Microsoft’s advertising business posted lackluster growth in the first quarter of 2023. Advertising and search revenue increased 3.4% to just over $3 billion during the period, including traffic acquisition costs that Microsoft pays to publishers. The company attributed the increase to higher search volume and its acquisition of Xandr, an ad buying platform it acquired from AT&T. LinkedIn revenue was up 7.6%. Microsoft attributed the increase to its Talent Solutions products. The company also said the number of sessions logged on LinkedIn grew 15%. Why we care. There was no reason not to take Microsoft at its word that advertising spending was slowing when it issued earnings last quarter. The company predicted low single digit growth, and delivered. The pace of growth is confirmation – as if more was needed – that demand for advertising is slumping. And those expecting a significant bump in revenue from the release of the new Bing were over their ski tips. The post Microsoft Search and Advertising revenue up 3.4% in Q1 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/QpxTUM9
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In the first quarter of 2023, Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, reported a slight decrease in Advertising revenue, while Search saw an increase of almost 2% YoY. Overall impressions. Overall, these results suggest a mixed performance for Google’s advertising platforms in terms of ad impressions. Even with all of the layoffs, Google has entered the first quarter of this year with nearly 27,000 more employees than last year. Though, it was noted that “the number of employees includes almost all of the employees affected by the reduction of our workforce. We expect most of those affected will no longer be reflected in our headcount by the end of the second quarter of 2023, subject to local law and consultation requirements.” Dig deeper. You can read the full report here. Why we care. Though down slightly, Google is still the main player in the search game. But its momentum seems to be slowing with the increase in Microsoft users, ChatGPT, and advancements from other technology platforms. The post Google search revenue rises 2%, slight dip in total ad revenue appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/hwtgkvV Google has confirmed that the April 2023 reviews update is now finished rolling out. This update announced on April 12, 2023, has officially completed rolling out over a 13-day period. February 2023 reviews update. As a reminder, the April 2023 reviews update started to roll out at about 12 p.m. ET on April 12. This update took 13 days to roll out after it was announced. So this update started on April 12 and lasted through April 25, 2023, Google posted. This update goes beyond Google’s prior product reviews updates to evaluate reviews of any topic that is reviewable, including:
Google has changed the name of its “product reviews system” to “reviews system” and has altered the language in multiple parts of its guidance documentation around product reviews to now apply to all types of reviews. Why we care. If your website offers general review content, you will want to check your rankings to see if you were impacted. Did your Google organic traffic improve, decline or stay the same? Long term, you are going to want to ensure that you put a lot more detail and effort into your review content. Make it unique so it stands out from the competition on the web. If you need more advice on this update, see our previous story over here. Previous product review updates. This is the seventh release of the formerly known as product reviews update, now the reviews update and was released on April 12 at about 12 pm ET. The first product reviews update was launched on April 8, 2021, the second was launched on December 1, 2021, the third has been released on March 23, 2022, and the fourth was released on July 27, 0222, and the fifth was released on September 20, 2022 and the sixth was released on February 21, 2023. The post Google April 2023 reviews update is finished rolling out appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/T4Hu5B7 Create high-quality content that meets Google E-E-A-T standards by Digital Marketing Depot4/25/2023 Are you struggling with your content marketing strategy? Do you lack time, resources, and a clear purpose? The Content Marketing Quick Start Guide from MoreVisibility is here to help! This guide provides tips and guidance to jumpstart your content planning and creation, helping you overcome common challenges such as lack of time, strategy, or production resources. One of the most critical aspects of content marketing is Google E-E-A-T, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. In this guide, you’ll learn how to create content that meets these guidelines, ensuring that your website ranks higher in search engine results and drives more traffic to your site. The guide will walk you through the different types of content you’ll need to plan, create, and optimize. Visit Digital Marketing Depot to download the Content Marketing Quick Start Guide. The post Create high-quality content that meets Google E-E-A-T standards appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/eWRQmXx The Google Ads Status Dashboard has indicated that there have been error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior today. Why we care. If you’re seeing