ChatGPT Code Interpreter is incredible | Potential unconfirmed Google update | Episode 285 - May 8, 2023

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MJ prompt: [link to image of me] pixar cartoon of the woman in this picture being incredibly excited about AIChatGPT’s Code Interpreter is mind blowing. It can take data and instantly create graphs and other visualizations. Geoffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI is concerned for our future. There is possibly an unannounced Google update going on. Also, I’m terribly excited about Google pulling information from videos without relying on structured data.

Important to know this week

Also, SEO Tips and News, AI News, ChatGPT uses, Local SEO, and SEO Jobs.

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ChatGPT Code interpreter is mind blowing

Some people are seeing a new plugin called Code Interpreter. It allows ChatGPT to create Python code and run it inside of your chat. It’s worth watching the demo video:

The user asks ChatGPT to plot the function 1/sin(x)and it creates a graph. They then ask, “zoom in to a range of x values between 0 and 1” and other questions of the data. ChatGPT is able to quickly create a new image. 

In the second demo, a user uploads a csv called music.csv. and asks questions like, “what are the columns”, “how many rows does it have”. In this case there were 10,000. Then “can you run some basic visualization. Within seconds it creates these:

Code interpreter

Then the user goes into more detail asking for analysis of only years with over 100 songs, and “let’s find a quantity that is most positively correlated with time.” ChatGPT creates a scatter plot of song loudness vs year and determines an answer.

The third example is the image interpreter. An image was uploaded and ChatGPT interpreted it.

Then, the user asks for modifications and a new image is created.

I cannot wait to play with this when analyzing data exported from GSC. Also, imagine when we can take a picture of anything and then use the power of ChatGPT to analyze it.

More examples of Code Interpreter in use:

You can join the waitlist to try Code Interpreter here.

2) Geoffrey Hinton’s interview in the New York Times

This NYT article interviewed Geoffrey Hinton, the man who is widely recognized as the “godfather of deep learning.” He worked for many years on many of the techniques that have laid the foundation for modern AI. He left Google recently so he could be more free to talk about his concerns over the risks of AI. 

Dr. Hinton was the man who built a neural network that learned to distinguish cats after looking at a large number of cat photos. His work has been instrumental to all who use AI today.

Until recently, he has maintained that the way AI works is powerful, yet inferior to how the human brain handles language. He has now changed his mind.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

He spoke highly of Google, saying that they were being a “proper steward” of AI, but that Microsoft’s rapid moves with releasing Bing and ChatGPT to the public have locked the tech giants in an unstoppable competition. I feel that Google has been moving towards a completely AI driven search engine for years now…and wanted to move slower. But Microsoft and ChatGPT have created a new urgency.

When I first read that Dr. Hinton is afraid of what AI could do, I have to admit I felt anxious. There is so much we don’t know about what will happen as the world learns what can be accomplished with AI. I have decided to be vigilant and aware of the risks, but to do all I can to focus on the opportunities to do good with AI. I know many of my friends are struggling because of fear. We do not like change and uncertainty. I came to a personal realization that these changes are going to happen whether I have fear or excitement, so we might as well try and enjoy ourselves in this wild time.

Dr. Demi Hassabis on society adapting to AI:

3) Many sites with significant ranking changes May 1-2

There appears to be some changes happening with Google’s algorithms. Most of the sites I monitor do not have much change, but many in the community are seeing losses.

SER article

We are seeing a number of changes in the search results as Google tests many different things which very possibly are for preparation for Magi, the upcoming AI driven search engine. SERP changes like Explore, Perspectives, Visual Grids and much more are being seeing much more often now.

I expect that this is not a single algorithm update but rather a whole series of changes Google is making. It will likely be difficult for most sites to understand what is happening as many of these changes are not going to be picked up by keyword tracking tools.

4) SERP Changes - Grid like results, Perspectives, See tickets

People are seeing more grid-like results on Google.

Barry Schwartz tweeted that it seems that more international folks are seeing SERP features that previously were only seen in the US. I’m seeing topic filter bubbles and more SERP annotations on sites I’m reviewing. I used to have to switch to US searches to see these. 

I saw several of these new perspectives featured snippets for clients this week:

More sightings of a “see tickets” button in the search results for local attractions.

