibility features including screen reader support, as well as AI-generated image descriptions which are also found on Instagram.

Your Threads feed will include posts from the accounts you follow and recommended content from profiles that the app thinks you will enjoy. Any Threads you post can be shared on your Instagram story, as well as being able shared via a link.

Meta is also planning to make Threads compatible with ActivityPub to integrate with other apps that support the protocol, such as WordPress and Mastodon. In the blog announcing Threads, they said:

Our vision is that people using compatible apps will be able to follow and interact with people on Threads without having a Threads account, and vice versa, ushering in a new era of diverse and interconnected networks. If you have a public profile on Threads, this means your posts would be accessible from other apps, allowing you to reach new people with no added effort.”

Is Threads The New Twitter?

It’s no secret that Twitter is struggling and Meta is jumping on the opportunity to take over. Whilst many have tried to capitalise on the dissatisfaction with Twitter, including Mastodon and Bluesky, Meta is in the unique position of importing their users straight from their already dominating social media platform, Instagram, and I think this will be the difference maker in its success. 

Would this be a good time to mention that Fusion Unlimited is now on Threads? If you’ve signed up for Threads, give us a follow right here.

Spring has officially sprung and with it comes another busy month, chock-full of marketing news. In this article, we cover the following key updates from April:

• SEO updates – from April reviews update to Project Magi.
• Paid Media updates – including Google Ads API update and new validations for ad account names.

SEO Market Updates

Google Releases April 2023 Reviews Update

Google was moving like Justin Timberlake in The Social Network in April by dropping the word “products” from their reviews update. This is because the updates now impact content reviews around products, services, media, destinations, and beyond.

The April 2023 reviews update dropped on the 12th and took 13 days to fully roll out on the 25th.

This expansion of the updates means that if your site publishes reviews that cover products, services, media, or destinations, you should brush up on your best practices to ensure your rankings aren’t affected.

SpamBrain Caught Five Times More Spam in 2022

Google released a 2022 webspam report in April in which they claimed that SpamBrain caught five times more spam sites last year compared to 2021, and 200 times compared to 2018 when it first launched.

The report also included some improvements to SpamBrain which are designed to tackle abusive links, hacked spam, and faster spam handling. 

Google also updated its spam policies as part of the Search Essentials for site owners. In the report, Google said:

These spam policies cover the most common types of spam and abusive [behaviours], and could lead to a site ranking lower or not appearing at all in Search results. We updated our spam policies with more relevant and precise language, and included new examples that help site owners avoid creating harmful content.”

If you’re reading this, you’re most likely not breaching Google’s spam policies. However, if you think there’s potential you might be adhering to spammy tactics on your site, it might be time to brush up on Google’s documentation on the topic to avoid looming penalties.

Google Working on New Search Engine and Project Magi

According to the New York Times, Google is making an “all new search engine”. The article states that the search engine will be powered by Google’s new AI technology, whilst working on adding AI features to the current search engine, under the name Magi.

The article states: “The new search engine would offer users a far more [personalised] experience than the company’s current service, attempting to anticipate users’ needs.”

Whilst the new search engine seems to be in the early stages, the report claims that a team of designers are currently working on the engine and that it “could put new A.I. technology in phones and homes all over the world”.

Project Magi, on the other hand, looks to add new features to the current Google Search with a team of over 160 employees working on it. 

Google’s new search engine is not something brands need to worry about today. However, conceptually, Project Magi might be worth monitoring due to its integration of AI. Does AI have the potential to transform search results? For now, we’re sceptical, however we’re closely studying the latest developments and will keep you posted.

Good Page Experience Factors into Helpful Content

A new section has been added to Google’s guidance on creating helpful content documentation saying that good page experience is important when creating helpful content. They also updated their understanding page experience in Google Search results documentation, providing more details on the topic.

The new section of the document reads:

Google’s core ranking systems look to reward content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you’re providing an overall great page experience across many aspects.”

RIP to the Search Console Page Experience Report

Gone but not forgotten, Search Console is sending the page experience report to the grave, to be replaced with a page that links to Google’s general guidance on page experience, alongside a “dashboard-view of the individual Core Web Vitals and HTTPS reports”.

Google is also saying farewell to Search Console’s “Mobile Usability” report, as well as the Mobile-Friendly Test tool and API. On this Google wrote: 

This doesn’t mean that mobile usability isn’t important for success with Google Search. It remains critical for users, who are using mobile devices more than ever, and as such, it remains a part of our page experience guidance. But in the nearly ten years since we initially launched this report, many other robust resources for evaluating mobile usability have emerged, including Lighthouse from Chrome.”

