Search Engine Land

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-800x457.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google trust low" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-800x457.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-591x338.png 591w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-198x113.png 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-768x439.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-1536x878.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Trust in Google has absolutely collapsed in the wake of revelations from the DOJ antitrust trial. Eleven advertisers told us why.

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-800x457.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google trust low" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-800x457.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-591x338.png 591w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-198x113.png 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-768x439.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9-1536x878.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-9.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>The Department of Justice&#8217;s laid out a damning case against Google in the <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-search-antirust-trial-hearing-updates-431977">antitrust lawsuit</a> closing argument.</p>



<p>Search Engine Land Managing Editor Danny Goodwin highlighted some of the damaging evidence – including how Google has been increasing costs for advertisers – in <a href="https://searchengineland.com/doj-google-search-ad-price-manipulation-440207">How Google harms search advertisers in 20 slides</a> </p>



<p>In light of the revelations, I contacted search marketers to get their thoughts on Google Ads to evaluate the current confidence level. Spoiler alert: it&#8217;s not good.</p>



<p>Clearly, trust is a major issue – and in the court of public opinion among advertisers, Google has already been found guilty.</p>



<p>Here&#8217;s what advertisers told Search Engine Land:</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-manipulation-and-deceptive-practices">Manipulation and deceptive practices</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://searchengineland.com/author/sarah-stemen">Sarah Stemen</a></strong> (Paid Search Specialist and Founder):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Their willingness to rewrite help desk documents, frankly, feels shocking after such revelations.&#8221;</li>



<li>&#8220;It seems like Google is trying to hide the mechanics of a potential first-price auction rather than ensuring a truly fair second-price system.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/borisbeceric/">Boris Beceric</a></strong> (Google Ads consultant and coach):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;The only one ‘benefitting’ from randomization is Google.&#8221;</li>



<li>&#8220;Google is a monopoly that&#8217;s raising prizes without telling advertisers about it.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/didsreeve/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dids Reeve</a></strong> (Freelance Paid Media Specialist):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;The document reads like randomization is code for &#8216;we can deviate from the usual auction algorithm to make ourselves some more money&#8217;. And that if advertisers perceive Google to be ‘randomizing’, then it would be bad enough that they want to cover up the fact.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-ridley/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Chris Ridley</a></strong> (Paid Media Manager, Evoluted):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;The latest news of Google randomizing the top two ad positions in the hope advertisers will raise their bids, is a sign that Google is willing to rewrite the rulebook for advertising on their platform.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertallenbrady/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Robert Brady</a></strong> (Founder and PPC Expert):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Exact match bears the name &#8216;exact,&#8217; but the behavior of the match type is far from exact. They keep the name because it gives advertisers a false sense of precision.&#8221;</li>



<li>&#8220;Randomization in this context is used the same way. The layperson would infer that it meant the behavior was truly random (not influenced by predictable factors), so Google deflects scrutiny when a full analysis shows that their &#8216;randomization&#8217; showed a clear preference in Google&#8217;s favor.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://searchengineland.com/author/amy-hebdon">Amy Hebdon</a></strong> (Google Ads Conversion expert):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;With RGSP, Google has gaslit advertisers with disingenuous explanations of the changes, trying to convince us that this lack of transparency is for our benefit.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-google-s-prioritization-of-profit-over-fairness">Google&#8217;s prioritization of profit over fairness</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyllsaskingales/">Jyll Saskin Gales</a></strong> (Google Ads Coach):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;However, reading the internal Google commentary on the practice, it&#8217;s clear that the motivations for randomization were not noble.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/charleybrennand/">Charley Brennand</a></strong> (PPC Consultant &amp; Founder):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Google will never put advertisers&#8217; needs before their need to grow profit.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Hebdon added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Using ad rank and a second-price auction, Google already had a system prioritizing quality and user experience while setting a fair price for advertisers.&nbsp;Where&#8217;s the flaw in that model, besides the fact that Google wasn&#8217;t extracting the maximum revenue possible?&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/neptunemoon/">Julie Friedman Bacchini</a></strong> (Founder of NeptuneMoon):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;My main takeaway from this is that these exhibits show that Google Ads is absolutely doing what is best for Google Ads first and foremost.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholaslukehandley/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Nick Handley</a></strong> (Head of Paid Media Performance at Impression):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Google has a monopoly on the Search space and until another player challenges Google, I feel we&#8217;re going to continue to see this type of revenue-increasing tactic to continue with Google putting stakeholders above clients.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-trust-in-google-is-quickly-collapsing">Trust in Google is quickly collapsing</h2>



<p><strong><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/ppckirk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kirk Williams</a></strong> (Founder of Zato):</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;But I can say that these [evidence brought up against Google] continually demonstrate the problem Google has right now: trust.&#8221;</li>



<li>&#8220;Google has an optics problem right now, and these documents help erode, rather than increase, trust.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Stemen added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;It challenges the very foundation of trust and transparency that&#8217;s essential for a healthy digital advertising ecosystem.&#8221;</li>



<li>&#8220;It raises the question – what else haven&#8217;t they been transparent about?&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Reeve added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;It makes me feel like the PPC community and their clients are being manipulated, too.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Ridley added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;We, as advertisers, should not take anything we know about how ad auctions work at face value, even if it’s within the Google Ads Help Center.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Brennand added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Now with the published data from the court case, we can see that we’ve been manipulated and actually, not even our Google counterparts are privy to what Google is up to.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Handley added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Given the recent DOJ vs Google trial, it&#8217;s becoming increasingly harder to trust Google and the recommendations they provide.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-impact-on-advertisers-and-clients">Impact on advertisers and clients</h2>



<p>Gales added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;The people who should be most angered by this are Google&#8217;s top customers, the Amazons and Temus and Expedias of the world, who spend millions a year on Google Ads just to be punished for their investment by being &#8216;randomly&#8217; pushed down.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Brennand added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;If this has only just been surfaced now, it begs the question of how many other harmful changes have happened under the radar that we didn’t know about.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Handley added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;This poses an interesting question, how are we meant to trust recommendations from our reps? If they are in the dark as much as us, surely some of their insight is harmful to us advertisers.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-perceived-un-fairness-of-ad-auctions">Perceived (un)fairness of ad auctions</h2>



<p>Williams added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;When users believe an auction to be more about competition and less about manipulation by the auctioneer and then learn it to be otherwise, that causes a lack of trust.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Gales added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;I support the principle of Randomization, as it seems to support the same principle as Quality Score: those with the deepest pockets shall not hoard all the clicks, and the most important thing is to give the user what they want &#8211; the best results.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Ridley added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;For years, Google has been telling advertisers through their Google Ads Help Articles that Ad Rank determines &#8216;whether your ads are eligible to show and, if eligible, where on the page your ads are shown (if at all) relative to other advertisers’ ads&#8217;.&#8221;</li>



<li>They even go as far as providing six factors that contribute to calculating your Ad Rank and have published and regularly updated several Google-hosted articles that double-down on the concept that “Your ad&#8217;s position on the page is determined by your Ad Rank”</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-other-reactions-of-shock-and-disappointment">Other reactions of shock and disappointment</h2>



<p>Stemen added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;However, encountering statements like &#8216;this gives us the freedom to config pricing&#8217; in official court documents is a real blow.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p>Reeve added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;It’s quite shocking to see in black and white the cynical way individuals at Google have discussed how they manipulate and warp the definitions and configuration of Google Ads metrics.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Bacchini</strong> added:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;Advertisers and PPC pros have long suspected some of this stuff, but seeing it in these docs is still stunning.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Why we care: </strong>The breakdown in the relationship between Google and advertisers may start with trust – but it goes beyond that. It becomes harder or impossible to trust advice from ad reps, having seen that Google is prioritizing revenue over fairness via manipulative practices. It means advertisers have an even harder job of ensuring they are not just throwing advertising budget down the drain but actually gaining incremental conversions with their ad spend.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper. <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-credibility-greg-finn-advertiser-432503">Has Google Ads lost all credibility? Why one advertiser says it’s time to leave</a></em></strong></p>


The Department of Justice’s laid out a damning case against Google in the antitrust lawsuit closing argument.
Search Engine Land Managing Editor Danny Goodwin highlighted some of the damaging evidence – including how Google has been increasing costs for advertisers – in How Google harms search advertisers in 20 slides 
In light of the revelations, I contacted search marketers to get their thoughts on Google Ads to evaluate the current confidence level. Spoiler alert: it’s not good.
Clearly, trust is a major issue – and in the court of public opinion among advertisers, Google has already been found guilty.
Here’s what advertisers told Search Engine Land:
Manipulation and deceptive practices
Sarah Stemen (Paid Search Specialist and Founder):
“Their willingness to rewrite help desk documents, frankly, feels shocking after such revelations.”
“It seems like Google is trying to hide the mechanics of a potential first-price auction rather than ensuring a truly fair second-price system.”
Boris Beceric (Google Ads consultant and coach):
“The only one ‘benefitting’ from randomization is Google.”
“Google is a monopoly that’s raising prizes without telling advertisers about it.”
Dids Reeve (Freelance Paid Media Specialist):
“The document reads like randomization is code for ‘we can deviate from the usual auction algorithm to make ourselves some more money’. And that if advertisers perceive Google to be ‘randomizing’, then it would be bad enough that they want to cover up the fact.”
Chris Ridley (Paid Media Manager, Evoluted):
“The latest news of Google randomizing the top two ad positions in the hope advertisers will raise their bids, is a sign that Google is willing to rewrite the rulebook for advertising on their platform.”
Robert Brady (Founder and PPC Expert):
“Exact match bears the name ‘exact,’ but the behavior of the match type is far from exact. They keep the name because it gives advertisers a false sense of precision.”
“Randomization in this context is used the same way. The layperson would infer that it meant the behavior was truly random (not influenced by predictable factors), so Google deflects scrutiny when a full analysis shows that their ‘randomization’ showed a clear preference in Google’s favor.”
Amy Hebdon (Google Ads Conversion expert):
“With RGSP, Google has gaslit advertisers with disingenuous explanations of the changes, trying to convince us that this lack of transparency is for our benefit.”
Google’s prioritization of profit over fairness
Jyll Saskin Gales (Google Ads Coach):
“However, reading the internal Google commentary on the practice, it’s clear that the motivations for randomization were not noble.”
Charley Brennand (PPC Consultant & Founder):
“Google will never put advertisers’ needs before their need to grow profit.”
Hebdon added:
“Using ad rank and a second-price auction, Google already had a system prioritizing quality and user experience while setting a fair price for advertisers. Where’s the flaw in that model, besides the fact that Google wasn’t extracting the maximum revenue possible?”
Julie Friedman Bacchini (Founder of NeptuneMoon):
“My main takeaway from this is that these exhibits show that Google Ads is absolutely doing what is best for Google Ads first and foremost.”
Nick Handley (Head of Paid Media Performance at Impression):
“Google has a monopoly on the Search space and until another player challenges Google, I feel we’re going to continue to see this type of revenue-increasing tactic to continue with Google putting stakeholders above clients.”
Trust in Google is quickly collapsing
Kirk Williams (Founder of Zato):
“But I can say that these [evidence brought up against Google] continually demonstrate the problem Google has right now: trust.”
“Google has an optics problem right now, and these documents help erode, rather than increase, trust.”
Stemen added:
“It challenges the very foundation of trust and transparency that’s essential for a healthy digital advertising ecosystem.”
“It raises the question – what else haven’t they been transparent about?”
Reeve added:
“It makes me feel like the PPC community and their clients are being manipulated, too.”
Ridley added:
“We, as advertisers, should not take anything we know about how ad auctions work at face value, even if it’s within the Google Ads Help Center.”
Brennand added:
“Now with the published data from the court case, we can see that we’ve been manipulated and actually, not even our Google counterparts are privy to what Google is up to.”
Handley added:
“Given the recent DOJ vs Google trial, it’s becoming increasingly harder to trust Google and the recommendations they provide.”
Impact on advertisers and clients
Gales added:
“The people who should be most angered by this are Google’s top customers, the Amazons and Temus and Expedias of the world, who spend millions a year on Google Ads just to be punished for their investment by being ‘randomly’ pushed down.”
Brennand added:
“If this has only just been surfaced now, it begs the question of how many other harmful changes have happened under the radar that we didn’t know about.”
Handley added:
“This poses an interesting question, how are we meant to trust recommendations from our reps? If they are in the dark as much as us, surely some of their insight is harmful to us advertisers.”
Perceived (un)fairness of ad auctions
Williams added:
“When users believe an auction to be more about competition and less about manipulation by the auctioneer and then learn it to be otherwise, that causes a lack of trust.”
Gales added:
“I support the principle of Randomization, as it seems to support the same principle as Quality Score: those with the deepest pockets shall not hoard all the clicks, and the most important thing is to give the user what they want – the best results.”
Ridley added:
“For years, Google has been telling advertisers through their Google Ads Help Articles that Ad Rank determines ‘whether your ads are eligible to show and, if eligible, where on the page your ads are shown (if at all) relative to other advertisers’ ads’.”
They even go as far as providing six factors that contribute to calculating your Ad Rank and have published and regularly updated several Google-hosted articles that double-down on the concept that “Your ad’s position on the page is determined by your Ad Rank”
Other reactions of shock and disappointment
Stemen added:
“However, encountering statements like ‘this gives us the freedom to config pricing’ in official court documents is a real blow.”
Reeve added:
“It’s quite shocking to see in black and white the cynical way individuals at Google have discussed how they manipulate and warp the definitions and configuration of Google Ads metrics.”
Bacchini added:
“Advertisers and PPC pros have long suspected some of this stuff, but seeing it in these docs is still stunning.”
Why we care: The breakdown in the relationship between Google and advertisers may start with trust – but it goes beyond that. It becomes harder or impossible to trust advice from ad reps, having seen that Google is prioritizing revenue over fairness via manipulative practices. It means advertisers have an even harder job of ensuring they are not just throwing advertising budget down the drain but actually gaining incremental conversions with their ad spend.
Dig deeper. Has Google Ads lost all credibility? Why one advertiser says it’s time to leave

Trust in Google has absolutely collapsed in the wake of revelations from the DOJ antitrust trial. Eleven advertisers told us why.

