To kick off the first full week of February, our digital experts Tom and Kylie have pulled together the latest updates in the world of digital marketing that you need to know. This week, we have topics covering AI advancements, search engine updates and Twitter’s plans to share revenue. Read our full blog below to find out more.
Google preparing to launch AI-based chat functionality
Not to be left behind by ChatGPT, Google is also preparing to enter the AI based chat market. This Wednesday, Google will be hosting an event that ‘reimagines’ the way that people search and interact with information. At this stage, the event is light on details but we’re likely going to see some significant future updates for Search alongside more information on Google’s chat project. The race for AI-backed search engines is significant as Microsoft have continued to invest in OpenAI with ChatGPT already announced for Teams integration in the future
Bing revamping crawl system to increase efficiency
Bing is revamping it’s crawl system to prioritise the use of the “lastmod” tag within XML sitemaps to determine which pages to index and how often. This change should improve Bing’s crawl efficiency to ensure that they are prioritising recently updated or new content and not wasting effort unnecessarily crawling old, outdated content. For website owners this reinforces the need to keep your “lastmod” dates updated to ensure your pages are treated as you wish.
Amazon’s advertising business sees further 19% YoY growth
Amazon’s advertising business continues to grow as it saw a further 19% YoY increase. Although many expected a downturn in Q4, this seemingly only materialised for Google and Facebook as TikTok and Amazon showed significant growth. Advertising is now close to 10% of overall Amazon revenue and one of the fastest growing internal areas, they also hold 7% of the overall market. With a squeeze on performance, it’s likely going to be these lower funnel conversion focused advertising plays that continue to perform well through an economic slowdown.
Google clarify that JSON-LD is preferred structured data format
Google have updated their structured data guidelines to clarify their preferred format for this. Although Google states three different formats that are acceptable (JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa), they have made it clear that JSON-LD is the preferred and recommended choice. This is due to it being the easiest format to implement and maintain at scale so comes with less risk of user errors. However, if your current structured data is marked up using Microdata or RDFa, it is fine to stay that way unless there are any errors.
Twitter plans to share advertising revenue with content creators
Twitter is working on sharing advertising revenue with creators. Creators who are currently signed up to Twitter Blue will soon be able to take a portion of the advertising revenue they generate. This follows the likes of YouTube and TikTok which also offer revenue sharing with content creators. It’s become clear that Elon Musk wants to position Twitter as a competitor video platform rather than purely text based. It remains to be seen if Musk can turn Twitter fortunes around as reports of significant revenue drops and advertisers leaving have dogged his first few months with the business.
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