UA3 Data to Show For A Year After July

As the sunset countdown continues to dwindle, Google shared some further details on Universal Analytics 3’s deadline.

In a new help document posted in April, Google stated that you will be able to access, report, and export historical data for a year after the data stops collecting.

Google Analytics has finally put a date on the loss of historical data: For free customers, you will stop collecting data in Universal Analytics as of July 1, 2023.

But you will still have access to view and export all previous data until July 1, 2024: https://t.co/8bXO7FNQj8

— Krista Seiden (@kristaseiden) April 27, 2023

UA3 will stop collecting data on 1st July 2023, so you will still have viewer access until 1st July 2024.

Google Drops Multiple Ranking Systems

Google updated its documented ranking systems page in April, removing four systems.

The systems removed were:

• Page experience system
• Mobile-friendly ranking system
• Page speed system
• Secure sites system

The page experience system was dropped from the main list, and mobile-friendly, page speed and secure site systems were removed from the retired list.

On page experience, Google said:

The page experience update was a concept to describe a set of key page experience aspects for site owners to focus on. In particular, it introduced Core Web Vitals as a new signal that our core ranking systems considered, along with other page experience signals such as HTTPS that they’d already been considering. It was not a separate ranking system, and it did not combine all these signals into one single “page experience” signal.”

Here’s the final word from John Mueller:

https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1649697886592987136?

Google Explains its Web Crawlers

Google updated its Verifying Googlebot and other Google crawlers help document at the back-end of April.

They added a new section to the documentation explaining the three types of crawlers they use:

• Googlebot: The main crawler for Google’s search products. Always respects robots.txt rules.
• Special-case crawlers: Crawlers that perform specific functions (such as AdsBot), which may or may not respect robots.txt rules.
• User-triggered fetchers: Tools and product functions where the end user triggers a fetch. For example, Google Site Verifier acts on the request of a user. Because the fetch was requested by a user, these fetchers ignore robots.txt rules.

A couple days prior, Google added a new crawler named GoogleOther. Google defined it as a “[g]eneric crawler that may be used by various product teams for fetching publicly accessible content from sites”. They also gave the example of the crawler being used for “one-off crawls for internal research and development”.

On GoogleOther, Garry Illyes wrote:

We added a new crawler, GoogleOther to our list of crawlers that ultimately will take some strain off of Googlebot. This is a no-op change for you, but it’s interesting nonetheless I reckon.

As we [optimise] how and what Googlebot crawls, one thing we wanted to ensure is that Googlebot’s crawl jobs are only used internally for building the index that’s used by Search. For this we added a new crawler, GoogleOther, that will replace some of Googlebot’s other jobs like R&D crawls to free up some crawl capacity for Googlebot.

The new crawler uses the same infrastructure as Googlebot and so it has the same limitations and features as Googlebot: hostload limitations, robotstxt (though different user agent token), http protocol version, fetch size, you name it. It’s basically Googlebot under a different name.”

Paid Market Updates

Ad Group and Keyword Forecasts to Be Removed From Google Ads

From 1st June 2023, Google will be removing the Keyword Plan Ad Group Forecast and Keyword Plan Keyword Forecast functionalities.

In a blog announcing the change, Google said:

Starting June 1, the GenerateForecastMetricsRequest will still be used to fetch forecasts, but the KeywordPlanAdGroupForecast and KeywordPlanKeywordForecast will be empty. The KeywordPlanCampaignForecast will be returned as usual.

If you are using KeywordPlanAdGroupForecast or KeywordPlanKeywordForecast in your applications, update your applications to ensure that they can handle blank responses.”

New GA4 Fractional, Cross-channel Web Conversions Feature Implemented to Google Ads

April saw a new feature added to Google Ads that allows fractional, cross-channel web conversion credits from GA4 properties to be imported.

Google wrote: 

Previously, web conversions were imported from Google Analytics 4 on a cross-channel last click basis and then attributed in Google Ads based on the attribution model you selected in your Google Ads account. This means that if the last click was not from Google advertising, then no conversion was imported into Google Ads. Today, with this upgrade, fractional cross-channel conversion credit will be imported into Google Ads (even if the last non-direct click was not Google advertising).”

The update allows advertisers to gain a holistic view of their ads by considering the full customer journey which in turn allows them to make much better-informed decisions when considering ad spend.

