Marketing News This Week, Plus Tips and Ideas November 2023: Google, YouTube, and Business Buying Tips

Let's look at the latest marketing news this week. We'll summarize news and share tips as they relate to SEO, Social Media, Branding, and Business.

You can also watch this week's marketing news on YouTube: https://youtu.be/D5V0eo4_Mbw

0:00 Marketing News This Week November 2023
0:46 Google AI Bard and Fraudulent DMCA Lawsuits
6:59 Google Chrome Getting Rid of Third Party Cookies for Advertising
8:37 New YouTube Updates: AI Comment Summaries andAsk Button
19:44 The Facebook Mobile Browser Update For Link History
22:12 Buying a Business: What to do with two websites, reviews, and Google Business Profiles?

Check out last week's YouTube Updates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miLjd8tYkEU&t=390s

Check out Jenny Hoyos' interview on Creator Science: https://youtu.be/As7abwNhG7Y?si=b6eGEqOwFuEDcI2_

For further reading and links on stories:
Google files lawsuits against AI chatbot scammers & false DMCA strikers (includes complaint PDFs from case filings): https://kattwagner.com/google-lawsuits-dcma-bard-scammers-filings

Google Third Party Cookies Phase Out for 2024: https://kattwagner.com/google-third-party-cookies-phase-out-2024/

YouTube Ask Button & Comment Summaries AI https://kattwagner.com/youtube-ask-button-comment-summaries-ai/

Facebook Adds Link History Feature; Updates Mobile Browser https://kattwagner.com/facebook-update-mobile-browser-external-link-history/

31 Tips for Combing Brands, Merging Websites after Buying a Business: https://kattwagner.com/31-tips-combing-brands-websites-buying-a-business/

Connect with me:

Website: KattWagner.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@brandhacking

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KattWagnerNY

Instagram (NEW): https://www.instagram.com/marketingkatt/

Twitter (NEW): https://twitter.com/brand_hacking

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kattwagner/

Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6873666446027841537

Facebook Group: https://facebook.com/groups/brandhackinggroup

Service & Coaching (Don't see something? Ask! I have services that aren't listed for public booking to help gatekeep my time) https://stan.store/brandhacking

Chapters

• 0:00 Marketing News This Week November 2023
• 0:46 Google AI Bard and Fraudulent DMCA Lawsuits
• 6:59 Google Chrome Getting Rid of Third Party Cookies for Advertising
• 8:37 New YouTube Updates: AI Comment Summaries andAsk Button
• 19:44 The Facebook Mobile Browser Update For Link History
• 22:12 Buying a Business: What to do with two websites, reviews, and Google Business Profiles?