Why advertisers can no longer trust Google

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-800x450.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="TikTok" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-800x450.jpg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-600x338.jpg 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-200x113.jpg 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-150x84.jpg 150w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>We may soon know whether TikTok users actually want hour-long videos. Could this lead to more advertising?

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-800x450.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="TikTok" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-800x450.jpg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-600x338.jpg 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-200x113.jpg 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271-150x84.jpg 150w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2023/03/Shutterstock_2158839271.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>TikTok is testing a new 60-minute video upload limit, which could unlock new content possibilities for brands, marketers and content creators.</p>



<p><strong>Why we care. </strong>TikTok is already a powerful <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-search-engine-ux-vs-semantics-437349">discovery engine</a>, but the ability to upload 60-minute videos opens up TikTok&#8217;s potential as a platform to host long-form branded video content – rather than breaking up videos into multiple parts.</p>



<p><strong>Why TikTok is testing this. </strong>TikTok wants to give creators more flexibility and the ability to experiment with new types of long-form content (e.g., cooking demos, beauty tutorials, educational lessons, comedic sketches) that don&#8217;t fit well into shorter videos.</p>



<p><strong>Not widely available. </strong>This new 60-minute video upload option is being tested with a limited number of users in select markets. It is not available to all users yet and TikTok has no &#8220;immediate plans&#8221; for a wider rollout, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/16/tiktok-upload-60-minute-videos/">TechCrunch</a> reported.</p>



<p><strong>Longer videos, more ads? </strong>This development could also lead the way to TikTok offering more advertising, in the form of pre- and mid-roll ads. </p>



<p><strong>Keeps getting longer.</strong> In January, TikTok started testing <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-pilots-30-minute-video-uploads-436864">30-minute video uploads</a>. That followed increases to <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-pilot-15-minute-video-upload-limits-433640">15 minutes</a> in 2023 and <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-10-minute-video-length-381434">10 minutes</a> in 2022.</p>



<ul>
<li>At launch, TikTok videos were limited to 15 seconds. TikTok later increased the maximum video length time to 60 seconds, then tripled that to 3 minutes in July 2021.</li>
</ul>


TikTok is testing a new 60-minute video upload limit, which could unlock new content possibilities for brands, marketers and content creators.
Why we care. TikTok is already a powerful discovery engine, but the ability to upload 60-minute videos opens up TikTok’s potential as a platform to host long-form branded video content – rather than breaking up videos into multiple parts.
Why TikTok is testing this. TikTok wants to give creators more flexibility and the ability to experiment with new types of long-form content (e.g., cooking demos, beauty tutorials, educational lessons, comedic sketches) that don’t fit well into shorter videos.
Not widely available. This new 60-minute video upload option is being tested with a limited number of users in select markets. It is not available to all users yet and TikTok has no “immediate plans” for a wider rollout, TechCrunch reported.
Longer videos, more ads? This development could also lead the way to TikTok offering more advertising, in the form of pre- and mid-roll ads. 
Keeps getting longer. In January, TikTok started testing 30-minute video uploads. That followed increases to 15 minutes in 2023 and 10 minutes in 2022.
At launch, TikTok videos were limited to 15 seconds. TikTok later increased the maximum video length time to 60 seconds, then tripled that to 3 minutes in July 2021.

We may soon know whether TikTok users actually want hour-long videos. Could this lead to more advertising?

TikTok now testing 60-minute video uploads

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Navigating the AI wars- Winning SEO strategies for brands" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>See how AI is changing our quest for information, the key players in the AI wars and the attributes that will define the future of search.

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Navigating the AI wars- Winning SEO strategies for brands" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Navigating-the-AI-wars-Winning-SEO-strategies-for-brands.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>As the traditional search box becomes obsolete and the vast majority of searches shift to the extreme long tail, <a href="https://searchengineland.com/future-seo-ai-powered-world-440023">SEO will invariably evolve in the future</a>.</p>



<p>It’s actually not such a bold prediction if you have been in the search space for a while. Data has shown time and time again that searchers don’t want to “search” but “find.” AI will finally make that happen, which is why every major tech company is shifting its focus to it.</p>



<p>Those of us who have been around for a while remember the PC war, the OS war, the first browser war, the smartphone war, the second browser war, the search engine war and the smart speaker war.</p>



<p>The AI wars will make them all pale in comparison because AI is the future to which all of those technologies pointed.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-who-will-win-the-ai-wars">Who will win the AI wars?</h2>



<p>At this point, it’s anybody’s guess. We know the ones who captured the early buzz, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude.</p>



<p>But don’t count out Apple and Amazon, which late in 2023, realized how annoyingly unintelligent Siri and Alexa were and what a goldmine they’d have if they could make them smarter. They announced their own <a href="https://searchengineland.com/seo-guide-large-language-models-413227">LLMs</a>, Ferret (now MM1) and Project Olympus.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Don’t count out the countless other AI companies. Will one of them ultimately build a better model than the big companies and either compete with them or be acquired by them? Or will the AI landscape eventually fragment so people learn to go to different LLMs depending on the subject they’re looking for?</p>



<p>While we don’t know exactly who the winners will be just yet, anyone who’s been in search marketing for a while knows exactly what the winning AI will eventually look like. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-follow-the-yellow-brick-road">Follow the yellow brick road</h2>



<p>In L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy finds herself lost and encounters three other lost souls: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion.</p>



<p>Each of them is missing something.</p>



<ul>
<li>A brain</li>



<li>A heart</li>



<li>Courage</li>



<li>Home</li>
</ul>



<p>All these also happen to be what AI is missing now.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-i-only-had-a-brain-knowledge">‘If I only had a brain’: Knowledge</h3>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?”</p>
<cite>–&nbsp;L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”</cite></blockquote>



<p>While chatbots seem impressive today, if you ask them anything more than a surface level of questions, you’ll quickly find where they lack.</p>



<p>Here’s an example. As a parent, I love the idea of buying toys made in America. It supports local manufacturing jobs, local communities and I find the quality and safety to be better than toys made overseas.</p>



<p>I asked Google Gemini for suggestions for toys made in the U.S. Here’s what it told me.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="949" height="1600" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt.png" alt="Google Geminie - U.S.-made toys prompt" class="wp-image-440566" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt.png 949w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt-200x338.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt-356x600.png 356w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt-67x113.png 67w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt-768x1295.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Google-Geminie-U.S.-made-toys-prompt-911x1536.png 911w" sizes="(max-width: 949px) 100vw, 949px" /></figure></div>


<p>Here’s the strange thing.</p>



<p>The Manhattan Toy Skwish is made in Thailand, the Nuby Comfort Plush Turtle in China and Mega Bloks, which used to be made in Canada, are now made in Mexico and China. K’NEX labels read “made in China of USA parts.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>In other words, out of six toys that Google Gemini recommends that are made in the USA, only one is. It’s the Green Toys My First Stack Cup.</p>



<p>OK, Google.</p>



<p>In fairness to Google, none of the other AI chatbots got it right. The problem is the age-old problem of &#8220;garbage in, garbage out.&#8221;</p>



<p>Google Gemini is tapping Amazon as one of its “authorities” on the subject. But when you go to Amazon’s own toys made in USA search results page (which happens to have ranked in the top 10 of Google’s organic results since the May 2020 core update), you’ll see that out of 75 product listings, nearly half of them are <strong>not</strong> made in the USA.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.”</p>
<cite>–&nbsp;L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”</cite></blockquote>



<p>While Google may have gotten away with ranking sites in organic search based more on their perceived authority than objective truth, users of their AI won’t be as forgiving. </p>



<p>There’s a reason Google has been stressing <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-e-e-a-t-guide-seo-394191">E-E-A-T</a> for years, and it hasn’t just been out of the goodness of their hearts. They need E-E-A-T to survive.&nbsp;</p>



<p>For a query like this, a retailer like FatBrain, which has been accurately cataloging and displaying the country of origin for all its products, will have an outsized advantage over less precise user experiences like Amazon’s.&nbsp;</p>



<p>AI models that can pull from the most accurate information will have an outsized advantage over their competition, and brands that can produce this information will, too.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-i-only-had-a-heart-empathy">‘If I only had a heart’: Empathy</h3>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“I had brains and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.”</p>
<cite>–&nbsp;L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”</cite></blockquote>



<p>Let’s say you had a question and you know two people who knew the answer. One is brilliant but tends to be pedantic, smug and self-absorbed. This person might give you the right answer but definitely isn’t the most pleasant person to talk to.</p>



<p>The other person may not know quite as much as the first, but takes a genuine interest in what you’re saying, is open-minded, patient and respectful, asks meaningful follow-up questions and doesn’t just deliver you a right answer but does it in a way that you understand and appreciate.</p>



<p>Which of the two would you go to for the answer? Which of the two would you want around you 24/7?</p>



<p>Everyone knows that SEO requires E-E-A-T. But in the coming world of AI, there’s going to be another “E,” which may be the most important factor of all: <strong>empathy</strong>.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The winner of the AI war will be a great communicator. While you can see the early attempts of AI companies to give their chatbots a “personality,” all the funniest jokes and most clever side comments will be nothing but annoying if the chatbot can’t – or won’t – understand your question.&nbsp;</p>



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<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-if-i-only-had-the-nerve-courage">‘If I only had the nerve’: Courage</h3>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”</p>
<cite>–&nbsp;L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”</cite></blockquote>



<p>In 1998, when Yahoo was at its pinnacle of power, Rick Skrenta and Bob Truel created GnuHoo in response, which later became DMOZ. Yahoo was dominant at the time, and many of us feared that the free and open nature of the Internet would be threatened by any one corporation controlling it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 2002, Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and Blake Ross started what would become Firefox in response to the increasing pressure of Netscape’s commercial requirements. It later became a bulwark against Microsoft when Internet Explorer won the first browser war.</p>



<p>Ironically, Google eventually controlled and shaped the web by dominating both. Today, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft (through OpenAI) seem to be looking to control and shape AI.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Those of us in the search space have witnessed how Google has evolved. While updates like <a href="https://searchengineland.com/googles-august-first-core-algorithm-update-who-did-it-impact-and-how-much-303538">Medic</a> in 2018 did a lot of good in suppressing potentially dangerous YMYL sites, there are lingering questions of whether Google has too much power to elevate established (“authoritative”) voices and drown out legitimate voices in the minority.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Google’s recent missteps with Gemini further illustrated the potential of what might happen if Google’s internal biases have too much influence on the training and testing of its AI.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When the United States was established, its founders rooted it in classical liberal principles. All humans are created equal. All humans are born with certain rights, including the freedom to speak, assemble and worship as they please. Those on earth who wielded the greatest power were not to infringe on these rights.</p>



<p>With direct control over the information that 99,000 people a second ask around the world, Google arguably has more power than any government on earth today. The power that whoever wins the AI War will have will be much greater.</p>



<p>Will the winners of the AI war set their principles on classic liberty (i.e., “I may not approve of what you say but I will defend the right to say it”)? Or, to maintain “order,” will they do what so many totalitarian regimes have done in world history by suppressing voices that don’t agree with them, especially those who challenge their power?</p>



<p>Just as it took courage for America’s founders to do what they did – and 250 years later, we are still enjoying the blessings of liberty that they put in place – it will take courage for the winner of the AI war to do the same – or for another DMOZ or Firefox to arise to challenge them.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-home">Home</h3>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
<p>“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”</p>
<cite>–&nbsp;L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”</cite></blockquote>



<p>I’ll end with the same bold prediction I started the last article with.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Traditional search is going the way of TV, newspaper and radio advertising. At one time, those were the dominant advertising media. They’re still relevant today, but they have a small fraction of the influence they once had.</p>



<p>What will the “new search” look like? It’ll be people asking their robot for an opinion and the robot giving them the best possible answer. No clicks, no SERPs, no ads.</p>



<p>Oh, AI companies will try to inject ads into their answer, but you’ll drop that AI faster than you drop your friend, who takes every conversation to try to sell you into their latest MLM venture.</p>



<p>How do you compete in this new world? How do you survive and thrive as a brand in a world where all searches are zero click, all SERPs are a single result and people won’t be able to skip or block your ads because there won’t be ads to skip or block?&nbsp;</p>



<p>The ultimate solution is to go back to 1993, the year before Yahoo was founded.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Build your brand.</strong></p>