5) Google pulling pros and cons from video content - to me this is a big deal

Google is showing pros and cons pulled from video content. In July of 2022, Google first started showing pros and cons annotations in the search results. They displayed this information for pages that didn’t have schema markup for pros and cons. They were able to identify which parts of the content were talking about pros and cons and display those in the search results.

Since then, I have been seeing more and more types of annotations in the search results, filled with information extracted from pages that could be helpful to a searcher:

SERP Annotations SERP Annotations SERP Annotations

Why is this such a big deal? 

Allow me to ramble a little. The better Google gets at extracting important information from pages the closer we get to an AI based search engine that can answer any question really well.

I have been thinking a lot about marketing. For all of my life, the choices that I make have been influenced by marketing. I always picked Coke in the Pepsi challenge. I still rapidly sing out loud, “Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun” each time I think of a Big Mac. 

You didn’t need me to tell you who those brands were because they have spent billions of dollars on marketing. 

We buy things from brands we know. We go to stores whose names we recognize. We listen to music from artists who have been promoted by an agent. 

Marketing.

Just now, David had a question about his tomatoes. You should see these things. We started them several weeks earlier than recommended just to see if we could do it. Hopefully these beauties make it another few weeks before we can plant them:

so many tomato plants

He has been searching Youtube to learn more about tomatoes and landed on The Epic Gardner’s videos. Kevin Espiritu’s videos are so incredibly helpful. He has spent years working hard to develop his brand. You can learn a lot about marketing from watching what he does. The amount of work Kevin puts into marketing is unreal. I believe AI will change this so that the Kevins of the world will be found more because of the experience and helpful content they share and less because of marketing efforts to be known as a brand. Creators will be freed up to create rather than promote. 

It’s not just marketing that makes his videos a good choice for searchers. It’s a combination of marketing plus an ability to share his gardening experiences in a way that people find valuable. 

Experience is a super power.

Let’s go back to this newly seen feature where Google can extract pros and cons from video. This will likely continue to evolve so that Google can extract more and more from video content. Just like we are seeing with new SERP annotations appearing, we’ll likely see Google be able to extract more and more helpful information from videos.  

Google has been showing us timestamps of key moments in videos in the search results for a while now. They are able to determine which general concepts are covered in a video which is very cool. I did not create timestamps for this video. Google figured out which concepts I was talking about.

concepts in videos

This reminds me of what Google said about MUM in 2018. 

Whether it’s with MUM, or other AI technology, soon, Google will soon be able to extract whatever it is that is important and helpful to a searcher from any piece of text, image or video in such a nuanced way. They should be able to find the exact thing that answers any question we have.

At this time, Google’s documentation on their systems says MUM is not currently used for general ranking in Search beyond improving featured snippets and Covid-19 vaccine information. 

But soon, Google is about to launch a completely AI driven search engine, Magi. I believe they’ve been innovating towards this product for many years now.

Google on MUM

I expect that soon, when we search for something like, “best tomatoes to plant for making sauces”, Google will craft an answer based on everything it has access to….

Epic Gardener mentioned that his Roma tomatoes make an incredible sauce, and this gardener who lives closer to you says she uses this kind…this local gardener shared a recipe for sauce he made with garden tomatoes here and he recommends this type…”

I believe we will soon be in an age where people seek out information from those with experience over those who they recognize simply because of brand marketing. Sometimes that’s the same thing. I might recognize that Best Buy is a brand that has experience in selling electronics. When I want information on a new product I want to buy, I may seek that brand out. But when I want to know specific questions like, “If I buy Mario Kart with the wheel things as controllers, can I only play it on a Wii or do I need another system?”, Google might surface a video from a random person who is sharing their experience on just that.

It will be able to surface a video, and the exact spot where the information you need is.

Soon, content that does well will be content that truly has a good answer for searchers rather than content that has been well marketed. 

We are going to see some really good content being created. And I believe Google knows that the way to reward creators for making this content is reader revenue manager. I have shared more in the subscriber content on how I plan to be using reader revenue manager and sharing my journey as I soon publish courses and other resources.

As I typed this, I saw this new SEL article:

Google no longer requires video descriptions as part of structured data

They still recommend adding structured data to your videos to help them understand what they’re about. But it sure sounds like they are getting better and better at understanding content without our help.

GA4 Countdown

Google really wants us to know the deadline is soon.