Transcript

0:00

What is up guys? We are going to be looking at some social media and marketing news today. We're going to look at some legal cases that deal with AI chatbots and DMCA strikes. And along the way, we're going to talk about some ideas and how you can be proactive in making sure your marketing strategy is future proof and that you're taking advantage of all the tools and getting the best out of all the algorithms that are in front of you today. But to share your own thoughts or ask some questions, to make it a two way street, make sure you use the comment section. Now, this type of video is designed to be a digest of news and updates that have rolled out in about the last week or two but if there's something you want to get more granular on, put the idea in the comments section, maybe I'll do some content deep diving into it, but let's jump in. So obviously right up here on my screen, we're gonna, we're gonna get into the nitty gritty legal world first, And what we're gonna look at, this is both coming from Google, but it's two separate lawsuits that they filed in the last week. So the first lawsuit was filed on Monday in the Northern District of California. They're bringing this against John Doe's. And this lawsuit's kind of the first of its kind from a major tech company. Now, it's important to note, If you look over here, the complaint in summary: you have trademark infringement, unfair competition and false designation of origin, and breach of contract. And as a top level summary of the story behind this, these John Doe scammers were exploiting public interest in Google's Artificial Intelligence chatbot, known as BARD. They were creating fake social media accounts to look like they were affiliated with Google, that it was Google themselves, and then leading people to their own version of what looked like BARD, but was not really BARD. The users that were tricked into believing it was ended up downloading malware. And this malware, in turn, gave these John Doe scammers access to these individuals social media accounts. And by the way guys, this is a great time to emphasize that BARD is not something that you can download. So if you come across anything advertising that it's BARD, and it has the Google logo on it, it's probably something exactly like this, because BARD cannot be downloaded. And if you're watching this, you're probably a small business owner or working on your own brand, and you might use Facebook, and that was the target audience of these scammers. Now as far as breach of contract, these scammers were uploading their malware to Google Sites and Google Drive, so they were using Google for malicious activity, for illegal activity. Think it's also worth pointing out that, you know, if you're asking why would they file against John Doe's, how are they filing against someone they don't know who they are? Well... in general, it's not uncommon for, especially a tech company, which may often deal with anonymous bad actors, to file something against John Doe, because the discovery process could help lead to identification of who's behind the acts. But more importantly, as part of Google's own statement on their blog post, they say that today's actions are part of our ongoing legal strategy to protect consumers and small businesses. And another reason you might see a tech company file something against a John Doe is for the sake of precedent. So here in Google's own blog, they say, today's actions are part of our ongoing legal strategy to protect consumers and small businesses and establish needed legal precedence in emerging fields of innovation. So lawsuit number two, filed by Google, also on Monday and also in the same district court is a complaint against two known fraudsters as well as 1 to 20 John Doe's that may be acting with them. Now, this lawsuit claims that two individuals established at least 65 Google accounts and used those accounts to file fraudulent copyright notices against over 117, 000 websites. In the complaint, Google also states that they think there's half a million more fraudulent takedown requests based on a preliminary investigation that's still ongoing. Now, the two named parties of this suit are Vietnam residents. what they were doing is they, they apparently are connected to some website, an e commerce site that was, doing, print fulfillment on t shirts, it sounds like. And they were using these fraudulent takedown requests as a means to takedown competing third party sellers. You know, and if they're not able to appear in a Google search results... Someone else will, right? So the benefit of the scam allegedly to these alleged fraudsters was that it was pushing their own. t shirt website or websites higher up in the ranking so they would get the clicks and then probably get the sales and conversions. and although it's my personal opinion that this is far from the only instance of improper use of the DMCA takedown system. it's something you hear people complain about on YouTube all the time. There's been lawsuits, there's been plenty of well known lawsuits over the last couple years. You had Bungie, the creators of Destiny 2, who, who had their own Destiny 2 content on YouTube taken down by DMCA strikes that were improperly filed By a YouTuber with the handle LordNazo. And he was creating fake Gmail addresses and And he sent 96 takedown requests. And he targeted not just Bungie's own YouTube channel, but two other creators with more than half a million followers each. One by the name of Byf and one by the name of aztecross so these, these people were having their content improperly stricken and taken down from YouTube because of this. And that litigation was all between those parties. Google