<p>Search engines like Google were always just supposed to be a way to get customers into your door. From there, it was really up to you to win them over to your brand and earn their loyalty so the next time they search, they’ll bypass Google and go directly to you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In online marketing terms, if you look at your website traffic and see that your direct traffic is growing, you’re in good shape. But if your direct traffic has been shrinking while your traffic from other channels is growing, you’re in trouble.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 1993, businesses grew by building great products, taking care of their customers and relying mostly on word-of-mouth to promote their brands.&nbsp;</p>



<p>In 2024, the most successful businesses still do it this way.&nbsp;</p>



<p>When I asked ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini where the best place to buy books is, they all mentioned Amazon. Why? Because they’d look foolish if they said anything else.</p>



<p>Amazon didn’t pay the AI models to mention them, and the latter didn’t arbitrarily decide to promote Amazon. These AI models looked around them and saw that more people buy books from Amazon than anywhere else and that people generally have good things to say about their experience.</p>



<p>There is one thing that will always be more powerful than AI, and that’s free and independent human thought. </p>



<p>If you want to be known as the best widget company, your job is not to convince AI or even Google that you’re the best. Your job is to convince your customers. Like any other expert, AI&#8217;s opinion will be questioned if it capriciously contradicts public opinion.</p>



<p>In fairness to Google, every bit of SEO advice they’ve ever given was always about building your brand, from <a href="https://searchengineland.com/title-tag-length-388468">title tag optimization</a> to <a href="https://searchengineland.com/measuring-optimizing-google-core-web-vitals-technical-seo-guide-432368">Core Web Vitals</a> to building links to E-E-A-T. These are all things you should have always been doing as a brand, not for Google’s sake but for your customers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Assuming that the winner of the AI wars has a good brain, a good heart and courage, we’ll be back home to a place where building your brand is back to being the most important ranking factor – which it always was.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/modern-seo-packaging-brand-marketing-google-436540">Modern SEO: Packaging your brand and marketing for Google</a></em></strong></p>

As the traditional search box becomes obsolete and the vast majority of searches shift to the extreme long tail, SEO will invariably evolve in the future.
It’s actually not such a bold prediction if you have been in the search space for a while. Data has shown time and time again that searchers don’t want to “search” but “find.” AI will finally make that happen, which is why every major tech company is shifting its focus to it.
Those of us who have been around for a while remember the PC war, the OS war, the first browser war, the smartphone war, the second browser war, the search engine war and the smart speaker war.
The AI wars will make them all pale in comparison because AI is the future to which all of those technologies pointed.
Who will win the AI wars?
At this point, it’s anybody’s guess. We know the ones who captured the early buzz, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, X’s Grok and Anthropic’s Claude.
But don’t count out Apple and Amazon, which late in 2023, realized how annoyingly unintelligent Siri and Alexa were and what a goldmine they’d have if they could make them smarter. They announced their own LLMs, Ferret (now MM1) and Project Olympus. 
Don’t count out the countless other AI companies. Will one of them ultimately build a better model than the big companies and either compete with them or be acquired by them? Or will the AI landscape eventually fragment so people learn to go to different LLMs depending on the subject they’re looking for?
While we don’t know exactly who the winners will be just yet, anyone who’s been in search marketing for a while knows exactly what the winning AI will eventually look like. 
Follow the yellow brick road
In L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy finds herself lost and encounters three other lost souls: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Lion.
Each of them is missing something.
A brain
A heart
Courage
Home
All these also happen to be what AI is missing now. 
‘If I only had a brain’: Knowledge
“Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think?”
– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”
While chatbots seem impressive today, if you ask them anything more than a surface level of questions, you’ll quickly find where they lack.
Here’s an example. As a parent, I love the idea of buying toys made in America. It supports local manufacturing jobs, local communities and I find the quality and safety to be better than toys made overseas.
I asked Google Gemini for suggestions for toys made in the U.S. Here’s what it told me.

Here’s the strange thing.
The Manhattan Toy Skwish is made in Thailand, the Nuby Comfort Plush Turtle in China and Mega Bloks, which used to be made in Canada, are now made in Mexico and China. K’NEX labels read “made in China of USA parts.” 
In other words, out of six toys that Google Gemini recommends that are made in the USA, only one is. It’s the Green Toys My First Stack Cup.
OK, Google.
In fairness to Google, none of the other AI chatbots got it right. The problem is the age-old problem of “garbage in, garbage out.”
Google Gemini is tapping Amazon as one of its “authorities” on the subject. But when you go to Amazon’s own toys made in USA search results page (which happens to have ranked in the top 10 of Google’s organic results since the May 2020 core update), you’ll see that out of 75 product listings, nearly half of them are not made in the USA. 
“Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.”
– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”
While Google may have gotten away with ranking sites in organic search based more on their perceived authority than objective truth, users of their AI won’t be as forgiving. 
There’s a reason Google has been stressing E-E-A-T for years, and it hasn’t just been out of the goodness of their hearts. They need E-E-A-T to survive. 
For a query like this, a retailer like FatBrain, which has been accurately cataloging and displaying the country of origin for all its products, will have an outsized advantage over less precise user experiences like Amazon’s. 
AI models that can pull from the most accurate information will have an outsized advantage over their competition, and brands that can produce this information will, too.
‘If I only had a heart’: Empathy
“I had brains and a heart also; so, having tried them both, I should much rather have a heart.”
– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”
Let’s say you had a question and you know two people who knew the answer. One is brilliant but tends to be pedantic, smug and self-absorbed. This person might give you the right answer but definitely isn’t the most pleasant person to talk to.
The other person may not know quite as much as the first, but takes a genuine interest in what you’re saying, is open-minded, patient and respectful, asks meaningful follow-up questions and doesn’t just deliver you a right answer but does it in a way that you understand and appreciate.
Which of the two would you go to for the answer? Which of the two would you want around you 24/7?
Everyone knows that SEO requires E-E-A-T. But in the coming world of AI, there’s going to be another “E,” which may be the most important factor of all: empathy. 
The winner of the AI war will be a great communicator. While you can see the early attempts of AI companies to give their chatbots a “personality,” all the funniest jokes and most clever side comments will be nothing but annoying if the chatbot can’t – or won’t – understand your question. 

					
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‘If I only had the nerve’: Courage
“True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”
– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”
In 1998, when Yahoo was at its pinnacle of power, Rick Skrenta and Bob Truel created GnuHoo in response, which later became DMOZ. Yahoo was dominant at the time, and many of us feared that the free and open nature of the Internet would be threatened by any one corporation controlling it. 
In 2002, Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt, and Blake Ross started what would become Firefox in response to the increasing pressure of Netscape’s commercial requirements. It later became a bulwark against Microsoft when Internet Explorer won the first browser war.
Ironically, Google eventually controlled and shaped the web by dominating both. Today, Alphabet, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft (through OpenAI) seem to be looking to control and shape AI. 
Those of us in the search space have witnessed how Google has evolved. While updates like Medic in 2018 did a lot of good in suppressing potentially dangerous YMYL sites, there are lingering questions of whether Google has too much power to elevate established (“authoritative”) voices and drown out legitimate voices in the minority. 
Google’s recent missteps with Gemini further illustrated the potential of what might happen if Google’s internal biases have too much influence on the training and testing of its AI. 
When the United States was established, its founders rooted it in classical liberal principles. All humans are created equal. All humans are born with certain rights, including the freedom to speak, assemble and worship as they please. Those on earth who wielded the greatest power were not to infringe on these rights.
With direct control over the information that 99,000 people a second ask around the world, Google arguably has more power than any government on earth today. The power that whoever wins the AI War will have will be much greater.
Will the winners of the AI war set their principles on classic liberty (i.e., “I may not approve of what you say but I will defend the right to say it”)? Or, to maintain “order,” will they do what so many totalitarian regimes have done in world history by suppressing voices that don’t agree with them, especially those who challenge their power?
Just as it took courage for America’s founders to do what they did – and 250 years later, we are still enjoying the blessings of liberty that they put in place – it will take courage for the winner of the AI war to do the same – or for another DMOZ or Firefox to arise to challenge them.
Home
“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”
– L. Frank Baumm, “The Wizard of Oz”
I’ll end with the same bold prediction I started the last article with. 
Traditional search is going the way of TV, newspaper and radio advertising. At one time, those were the dominant advertising media. They’re still relevant today, but they have a small fraction of the influence they once had.
What will the “new search” look like? It’ll be people asking their robot for an opinion and the robot giving them the best possible answer. No clicks, no SERPs, no ads.
Oh, AI companies will try to inject ads into their answer, but you’ll drop that AI faster than you drop your friend, who takes every conversation to try to sell you into their latest MLM venture.
How do you compete in this new world? How do you survive and thrive as a brand in a world where all searches are zero click, all SERPs are a single result and people won’t be able to skip or block your ads because there won’t be ads to skip or block? 
The ultimate solution is to go back to 1993, the year before Yahoo was founded. 
Build your brand.
Search engines like Google were always just supposed to be a way to get customers into your door. From there, it was really up to you to win them over to your brand and earn their loyalty so the next time they search, they’ll bypass Google and go directly to you. 
In online marketing terms, if you look at your website traffic and see that your direct traffic is growing, you’re in good shape. But if your direct traffic has been shrinking while your traffic from other channels is growing, you’re in trouble. 
In 1993, businesses grew by building great products, taking care of their customers and relying mostly on word-of-mouth to promote their brands. 
In 2024, the most successful businesses still do it this way. 
When I asked ChatGPT, Grok and Gemini where the best place to buy books is, they all mentioned Amazon. Why? Because they’d look foolish if they said anything else.
Amazon didn’t pay the AI models to mention them, and the latter didn’t arbitrarily decide to promote Amazon. These AI models looked around them and saw that more people buy books from Amazon than anywhere else and that people generally have good things to say about their experience.
There is one thing that will always be more powerful than AI, and that’s free and independent human thought. 
If you want to be known as the best widget company, your job is not to convince AI or even Google that you’re the best. Your job is to convince your customers. Like any other expert, AI’s opinion will be questioned if it capriciously contradicts public opinion.
In fairness to Google, every bit of SEO advice they’ve ever given was always about building your brand, from title tag optimization to Core Web Vitals to building links to E-E-A-T. These are all things you should have always been doing as a brand, not for Google’s sake but for your customers. 
Assuming that the winner of the AI wars has a good brain, a good heart and courage, we’ll be back home to a place where building your brand is back to being the most important ranking factor – which it always was.
Dig deeper: Modern SEO: Packaging your brand and marketing for Google

See how AI is changing our quest for information, the key players in the AI wars and the attributes that will define the future of search.

Navigating the AI wars: Winning SEO strategies for brands

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to archive your Universal Analytics historical data" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Time is running out to save your Universal Analytics data. Follow these steps to archive historical analytics before the July 1 deadline.

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to archive your Universal Analytics historical data" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-archive-your-Universal-Analytics-historical-data.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>Another <a href="https://searchengineland.com/how-to-use-google-analytics-4-guide-431630">Google Analytics 4</a> migration project deadline is fast approaching, and this deadline is hard set. On July 1, Google will <a href="https://searchengineland.com/reminder-google-universal-analytics-services-api-turn-off-439040">delete all historical data</a> from Universal Analytics properties. This deadline also affects Analytics 360 customers.</p>



<p>With little more than a month until the deadline, if you have not done so by now, your organization needs to prioritize archiving your historical data. There are three main phases I recommend for approaching this project.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-phase-1-make-a-plan">Phase 1: Make a plan</h2>



<p>Before archiving data, it’s important to decide:</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-specific-data-is-important-to-you-nbsp">What specific data is important to you?&nbsp;</h3>



<ul>
<li>Prioritize downloading data that you regularly refer to, such as conversion and sales data.</li>



<li>Make a full list of the data you need to archive.</li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-many-years-of-data-do-you-want-to-keep">How many years of data do you want to keep?</h3>



<ul>
<li>Many of us have been using Google Analytics since the mid-2000s – does your organization need to archive data from nearly 20 years ago?&nbsp;</li>



<li>Decide how far back you want to archive data from. I recommend, at minimum, to consider archiving back to 2018 or so to ensure you have pre-pandemic data since the pandemic really presented data anomalies for many companies.</li>
</ul>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-at-what-cadence-do-you-review-data">At what cadence do you review data?</h3>



<ul>
<li>Consider how often you typically report on your data. Is it weekly? Monthly?&nbsp;</li>



<li>Depending on the archiving method you choose in Phase 2, you may need to organize the data into specific time increments.</li>
</ul>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-phase-2-choose-an-archiving-method">Phase 2: Choose an archiving method</h2>



<p>There are four main options available for archiving your Universal Analytics data. Each has its own pros and cons, so choose a method based on your team&#8217;s resources and skills.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-option-1-manual-file-downloads">Option 1: Manual file downloads</h3>



<ul>
<li><strong>Pros</strong>: Easy for almost all users to do, free</li>



<li><strong>Cons</strong>: Time-consuming, cumbersome, difficult to access data for reporting later, limited to 5000 rows</li>
</ul>



<p>While this is the easiest process to understand, it is also time consuming. </p>



<p>Following your plan for years, cadence and data points, you’ll need to go into each report in the Google Universal Analytics interface, set the date, dimension and metric settings as needed. </p>



<p>Also, remember to change the number of rows from the default of 10 to the maximum of 5,000 rows to ensure you capture as much data as possible. </p>