errors or unexpected issues in your Ads dashboard, be aware that they may be related to this latest issue. Monitor your campaigns closely and be on the lookout for overspending, ad disapprovals, or even suspensions. The post Google Ads errors and issues reported appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/AYVkUS9 On Sunday, multiple Meta advertisers noticed their accounts had spent up to four times their daily budget in a matter of hours. Advertisers also noticed their average CPA’s (cost per acquisition) had nearly tripled in the same time period. What happened. Meta has been quiet on the issue. They have not addressed the issue publicly or made a statement. However, Search Engine Land contributor Curt Maly, who is in a Meta group for Facebook advertisers, said that Meta had posted the following statement inside the group:
So, a few things with this statement, Maly says:
Crickets from Meta. Meta has not made a public statement or addressed the issue on Twitter or any other platform (open to the general public). At least when Google has issues, Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin is on top of it. Meta does have an outage tool you can use to see if there are any known glitches. On Sunday it showed that there was a “Major Disruption” in the Ads Delivery category. Now, that status is back to normal. What a mess. Here’s what other advertisers are experiencing. Why we care. This is a major glitch that could affect any Facebook advertiser. Check your ad campaigns and pause any that are overspending. We don’t know for sure if Facebook is going to issue refunds, what caused the issue, if it’s fixed, and how they’re going to make it right, but check back for more info. The post A catastrophic Meta bug caused overspending, higher-than-average CPA’s appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/XMmWQoY As new ChatGPT alternatives pop up daily, AI content detectors are also gaining popularity. In this article, I’ll share 16 of these detectors and show you how they score some paragraphs of my original, unpublished writing versus a few paragraphs on the same topic from ChatGPT. I’ll also walk through the types of functions AI detectors are (and aren’t) a good fit for and how marketers, editors, and SEOs should think about them. What detection tools are good (and bad) atAs I’ve detailed in other articles, generative AI and ChatGPT content poses several issues:
It’s important to note that the current AI detectors do not solve all of these problems. Mostly, these tools do not fact-check AI content, improve or audit content quality, or provide citations for information pulled from other sources. That said, the areas that AI detectors can help include:
How AI detection software worksEach tool is different and has its approach to the problem. But for the most part, ChatGPT detection tools grade content based on how predictable the phrase choices are within a piece of content. In other words, the likelihood that content is scored as AI versus human has a lot to do with whether the detection software deems a piece of writing as following the likely pattern AI would follow in generating content. The two core concepts around this process are called:
For example, in an essay about the founding of America, it’s highly unlikely that generative AI would include a random, unevenly written anecdote about the first time they ever saw a penguin, so that would likely look like human writing to a detection tool. Similar to how ChatGPT detectors popped up to detect generative AI writing, tools are already being developed to get around the detectors. (And, of course: the detectors are likely already thinking about how to detect the bypassers, and so on). Tools like Undetectable or Quillbot will rewrite your content, sometimes making it more difficult to detect for certain AI detection tools. Additionally, several people have found different prompts to get ChatGPT and other AI writing tools to output content that scores “more human” on the human-to-AI scale by using prompts defining burstiness and perplexity and telling ChatGPT to write with more of each. Does detection accuracy matter to you?An important question to answer before you dive too far into these tools is: How much do you care about detecting whether content is written by AI? And why? If you’re using ChatGPT for rewriting title tags or generating email copy, maybe it doesn’t matter at all if that content “passes” AI writing checks. Additionally, if a writer uses AI to generate a copy and the copy is great, maybe the score isn’t important at all. These detection tools will likely be engaged in the “detection arms race” with un-detection tools and prompts I mentioned above. The best AI writing detectors comparedIf you're still looking for an AI/ChatGPT content detector, we'll go through each of them and how they “scored” in evaluating human-generated copy versus AI copy versus AI copy that used this prompt to try to “beat detection." Note: Detection versus a few paragraphs of content isn't necessarily a thorough test of the detection capabilities of these tools. Hopefully, it will give you a rough sense of how they score different content and a glimpse of the range of outcomes you can expect from these kinds of tools. (You can view the actual samples input to the tool – the “human” sample written by me, the “AI” sample written by ChatGPT via GPT-4, and the updated copy based on the same topic here.) In the table below, you can see how each tool scored the copy I wrote from scratch, the copy I took from ChatGPT directly with no prompt modification, and that same copy tweaked with the “perplexity and burstiness” prompt : Below is a brief overview of the tools included in the table and some of their key features. 