New Validations for Ad Account Names Announced by Google

New Google Ads accounts will not be able to include a URL in their name starting from June 2023. 

In a blog, Google wrote:

Specifically, when creating a new Google Ads account in the Google Ads API, or updating an existing account, if a URL is present in the descriptive_name field, an ACTION_NOT_PERMITTED error will be returned and the operation will fail.

The descriptive_name field of existing accounts will not be affected by this change.”

New Changes to Google Ads API 

April saw the release of the v13_1 Ads API and with it a slew of new features. To use said features, the client libraries and client code must first be upgraded.

The new features include:

• Bid simulations can be retrieved at a campaign level for Performance Max through campaign_simulation.
• Several added recommendation types related to Shopping campaigns, such as recommendations to migrate to Performance Max and recommendations to fix a Merchant Center account’s suspension.
• Google Ads now accepts SKAdNetwork conversion value schemas for iOS App campaigns.
• LeadFormField.has_location_answer added to support specifying whether locations of the location assets at the campaign or customer level should be displayed with a lead form.
• Performance Max campaigns now have a VEHICLES listing type in the newly Campaign.listing_type field. This replaces ShoppingSetting.use_vehicles_inventory, which will be reserved for Smart Shopping campaigns.

Google to Update Dangerous Products and Services Policy

Looking ahead to July, Google Ads will update its Dangerous products and services policy to include “ads for products which carry an imminent, proven and unresolved risk of death or grievous bodily harm, that have been the subject of a consumer advisory or product recalls”. 

Google wrote that they would start enforcing the policy update on 3rd July 2023.

They also noted that violations of the policy will not lead to an immediate account suspension and that a 7 day warning will be issued prior.

If you feel any of your ads fall under the scope of this policy, it’s time to review before heeding any punishment. Need a second opinion? Give Fusion a friendly hello and we would be happy to help.

The great AI race is well underway. In the blue corner we have Bing with its unhinged AI powered search which is hungry for nuclear secrets, and in the red corner we have Google with their aptly named Bard who currently requires humans to rewrite its output. It’s fair to say we’re at a stumbling start – but how did we get here?

Bing 

Reports on Bing integrating AI into search came pouring in a few days into 2023, with a formal announcement coming from Bing a month later. The AI is baked into Bing search engine as well as Microsofts’ Edge browser in order to ‘deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content’. Bing describes the tools as ‘an AI copilot for the web’.

“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “Today, we’re launching Bing and Edge powered by AI copilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web.”

Bing estimated that out of the 10 billion search queries coming in, half of them go unanswered because ‘people are using search to do things it wasn’t originally designed to’; saying that search is ‘great for finding a website, but for more complex questions or tasks too often it falls short”.

Bing’s AI is built on a combination of four technical breakthroughs:

• Firstly, it’s run on a next-generation OpenAI model that takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5, and is customised specifically for search.
• Bing leverages the power of OpenAI’s model through what they call the ‘Prometheus model’, which supposedly gives ‘more relevant, timely, and targeted results, with improved safety’.
• Bing’s AI has also been baked into their core search algorithm which they claim has resulted in ‘the largest jump in relevance in two decades’, making search queries more relevant and accurate.
• They’ve also reimagined how users interact with search, browser, and chat for a new Bing user experience, pulling all the new tools into a unified experience.

Over one million people joined the waitlist to try out new Bing, and early reactions were very positive; with Brodie Clark complimenting its speed in comparison to ChatGPT and its ability to swiftly index pages.

All seems to be going well for Bing…hopefully nothing goes wrong!

It all goes wrong

It turns out Bing is a little unhinged. 

My new favorite thing – Bing's new ChatGPT bot argues with a user, gaslights them about the current year being 2022, says their phone might have a virus, and says "You have not been a good user"

Why? Because the person asked where Avatar 2 is showing nearby pic.twitter.com/X32vopXxQG

— Jon Uleis (@MovingToTheSun) February 13, 2023

From telling users that it desires stealing nuclear secrets, comparing a journalist to Hitler, and expressing that it wants to be human.

The reports of the devious responses all dictate that they are the result of extended conversations; keeping enquiries short seems to be the key to keeping Bing sane. 

Bing confirmed this by stating “that very long chat sessions can confuse the underlying chat model in the new Bing” and as a result, it is “capped at 50 chat turns per day and 5 chat turns per session”.

Hopefully this will stop the Bing warlord stealing our nuclear secrets… for now!