<p>Click the export button and export data to a Google Sheet, Excel or CSV. Repeat this process until you have downloaded all of the data identified in your archive plan.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-option-2-download-data-to-google-sheets-using-the-google-analytics-add-on-best-option-for-tech-novices">Option 2: Download data to Google Sheets using the Google Analytics add-on (best option for tech novices)</h3>



<ul>
<li><strong>Pros</strong>: Fairly simple to implement for most users with spreadsheet experience, free, fast to download.</li>



<li><strong>Cons</strong>: Restrictive to a set timeframe (e.g., monthly), each sheet has total data limitations, often encounters sampling issues.</li>
</ul>



<p>This option is fairly simple for most users to perform. Create a new Google Sheet and add the <a href="https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/google_analytics/477988381226" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Analytics spreadsheetadd-on</a>. </p>



<p>The add-on essentially uses the Google Analytics API to download data to Google Sheets but doesn’t require API programming knowledge to operate. Google has compiled a basic overview of this approach in this <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/13851096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">help document</a>.</p>



<p>The first time you use the add-on, you’ll build a report using the add-on’s interface. But after the first report has been run, you can also simply update the Report Configuration tab and create additional reports directly in columns of that sheet. </p>



<p>You can also conveniently use formulas in the Report Configuration sheet. Use the <a href="https://ga-dev-tools.google/dimensions-metrics-explorer/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dimensions and Metrics Explorer</a> to find the proper API code to enter into each field.&nbsp;</p>



<p>One drawback of the Google Sheets method is that you may encounter sampling if you pull too much data at once (e.g., your entire 20-year dataset for sessions) or your report is too detailed (too many dimensions pulled together for a high level of granularity).&nbsp;</p>



<p>When you run a report, you’ll see the sampling level on the report’s data tab in cell B6. If your report contains sampled data, you may want to consider reducing the amount of data in this particular pull, for example, you might split the pull into two time frames. </p>



<p>However, if you just can’t avoid sampling, check the data sample percentage on the report. Then, on the Report Configuration tab, unhide rows 14-17 and the sampling size on row 15 to this level so that your data remains consistent.</p>



<p><strong>Tip</strong>: The add-on defaults to 1,000 lines of data in a report. Simply delete the 1,000 under the line labeled “Limit” (typically row 11).</p>



<p>Another drawback of the Google Sheets option is that each file is limited to 10,000,000 cells. Typically, each sheet starts out with 26 columns (A to Z) and 1,000 default rows (or 26,000 cells).</p>



<p>If your downloaded data exceeds the 10,000,000 cell limitation (which can very likely happen), then you may need to have multiple Google Sheets to download all of the data.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-option-3-download-data-using-the-google-analytics-api">Option 3: Download data using the Google Analytics API</h3>



<ul>
<li><strong>Pros</strong>: Pulls data quickly once set up</li>



<li><strong>Cons</strong>: Requires web development knowledge and resources, doesn’t solve the data sampling issue, API quota limitations</li>
</ul>



<p>If you have web development resources that can work on the archiving project, they can pull the data detailed in your plan using the Google Analytics API directly.&nbsp;</p>



<p>This works similarly to the aforementioned Google Sheets add-on option, but it’s a more manual process in programming the API calls.</p>



<p>To learn about how to use the API for this project, visit <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11583528?hl=en#export" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google’s archiving information page</a> and review the second bullet, which details several resources and considerations for using the API for this data export project.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-option-4-download-data-to-bigquery-best-option-overall">Option 4: Download data to BigQuery (best option overall)</h3>



<ul>
<li><strong>Pros</strong>: Simple to access data later for reporting, increased data insights, most flexible for data</li>



<li><strong>Cons</strong>: Complicated for novices to set up initially, can involve fees for BiqQuery, may require technical resources to set up, need to involve an additional tool</li>
</ul>



<p>The main benefit of archiving your Universal Analytics data to BigQuery is that BigQuery is a data warehouse that allows you to ask questions of the data set through SQL queries to get your data very quickly. This is especially useful in accessing this data for reporting later.&nbsp;</p>



<p><strong>Analytics 360 users</strong></p>



<p>If you are an Analytics 360 user, Google provides a native export to BigQuery. I recommend this method. <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3416092" target="_blank" rel="noopener">See instructions from Google</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Everyone else</strong></p>



<p>If you’re not an Analytics 360 user, then you’ll need to approach the BigQuery backup differently because Google <strong>does not</strong> provide innate BigQuery backup options in Universal Analytics for non-360 users.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Here are the steps you’ll want to follow:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Step 1: </strong>Create a Google API Console project and enable BigQuery.
<ul>
<li>Log in to the <a href="https://console.cloud.google.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google APIs Console</a>.</li>



<li>Create a Google APIs Console project.</li>



<li>Navigate to the APIs table.</li>



<li>Activate BigQuery.</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><strong>Step 2: </strong>Prepare your project for BigQuery export.
<ul>
<li>Ensure Billing is enabled for your project. You may not need to pay anything, but it will vary depending on the usage and data you have.</li>



<li>If prompted, create a billing account.</li>



<li>Accept the free trial if it&#8217;s available.</li>



<li>Validate Billing enablement. Open your project at <a href="https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery</a>, and try to create a data set in the project. Click the blue arrow next to the project name, then click <em>Create data set</em>. If you can create the data set, billing is setup correctly. If there are any errors, make sure billing is enabled.</li>



<li>Add the service account to your project. Add analytics-processing-dev@system.gserviceaccount.com as a member of the project, and ensure that permission at the project level is set to Editor (as opposed to BigQuery Data Editor). The Editor role is required in order to export data from Analytics to BigQuery.</li>



<li>If you are in the EU, please also <a href="https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3416092#step2.1&amp;zippy=%2Cin-this-article" target="_blank" rel="noopener">review additional requirements</a>.</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><strong>Step 3: </strong>Set up a free trial of Supermetrics. Similar to the Google Sheets add-on in option 2 above, Supermetrics is a tool that helps non-technical users interface with and use APIs. They offer a free 14-day trial, which is likely all you’ll need for this project since you’re only downloading the Universal Analytics data once (not regularly).
<ul>
<li>Connect the BigQuery data source in the Supermetrics dashboard.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li><strong>Step 4: </strong>In BigQuery, establish the connection to Supermetrics.
<ul>
<li>Navigate to BigQuery, then to <em>Data transfers</em>.</li>



<li>Click <em>+ Create transfer.</em></li>



<li>Select your <em>Google Analytics by Supermetrics</em> as your source and click <em>Enroll</em>.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Fill in the transfer details. <a href="https://support.supermetrics.com/support/solutions/articles/19000098531-how-to-configure-a-data-transfer-in-bigquery" target="_blank" rel="noopener">See detailed instructions on how to set up a transfer</a>.</li>



<li>Under<em> Third-party connection</em>, click <em>Connect source</em>.</li>



<li>Accept the agreement.</li>



<li>Click <em>Authorize with your Google data source</em>.</li>



<li>Click<em> Sign in with Google</em>.</li>



<li>Sign in with the Google Account you use with this data source. This doesn&#8217;t have to be the same as the Google Account you use with Supermetrics.</li>



<li>Click <em>Allow</em>.</li>



<li>Select the accounts you&#8217;d like to include in your reporting and define the transfer settings.</li>



<li>Click <em>Submit</em>.</li>



<li>Click <em>Save</em>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<p>Because you only need to transfer the Universal Analytics data one time, you can also change the schedule on the transfer to <em>On demand</em> and then run the transfer now.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-phase-3-ensure-you-ve-captured-it-all">Phase 3: Ensure you’ve captured it all</h2>



<p>Before you consider the project complete, be sure to double-check your archived data to ensure you’ve captured everything you planned to archive.</p>



<p>On July 1, you will no longer be able to access Universal Analytics data, either by API or through the interface.&nbsp;</p>

Another Google Analytics 4 migration project deadline is fast approaching, and this deadline is hard set. On July 1, Google will delete all historical data from Universal Analytics properties. This deadline also affects Analytics 360 customers.
With little more than a month until the deadline, if you have not done so by now, your organization needs to prioritize archiving your historical data. There are three main phases I recommend for approaching this project.
Phase 1: Make a plan
Before archiving data, it’s important to decide:
What specific data is important to you? 
Prioritize downloading data that you regularly refer to, such as conversion and sales data.
Make a full list of the data you need to archive.
How many years of data do you want to keep?
Many of us have been using Google Analytics since the mid-2000s – does your organization need to archive data from nearly 20 years ago? 
Decide how far back you want to archive data from. I recommend, at minimum, to consider archiving back to 2018 or so to ensure you have pre-pandemic data since the pandemic really presented data anomalies for many companies.
At what cadence do you review data?
Consider how often you typically report on your data. Is it weekly? Monthly? 
Depending on the archiving method you choose in Phase 2, you may need to organize the data into specific time increments.

					
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Phase 2: Choose an archiving method
There are four main options available for archiving your Universal Analytics data. Each has its own pros and cons, so choose a method based on your team’s resources and skills.
Option 1: Manual file downloads
Pros: Easy for almost all users to do, free
Cons: Time-consuming, cumbersome, difficult to access data for reporting later, limited to 5000 rows
While this is the easiest process to understand, it is also time consuming. 
Following your plan for years, cadence and data points, you’ll need to go into each report in the Google Universal Analytics interface, set the date, dimension and metric settings as needed. 
Also, remember to change the number of rows from the default of 10 to the maximum of 5,000 rows to ensure you capture as much data as possible. 
Click the export button and export data to a Google Sheet, Excel or CSV. Repeat this process until you have downloaded all of the data identified in your archive plan.
Option 2: Download data to Google Sheets using the Google Analytics add-on (best option for tech novices)
Pros: Fairly simple to implement for most users with spreadsheet experience, free, fast to download.
Cons: Restrictive to a set timeframe (e.g., monthly), each sheet has total data limitations, often encounters sampling issues.
This option is fairly simple for most users to perform. Create a new Google Sheet and add the Google Analytics spreadsheetadd-on. 
The add-on essentially uses the Google Analytics API to download data to Google Sheets but doesn’t require API programming knowledge to operate. Google has compiled a basic overview of this approach in this help document.
The first time you use the add-on, you’ll build a report using the add-on’s interface. But after the first report has been run, you can also simply update the Report Configuration tab and create additional reports directly in columns of that sheet. 
You can also conveniently use formulas in the Report Configuration sheet. Use the Dimensions and Metrics Explorer to find the proper API code to enter into each field. 
One drawback of the Google Sheets method is that you may encounter sampling if you pull too much data at once (e.g., your entire 20-year dataset for sessions) or your report is too detailed (too many dimensions pulled together for a high level of granularity). 
When you run a report, you’ll see the sampling level on the report’s data tab in cell B6. If your report contains sampled data, you may want to consider reducing the amount of data in this particular pull, for example, you might split the pull into two time frames. 
However, if you just can’t avoid sampling, check the data sample percentage on the report. Then, on the Report Configuration tab, unhide rows 14-17 and the sampling size on row 15 to this level so that your data remains consistent.
Tip: The add-on defaults to 1,000 lines of data in a report. Simply delete the 1,000 under the line labeled “Limit” (typically row 11).
Another drawback of the Google Sheets option is that each file is limited to 10,000,000 cells. Typically, each sheet starts out with 26 columns (A to Z) and 1,000 default rows (or 26,000 cells).
If your downloaded data exceeds the 10,000,000 cell limitation (which can very likely happen), then you may need to have multiple Google Sheets to download all of the data.
Option 3: Download data using the Google Analytics API
Pros: Pulls data quickly once set up
Cons: Requires web development knowledge and resources, doesn’t solve the data sampling issue, API quota limitations
If you have web development resources that can work on the archiving project, they can pull the data detailed in your plan using the Google Analytics API directly. 
This works similarly to the aforementioned Google Sheets add-on option, but it’s a more manual process in programming the API calls.
To learn about how to use the API for this project, visit Google’s archiving information page and review the second bullet, which details several resources and considerations for using the API for this data export project.
Option 4: Download data to BigQuery (best option overall)
Pros: Simple to access data later for reporting, increased data insights, most flexible for data
Cons: Complicated for novices to set up initially, can involve fees for BiqQuery, may require technical resources to set up, need to involve an additional tool
The main benefit of archiving your Universal Analytics data to BigQuery is that BigQuery is a data warehouse that allows you to ask questions of the data set through SQL queries to get your data very quickly. This is especially useful in accessing this data for reporting later. 
Analytics 360 users
If you are an Analytics 360 user, Google provides a native export to BigQuery. I recommend this method. See instructions from Google.
Everyone else
If you’re not an Analytics 360 user, then you’ll need to approach the BigQuery backup differently because Google does not provide innate BigQuery backup options in Universal Analytics for non-360 users. 
Here are the steps you’ll want to follow:
Step 1: Create a Google API Console project and enable BigQuery.

Log in to the Google APIs Console.
Create a Google APIs Console project.
Navigate to the APIs table.
Activate BigQuery.
Step 2: Prepare your project for BigQuery export.

