Tuesday, April 22

🌟 Today’s Highlights:

• Google Ads made a big change to its unfair advantage policy

• Instagram is testing a Collaborative Stories feature

• Did you know you can hire the same team behind this newsletter for yours?

• 📊 Stat of the Day: U.S. search revenue grew nearly 16% year-over-year in 2014 to $102.9 billion. (Source: PwC)

• 💡 Today’s Insight: Google AI Overviews are hurting click-through rates

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💡 Today’s Insight 💡

Google AI Overviews are hurting click-through rates

🗞 TL;DR - Two new studies agree that, while citations in Google’s AI Overviews result in higher-quality clicks, the feature does steal clicks from organic search results. Here’s what the two new data studies from SEO tool provider Ahrefs and performance agency Amsive have to say…

💡 Insight - According to the two studies, here’s how AI Overviews have decreased click-through rate (CTR) for traditional organic listings:

• Ahrefs: 34.5% drop in position 1 CTR when AI Overviews were present

• Amsive: Average 15.49% CTR drop with much larger losses in specific cases (ex. -37.04% when combined with featured snippets)

AI Overviews are much more likely to trigger on non-branded queries – the terms with the largest CTR drops were:

• Ahrefs: Focused exclusively on informational intent (99.2% overlap with AI Overviews)

• Amsive: -19.98% CTR decline on non-branded keywords

Google’s AI Overviews push organic results further down, minimizing visibility for solidly ranking pages. There was a 27.04% CTR drop for keywords not in the Top 3 positions, according to Amsive.

Lastly, branded keywords are less likely to trigger AI Overviews (only 4.79%), but when they do they get a +18.68% CTR boost.

⚡️ Today’s Headlines ⚡️

↕️ Google will now allow relevant top Search ads to participate in bottom ads auction. The update to its unfair ads policy clarifies that this is not double serving and helps to reduce friction and improve ad relevance.

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👯 Instagram is testing a Collaborative Stories feature. The new Stories element, called “Storylines,” allow friends that you follow back to link a new, related story to your story, essentially building a narrative.

👀 What’s Tanking Your Conversion Rate? Experts from Business Builders & DoWhatWorks found 5 hidden culprits. Learn what they are TOMORROW by registering for this free webinar →

🏷️ Instagram is testing a new message alongside ads. The message showcases how many posts have tagged the account that posted the ad, presumably helping with discoverability and trust building.

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