Final Edition of 2024

Welcome to the final edition of UDD of 2024!

It's a winter wonderland here in the Twin Cities–the Minneapolis area got hit pretty hard with snow yesterday, just in time for the holidays.

We're getting ready to wrap up the year, and what a year it's been!

With big updates like AI Overviews getting integrated into Search results, Twitter moving its domain to X.com, Threads' continuous growth, Reddit innovating in the advertising space, Google's third-party cookie deprecation Uno reverse card, the proposed ban on TikTok, and Universal Analytics data deletion, it's been quite a ride.

Ready to dive into the final updates of the year? Let's do it.

SEO

1. December Core Update

At a glance: Google’s December core update began rolling out just one week after the November core update wrapped up. The December update finished rolling out on December 18, lasting just 6 days.

In a statement on X, Google Search Central said, “If you're wondering why there's a core update this month after one last month, we have different core systems we're always improving.” This was a standard core update, but reportedly caused a lot of volatility. If you were hit, now is the time to start evaluating your site. Feel free to reach out if you could use a second opinion on your website’s performance post-update.

Perrill perspective:

A core update is a great time to remind yourself that SEO is a zero-sum game. If you lost rankings, then someone else gained them. If you gained rankings, someone else lost them. Core updates don’t punish entire industries. They elevate some sites and demote others. If your site dropped, then someone else moved up, and now is the time to figure out why it happened.? – Nate Tower , President

2. How and why Google ranks content

At a glance: Mark Williams-Cook, an SEO Director at Candour, discovered an exploit that revealed over 2,000 properties Google uses to classify both queries and websites, giving SEOs a peek behind the curtain at Google’s algorithm operations.

This exploit gives insights into scoring, site quality scores, classification, and more. Review the full video analysis below.

3. ChatGPT Search available to everyone

At a glance: OpenAI released ChatGPT Search to all free users, opening up the search feature to a much larger audience.?

As more users shift to using ChatGPT Search, it’s possible that ChatGPT could own 1% of the search share. Which doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a substantial amount that businesses should be aware of.

Perrill perspective:

A lot of users have already been using AI-driven search tools alongside traditional search engines for a while now, but making ChatGPT Search free for all could fragment search behaviors even further, impacting how and where marketers should focus their SEO efforts. Because AI-driven search often delivers concise, on-demand answers without needing to direct users to multiple sites, we’ll likely continue to see some reduction in organic traffic to publishers’ sites – especially for informational searches. Competing for these queries with in-depth, value-rich content is more critical than ever. Marketing teams relying on analytics tools like GA4 may also need to explore new ways to measure engagement and conversions as search continues to move away from the traditional SERP experience we’ve known for so long. – Daniel Cole , Digital Marketing Manager

Perrill perspective:

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend setting up a custom channel in Google Analytics 4 (or whatever you use) for any gen AI search tools. This will allow you to easily see how much traffic is being driven by these AI search tools, and it will also give you a quick way to compare your more typical organic traffic to these other sources. – Nate Tower , President

4. Bing Search is implementing Small Language Models (SLMs)

At a glance: To give searchers an even better experience, Bing is now using both large and small language models.

Large language models (LLMs) process queries slowly and can be more expensive to use, whereas SLMs can process and understand queries more fully. Bing is using SLMs in its deep search function, where the processing time is slower but the results are much more tailored to match the query. Read more about the latest updates to Bing’s AI-powered search functionality here.

5. AI Overviews dominates SERPs + Gemini 2.0

At a glance: In a new study by SEO platforms Botify and DemandSphere, 75% of AI Overview citations are pulled from the first 12 organic results. AI Overviews also showed up for almost half of all queries, a number that seems to keep going up.

Another interesting piece to this is that Google is bringing Gemini 2.0 to both Search and AI Overviews, giving it the ability to “tackle more complex topics and multi-step questions.” Google continues investing in its AI capabilities, and as AI Overviews improve, it will likely continue to take SERP real estate away from organic results.

Social Media

1. TikTok ban goes to Supreme Court

At a glance: With the January 19 sell-or-get-banned deadline quickly approaching, TikTok has elevated its court case to the Supreme Court, where TikTok will argue that the proposed ban violates the First Amendment.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of this case plays out and which side the Supreme Court will side with.

2. Reddit Answers

At a glance: Reddit launched its own version of AI Overviews called Reddit Answers, providing answers to user questions by sourcing information from subreddits.

This new feature operates strictly within the Reddit platform and is a new way for Redditors to get information on the platform. Whether or not users like this new feature is another question altogether, but Reddit Answers will get rolled out to a limited number of users in the U.S.