was not a party in those suits. But here we see Google initiating a suit. And why might that be? Now in the complaint. Google states that defendants have weaponized copyright law's notice and takedown process, and used it not for its intended purpose of expeditiously removing infringing content, but instead to have the legitimate content of their competitors removed based on false allegations. They said it harms consumers, third party businesses, and Google, and that it also stifles competition and threatens to tarnish Google's trusted brand. And I had a decent laugh at this, but further on in the complaint, Google wants to make the argument that the defendants are not just aware that their scheme is harmful and abusive and unlawful, but they're proud of it. And they cite this video that is still up on YouTube currently, right now. And this is the video right here that they're talking about, so how about that? This is still up, it still has the exact same description that they put in the suit. And Google hasn't taken this down. And it, to me, this just struck me when I saw that part. you know, all these other improper uses of the DMCA, takedown cases that I'm familiar with, I'm not even familiar with all of them, all the appeals that YouTube partners have to go through to, if you don't have a YouTube partner liaison for you, it's a nightmare. You need a whole army of people tagging YouTube on social media to get some help if you are hit by an improper takedown request. And it just made me wonder, you know, we've, we have other lawsuits out there where other parties are having to fight their own battles against people improperly using the DM, the DMCA strike feature on YouTube or through Google. So, on one hand, I think it's a very selective case for them to bring forward. Especially as these respondents aren't even residents of the country. I don't think extradition is a strategy here. It seems like Google might just want a default judgment. Who knows, we'll have to see how it plays out, and if you want an update, I will follow it, so hit that subscribe button. But with that being said, if it does go forward, if there is some type of judgment, that puts one little precedent on the board. and that would be significant, and that would be interesting. Now the next news comes with some tips directly from Google. If you haven't already heard... Google Chrome is going to depreciate third party cookie usage in the second half of 2024, so possibly less than a year away. And their stated reasoning for depreciating third party cookies is to create a more transparent ads ecosystem that respects the privacy of consumers. Now with this being said, this is going to remove a huge chunk of data that if you do advertising or anyone in your company or brand relies on Google Ads as part of their strategy, this is going to change things up a little bit. But Google says they want you to be prepared, and particularly, they want you to use Google AI tools to continue to re engage with your audience after third party cookies are depreciated. So, with their AI tools, you'll still be able to do optimized targeting, um, they want you to leverage things like their smart bidding feature. Use performance max once you're eligible for it. If you are a niche website owner or Any other type of web publisher that's using ad servers, you know, you've got like Mediavine or Ezoic and you're running ad displays, Google is advising you to check with your provider to understand their own roadmap for what they're going to be doing once third party cookies are phased out of Chrome. If you work directly through Google Ads, Google is maintaining that most of the work that they're doing will be done on the back end, and as far as you going in and creating an audience, it will be the same user experience for you on the front end. They will be updating this page, so if you don't have a Google account representative or you just want to read this and see how it updates, what the roadmap looks like through Google moving forward, you can grab that link in my Scratchpad. It's called Foundations for Durable Ads Performance from Google Ads Help. Alright, so let's talk about new YouTube features. And if you watched my digest last week, YouTube rolled out something like three dozen new features, a lot of them were AI driven, I'll link to that video in the description and and put a card in the corner, it'll pop down on the screen, so. But they've got two more features. Both driven by AI. The first is comment topics summarized by AI.. And this experiment right now is for the mobile app. And they provide a demonstration here using MrBeast's channel. So you'll see that there's an additional comment sort option for topics. And then under these topics are summaries by AI. Basically they're using AI to curate and summarize a list of engaging and popular conversations that are happening in the comments section. Why this is important? Uh, well, The comment section is a staple feature of YouTube. A lot of users, and I've done it too, will scroll down through the comments and start reading comments before they've even made it seconds into the video. it's a good way to see what other people are saying and share your own thoughts. or see if you're the only one that noticed something or if someone else noticed it too. If you've ever gone and listened to a song that used to be popular, like a hit that came out in, like, 2004, and you go back on YouTube and listen to it, you'll probably see a slew of comments that say, still watching this in 2023, and it's almost like a tradition. So this AI comments feature is an interesting way to summarize what the community is saying, how they're reacting, what the sentiments