Holy guacamole 😱


Every Wednesday / 31st July 2024 / goodsignals.com​
​

Weekly Trivia: Which country has the most monthly active WhatsApp users?


Happy Avocado Day (and Harry Potter's birthday, muggles)! After the hijacking incident last week, I am now back in the editor's seat bringing you the latest edition of The Signal. Goodbye, Mike! [Just joking... the boss is watching from behind...]
​
It's the Olympics season again. According to Google Trends, new sports including surfing, skateboarding and breaking are trending. Want to know how many people are interested in your favourite game? The full report is here.
​
We are having a busy week, with lots of new products to unpack. Google has just rolled out new augmented reality features in Maps that can transport you back to Paris in the 1900s. It is also experimenting with replacing the heading for X (Twitter) posts with "Latest Posts from" in Search. Meta introduced the SAM2 model, which allows real-time object segmentation in videos and images. OpenAI released a hyperrealistic voice assistant following the Scarlette Johansson debacle and is now testing SearchGPT, while WordPress has partnered with the company's competitor Perplexity to enhance content visibility for its users.
​
Joyce, editor at The Signal
​
P.S. The answer to our trivia? India - the country has more than 500 million monthly active WhatsApp users, which is around one-fourth of its worldwide users. But recently, Meta has been pushing its marketing in other regions, too, such as the US.


​

​Google: Core Update Isn't Extremely Far Away As Publishers Grow Concerned - Google's John Mueller responded on LinkedIn again to complaints about image thumbnails not showing up in Search. He recommends people wait for the next core update. By Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable.

​How Blogging Builds Trust and Brand Loyalty in the Age of AI - Don't be misled by those who say blogging is dead - it is not. Blogs can enhance brand awareness and strengthen your business in the long term. Learn how to build an effective blog here. By Ron Lieback on Search Engine Land.

​Enterprise SEO Challenges and Mistakes You Need To Overcome - Working with enterprise clients and earning their trust are no easy feat, so let's learn about the Dos and Don'ts ahead of the game. The outcome can be extremely rewarding if you play your cards right. By Patrick Stox on Ahrefs Blog.

​Your New AI Friend is Almost Ready to Meet You - A new AI friend app is under development. Unlike Replika and Character, it will come with a wearable pendant. Would you give it a try? By David Pierce on The Verge.

​What I Learned About Search From Listening to 2 Musicians - What video made Moz's Miriam Ellis watch again and again and take nine pages of notes? In a viral interview on YouTube, music educator Rick Beato was joined by jazz pianist Ted Gioia to discuss AI's effect on culture - but the implication is way broader than just the music industry. Read Miriam's summary here. By Miriam Ellis on Moz.

​Website Migration Checklist: 11 Steps for Success - If you are looking to rebrand your business or scale up the site, website migration will be an unavoidable step. Here is a foolproof plan of how you should do it from setting up hosting to post-migration monitoring. By Ludwig Makhyan on Search Engine Land.

​Instagram Creators can now Make AI Doppelgangers to Chat With Their Followers - Another rollout from Meta - now you can chat with Tylor Swift on Instagram. The new feature is not only for creators, as Meta will allow anyone to customise an AI character on the app. By Karissa Bell on Engagdet.

​Google Advises Caution With AI Generated Answers - Google's Gary Illyes cautions against AI-generated answers as their accuracy can be questionable. While LLMs can give contextually relevant answers to questions, the relevance isn't always the same as what users ask. By Roger Montti on Search Engine Journal.

​Google May Rely Less On Hreflang, Shift To Auto Language Detection - As hinted by the Search Relations team, Google may rely less on the hreflang annotations which specify a webpage's language and move to automatic language detection. This will potentially make multilingual SEO easier. By Matt G. Southern on Search Engine Journal.

​Attribution is Dying. Clicks are Dying. Marketing is Going Back to the 20th Century - Watch Rand Fishkin blowing your mind in this 7-minute video on how marketing works and doesn't work in 2024. Bonus is a case study of how a risotto rice brand stole Americans' hearts. By Rand Fishkin on Sparktoro.


Joyce Yang,

editor at The Signal


Last thing.

We hope you enjoy this email from Good Signals. However, if you no longer wish to receive any further communications from us, you can simply unsubscribe below.

Good Signals, Studio 1, The Bottle Factory, 12 Ossory Road, London, Greater London SE1 5AN
​
​P.S. You can update your preferences here.

The Signal by Good Signals

Your website is like a dog. That dog needs love, care and attention. Go on, sign up to The Signal and discover how to whip up some Scooby Snacks for your prize pooch.

Read more from The Signal by Good Signals

14th March 2025 / goodsignals.com Good morning from a cold and cloudy London,Just a quick update - last night, Google started rolling out a core algorithm update. It’s the first of 2025 and is expected to take about two weeks to complete. These updates target content globally, rewarding genuinely useful and engaging material while deprioritising content created solely for search performance.You may notice ranking and traffic fluctuations during this period, but it’s best to hold off on making...

Just as I hit send on that email, Google announced the December 2024 Spam Update. This update is rolling out globally and applies to all languages. It targets websites that breach Google’s spam policies, and the rollout is expected to take up to a week to complete.It seemed important to flag this before you wind down for the holidays.Thanks, Mike 19th December 2024 / goodsignals.com SEO Trivia: What is the most searched-for Christmas film? Answer. Last night, just six days after it began,...

19th December 2024 / goodsignals.com SEO Trivia: What is the most searched-for Christmas film? Answer. Last night, just six days after it began, Google's December 2024 Core Update completed its rollout! Short but impactful, this update caused quite a stir, with significant surges and notable drops in rankings, and even some reversals of changes made during November's core update. While it’s tough news for sites that dropped after recent gains, it’s great for those that rebounded after earlier...