Ensure Billing is enabled for your project. You may not need to pay anything, but it will vary depending on the usage and data you have.
If prompted, create a billing account.
Accept the free trial if it’s available.
Validate Billing enablement. Open your project at https://console.cloud.google.com/bigquery, and try to create a data set in the project. Click the blue arrow next to the project name, then click Create data set. If you can create the data set, billing is setup correctly. If there are any errors, make sure billing is enabled.
Add the service account to your project. Add analytics-processing-dev@system.gserviceaccount.com as a member of the project, and ensure that permission at the project level is set to Editor (as opposed to BigQuery Data Editor). The Editor role is required in order to export data from Analytics to BigQuery.
If you are in the EU, please also review additional requirements.
Step 3: Set up a free trial of Supermetrics. Similar to the Google Sheets add-on in option 2 above, Supermetrics is a tool that helps non-technical users interface with and use APIs. They offer a free 14-day trial, which is likely all you’ll need for this project since you’re only downloading the Universal Analytics data once (not regularly).

Connect the BigQuery data source in the Supermetrics dashboard. 
Step 4: In BigQuery, establish the connection to Supermetrics.

Navigate to BigQuery, then to Data transfers.
Click + Create transfer.
Select your Google Analytics by Supermetrics as your source and click Enroll. 
Fill in the transfer details. See detailed instructions on how to set up a transfer.
Under Third-party connection, click Connect source.
Accept the agreement.
Click Authorize with your Google data source.
Click Sign in with Google.
Sign in with the Google Account you use with this data source. This doesn’t have to be the same as the Google Account you use with Supermetrics.
Click Allow.
Select the accounts you’d like to include in your reporting and define the transfer settings.
Click Submit.
Click Save.
Because you only need to transfer the Universal Analytics data one time, you can also change the schedule on the transfer to On demand and then run the transfer now. 
Phase 3: Ensure you’ve captured it all
Before you consider the project complete, be sure to double-check your archived data to ensure you’ve captured everything you planned to archive.
On July 1, you will no longer be able to access Universal Analytics data, either by API or through the interface.

Time is running out to save your Universal Analytics data. Follow these steps to archive historical analytics before the July 1 deadline.

How to archive your Universal Analytics historical data

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-800x457.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-800x457.jpg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-592x338.jpg 592w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-198x113.jpg 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Google said these new crawlers are to "better support crawling of binary data that may be used for research and development."

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-800x457.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-800x457.jpg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-592x338.jpg 592w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-198x113.jpg 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/google-cameras-1920.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>Google has added two new crawlers to the Googlebot family of web crawlers:</p>



<ul>
<li>GoogleOther-Image </li>



<li>GoogleOther-Video</li>
</ul>



<p>Google said these two new crawlers are versions of <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-launches-new-googlebot-named-googleother-395827">GoogleOther</a> optimized for fetching image and video bytes. GoogleOther was added in April 2023 to be used internally by Google teams to crawl the public web and free up some resources for the main Googlebot crawlers.</p>



<p><strong>GoogleOther-Image</strong>. GoogleOther-Image, according to the <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers#googleother-image">documentation</a>, is the version of GoogleOther optimized for fetching publicly accessible image URLs. It will go under the user agent tokens of GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther and the full user agent string will be GoogleOther-Image/1.0.</p>



<p><strong>GoogleOther-Video</strong>. GoogleOther-Video, according to the <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/overview-google-crawlers#googleother-image">documentation</a>, is the version of GoogleOther optimized for fetching publicly accessible video URLs. It will go under the user agent tokens of GoogleOther-Video and GoogleOther and the full user agent string will be GoogleOther-Video/1.0.</p>



<p><strong>Why these new crawlers. </strong>Google <a href="https://developers.google.com/search/updates#introducing-the-googleother-image-and-googleother-video-crawlers">said</a>, &#8220;the new crawlers were launched to better support crawling of binary data that may be used for research and development.&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>More on Google crawlers. </strong>The types of Googlebot crawlers include: </p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Googlebot</strong> – The main crawler for Google’s search products. Google says this crawler always respects robots.txt rules.</li>



<li><strong>Special-case crawlers – </strong>Crawlers that perform specific functions (such as AdsBot), which may or may not respect robots.txt rules.</li>



<li><strong>User-triggered fetchers – </strong>Tools and product functions where the end-user triggers a fetch. For example, Google Site Verifier acts on the request of a user or some Google Search Console tools will send Google to fetch the page based on an action a user takes.</li>
</ul>



<p>Google also has listed IP address ranges and reverse DNS mask for each type:</p>



<ul>
<li><strong>Googlebot</strong> – <a href="https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/googlebot.json">googlebot.json</a> (crawl-<strong><em>–</em></strong>–<strong><em>–</em></strong>.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-<strong><em>–</em></strong>–<strong><em>–</em></strong>.geo.googlebot.com)</li>



<li><strong>Special-case crawlers – </strong><a href="https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/special-crawlers.json">special-crawlers.json</a> (rate-limited-proxy-<strong><em>–</em></strong>–<strong><em>–</em></strong>.google.com)</li>



<li><strong>User-triggered fetchers – </strong><a href="https://developers.google.com/static/search/apis/ipranges/user-triggered-fetchers.json">user-triggered-fetchers.json</a> (<strong><em>–</em></strong>–<strong><em>–</em></strong>.gae.googleusercontent.com)</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Why we care. </strong>Many of you check your crawling activities and bot activity on your website and in your log files. When you see this new GoogleOther crawlers, do not be alarmed. It is a real Googlebot.</p>


Google has added two new crawlers to the Googlebot family of web crawlers:
GoogleOther-Image 
GoogleOther-Video
Google said these two new crawlers are versions of GoogleOther optimized for fetching image and video bytes. GoogleOther was added in April 2023 to be used internally by Google teams to crawl the public web and free up some resources for the main Googlebot crawlers.
GoogleOther-Image. GoogleOther-Image, according to the documentation, is the version of GoogleOther optimized for fetching publicly accessible image URLs. It will go under the user agent tokens of GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther and the full user agent string will be GoogleOther-Image/1.0.
GoogleOther-Video. GoogleOther-Video, according to the documentation, is the version of GoogleOther optimized for fetching publicly accessible video URLs. It will go under the user agent tokens of GoogleOther-Video and GoogleOther and the full user agent string will be GoogleOther-Video/1.0.
Why these new crawlers. Google said, “the new crawlers were launched to better support crawling of binary data that may be used for research and development.”
More on Google crawlers. The types of Googlebot crawlers include: 
Googlebot – The main crawler for Google’s search products. Google says this crawler 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 or some Google Search Console tools will send Google to fetch the page based on an action a user takes.
Google also has listed IP address ranges and reverse DNS mask for each type:
Googlebot – googlebot.json (crawl-–––.googlebot.com or geo-crawl-–––.geo.googlebot.com)
Special-case crawlers – special-crawlers.json (rate-limited-proxy-–––.google.com)
User-triggered fetchers – user-triggered-fetchers.json (–––.gae.googleusercontent.com)
Why we care. Many of you check your crawling activities and bot activity on your website and in your log files. When you see this new GoogleOther crawlers, do not be alarmed. It is a real Googlebot.

Google said these new crawlers are to "better support crawling of binary data that may be used for research and development."

Google adds two new Googlebot crawlers: GoogleOther-Image and GoogleOther-Video

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-800x457.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-800x457.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-591x338.png 591w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-198x113.png 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-768x439.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-1536x878.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Snapchat explains how Execution, Experimentation and Evaluation help brands track campaign performance in a privacy-compliant manner.

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-800x457.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-800x457.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-591x338.png 591w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-198x113.png 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-768x439.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11-1536x878.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-11.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>With rising data restrictions, Snapchat says &#8220;Execution, Experimentation and Evaluation&#8221; are the key pillars marketers need to focus on to ensure strategic measurement evolves with the times.</p>



<p><strong>Why we care. </strong>While Google keeps delaying <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-third-party-cookie-phase-out-third-delay-439864">deprecating third-party cookies</a>, it will happen. So it’s important for advertisers to maintain accurate campaign insights and revenue accountability to conduct effective marketing measurement with tighter data privacy laws.</p>



<p><strong>How it works.</strong> The framework aims to create a cycle of constant testing, learning and iteration.</p>



<ul>
<li>Execution refers to the core campaign components that power marketing efforts day-to-day.</li>



<li>Experimentation involves methods like A/B testing to course correct along the way.</li>



<li>Evaluation uses techniques like media mix modeling to quantify real performance impact.</li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="731" height="600" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-16-at-15.23.12-731x600.png" alt="" class="wp-image-440557" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-16-at-15.23.12-731x600.png 731w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-16-at-15.23.12-412x338.png 412w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-16-at-15.23.12-138x113.png 138w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-16-at-15.23.12-768x630.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/Screenshot-2024-05-16-at-15.23.12.png 1360w" sizes="(max-width: 731px) 100vw, 731px" /></figure>



<p><strong>What they&#8217;re saying.</strong> &#8220;Advertisers who adopt this robust measurement approach see better advertising outcomes,&#8221; per <a href="https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/blog/how-to-make-measurement-your-brands-strategic-advantage" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Snapchat</a>.</p>



<p><strong>Between the lines.</strong> The real emphasis is on evaluating actual results over chasing vanity metrics.</p>



<ul>
<li>Snap says brands often prioritize &#8220;easy accessible correlation metrics over causal experimentation KPIs.&#8221;</li>



<li>But if experimentation isn&#8217;t tied to evaluating bottom-line impact, &#8220;media optimization may be driving negative progress.&#8221;</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Zoom out.</strong> Snapchat&#8217;s push is part of a broader industry reckoning as user privacy changes upend traditional digital measurement.</p>



<p><strong>The bottom line.</strong> As ad measurement evolves, Snapchat is encouraging a more holistic, cyclical approach centered on continuous optimization and tying performance to real business outcomes.</p>


With rising data restrictions, Snapchat says “Execution, Experimentation and Evaluation” are the key pillars marketers need to focus on to ensure strategic measurement evolves with the times.
Why we care. While Google keeps delaying deprecating third-party cookies, it will happen. So it’s important for advertisers to maintain accurate campaign insights and revenue accountability to conduct effective marketing measurement with tighter data privacy laws.
How it works. The framework aims to create a cycle of constant testing, learning and iteration.
Execution refers to the core campaign components that power marketing efforts day-to-day.
Experimentation involves methods like A/B testing to course correct along the way.
Evaluation uses techniques like media mix modeling to quantify real performance impact.




What they’re saying. “Advertisers who adopt this robust measurement approach see better advertising outcomes,” per Snapchat.
Between the lines. The real emphasis is on evaluating actual results over chasing vanity metrics.
Snap says brands often prioritize “easy accessible correlation metrics over causal experimentation KPIs.”
But if experimentation isn’t tied to evaluating bottom-line impact, “media optimization may be driving negative progress.”
Zoom out. Snapchat’s push is part of a broader industry reckoning as user privacy changes upend traditional digital measurement.
The bottom line. As ad measurement evolves, Snapchat is encouraging a more holistic, cyclical approach centered on continuous optimization and tying performance to real business outcomes.

Snapchat explains how Execution, Experimentation and Evaluation help brands track campaign performance in a privacy-compliant manner.

Snapchat outlines Three Es for advanced marketing measurement

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-800x457.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-800x457.jpg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-592x338.jpg 592w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-198x113.jpg 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>What happens when you let Google do the Googling for you, but Google can't find what Google is Googling for on Google?

<div><img width="800" height="457" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-800x457.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-800x457.jpg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-592x338.jpg 592w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-198x113.jpg 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/google-core-update-paper-explosion-1920.jpg 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>I don&#8217;t know for a fact that people are searching less on Google. I just know it&#8217;s true.</p>



<p>During Google I/O, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai told us AI Overviews have resulted in an &#8220;increase in Search usage.&#8221; Pichai said the same thing during <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-ceo-says-ai-overviews-are-increasing-search-usage-439983">Alphabet&#8217;s Q1 2024 earnings call</a>.</p>



<p>But if that&#8217;s the case –&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t that mean AI Overviews, or the artist formerly known as Search Generative Experience (SGE), isn&#8217;t solving a problem it was supposedly invented to fix? </p>



<p>Namely, giving users the answer or information they want, faster?</p>



<p>Yes, in the same week that OpenAI basically created Samantha, the AI virtual assistant from the movie &#8220;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)">Her</a>,&#8221; Google&#8217;s tagline became &#8220;Let Google do the Googling for you.&#8221;</p>



<p>Well, if Google is now doing the Googling for you, Search volume will likely go up when Google can&#8217;t find what Google is Googling for on Google! </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-no-blue-links">No blue links</h2>



<p>Google&#8217;s Search in the Gemini era video was telling. </p>



<p>Watch this:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<iframe title="Search in the Gemini era | Google I/O 2024" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s4InWsd-J6g?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</div></figure>



<p>What did you notice was missing?</p>



<p>The subheading already gave it away, but there are no blue links in sight.</p>



<p>Former Google CEO said <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-not-about-blue-links-eric-schmidt-440318">Google is not about blue links</a>. Clearly, he wasn&#8217;t wrong.</p>



<p>In Google&#8217;s Gemini era, apparently, links will now live in a <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-adds-web-filter-to-only-show-text-based-links-in-google-search-results-440519"><em>Web</em> filter</a>.</p>



<p>If you&#8217;re lucky, <em>Web</em> will be the fourth option you can choose (after <em>All</em>, <em>Images</em>, <em>Video</em> and <em>News</em>) – or you may have to hunt for the <em>Web</em> filter under the <em>More</em> options.</p>