are. and it's also a great signal, it's a powerful signal to the creator, because they can quickly see did they miss something, do they need to address something. It also makes it easier to join important conversations where you, where a response might be needed, and a quick way for creators to see what they should make videos about next time. The next feature is AI powered Q& A. They call it a conversational AI tool. And what this does, and right now it's only on mobile, but there will be an ask button. So how it works is if you press this ask button, it'll pull up an AI driven chat and you can start asking your questions about the video. There are some prompts that are already curated if you're not sure what to ask, and then the AI will do its best to provide an answer for you. And the cool part is this is all without interrupting the playback of the video. So it's not taking you off screen or taking you away from YouTube for you to start asking these questions and learn more. Now this is really powerful because a lot of people go to YouTube to ask their questions and find answers. especially for content where they might not trust what they believe could be ChatGPT generated content if they were to do a Google search and try to sort through a bunch of blog pages. Additionally, this will reward creators that create high effort, high quality, valuable content, so... With YouTube prioritizing question and answers, or being able to have conversations about specific topics, specific keywords, specific concepts that are within a video, That signals that YouTube is trying to do a better job at figuring out what videos are actually about, which means they can better match the content with the people that want to see it and consume it. And that's a win win for creator and community. If you want to enroll and give these features a test run, all you have to do is go to youtube. com slash new. I'll throw an easy click link in my scratch pad, but I mean, youtube. com slash new. You do have to be a YouTube premium user to try it out, just so you know. But you can try both of those features if you would like to and are a premium user. And we've talked a lot about Google. We've talked a lot about YouTube. I know they're two peas in the same pod, but let's talk about how they move quite differently. Google's John Mueller. Responded to a Reddit post. The Reddit post said, Does SEO have a future? You know, the Reddit user is concerned, I've been working as an SEO executive for the past three years, and I find myself feeling a bit uncertain about the future of SEO. Do you believe that SEO still holds significant potential and a promising future? Or should I consider expanding my skill set into other areas? Now this is Google's John Mueller here, responding. He says, today's SEO is different than the SEO 20 years ago, and it's different from the SEO that will be done in 20 years. A lot of the awesome user focused sites and online businesses will have evolved and still thrive. And a lot of the low effort sites will be digital dust, like it has happened to those from 20 years ago. So, I saw this post, and I was like, well, that's actually reassuring. That's pretty optimistic. And then I was like, but, should I hold my breath? And this is your chance comment. Should I hold my breath? Would you hold your breath? And here's why I say that. Lately I've seen more examples than I would like to see in being shared by, you know, SEO peers on, you know, on SEO Twitter and that community from people that are in the niche website world. And their websites are getting outranked by sites that are ripping their content. They're following, they're copying their exact articles, their sitemaps, essentially, and republishing the same thing, adding nothing new or transformative, but they're getting the ranks. And then you also have examples like this, where, you know, Mike Futia shared this, sorry if I got your name wrong, on November 10th, so just five days ago. And he says, what is going on with this Google product review update? This result ranks number four for the keyword, "best smoker grill combo." And it's literally just a LinkedIn profile page that optimized their LinkedIn URL for the keyword combo. It's just a page. And I love this because it's like a fun way to see what other people are saying, gauge the sentiment, and also get other anecdotes from other people, right? So, here's some of the commentary. We have Joe Youngblood saying, Google told us recently that content length no longer matters. This is what they meant, I guess. Google broke themselves. It's a terrible search engine. That's from Jeremy Koering Mark Schenker says bogus results abound on the first SERP for some keywords, indeed. Can't tell you how many times I've conducted keyword research for informational phrases to also find just profiles with no usefulness to the search intent. Just a monopoly. The Interest Empire notes that other LinkedIn profiles are absolutely killing it in a couple of my niches with pure garbage as well.. But the reason I bring all this up and why I say this Reddit post was huge food for thought for me, like a seven course meal at this point. It's because I look at YouTube and video as one of the most powerful tools for SEO, not just YouTube's on platform search, but how a YouTube video can rank in Google searches, how it can rank in Bing searches, how including a YouTube video in your blog content can help that specific blog post to rank as a URL result in a SERP. I started thinking about... The future of SEO in terms of YouTube And to me, YouTube's a whole nother world, even though it's in the same Peapod as Google. Back to back now on these Little Digest episodes, we've seen that YouTube