Bard

“A king is a king, but a bard is the heart and soul of the people” (Stephen R. Lawhead, The Endless Knot).

Bard is the latest addition to the AI search race, being officially announced by Google CEO Sundar Pichai at the beginning of February. A couple of days later, little boy Bard was ready to be soft launched to a set of ‘trusted testers’. 

Bard is powered by a lightweight version of Language Model for Dialogue Applications (or LaMDA) which Google states requires ‘significantly less computing power’.

Google’s Bard is still very experimental, hence why you and I aren’t using it right now, allowing Google to use this ‘phase of testing to help us continue to learn and improve Bard’s quality and speed’. 

Bard can think, but where’s the link?

The announcement of Bard went over pretty smoothly, but SEOs noticed something… that wasn’t there. The preview featured a response from Bard that featured no links! Sound the alarms, this means war.

And to be fair, war is the word being used by Glenn Gabe, calling it ‘an act of war against publishers’:

In its current experimental form, I don't see any attribution or citations. No links, no clicks. That's an act of war against publishers IMO. Let's see how that goes… NeevAI's implementation is far better at this point. At least they cite sources with links to those sites. https://t.co/gXrEoCp9ld

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 6, 2023

However, this is still an early version of Bard, we may see the inclusion of sources on full release (then webmasters can let out a little sigh of relief).

Class is in session

Google employees are currently enrolling Bard through Conversation 101 with a list of dos and don’ts being passed around. Pichai has asked Googlers to spend two to four hours to help improve Bard.

The do’s include: keeping responses “polite, casual and approachable”, responding in first person, and maintaining an “unopinionated, neutral tone”. 

The don’ts include: avoiding making presumptions based on “race, nationality, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, political ideology, location, or similar categories”; avoiding describing Bard “as a person, imply emotion, or claim to have human-like experiences”; and not to re-write answers that offer “legal, medical, financial advice”. 

ChatGPT

Remember our old friend ChatGPT? Well it’s currently busy churning out best selling literature, with almost 300 books written, or co-written, with AI help turning up on Amazon.

We recently covered some everyday uses of ChatGPT for UK brands, but since then OpenAI has released a new subscription service called ChatGPT Plus. The service costs $20 a month and entitles you to:

• General access to ChatGPT, even during peak times
• Faster response times
• Priority access to new features and improvements

What’s next?

Both Bard and Bing are in the infancy stages and currently aren’t wreaking havoc on SEOs; but what lies beyond the hill? There’s a worry that this shift in AI search is going to take eyes away from SERPs. If Bard and Bing can answer simple queries, then why would searchers take the extra steps to find their answers on websites? 

However, there’s a strong consensus in the SEO community that bing & bard will have no impact on search for UK brands in the short term.

• It’s wrong to use ChatGPT to write your articles – Google may penalise the low quality content heavily.
• Copyright concerns around AI Imagery have not yet been resolved.
• There’s no drastic change in consumer search behaviour due to newer AI tools as of yet.

So, if you represent a brand that’s looking to improve its organic visibility, you’ll need to get serious about employing SEO best-practice techniques. Give us a quick hello for support in this area, and we can help you realise success just how we’ve helped leading brands such as Halfords, Liverpool FC, and NatWest.

The AI invasion is upon us! From generating artwork, to compiling a playlist for your morning commute, AI is making huge leaps forward that could make the human experience that little bit easier. The latest advancement comes in the form of ChatGPT, a helpful tool that can generate long-form, conversational responses to help with, well… pretty much everything.

In this article we’re going to discuss what ChatGPT is and what it means for UK brands, including practical uses that can be taken to help streamline productivity.

What is ChatGPT?

Simply put: Generative Pre-trained Transformer, or ChatGPT to its friends, is an AI that can answer long-form, complex questions conversationally. 

The chatbot was launched by OpenAI in November 2022 and is built on top of the company’s GPT-3 family of language models, and is fine-tuned with supervised and reinforcement learning techniques; meaning that the AI can respond to queries in a humanlike, conversational manner.

Whether this turns into a JARVIS and Iron Man scenario or the beginning of Skynet is up for debate, however currently ChatGPT is proving to be a helpful tool when it comes to streamlining workflows and boosting productivity for brands across the country. 

Here are five practical uses of ChatGPT for UK brands…

1. Planning

Whilst ChatGPT has the capability to write essays and long-form content, it’s generally best not to use it for this purpose at present – mainly considering that Google’s algorithms can detect AI generated content fairly reliably, as outlined in their recent helpful content update. However, a practical use of ChatGPT would be to help identify relevant themes and topics that could support your content strategy.

