2024 has been a wild ride and marketing is rapidly changing. Keeping up with the trends is critical to staying ahead of your competition. Here are some hot topics so far this year –
Generative AI in Search:
Is it the greatest thing ever or just a fad? Like most things, it’s a little bit of both. On the bad side, Google pulled most of SGE in search last month due to some very serious response issues (e.g. please don’t swallow any rocks). Google also pulled endless scroll around the same time so it’s likely SGE and scroll were hitting advertising dollars. ChatGPT continues to have issues with hallucinations and poor responses on more complex prompts.
On the good side, when it’s right, it’s extremely helpful. ChatGPT has proven to speed up search and finding. Instead of remembering search operators and jumping through hoops to get to an answer, a finely crafted prompt can get you an answer much more quickly.
Visual Search:
This rapidly growing part of search is expected to explode as we move into 2025. Simple take a picture of something, circle it on your phone, and then search comes back with details about what you circled. It’s going to be critical to include high quality images with diverse angle so various reverse search engines like Bing Visual Search can find you. Don’t forget to include well crafted image metadata, structured data/schema, and image sitemaps.
Authenticity and Authority:
Everyone who jumped into using AI to create content had the door slammed on them with Google’s big update. It’s more important than ever to create high quality original content. Build our authority by collaborating with industry experts and building a community in your niche. Honesty and transparency helps too – if you’re wrong, own it and find a path forward that builds your credibility.
It’s been a fast first half of the year and it’s building up to some more big changes in marketing before the year is out.