1. Originality.AIOriginality.AI is a paid tool described as “the most accurate AI content detector and plagiarism checker built for serious content publishers.” It costs $.01 per credit, which scans 100 words. It also features a plagiarism scanner alongside the AI scanner. As you can see from the chart above, this is the only AI scanner with 100% confidence that the human content was human and that the AI content was AI (while also being correct in all cases). Hive Moderation (discussed later in the article) essentially had the same conclusion with a 0% AI score for the human content and 99.9% confidence the two AI-generated texts were AI. On top of having a Chrome extension and an overall score, Originality.AI added a feature highlighting the specific sections of the content you paste that it predicts will and won’t be AI. I use this tool most frequently to check for AI content personally. My most frequent use-case is checking content submitted by freelance writers we work with for AI and plagiarism. 2. WriterWriter offers a free detector that works on up to 1,500 characters and requires API access for more. This tool essentially thought all of the submissions were relatively likely to be human-generated. Writer is an AI writing platform, and the free content detector also allows you to input a URL to check. There is no plagiarism feature within this tool directly, and it gives you an overall score but doesn’t mark specific sections as likely or unlikely to be AI-generated. 3. Copyleaks AI Content DetectorThe Copyleaks AI Content Detector has a few interesting features:
The tool is free, and while a single scan doesn't do both, there's also a plagiarism detector. It accurately identified much of the human-generated content as human and much of the AI-generated content as AI. However, it wasn't always confident and was incorrect in some individual sections. 4. OpenAI's AI Text ClassifierAI Text Classifier is a free tool from OpenAI, the company that created GPT (which is what runs many generative AI tools) and ChatGPT. If you thought the company that makes the most popular AI tools would have the most accurate detector, that didn't ring true for our test. The tool identified the human content as “very unlikely” to be AI-generated but identified the content from OpenAI’s own platform as “unclear” if it was AI-generated and “unlikely” AI-generated with and without the additional prompt. The tool is free (you need an OpenAI account). There aren't a lot of bells and whistles and no plagiarism check. You get a finding (like what you see in the screenshot) but no precise score. It also won’t highlight specific sections of copy for their individual likelihood of being AI-generated or not. 5. Crossplag AI Content DetectorCrossplag offers a few free scans without an account. When logged in, you'll get unlimited free scans. The tool does give an overall score but doesn't offer the ability to check for plagiarism or mark up individual sections of the content. Crossplaq identified the human and AI content as 99% human. It is worth noting that the tool repeatedly calls out that it performs better on longer text. Our samples here were above their 200-character minimum recommendation but on the shorter side. 6. GPTZeroGPTZero has free and paid versions. The free version gives you a score and has some pre-loaded examples. The paid version also offers a plagiarism checker, highlighting AI content, and the ability to bulk upload multiple pieces of content (which is actually designed for a classroom environment, like many of these tools). Pricing for the paid tools isn't listed on the website, but you can fill out forms to request access to the paid tool and the API. The free version of the tool identified all three of our writing samples as likely entirely human. 7. Sapling AI DetectorSapling AI Detector offers free and paid versions, a Chrome Extension, an API, an overall score and sentence highlighting. Sapling identified the human content as mostly human and the AI content as almost entirely AI. However, it identified the “perplex” and “bursty” ChatGPT content as highly likely to be human. 8. Content at Scale's AI DetectorThe Content at Scale AI Detector is free and offers a score with a breakdown of different elements within the content (predictability, probability, and pattern) and pre-populated examples. No plagiarism detection option exists, and individual content sections aren’t highlighted. Content at Scale rated all three samples as 92% human or higher. The human did have the highest human percentage, followed by the prompt-modified GPT content and the content generated by the simplest prompt. 9. ZeroGPTZeroGPT is a free tool that offers an overall score and highlighting but no plagiarism detection. The tool returned low percentages of AI-generated likelihood across the board. It roughly corresponded to the human-ness of the samples, with the human-generated sample getting the lowest AI percentage, followed by the burstiness / perplexity prompt, and then by the simpler prompt). 