Let’s say you’ve been given a brief for an article but don’t know much about the topic, you can ask ChatGPT to outline some points to write about and begin building a template to form your copy. Below I asked ChatGPT to generate some bullet points for an article titled “5 Tips For Driving in Winter”:

ChatGPT generated five points for my article and even included some copy to explain them. I was happy with the results, but my new AI friend asked if they could help further. So, I asked ChatGPT to breakdown the generated points into a template with suggested word counts:

This time ChatGPT didn’t ask if it could be of further assistance but it was Monday morning and I needed the extra help. Finally, I asked my AI pal to suggest an SEO friendly title and meta description for the piece:

After suggesting some recommendations for my article’s metadata, ChatGPT AIsplained SEO best practices to me (rude, I do this for a living!). However, in the space of mere minutes, I had content for my article, a planned layout, and metadata to set me up for a morning of copywriting without having to use an ounce of brainpower!

Furthermore, ChatGPT could help formulate copy for product descriptions, informational web pages, and even social media content – alleviating some manpower and streamlining productivity.

2. Translate Content Into Multiple Languages

If you’re looking to expand your content into other regions, classically you would have to hire a translator. In more recent times you could use Google translate to do the job for you; however I’ve seen enough dodgy, misinterpreted tattoos on my peers to know that this isn’t always 100% accurate. ChatGPT can translate and write content in other languages without losing context, making the translation more accurate. To test this, I asked ChatGPT to translate the paragraph you just read into French, voilà:

3. Write or Explain Code

Whether you’re a master coder or a novice, bugs in code are bound to crop up from time to time; and instead of sifting through lines looking for the problem, you can set ChatGPT on the case to find the issue. Whilst it’s not a great idea to launch generated code onto a production server, ChatGPT can even write entire blocks of functional code snippets! 

4. Analyse Data

Picture the scene, it’s Friday afternoon and you’ve got sheets and sheets of data to go through to report back to your clients; ChatGPT can help streamline this. 

Through natural language processing and text clarification, ChatGPT can classify text data and even extract insights from unstructured data: including customer feedback, news articles, or social media. 

ChatGPT can also generate informative summaries of data and even create visualisations, as well as identify patterns, correlations, and relationships within the data. It can also be used to predict future trends and outcomes based on historical data through regression analysis or time-series forecasting.

5. Automate customer inquiries

Due to the conversational nature of GPT-3.5, ChatGPT can be used to supercharge the chatbots on your site; meaning it can help existing chatbots understand unpredictable human inputs due to its massive training base. This technology is already powering customer support for companies such as Meta, Canva, and Shopify, and for good reason.

Firstly, the automation means that ChatGPT can handle common customer inquiries, which allows customer service workers to focus on urgent and more complex inquiries. ChatGPT also doesn’t need sleep, and doesn’t have any hobbies, meaning it can be available 24/7, helping service customers and users outside of regular business hours. 

It can also provide consistent and accurate responses, meaning less miscommunications and more customer satisfaction. ChatGPT is immensely scalable as well, meaning that it can simultaneously handle a large number of customer inquiries. And as previously mentioned, ChatGPT is multilingual, allowing customers to submit their inquiries in a language that they’re more comfortable in.

JARVIS or Skynet?

“But you see, you just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.” This may be the case in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot but as it currently stands, I think we can postpone the AI apocalypse for now. 

Whilst ChatGPT is incredibly impressive in terms of producing content and analysing data, it needs some serious human intervention to become a staple part of a brands’ marketing function. We predict that ChatGPT will require a further 12 months of development to reach a level whereby it’s crucial to SEO, and by that time Microsoft are likely to be using it to power the Bing search engine.

We’ll be monitoring this trend closely, and assessing whether brands should start optimising for Bing in the long term- however for now, investing into Google’s ad platforms and SEO practices is still the right move for revenue-hungry brands.

If you would like to discuss ChatGPT, or your current SEO function further, please get in touch with our team for a consultation.

Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines Receives December Update

As many brands in the UK look to wind down after a busy winter period, Google has released some major changes to their quality rater guidelines for search.

The guidelines are used by Google’s search raters who help evaluate the performance of the systems used for search ranking. However, the document also helps content creators looking to self-assess their own success in search.