3. Bluesky subscription

At a glance: Bluesky is considering leveraging a new revenue source by creating a subscription with paid features that look very similar to X’s subscription.

The app has experienced a lot of growth recently, so it needs to source additional funding to keep that growth up. And while they’re currently trying to avoid bringing ads to the platform, this is an option Bluesky can test. But subscriptions haven’t been major revenue drivers for other social platforms, so it’s likely Bluesky will have to figure something else out–or turn to ads.

4. X makes Grok available to all users

At a glance: Grok, X’s chatbot, is now available to all users, providing users with the option to ask questions, generate images, analyze posts, and more.

Grok was previously only available to X Premium subscribers, but now they’re expanding it to all users. But will people be interested in the chatbot, and do users enjoy having an in-app chatbot?? The jury is still out, but it’s not stopping X from outfitting Grok with a bunch of new features too.?

Now, Grok is even more integrated into X’s data to provide better answers that include citations for extra clarity. Image generation has also improved, and X is testing new audio queries.

5. Instagram screenshot blocking

At a glance: Instagram is launching screenshot blocking in DM “Vanish Mode”, and when “View Once” is active for content.?

This will allow for more privacy for users who want it, which could be extremely beneficial for younger users in terms of protecting them.

Paid Media

1. Google Ads AI reporting

At a glance: A new reporting tool powered by AI is Google Ads’ latest beta feature, available to a limited number of advertisers to test.?

When advertisers prompt the tool for specific analytics requests, it will share tailored reports to help advertisers dig deeper into their campaign performance. It allows advertisers to describe the reports they want to see and then does its best to generate them.

2. Google PMax beta test for negative keyword exclusions

At a glance: Google Ads is also beta testing negative keyword exclusions in Performance Max campaigns, a long-awaited feature that would give advertisers more control over keyword targeting and exclusions for PMax campaigns.?

The rollout is pretty minimal so far, but the plan is to continue growing availability in 2025. So expect better targeting in the new year.

3. Perplexity publisher ad revenue program

At a glance: Perplexity has added some pretty big publisher names to its ad revenue sharing program, including The New York Times, LA Times, and Dow Jones.?

The program was created after publishers voiced concerns that when Perplexity summarizes search results using publisher content, they’re taking revenue away from the publisher sites. So the fix, at least for now, is to give publishers a cut from ads shown on the Perplexity platform. But this doesn’t seem like a permanent fix, and to continue growing and competing with other names like ChatGPT, Perplexity will have to find ways to resolve the conflict over content ownership.

4. Microsoft improves tracking and consent features

At a glance: Microsoft Advertising is updating its attribution model to track all devices within the same household, which could help with understanding cross-device behavior as well as cross-device conversion matching.

The platform is also offering tools for managing user consent, specifically geared toward complying with regulations in Europe. Overall, the updates should lead to more sophisticated tracking.

5. Google experiments with double-serving ads

At a glance: Google was seen serving two placements from the same advertiser on the same keyword, which conflicts with Google’s policy of only serving one ad account per keyword.

Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liason, said that this is part of an experiment Google Ads is running and that it’s nothing to be concerned with right now. But this feature could definitely impact performance and cost, so it’s something to be aware of as the test moves forward.

Mixed Bag

1. Google’s top search trends of 2024

At a glance: Google released its report on the most Googled terms of the year, which is a fun and interesting way to reflect on the year in search.

Covering trending topics from the past year, the list includes queries like, “U.S. Election”, “Olympic chocolate muffins”, “Copa America”, and “Inside Out 2”. Check out the full review here.

2. The latest on X, Threads, and Bluesky

At a glance: With Bluesky on the rise, Threads continuing to hold its own, and X pushing to keep its hold on the social media space, there are several updates we wanted to share.

While X is reporting record-high usage in 2024, Threads was the most downloaded iOS app in November, with 11 million downloads. So it seems like we're getting some mixed reports here, but it's completely possible that people aren't making the full switch from one platform to another and are instead testing out each platform. Bluesky has been a hot topic recently, adding around 1 million new users a day and growing to over 25 million users, which is substantial, but nowhere near where Threads is at (over 275 million) or X (over 500 million). Based on those numbers, Threads has made the most inroads at dethroning X, but Bluesky has only recently been gaining more traction. Are you following this saga? Which platform are you using? Let us know in the comments.

3. Google December 2024 spam update

At a glance: Google released its December spam update just one day after the December core update finished rolling out.

The update should only take a week to roll out and specifically targets sites that violate Google's spam policies. For reference, you can find Google's spam documentation here.

That brings us to a close on 2024, and what a year it's been! Thank you for reading and trusting us to bring you the latest digital marketing updates. Have a joyful and relaxing holiday! We'll see you back here in 2025.