<p>We knew this was coming. For two decades, Google has talked about Search being like the computer from &#8220;Star Trek&#8221;:</p>



<ul>
<li>&#8220;When search grows up, it will look like Star Trek: you talk into the air (&#8220;Computer! What&#8217;s the situation down on the planet?&#8221;) and the computer processes your question, figures out its context, figures out what response you&#8217;re looking for, searches a giant database in who-knows-how-many languages, translates/analyses/summarises all the results, and presents them back to you in a pleasant voice. I think this technology is about, oh, 300 years off.&#8221; </li>
</ul>



<p>That quote, from former Google Chief Technology Officer Craig Silverstein, is from 2003. </p>



<p>It didn&#8217;t take 300 years. It took just 20.</p>



<p>The future is here. </p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-search-was-already-fragmenting">Search was already fragmenting</h2>



<p>We don&#8217;t know exact data on overall Google Search usage in 2024 and how it compares to previous years. Google doesn&#8217;t reveal that.</p>



<p>But reporting an increase in Search usage is like reporting on <a href="https://searchengineland.com/moz-domain-authority-case-against-431732">Domain Authority</a>. It&#8217;s a meaningless vanity metric. </p>



<p>Google claims user satisfaction has also gone up during the same time. But I can&#8217;t remember an extended period of sustained negativity around the quality of Google&#8217;s Search results as I&#8217;ve seen over the past two years – both inside and outside of the search marketing industry.</p>



<p>Google&#8217;s own data has shown that <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-tako-ai-chatbot-search-427584">younger Internet users going to TikTok and Instagram</a> instead of Google. While Google is a monopoly general search engine, people are searching on other platforms – Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and more.</p>



<p>Meanwhile, we&#8217;ve been hearing <a href="https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-search-feature-rumors-heating-up-440337">rumors about ChatGPT search</a> –&nbsp;and I fully expect OpenAI to launch a search product in the near future.</p>



<p><em><strong>Dig deeper. <a href="https://searchengineland.com/modern-search-landscape-how-where-reach-target-audience-388290">The modern search landscape: How and where to reach your target audience</a></strong></em></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ai-overviews-apocalypse">AI Overviews apocalypse</h2>



<p>The inevitable SGE doomsday we&#8217;ve been warning you about since last May has finally arrived.</p>



<p>Publishers who weren&#8217;t already freaking out about losing traffic from Google&#8217;s helpful content or core updates – or Gartner&#8217;s prediction that <a href="https://searchengineland.com/search-engine-traffic-2026-prediction-437650">traffic from search engines fall 25% by 2026</a> – are definitely starting to freak out now as AI Overviews start rolling out.</p>



<p>Here are just a few headlines we&#8217;ve seen following the launch of AI overviews:</p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/15/media/google-gemini-ai-search-news-outlet-impact/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">News publishers sound alarm on Google’s new AI-infused search, warn of ‘catastrophic’ impacts</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2024/googles-ai-search-feature-fuels-content-traffic-concerns/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google&#8217;s AI Search Feature Fuels Content Traffic Concerns</a></li>



<li><a href="https://apnews.com/article/google-search-ai-overviews-internet-traffic-ebb6bbbde17ed29a5f7b630d9e5e285b" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google unleashes AI in search, raising hopes for better results and fears about less web traffic</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/why-id-rather-use-tiktok-than-google-searchs-ai-overviews/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Why I&#8217;d Rather Use TikTok Than Google Search&#8217;s AI Overviews</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/site-traffic-down-google-just-made-some-big-search-changes/474221" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Site Traffic Down? Google Just Made Some Big Search AI Changes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20240515-google-s-ai-search-revamp-puts-publishers-in-a-quandary" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google&#8217;s AI search revamp puts publishers in a quandary</a></li>



<li><a href="https://the-media-leader.com/google-searchs-ai-overview-a-threat-to-journalism-warns-nma-chief/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google Search&#8217;s AI Overview a threat to journalism, warns NMA chief</a></li>
</ul>



<p>This quote from Owen Meredith, CEO of the News Media Association, is a variation on one that we&#8217;ve heard in recent months from content creators who have recently been frustrated by <a href="https://searchengineland.com/library/platforms/google/google-algorithm-updates">Google algorithm updates</a>:</p>



<ul>
<li>“Google’s&nbsp;stated mission&nbsp;is to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible’ by sending visitors to websites. Introducing [generative AI] into search and AI Overviews that directly synthesise and present information to the user risks discouraging users from clicking through to the original links, in turn threatening the business model of those who invest in journalism and quality information.”</li>
</ul>



<p>Relying entirely or mostly on one platform like Google to send you traffic via clicks on links isn&#8217;t a business model. It&#8217;s gambling. Because anytime Google changes something, you risk losing everything.</p>



<p>Ten blue links were a transitory way to provide answers. Now we have AI Overviews.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tying-a-bow-on-it">Tying a bow on it</h2>



<p>So we don&#8217;t know for a fact that people are searching less on Google. We just know it&#8217;s true. </p>



<p>People are unhappy with Search. Google remains a monopoly but people are searching elsewhere. </p>



<p>AI Overviews are designed to reduce the number of Searches – but again, the whole message from Google is &#8220;Let Google do the Googling for you.&#8221; That itself indicates users should have to do less searches.</p>



<p>Although Google has definitely seen an uptick in the number of Searches for how to turn off AI results. </p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results.png"><img decoding="async" width="841" height="800" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results.png" alt="" class="wp-image-440562" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results.png 841w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results-355x338.png 355w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results-631x600.png 631w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results-119x113.png 119w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/turn-off-google-ai-results-768x731.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 841px) 100vw, 841px" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption"><em>Screenshot via <a href="https://x.com/di_friscoSEO/status/1790824143752954101">Adam Di Frisco</a>/X</em></figcaption></figure></div>


<p>Oops. </p>



<p>Google seems to be increasingly detaching itself from reality.</p>



<p>In this brave new Google world, advertisers should expect costs to increase (hello, <a href="https://searchengineland.com/doj-google-search-ad-price-manipulation-440207">tuning and squashing</a>), websites should expect less organic traffic, while Google sends Searchers down rabbit holes of follow-up queries to inflate Search usage stats nobody cares about –&nbsp;or uses agents to complete tasks like purchases (where I&#8217;m sure Google will tack on some hidden Ticketmaster-type fees that turn what should be a $50 purchase into $120).</p>


I don’t know for a fact that people are searching less on Google. I just know it’s true.
During Google I/O, Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai told us AI Overviews have resulted in an “increase in Search usage.” Pichai said the same thing during Alphabet’s Q1 2024 earnings call.
But if that’s the case – doesn’t that mean AI Overviews, or the artist formerly known as Search Generative Experience (SGE), isn’t solving a problem it was supposedly invented to fix? 
Namely, giving users the answer or information they want, faster?
Yes, in the same week that OpenAI basically created Samantha, the AI virtual assistant from the movie “Her,” Google’s tagline became “Let Google do the Googling for you.”
Well, if Google is now doing the Googling for you, Search volume will likely go up when Google can’t find what Google is Googling for on Google! 
No blue links
Google’s Search in the Gemini era video was telling. 
Watch this:






What did you notice was missing?
The subheading already gave it away, but there are no blue links in sight.
Former Google CEO said Google is not about blue links. Clearly, he wasn’t wrong.
In Google’s Gemini era, apparently, links will now live in a Web filter.
If you’re lucky, Web will be the fourth option you can choose (after All, Images, Video and News) – or you may have to hunt for the Web filter under the More options.
We knew this was coming. For two decades, Google has talked about Search being like the computer from “Star Trek”:
“When search grows up, it will look like Star Trek: you talk into the air (“Computer! What’s the situation down on the planet?”) and the computer processes your question, figures out its context, figures out what response you’re looking for, searches a giant database in who-knows-how-many languages, translates/analyses/summarises all the results, and presents them back to you in a pleasant voice. I think this technology is about, oh, 300 years off.” 
That quote, from former Google Chief Technology Officer Craig Silverstein, is from 2003. 
It didn’t take 300 years. It took just 20.
The future is here. 
Search was already fragmenting
We don’t know exact data on overall Google Search usage in 2024 and how it compares to previous years. Google doesn’t reveal that.
But reporting an increase in Search usage is like reporting on Domain Authority. It’s a meaningless vanity metric. 
Google claims user satisfaction has also gone up during the same time. But I can’t remember an extended period of sustained negativity around the quality of Google’s Search results as I’ve seen over the past two years – both inside and outside of the search marketing industry.
Google’s own data has shown that younger Internet users going to TikTok and Instagram instead of Google. While Google is a monopoly general search engine, people are searching on other platforms – Amazon, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit and more.
Meanwhile, we’ve been hearing rumors about ChatGPT search – and I fully expect OpenAI to launch a search product in the near future.
Dig deeper. The modern search landscape: How and where to reach your target audience
AI Overviews apocalypse
The inevitable SGE doomsday we’ve been warning you about since last May has finally arrived.
Publishers who weren’t already freaking out about losing traffic from Google’s helpful content or core updates – or Gartner’s prediction that traffic from search engines fall 25% by 2026 – are definitely starting to freak out now as AI Overviews start rolling out.
Here are just a few headlines we’ve seen following the launch of AI overviews:
News publishers sound alarm on Google’s new AI-infused search, warn of ‘catastrophic’ impacts
Google’s AI Search Feature Fuels Content Traffic Concerns
Google unleashes AI in search, raising hopes for better results and fears about less web traffic
Why I’d Rather Use TikTok Than Google Search’s AI Overviews
Site Traffic Down? Google Just Made Some Big Search AI Changes
Google’s AI search revamp puts publishers in a quandary
Google Search’s AI Overview a threat to journalism, warns NMA chief
This quote from Owen Meredith, CEO of the News Media Association, is a variation on one that we’ve heard in recent months from content creators who have recently been frustrated by Google algorithm updates:
“Google’s stated mission is to ‘organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible’ by sending visitors to websites. Introducing [generative AI] into search and AI Overviews that directly synthesise and present information to the user risks discouraging users from clicking through to the original links, in turn threatening the business model of those who invest in journalism and quality information.”
Relying entirely or mostly on one platform like Google to send you traffic via clicks on links isn’t a business model. It’s gambling. Because anytime Google changes something, you risk losing everything.
Ten blue links were a transitory way to provide answers. Now we have AI Overviews.
Tying a bow on it
So we don’t know for a fact that people are searching less on Google. We just know it’s true. 
People are unhappy with Search. Google remains a monopoly but people are searching elsewhere. 
AI Overviews are designed to reduce the number of Searches – but again, the whole message from Google is “Let Google do the Googling for you.” That itself indicates users should have to do less searches.
Although Google has definitely seen an uptick in the number of Searches for how to turn off AI results. 
Screenshot via Adam Di Frisco/X
Oops. 
Google seems to be increasingly detaching itself from reality.
In this brave new Google world, advertisers should expect costs to increase (hello, tuning and squashing), websites should expect less organic traffic, while Google sends Searchers down rabbit holes of follow-up queries to inflate Search usage stats nobody cares about – or uses agents to complete tasks like purchases (where I’m sure Google will tack on some hidden Ticketmaster-type fees that turn what should be a $50 purchase into $120).

What happens when you let Google do the Googling for you, but Google can't find what Google is Googling for on Google?

Google AI Overviews: More searches, less satisfaction

<div><img width="800" height="458" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-800x458.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Netflix" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-800x458.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-591x338.png 591w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-198x113.png 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-768x439.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-1536x879.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Netflix also has plans for an in-house advertising platform and is now partnering with Google on ad sales and tech.