is proactively innovating to meet the YouTube community, where they will try to go next. So these experimental features like the AI Q& A and the content summaries, and then they recently announced that they want to increase transparency when it comes to AI generated content that's being published to the platform. All of this is great because it serves people who click into a YouTube video that want to consume content hosted on YouTube. You know, people go to YouTube to get an answer quickly, see what others are saying and hear from a real person. And YouTube rewards content that helps provide those three things to its users. So that in turn motivates creators, because creators want to get in front of more viewers. It motivates the creators to answer questions well. Or answer questions that haven't been asked before, asked and answered. To spark conversations. And not something that's just another chat GPT summary of a chat GPT summary of a chat GPT summary. I welcome all disagreement, but I truly think that YouTube treats high effort content better than Google Search does. And thus the motivation is there for creators to continue putting in the effort to make great content. That's a positive feedback loop. We have all these people that feel disenchanted by the efforts they're putting into Google search just for it to go nowhere and to still not understand why it's going nowhere. Especially in comparison to lower effort content that is performing. I know that creators with 34 second YouTube shorts that average more than a million views per short get called low effort and lucky all the time. But that's an inaccurate assessment. Creating content that's enjoyable and replayable enough for YouTube to consistently reward you with a higher velocity, that's a highly scientific and high effort process. It's a skill that has to be refined over time and built and developed. I watched an incredible interview by Creator Science, it's Jay Clouse who brought on Jenny Hoyos as his guest. Jenny Hoyos is a... 18 year old YouTuber who is like breaking the YouTube science and she breaks down with really good, with the help of really great questions by Jay she breaks down her exact process and why it works and how YouTube works. And she does this in 38 minutes and 13 seconds. And I'm going to card to this video. It'll be in the description. It'll be in my scratch pad of all my notes and resources. You should watch this video, even if you don't make YouTube shorts or YouTube videos. There's so much more you can learn from this 38 minute video about audience engagement, winning repeat visits, and writing good content, that it's well worth it no matter why you're here watching this video. So make sure you go and watch that. In fact, if you want to leave right now and dip out of here to go do that, Go ahead. I encourage it. Hit the like button on the way out, but it's, it's phenomenal. but I want someone to watch Jenny and Jay explain the way YouTube works in this 38 minutes and then come back and tell me if Google search has ever been explained with the clarity and granularity in the same way. I know YouTube and Google search are peas in a pod, but it's incredibly interesting how differently they move. With YouTube, I'm confidently opinionated that people can more easily understand the process by which the effort put into YouTube will translate into results and an outcome. And I don't mean that we don't know certain things, tried and true principles work when it comes to Google search. But just the process of understanding it, there's just not clarity, there's not transparency. Like we've got the man Danny Sullivan out here in the trenches. And he does so much to educate us, he really does. but there's just such an air of mystery about Google Search Liaison, and then the corresponding frustration on why low input efforts get a great output in terms of SERP relevance and authority. So I hear about Google Updates all the time, and I don't always know what they actually mean until I see someone on, another peer, another mentor, another creator, share their insights. And then I can only start to piece together bits and pieces of... Maybe if I do this, this will work a little bit more. When it comes to YouTube, I feel like some of the improvements, the ways you can optimize are just so much more clear cut. But I welcome all agreement, disagreement, optimism, pessimism. Does SEO have a future? Where do you see it having the greatest future or not? And if you do go and watch that Jenny Hoyos video on creator science, I would really love to hear, especially if you are not a YouTube person, and if you've never really tried to learn how YouTube works, how the algorithm does its thing. I want, I want to know, like, if in 38 minutes, you feel like you have a good understanding now. They are great at explaining it. but I don't even think the best explainers could explain the mystery that is Google Search in 38 minutes. So. I would love to hear the opinion of someone who feels like they know nothing about YouTube. Anyway, for my last update, this is very quick for anyone that missed my short But when the Facebook back button was broken for many users on the Android mobile app this week, it was because Facebook was doing an update, right? You know that there's always an update on the horizon when something breaks on Facebook. And if you want to see it in action, I will link to this short video. It's less than 60 seconds, so really quick to get a peek at how it looks. But this is great news for anyone that's afraid to use links in social posts on Facebook. We can put that myth to rest. Facebook has cleaned up their mobile browser experience. So when someone clicks a link, it loads