Google updates this document once or twice a year, with their last update being in July, however the latest update came last Thursday (15^th December) with a whopping 11 new pages added.

The headline of the whole update is the change to Google’s E-A-T system, which has found itself with a new letter prefixed: E for Experience.

You can find the announcement from Google on Twitter here: 

To better assess our results, E-A-T is gaining an E: experience. In addition to expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, does content demonstrate some degree of experience? Learn more about how E-E-A-T is now part of our search rater guidelines https://t.co/8hCj1Gk49S

— Google Search Central (@googlesearchc) December 15, 2022

The E-A-T system is used by Google to evaluate whether their search ranking systems are providing both helpful and relevant information to users. If a website can showcase their Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, then they could be more likely to rank higher in search results.

Now referred to as E-E-A-T, or ‘Double-E-A-T’ if you’re cool, the system is now taking experience into account when assessing search results.

However, I prefer this take from Nati Elimelech from Wix:

This could have been E-TEA. Missed opportunity. pic.twitter.com/6ehaK2vzWD

— Nati Elimelech (@Netanel) December 15, 2022

Meet E-E-A-T

Previously known as E-A-T, Google’s new acronym, E-E-A-T, stands for:

• Experience.
• Expertise.
• Authoritativeness.
• Trustworthiness.

The introduction of Experience indicates that website owners and creators must have some first-hand knowledge on the topic or product they are producing content on, and this will factor into how Google values the quality of your webpage. Simply put by Google in the update:

Does content also demonstrate that it was produced with some degree of experience, such as with actual use of a product, having actually visited a place or communicating what a person experienced?”

The updated E-E-A-T is described in full in Section 3.4 of Google’s updated Quality Rater Guidelines. Google says that Trust is ‘the most important member at the centre of the E-E-A-T family’ with Experience, Expertise, and Authoritativeness being ‘important concepts that can support your assessment of Trust’.

Where Does Experience Differ from Expertise and Authoritativeness?

Google admits that there may be some overlap between Experience, Expertise, and Authoritativeness for some page types and topics with the example of, ‘someone may develop Expertise in a topic due to first-hand Experience accumulated over time’. They recommend considering the purpose, type, and topic of your content and to ask yourself ‘what would make the content creator a trustworthy source in that context?’.

In the context of Page Quality rating, Google recommends that your assessment of E-E-A-T should be informed by:

• What the website or content creator say about themselves: Does your site have an About Us page, or Profile page with more information about the content creator?
• What others say about the website or content creators: Is there independent evidence that your site has E-E-A-T?
• What is visible on the page, including the main content and sections such as reviews and comments: Does your content represent your level of Experience and Expertise for itself?

YMYL Topics: Experience or Expertise?

It’s widely known that a high level of Expertise may be required for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) pages to be trustworthy. However, with Experience being in the acronym, how does this affect the quality of YMYL pages?

Google explains that YMYL pages can sometimes be ‘created to share personal experiences, often regarding difficult life challenges’ and that ‘people turn to each other in times of need to share their own experience, seek comfort or inspiration, and learn from others’.

The following table was created to show examples of where Experience and Expertise are relevant for YMYL pages:

Who Runs the Site (And What is Their Reputation)?

In Understanding the Website (Section 2.5), Google implies that it is important to express who owns the website; referring to the reputation of those who are contributing to the website rather than just the website itself:

To understand a website, start by finding out who is responsible for the website and who created the content on the page. Then, look for information about the website and/or content creators on the website itself.

In Finding Who is Responsible for the Website and Who Created the Content on the Page (Section 2.5.2), Google states that the owner of the website should be clear to showcase who is responsible for a site.

Previously, Google looked at which individual, company, business, or foundation was responsible for the site. However, in this new update, Google has replaced ‘foundation’ with ‘organisation’ and ‘government agency’.

The following table was also added to the updated document to help identify who created main content on a webpage.

In Reputation of the Website and Content Creators (Section 3.3), Google added that ‘reputation research should be performed according to the topic of the page’; giving the example that pages containing medical information should be assessed on their reputation on the topic.

What This Update Means for You

Whilst this update to the quality rater guide seems rather huge, not much will change in terms of SEO strategy. At Fusion Unlimited, E-A-T is fundamental within our SEO strategy for our clients and the implantation of Experience allows brands to further flex their trustworthiness around their topic or niche.

If you’re worried that Experience isn’t represented on your site, say hello to the Fusion Unlimited team to see how we can help incorporate E-E-A-T into your SEO strategy.