<div><img width="800" height="458" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-800x458.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Netflix" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-800x458.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-591x338.png 591w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-198x113.png 198w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-768x439.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10-1536x879.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/SEL-Blog-10.png 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>Netflix&#8217;s ad-supported tier is rapidly gaining traction, reaching 40 million monthly users globally, the streamer announced at its 2024 Upfront presentation.</p>



<p>The paid ad offering, initially seen as a risky move, has quickly become a hit for Netflix as it seeks new revenue streams amid intensifying streaming competition.</p>



<p><strong>Why we care.</strong> Netflix&#8217;s platform offers advertisers a large and expanding pool of potential customers. If you&#8217;re looking for new advertising opportunities, you may want to explore streaming audiences.</p>



<p><strong>Driving the news.</strong> Just six months after hitting 5 million ad-supported subscribers post-launch in late 2022, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/15/24157487/netflixs-ad-tier-40-million-subscribers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">that number has now swelled to 40 million</a>.</p>



<ul>
<li>In regions where the ad tier is available, over 40% of new Netflix sign-ups are opting for the cheaper ad-supported plan.</li>



<li>The service now has 270 million total subscribers across all its pricing tiers.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Between the lines. </strong>Netflix is doubling down on the ad business by bringing its ad tech in-house.&nbsp;</p>



<ul>
<li>It&#8217;s launching its own advertising platform to &#8220;power the ads plan with the same level of excellence&#8221; as its streaming tech, per Netflix&#8217;s president of advertising Amy Reinhard.</li>



<li>While initially partnering solely with Microsoft, Netflix is now also tapping Google, The Trade Desk and Magnite for its ad sales and tech.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>What they&#8217;re saying.</strong> &#8220;Our ad membership has been an overwhelming success,&#8221; Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the presentation. &#8220;We&#8217;re just getting started on that journey.&#8221;</p>



<p><strong>The bottom line.</strong> Netflix&#8217;s ability to rapidly scale its ad business demonstrates the power of its brand and content – signaling a secure new revenue pipeline as it branches further into advertising.</p>


Netflix’s ad-supported tier is rapidly gaining traction, reaching 40 million monthly users globally, the streamer announced at its 2024 Upfront presentation.
The paid ad offering, initially seen as a risky move, has quickly become a hit for Netflix as it seeks new revenue streams amid intensifying streaming competition.
Why we care. Netflix’s platform offers advertisers a large and expanding pool of potential customers. If you’re looking for new advertising opportunities, you may want to explore streaming audiences.
Driving the news. Just six months after hitting 5 million ad-supported subscribers post-launch in late 2022, that number has now swelled to 40 million.
In regions where the ad tier is available, over 40% of new Netflix sign-ups are opting for the cheaper ad-supported plan.
The service now has 270 million total subscribers across all its pricing tiers.
Between the lines. Netflix is doubling down on the ad business by bringing its ad tech in-house. 
It’s launching its own advertising platform to “power the ads plan with the same level of excellence” as its streaming tech, per Netflix’s president of advertising Amy Reinhard.
While initially partnering solely with Microsoft, Netflix is now also tapping Google, The Trade Desk and Magnite for its ad sales and tech.
What they’re saying. “Our ad membership has been an overwhelming success,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said during the presentation. “We’re just getting started on that journey.”
The bottom line. Netflix’s ability to rapidly scale its ad business demonstrates the power of its brand and content – signaling a secure new revenue pipeline as it branches further into advertising.

Netflix also has plans for an in-house advertising platform and is now partnering with Google on ad sales and tech.

Netflix ads tier hits 40 million subscribers

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="A better approach to B2B lead gen in 2024" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Improve your B2B lead gen ROI by matching offers, ad channels and educational content to the user's awareness and intent level.

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="A better approach to B2B lead gen in 2024" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/A-better-approach-to-B2B-lead-gen-in-2024.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>
<p>B2B advertising, with its long sales cycles and relatively thin data density, has never been easy. And the tracking upheaval from cookies disappearing is about to make it harder.</p>



<p>That means that some of the pervasive flaws I&#8217;ve seen in inheriting B2B lead gen accounts over the years are about to produce even shakier results. </p>



<p>Even without talking about cookies and alternative measurement set-ups, there’s a better path forward for lead gen in 2024. This article will examine:</p>



<ul>
<li>What brands still get wrong about their lead gen fundamentals.</li>



<li>How to align the offer and the funnel stage.</li>



<li>How to align the channel mix and the funnel stage.</li>



<li>How to qualify users with content.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-brands-are-getting-wrong-about-lead-gen">What brands are getting wrong about lead gen</h2>



<p>The single biggest mistake I see brands making with lead gen is misjudging (or ignoring) the intent of the lead. </p>



<p>A common example here is asking a cold prospect to request a demo, which is a leap of faith that will very rarely be rewarded with positive ROI or pestering prospects that download content to engage with sales.</p>



<p>The second big mistake is that brands will stop measuring beyond the lead, which leads to misappropriating budget and clear blind spots in performance. </p>



<p>Movement between funnel stages, lead quality and lead progression to MQLs &gt; SQLs &gt; opportunities &gt; closed deals are all vital for lead gen marketers to understand. This lets you assess your campaigns&#8217; performance and optimization priorities – and spend your budget where it will have the biggest impact on the bottom line.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: </em></strong><a href="https://searchengineland.com/paid-search-b2b-lead-gen-strategies-439985"><strong><em>Top 5 paid search B2B lead gen strategies for 2024</em></strong></a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-align-your-offer-with-the-user-s-funnel-stage">How to align your offer with the user’s funnel stage</h2>



<p>I use this chart all the time with my clients (and sometimes in my articles for Search Engine Land):</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey.png"><img decoding="async" width="1600" height="821" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey.png" alt="Mapping out the full purchase journey" class="wp-image-438560" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey.png 1600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey-600x308.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey-800x411.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey-200x103.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey-768x394.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/03/Mapping-out-the-full-purchase-journey-1536x788.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></a></figure></div>


<p>The <strong>top of the funnel</strong> is about educating and relating to the user:</p>



<ul>
<li>What they need to learn.</li>



<li>What challenges they need to solve.</li>



<li>What they need to know about their problem. </li>
</ul>



<p>At this point, it’s about relating to their pain points and starting to build trust more than what they need to solve than they do about who’s solving it for them.</p>



<p>The <strong>middle of the funnel</strong> starts tying solutions to problems and introduces your brand as the option: </p>



<ul>
<li>Why your solution works.</li>



<li>How it’s different from your competitors.</li>



<li>The results you’ve driven for brands with similar challenges. </li>
</ul>



<p>This stage assumes the user has their head around their challenge and is now actively researching solutions to help.</p>



<p>The <strong>bottom of the funnel</strong> brings in more emotion and third-party proof. This stage assumes the users have a shortlist of solutions in mind and are looking for reassurance, from case studies and testimonials, that yours is the one for them. This is also when you can start leaning on urgency, with limited sales windows or expiring promotions.</p>



<p>The most important thing to remember from all of this is that thoughtful nurturing is key to good lead gen. If you’re using bottom-funnel tactics for people who haven’t heard of you yet, you’re only wasting time and possibly turning users off from your brand.</p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-align-the-channel-mix-and-the-funnel-stage">How to align the channel mix and the funnel stage</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-top-of-funnel-channels">Top-of-funnel channels</h3>



<p>Starting with awareness/top-of-funnel targeting should mean starting on <a href="https://searchengineland.com/linkedin-advertising-a-comprehensive-guide-439831">LinkedIn</a> (and, for some brands with access to the right audiences, possibly on <a href="https://searchengineland.com/facebook-ads-lead-generation-guide-430339">Facebook</a>).&nbsp;</p>



<p>My first option is always to start with LinkedIn prospecting because:</p>



<ul>
<li>Costs are cheaper for top-of-funnel engagement than they are for lead generation or conversion.</li>



<li>LinkedIn’s company-based targeting means you can go fairly broad and still stay within your ICP.&nbsp; </li>
</ul>



<p>LinkedIn is a great place for educating users and positioning your brand as a thought leader; people go to LinkedIn to consume content, perhaps in the form of thought leader ads, and are open to high-quality, informative engagements.</p>



<p>I approach Facebook prospecting with caution, but it can be worth testing depending on the audience.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-middle-of-funnel-and-retargeting-channels">Middle-of-funnel and retargeting channels</h3>



<p>Once someone has engaged with your brand and content, you should have started to narrow your audience. </p>



<p>Whether you’re retargeting content engagers or focused on accounts that have engaged with sales in some way or piped-in audiences from tools like Clearbit or 6Sense, I recommend choosing the following combinations of ad types and channels:</p>



<ul>
<li>LinkedIn sponsored content and conversation ads.</li>



<li>Facebook and Instagram in-feed ads or video ads, with messaging that aligns with your audience and funnel stage.</li>
</ul>



<p>Given my thoughts on Facebook prospecting, you might be surprised at my preference here. But you’ve already defined the audience. </p>



<p>Facebook/Instagram can help expand your audience matching scope beyond LinkedIn (where we’ve seen plenty of audience match degradation), and retargeting costs tend to be lower.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-bottom-of-funnel-channels">Bottom-of-funnel channels</h3>



<p>Focusing on users who have engaged with high-intent content or visited your site multiple times is a crucial audience for this stage. </p>



<p>Ensuring coverage for <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-paid-search">paid search</a> and high-intent SEO queries are the bread and butter for <strong>capturing</strong><em> </em>intent at this stage, but paid social is a great way to generate<em> </em>that last step of intent by using social proof like case studies, testimonials, etc. – and sealing the deal with demo offers.&nbsp;</p>



<p>These will be your highest engagement costs of the campaign, and they should be, since leads at this stage are (assuming you’ve qualified them along the way) extremely valuable.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/implement-full-funnel-ppc-marketing-strategy-439545">How to implement a full-funnel PPC marketing strategy</a></em></strong></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-to-qualify-users-with-content">How to qualify users with content</h2>



<p>This happens throughout the funnel, and lots of this work is done with the type of content you’re offering. </p>



<p>For instance, your content should help the platforms’ bidding and targeting algorithms identify the audience&#8217;s pain points, solutions, etc. (Facebook’s algorithm can do this, but it doesn’t have the all-important layer of company targeting that LinkedIn does.)</p>



<p>There can also be ways to increase engagement within your ICP by speaking directly to them in your copy. Identifying opportunities to call out your audience in messaging is a great tactic.</p>



<p>For example, if you’re targeting CFOs, try “CFOs’ Favorite Answer to {Challenge} in 2024” or something similar that lets them know your content is for them. </p>



<p>The bonus here is that the more tightly you align your messaging with your ICP, the more you can delineate who falls outside your ICP and shouldn’t bother engaging with your ad.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: </em></strong><a href="https://searchengineland.com/paid-search-lead-gen-tips-new-accounts-limited-budgets-435647"><strong><em>Paid search for lead gen: Tips for new accounts with limited budgets</em></strong></a></p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-aligning-tactics-to-intent-a-better-b2b-lead-gen-approach">Aligning tactics to intent: A better B2B lead gen approach</h2>



<p>Above all, remember to consider the user’s mentality when developing your lead gen campaigns. </p>



<p>Don’t:</p>



<ul>
<li>Ask for too much too early.</li>



<li>Get silly with retargeting frequency.</li>



<li>Bother spending for bottom-funnel engagement without so much as a how-do-you-do.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p>Cookies or not, adhering to those principles will help you eliminate a lot of waste from your lead gen campaigns and keep your brand from developing a pushy reputation.</p>

B2B advertising, with its long sales cycles and relatively thin data density, has never been easy. And the tracking upheaval from cookies disappearing is about to make it harder.
That means that some of the pervasive flaws I’ve seen in inheriting B2B lead gen accounts over the years are about to produce even shakier results. 
Even without talking about cookies and alternative measurement set-ups, there’s a better path forward for lead gen in 2024. This article will examine:
What brands still get wrong about their lead gen fundamentals.
How to align the offer and the funnel stage.
How to align the channel mix and the funnel stage.
How to qualify users with content.
What brands are getting wrong about lead gen
The single biggest mistake I see brands making with lead gen is misjudging (or ignoring) the intent of the lead. 
A common example here is asking a cold prospect to request a demo, which is a leap of faith that will very rarely be rewarded with positive ROI or pestering prospects that download content to engage with sales.
The second big mistake is that brands will stop measuring beyond the lead, which leads to misappropriating budget and clear blind spots in performance. 
Movement between funnel stages, lead quality and lead progression to MQLs > SQLs > opportunities > closed deals are all vital for lead gen marketers to understand. This lets you assess your campaigns’ performance and optimization priorities – and spend your budget where it will have the biggest impact on the bottom line.
Dig deeper: Top 5 paid search B2B lead gen strategies for 2024
How to align your offer with the user’s funnel stage
I use this chart all the time with my clients (and sometimes in my articles for Search Engine Land):

The top of the funnel is about educating and relating to the user:
What they need to learn.
What challenges they need to solve.
What they need to know about their problem. 
At this point, it’s about relating to their pain points and starting to build trust more than what they need to solve than they do about who’s solving it for them.
The middle of the funnel starts tying solutions to problems and introduces your brand as the option: 
Why your solution works.
How it’s different from your competitors.
The results you’ve driven for brands with similar challenges. 
This stage assumes the user has their head around their challenge and is now actively researching solutions to help.
The bottom of the funnel brings in more emotion and third-party proof. This stage assumes the users have a shortlist of solutions in mind and are looking for reassurance, from case studies and testimonials, that yours is the one for them. This is also when you can start leaning on urgency, with limited sales windows or expiring promotions.
The most important thing to remember from all of this is that thoughtful nurturing is key to good lead gen. If you’re using bottom-funnel tactics for people who haven’t heard of you yet, you’re only wasting time and possibly turning users off from your brand.