very quickly, and there are new features added here along the bottom. You can see highlighted in this orange and purple. For a user to quickly share the content, refresh the content, bookmark the content, and then that icon on the right is a new link history feature. Which means, say I'm on Facebook, and I remember a link that I clicked into a week ago, and I was like, Oh, I wanted to buy that, but I forgot. I can go to my link history, just like your saved post feature on Facebook. You can go to your link history, and look at anything you've looked at in the last 30 days, and pull it back up. Now, that's amazing for users, and for advertisers, and for creators on the platform. sometimes you click a link, you have to go back to Facebook for whatever reason, you're busy, or you click back just to read the post before you go any further, you want to see what the post said, or read the comments and see the comment feedback, and then your Facebook timeline refreshes on you and you weren't ready for it too, and you can never find that post again. Well, you can now go to your link history and get back to that link. If someone clicks links within your webpage, they can stay within the Facebook browser the whole time and keep exploring things on your page without ever having to leave Facebook, but you still get the web traffic metrics... If you've visited something on this channel here more than once, I hope you hit the subscribe button and come back again, you know, I love advocating for a hybrid SEO and social media approach to content marketing. That doesn't mean spamming your blog posts to social media. It means creating engaging posts that, if people want to dive deeper, you can link them to your blog write up, which is usually a longer format deep dive, for them to learn more. It's basically funneling them from people who just want a glimpse that they can get from skimming your social posts to allowing the people that want to read more to go somewhere to read more. But a lot of people were afraid to paste URLs into a Facebook post. You'll see a lot of people"link in the comments." And you don't need to do that. You really do not need to do that. But don't forget, you can hop over to that if you wanna see it in action, what it looks like, Facebook, And then on a closing note, in the spirit of anecdotes and community conversation. There's a great post by Nolan Gore, he says, I'm buying a competitor. We both have great reviews, but I have more and better. What do I do with their Google listing and website? And he says he would pay someone 100 for 30 minutes to advise him on this. Who can he talk to? But there's a whole bunch of comments providing their insights. And I love this comment from Rich Jordan. He says, We've done this a few times. Bullet one. Leave the digital assets and Google business profile up so that the folks looking for it will still find it. Point 2. Forward the phone to your team. Be thoughtful about the talk track and introduce yourself. Point 3. Rewrap or reshirt the team to your brand So that company that you're acquiring, if you keep their team, can do all the work. And then point four is, at some point down the road, merge and rebrand the digital assets, but make this decision based on volume of branded search traffic for the acquired company. It should slow down. So basically, when, when it slows down enough, that's when you should start combining the brands and stepping away from, after most people have transitioned. And then Tony Taylor comments to build on it saying great advice, but with the acquired outfits website, I'd jump on the rebrand ASAP. Just adjust homepage and contact info. Something like, quote, "Two lawn care leaders are now one. Welcome to Top Choice Lawn Care." so I will link to this as well in my Scratchpad. Um, posts like this are great reading. They will give you ideas, even if you're not trying to buy someone's business or wondering what to do about someone else's Google My Business profile. But just the concepts and ideas will get your brain going. So I wanted to share that light bulb with you. And keep in mind, if you were to go over here and interact with a post like this, you'll start seeing more content and more conversations like this in your own feed. So be intentional about the content you interact with, and curate your feed to something that can be an enjoyable and learning feed every time you're scrolling mindlessly. Cause that's when I come across some of the greatest stuff now. But that's gonna be all for now, guys. We got through a rundown of some major news, some cases that might become big deals. Maybe they won't, we'll see. We got to see some cool new features that I hope you put into practice. And you're aware now that third party cookies are going to kind of be depreciated, probably not only by Google Chrome, the same news might be followed by others. If third party cookies are relevant in any way to your business now or will be in the future, keep that in mind. And news can move a mile a minute sometimes, right? So, if there's another thing happening that you think is relevant you just want to talk about, throw it in the comments. especially if you have a personal story, a win, a success for your own business, like Did you finally set up your Instagram page? Did you publish a TikTok video this week? Did you get a sale? Did you clear out your email inbox? Did you have a good conversation with somebody about something? The comments are always open, so. Thanks so much for tuning in. Check the description. For, you know, my Scratchpad or blog post about all these news topics, and important links to videos and resources mentioned. And until next time, you guys have a good one. Take care.