10. GLTRGLTR, or the “Giant Language model Test Room,” is a free tool that was a collaborative effort between Hendrik Strobelt, Sebastian Gehrmann, and Alexander Rush from the MIT-IBM Watson AI lab and Harvard NLP. The tool offers some overall scoring but mainly shows whether each word within a text was one of the 10, 100, 1,000 or outside the 1,000 most likely words to be generated by AI based on the prior context in the text. There is no plagiarism feature set here. The tool returned the highest number of “likely words” and particularly likely words in the top 10 for the text generated by the simpler prompt. Still, the distribution was similar for the human and additional prompt copy in this small test. 11. ChatGPT Detector on Hugging FaceThis is a free detector that gives an overall prediction and score. It doesn’t have any plagiarism or highlighting features. This tool generated over 99.9% likelihood of human content for all three samples. 12. Corrector AI Content DetectorCorrector AI Detector is a free tool with a 600-word count limit and a percentage score. There is no plagiarism or highlighting features for the tool. The tool labeled each of the samples with a very low percentage probability of being “fake” or AI. 13. Writefull GPT DetectorThe Writefull GPT Detector is a free tool with a simple score and API access. There is no highlighting and no plagiarism detection. It found all three samples as likely human but did have the ChatGPT content with the simplest prompt with the highest AI likelihood (19%). 14. Hive Moderation’s AI-Generated Content DetectionThe Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool is free (with character limits and requiring sign-in after several uses). It doesn't offer plagiarism or highlighting but does allow you to break content out by sections and get segment-specific scores. Hive essentially scored each writing sample properly, with a 0% likelihood of being AI for the human content and 99.9% scores for the AI samples. (Only Originality.AI had a similar confidence level while being accurate across the samples.) 15. Paraphrasing Tool AI Content DetectorThe paraphrasing tool is a re-writer, and they offer this free AI content detector with an overall conclusion and highlighting and no plagiarism features. The Paraphrasing Tool concluded that each of the text was likely human. 16. AI Writing CheckAI Writing Check is a free tool that offers a score, has a word maximum, and does not feature text highlighting for AI probability or plagiarism features. AI Writing Check identified all three writing samples as human. Key learnings from testing 16 AI and ChatGPT content checkersAgain, it’s essential to caveat my key findings here because three short writing samples are very small samples to draw steadfast conclusions about the individual tools. That said, I found a few interesting patterns related to AI writing detectors in general:
I’d recommend keeping an eye on at least a few of these tools if you find AI detection useful in your projects. The pace of innovation across AI content generation, editing and detection may quickly make your favorite tool obsolete. The post 16 of the best AI and ChatGPT content detectors compared appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/1yTXErD LinkedIn is an essential platform to leverage if you’re looking to nurture and engage your audience. It’s great for distributing your organization’s content and even building your own brand. Tracking your LinkedIn performance is necessary to ensure you’re making the most of your presence on the site. This article takes a closer look at LinkedIn content analytics, why it’s important, and how to use it to improve your performance on the platform. What is LinkedIn analytics?LinkedIn analytics comprises a collection of metrics specific to LinkedIn that evaluate your page’s or posts’ effectiveness. Like other social media platforms, LinkedIn also offers a range of metrics that assist you in monitoring the success of your approach. There are several key metrics you should monitor when using LinkedIn analytics, including:
To view post analytics for your content:
How to use LinkedIn analytics to improve your performanceHere are some tips for using LinkedIn analytics to improve your performance on the platform. Analyze your audienceUse the visitor demographics metric to learn more about your audience and tailor your content to their interests and needs. Experiment with different types of contentLinkedIn can vary depending on factors such as the industry, audience, and current trends. However, some of the most effective types of content that generally perform well on LinkedIn include:
Use hashtags popular within your industryTo find out which hashtags to use or follow, type in a topic, and you will see how many LinkedIn users are following it, Optimize your profileUse the profile views metric to see how often your profile is viewed. Tweak your profile to make it more appealing to your target audience. Start with a strong headline and make it compelling and specific to your expertise so you stand out. Engage with your followersUse the content engagement metric to see how your audience interacts with your content and engage with them by responding to comments and messages. Post a question or a statement to start a discussion. You can add visuals like emojis, tag companies and people, and share links. LinkedIn engagement optimization tipsFollow these steps to help you maximize your engagements on LinkedIn. Set clear goalsBefore you start analyzing your content, it’s important to understand what you want to achieve clearly. Do you want to increase engagement, generate leads, or build brand awareness? Knowing your goals will help you focus your analysis on the metrics that matter most. Track the right metricsOnce you have your goals, you need to track the right metrics to measure your progress. On LinkedIn, some key metrics to track include engagement rate, click-through rate, and follower growth. Analyze your contentWith your goals and metrics in mind, you can start analyzing your content to see how it’s performing. Look for patterns in your top-performing content, such as the type of content (text, image, video), topic, and time of day. Optimize your contentYou can start optimizing your content based on your analysis to improve engagement. For example, if your video content performs better than text posts, you might want to create more videos. Or, if you notice that your posts perform better in the morning, you can schedule more posts for that time. Test and iterateFinally, it’s important to test and iterate your content strategy based on your analytics. Keep track of your metrics over time and adjust as needed to maximize your engagement on LinkedIn. Make your content better with LinkedIn analyticsLinkedIn content analytics is a powerful tool for maximizing engagement for content marketing on LinkedIn. By analyzing your content’s performance, using the data to improve your content, engaging with your audience, experimenting with different types of content, and monitoring your progress over time, you can increase engagement and build relationships with your target audience. The post LinkedIn content analytics: What it is and how to use it appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/8ZpXwty Bing seems to be rolling out site name and favicons to its search results, much like Google did months ago on desktop and last year on mobile search. Now when you look at the Bing search results, you may start to see little favicons at the top left of the search result snippets, with the site’s name above it, some have noticed and we are able to replicate at Search Engine Land. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of Bing showing the site name and favicon for this site: Here is what it looks like without it in Bing search: Let’s compare that to how it looks in Google search: Controlling site names with Google. Google back in October explained that Google Search uses a number of ways to identify the site name for the search result. But if you want, you can use structured data on your home page to communicate to Google what your site’s name should be. Google has specific documentation on this new Site name structured data available over here. I do wonder if this works the same way for Bing Search? Site name issues with Google. Google has had some issues with showing the correct site name in Google Search, so much so the CMO of Salesforce called it “extremely damaging to our brand.” Google has since opened a form for you to report issues with your site name in Google Search: Why we care. Site names and favicons can impact your click-through rate from the search results. If you can control what the site name says and how the favicon appears in the Bing and Google search results, it can be helpful for your brand and traffic. But if they show the wrong information, like “Sales force” with a space, it can be hurtful to the brand. The post Bing search results gain site name and favicons appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/PL4VICp Microsoft will be bringing Bing Chat data directly into Bing Webmaster Tools in May, Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said on Twitter. We knew this was coming when Fabrice Canel this news several weeks ago, but now Fabrice is saying this will launch in the coming weeks. Coming in May. “e will be shipping in May in Bing Webmaster Tools UX and Bing Webmaster Tools API,” Fabrice Cancel said when asked if Bing Chat data is coming to Bing Webmaster Tools. He said in another tweet, “We will start reporting clicks and impressions in Bing Chat in the following weeks.” Here are those tweets: Bing Chat in Webmaster Tools. Bing Webmaster Tools will soon be adding Bing chat integration to allow publishers, content creators, and site owners to see how much traffic the chat feature is sending their sites. It will be part of the Bing performance report and show impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and more. Here is a photo of this report from Jennifer Slegg on Twitter: Why we care. With all the concern, confusion and stress around these new chat AI features, having a report that shows how many people see our links, click on our links and visit our sites will be helpful to publishers, content creators and site owners. So soon, as early as May 2023, we should soon see how much traffic and visibility our sites are getting directly from Bing Chat. I do hope Google does the same for Google Bard, but since Bard is less likely to offer citations, I kind of doubt we will see this from Google anytime soon. The post Bing Webmaster Tools to gain Bing Chat impressions and clicks next month appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/GHMYq4N |
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