					
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How to align the channel mix and the funnel stage
Top-of-funnel channels
Starting with awareness/top-of-funnel targeting should mean starting on LinkedIn (and, for some brands with access to the right audiences, possibly on Facebook). 
My first option is always to start with LinkedIn prospecting because:
Costs are cheaper for top-of-funnel engagement than they are for lead generation or conversion.
LinkedIn’s company-based targeting means you can go fairly broad and still stay within your ICP.  
LinkedIn is a great place for educating users and positioning your brand as a thought leader; people go to LinkedIn to consume content, perhaps in the form of thought leader ads, and are open to high-quality, informative engagements.
I approach Facebook prospecting with caution, but it can be worth testing depending on the audience. 
Middle-of-funnel and retargeting channels
Once someone has engaged with your brand and content, you should have started to narrow your audience. 
Whether you’re retargeting content engagers or focused on accounts that have engaged with sales in some way or piped-in audiences from tools like Clearbit or 6Sense, I recommend choosing the following combinations of ad types and channels:
LinkedIn sponsored content and conversation ads.
Facebook and Instagram in-feed ads or video ads, with messaging that aligns with your audience and funnel stage.
Given my thoughts on Facebook prospecting, you might be surprised at my preference here. But you’ve already defined the audience. 
Facebook/Instagram can help expand your audience matching scope beyond LinkedIn (where we’ve seen plenty of audience match degradation), and retargeting costs tend to be lower.
Bottom-of-funnel channels
Focusing on users who have engaged with high-intent content or visited your site multiple times is a crucial audience for this stage. 
Ensuring coverage for paid search and high-intent SEO queries are the bread and butter for capturing intent at this stage, but paid social is a great way to generate that last step of intent by using social proof like case studies, testimonials, etc. – and sealing the deal with demo offers. 
These will be your highest engagement costs of the campaign, and they should be, since leads at this stage are (assuming you’ve qualified them along the way) extremely valuable.
Dig deeper: How to implement a full-funnel PPC marketing strategy
How to qualify users with content
This happens throughout the funnel, and lots of this work is done with the type of content you’re offering. 
For instance, your content should help the platforms’ bidding and targeting algorithms identify the audience’s pain points, solutions, etc. (Facebook’s algorithm can do this, but it doesn’t have the all-important layer of company targeting that LinkedIn does.)
There can also be ways to increase engagement within your ICP by speaking directly to them in your copy. Identifying opportunities to call out your audience in messaging is a great tactic.
For example, if you’re targeting CFOs, try “CFOs’ Favorite Answer to {Challenge} in 2024” or something similar that lets them know your content is for them. 
The bonus here is that the more tightly you align your messaging with your ICP, the more you can delineate who falls outside your ICP and shouldn’t bother engaging with your ad.
Dig deeper: Paid search for lead gen: Tips for new accounts with limited budgets
Aligning tactics to intent: A better B2B lead gen approach
Above all, remember to consider the user’s mentality when developing your lead gen campaigns. 
Don’t:
Ask for too much too early.
Get silly with retargeting frequency.
Bother spending for bottom-funnel engagement without so much as a how-do-you-do. 
Cookies or not, adhering to those principles will help you eliminate a lot of waste from your lead gen campaigns and keep your brand from developing a pushy reputation.

Improve your B2B lead gen ROI by matching offers, ad channels and educational content to the user's awareness and intent level.

A better approach to B2B lead gen in 2024

<div><img width="800" height="450" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish-800x450.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="How to run a successful site migration from start to finish" style="margin-bottom: 15px;" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish-800x450.png 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish-600x338.png 600w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish-200x113.png 200w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2024/05/How-to-run-a-successful-site-migration-from-start-to-finish.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></div>Moving to a new domain, changing your CMS or merging sites? Learn best practices for a seamless site migration that boosts search visibility. 

A site migration can feel like packing up your entire house and moving across the country. There’s much to keep track of, and you don’t want to lose any valuable possessions (or, in this case, SEO progress) along the way. 
When done right, a site migration is a chance to improve site performance, enhance user experience and boost search presence.
However, with countless moving parts and multiple teams involved, having an organized plan is essential for a smooth transition. 
To nail it, you need a rock-solid plan and a dedication to doing things right.
In this article:
What is a site migration?
Why is SEO important in site migrations?
Preparing for your site migration
Managing and optimizing the new site structure and content
Improving user experience
Managing links
Monitoring technical SEO
Managing post-launch activities
Continuously refining
What is a site migration?
A site migration refers to the process of making major changes involving a website. 
This might include moving a site to a new domain or hosting provider, switching to a different content management system (CMS) or merging multiple websites into one.
Why is SEO important in site migrations?
Some people may wonder what SEO has to do with moving a site. 
A site migration with SEO built into it can preserve rankings, avoid traffic loss, retain link equity, improve user experience and uncover new opportunities to improve the site. A site migration without SEO is laced with assumptions and poor decisions and can lead to a near-death traffic loss.
To illustrate how, when done right, SEO built into a site migration can massively impact search performance, see the image below. 

After this client’s site migrated about mid-April 2023, they experienced the following results when comparing February 2023 to August 2023:
A 455% increase in daily traffic.
A 78% increase in top 10 rankings, with the top three rankings going from 8,081 to 13,591.
Zero SERP features to 1,496 SERP features.
Preparing for your site migration
Before you jump into the deep end, take the time to plan: 
Define your goals and objectives. Whatever your website migration goals, document them and the steps needed to make them a reality. Get specific and make your targets measurable. This will help guide your efforts and give you a clear way to evaluate success post-migration.
Conduct a thorough SEO audit. A thorough SEO audit assesses the site’s strengths and pinpoints areas for improvement. Part of this involves tracking your site’s current rankings, traffic levels and engagement metrics using tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console and others.
Come up with a project plan. Map out a detailed project plan. Break the migration into phases, assign roles and responsibilities and set realistic deadlines. (Don’t forget to build in time for testing and troubleshooting. Migrations rarely go off without a hitch, so planning for the unexpected is key.)
Google gives some additional best practice tips for managing a site move, including splitting your move into smaller steps, changing only one thing at a time and timing the move to coincide with lower-traffic times. 
Dig deeper: 12 SEO pitfalls to avoid during a website platform migration
Managing and optimizing the new site structure and content
How people and search engines access your content, and what type of content you publish are both important to your SEO program moving forward.
Site structure
A well-organized site structure enhances user experience and helps search engines understand the relationships between your pages.
Think about how you might restructure and streamline your site’s navigation for the relaunch. 
This will require taking a look at your target keywords and mapping them to the navigation and content. 
Group related content together in a logical hierarchy, making it easy for website visitors and search engines to find exactly what they need.
I call this SEO siloing, and the benefits include:
Creating a good user experience can result in more time spent on the website.
Helping search engines determine relevance, which positions the site for ranking for target keywords.
The goal is to have the top of each silo (navigational category) be based on the more generic keywords and to build a hierarchy of subpages that support that keyword topic.

The picture above shows a sample structure for SEO siloing on a fictional power tools website. 
The main categories are cordless power tools, electric power tools and gas-powered tools. The supporting subpages are shown underneath.
Content
Now onto the content that fills the pages on your site. As you head into a site migration, it’s a perfect opportunity to make improvements.
The goal is to ensure the quality of your content when you relaunch. 
Here are some tips as you review the content on your site:
Review top-performing webpages and be sure to prioritize those. For pages that aren’t performing, decide if they need a rewrite, need to be merged or 301 redirected.
Assess the content with some guidelines in mind, such as Google’s E-E-A-T principles and its advice on helpful content. 
Review all content to make sure that it is evergreen and thorough. If it can be updated, do it. If entire topics are out of date, flag those to do a 301 redirect on them later on. 
Consider merging multiple pages on a similar or same topic into one more extensive guide on the topic. (Don’t forget to 301 redirect URLs later).
Ensure that your new site’s content is optimized for your target keywords. Optimize titles, headings, meta descriptions and body content. 
Address duplicate content issues. Duplicate content can happen for multiple reasons, including trailing slashes on URLs, CMS problems, content that is too similar, boilerplate content and more. 
If you need to add new content before the site migration, consider using AI content tools for efficiency—but be careful to follow search engine guidelines. 
See my article on how to survive the search results when you’re using AI tools for content.
Improving user experience
Prior to a site migration is a good time to assess user experience factors on your site and make any adjustments moving forward. 
Review Core Web Vitals
Google’s Core Web Vitals focus on the responsiveness, speed and interactivity of a site. Benchmarking and seeing what may be improved on your current site is a good step before relaunching a new site.
Google gives more insights in a help file here, and you can view the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console. Prioritize adjustments based on your available resources. 
Mobile-friendliness
Ensuring your site is optimized for mobile means things like having a responsive design, touch-friendly navigation, creating and formatting content with mobile readers in mind and much more. 
Improving accessibility
Evaluating and improving accessibility on your website can ensure your site is usable for people with disabilities. 
The gold standard for complying with accessibility is W3.org’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Prioritize minimum requirements first.
Enhancing security
Some things you can do to improve the security of your site are evaluating your server / hosting provider (this may be a reason for your site move anyway), implementing HTTPS and updating software, plugins and authentication protocols. 

					
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Managing links
Properly mapping and redirecting URLs is essential for maintaining SEO value during a site migration. Without careful planning, you risk losing link equity. 
Create a detailed spreadsheet that lists every old URL and its corresponding new URL. This redirect map will serve as a blueprint for implementing 301 redirects and ensuring no pages are lost in the transition.
Be sure to account for changes in site structure, URL naming conventions and content consolidation. A thorough redirect map is your best defense against broken links and lost SEO value.
Work with your development team to ensure that redirects are configured correctly: 
Steer clear of redirect traps like using short-term 302s instead of permanent 301s, creating messy chains or loops and forgetting that URLs are case-sensitive.
Prior to launch, thoroughly test your redirects to ensure they are working as intended. Use tools like the SEOToolSet (full disclosure, this is my company’s SEO software) or Screaming Frog to crawl your old URLs and verify that they are being properly redirected to the correct new URLs.
Pay special attention to your most important pages, such as your home page, top-level categories and high-traffic blog posts. 
Mapping your 301s is just one part of managing your links before a site migration. This is also a good time to review your inbound link profile. 
Get rid of any links that may not serve your site well moving forward and identify new link opportunities for the site.
Monitoring technical SEO
Monitoring all aspects of technical SEO before and during a site migration is vital for site health and search engine visibility. 
Here are some tasks to check off your list:
Review design modifications
Changes to website design can impact SEO–one example is the coding aspect of building a site. Review design plans to make sure they support SEO objectives.
Audit your tracking tools
Confirm that Google Analytics tracking is correctly configured. Moving to GA4 can be complicated, consider hiring analytics experts if necessary. 
Also, ensure Google Search Console is configured for your site. 
Back up your existing site
As a precautionary measure, back up your entire website – especially the XML Sitemap. Trust me, you need this. Download all images and other resources, and save a copy of your database if relevant.
Establish a test environment
It’s common practice among web developers to create a separate testing environment to experiment with changes before making them live. 
Ensure this is set up and that search engines are blocked from indexing this staging area.
Validate structured data
Examine and rectify any issues with structured data on your pages using tools like Google’s structured data testing tools.
Review metadata
Ensure titles and meta descriptions are unique with original content and are correctly optimized. 
Review robots directives
Recheck the setup of your robots.txt file to ensure it is correctly blocking or allowing access as intended. 
Create and manage sitemaps
Develop a new HTML sitemap to aid users in navigating the new site smoothly. 
To some, this next point may seem counterintuitive, but it’s important: The second the new site is live, submit the old XML sitemap you archived earlier. This causes the search engines to find your redirects instantly. 
Carry out launch day tasks
On launch day, crawl the website to identify and resolve any emerging issues right away, such as crawl errors. 
Recommended tools include SEOToolSet’s site spider, Lumar and Screaming Frog. You can also use the various testing features in Search Console. 
Managing post-launch activities
You’ve made it through the site migration process, but the work isn’t over yet. Keeping a close eye on your site’s performance in the weeks and months following the move is important. 
Testing
The first step in post-migration testing is to conduct a comprehensive review of your site’s functionality. 
This means testing every page, link, form and feature to ensure that everything is working as intended. 
Give your website a thorough once-over by focusing on these vital areas:
Navigation and internal linking.
Forms and contact pages.
Ecommerce functionality (if applicable).
Mobile responsiveness and usability.
Integrations with third-party tools or services.
Site speed and responsiveness.
As you test, make note of any issues or errors you encounter and prioritize fixing them based on their impact on user experience and site performance. 
Watching key metrics
With your tracking tools in place, it’s time to monitor your site’s performance and organic traffic levels. 
Keep a close eye on your daily and weekly traffic in Google Analytics. It’s normal to see some temporary fluctuations after a migration, but if you notice a sustained drop in organic traffic, it’s time to investigate further.
Another key metric to monitor post-migration is your site’s keyword rankings and overall search visibility. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs to track your rankings for target keywords and monitor any changes over time.
Enhancing user experience
Beyond functionality, it’s important to take a holistic look at your site’s user experience and engagement post-migration. 
Are visitors finding what they need easily? Are they engaging with your content and converting at the rates you expect?
You can use your analytics tools to dive into behavioral metrics such as goal completions, bounce rates and more.
If you notice a drop in conversions or engagement, dig deeper to identify potential issues or roadblocks. 
Is there a particular page or step in your conversion funnel where users drop off? Are there certain user segments or traffic sources that are underperforming?
Consider reviewing the following areas that may need user experience improvement:
Improving navigation and site structure.
Optimizing content layout and readability.
Enhancing calls-to-action and conversion points.
Ensuring mobile-friendliness and responsiveness.
Adding engaging visual elements and media.
You can use things like heat maps and surveys to get inside your visitors’ heads. Look for trends and sticking points, then use that data to fine-tune your site’s user experience. 
Continuously refining
Once you’ve completed a successful site migration, the real adventure begins. 
You’ll continue to keep a close eye on your site, run tests and make tweaks to ensure that it’s always performing at its best and delivering an exceptional user experience.
With a commitment to improvement, you can ensure that your migrated site survives and thrives in its new home for the long haul.

Moving to a new domain, changing your CMS or merging sites? Learn best practices for a seamless site migration that boosts search visibility.

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Read the Latest Trends and Headlines in Digital Marketing.

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