Joe Hall on how he is using GA4 for SEO:

 

SEO Tips and News

This is a good article on E-E-A-T by Rachel Handley at Semrush.

Google tweeted a reminder that understanding what the Quality Raters’ Guidelines say about E-E-A-T can help us align with the signals they use to rank content:

Glenn Gabe’s article on the April reviews update

There is a drop in the number of FAQ and video snippets being seen on mobile.

Here’s a discussion on indexing issues for a site with multiple millions of pages “all written by humans and with a lot of depth and expertise.” I would argue that it would be very difficult to have millions of pages that are considered substantially more valuable than other pages in the search results as described in Google’s helpful content documentation.

Barry Adams has updated his guide to Google News SEO.

Google made changes to their recommendations on using cross domain canonicalization for syndication. 

https://twitter.com/badams/status/1653666919851999232?s=20

Here’s a thread where people are discussing how close Ahrefs estimates of traffic are. It seems to vary. I have found that the actual traffic number estimates are off for most sites, but the trends are good. They usually can tell me if a site has been impacted by a Google update.

John Mueller said once again that it’s not a good idea to disavow links based on metrics a tool can give you.

AI News

The US government is meeting to discuss AI safeguards. They have been considering regulations that would require AI models to go through a certification process before they are released. 

Bard may soon be on the homepage of Pixel devices. The article speculates it’s possible being a Pixel owner will allow you to skip a waitlist. Muahahahahaha…..I am a Pixel owner.

Britain has launched a probe into ChatGPT style AI as regulators grow concerned by risks.

Bill Gates says AI chatbots will teach kids to read within 18 months.

IBM is pausing hiring for jobs as they automate more things with AI. For example, mundane tasks like moving employees between departments, or HR tasks like evaluating productivity could be affected.

Adobe published a document on how AI will redefine eCommerce: Real time merchandising, dynamic content creation, enhanced site search and soon adaptive fulfillment based on factors like weather and shipping.

In this study, they took medical questions from Reddit and got answers from a doctor and also ChatGPT. Doctors evaluated the responses and 79% of the time preferred ChatGPT.

Khan Academy is piloting a version of GPT called Khanmigo. It can guide students through math problems, and much more.I am so excited for how AI is going to change education.

Walmart has been using its own AI for negotiating prices.

Here’s an interesting article about a leaked internal Google document that claims that the race to do incredible things with AI is not going to be won by Google or Microsoft, but rather, individuals like you and me who are playing with open source options to use AI. Here is more on OpenLLAMA.

Bing image creator now supports multiple languages.

Ethan Mollick uploaded public data to ChatGPT and asked it to create two competing hypotheses it could answer with the data. It wrote an academic paper that’s not too bad!

Crypto.com released a new chatbot called Amy that can help users learn about the crypto industry with near real-time information.

ChatGPT is allowing doctors to accurately decode human thoughts.

ChatGPT decoding human thoughts

Every brand should have its own knowledge base in the age of AI:

The things people are creating with generative AI are amazing. It is mind blowing to think that we have only really started playing with this technology for a few months.

Snoop Dog is impressed by AI:

https://twitter.com/pkedrosky/status/1653955254181068801?s=20

 

ChatGPT uses

We moved a computer into our kitchen as I am finding ChatGPT so incredibly helpful. Before sitting down to write newsletter this morning I asked, “What can I do with muesli?” It gave me a bunch of ideas.

I’m getting better at using ChatGPT to help me find music to listen to while I work. Try these prompts:

I’d encourage you to be trying things with ChatGPT and MidJourney as often as you can. The more you practice, you’ll learn how to prompt. And here’s the thing…nobody knows what they are doing when they are prompting. 

Last night I was struggling to create an image in MidJourney that was a cross between a cat and a dog. It was the first time someone in the server sent me a message 😂

I failed a lot.

I found I got better results by being a bit more creative. 

I think this is the best one.

If you can make a better cat-dog – an animal that people will argue with over which it is, send it to me! I am going to use this in an upcoming presentation. 

I had an interesting conversation with ChatGPT about how my feelings on ChatGPT are evolving. I had prompted this to get ChatGPT to shorten it…but instead it responded and started a great conversation.

 

It might seem a little unnerving to talk to ChatGPT like you would a human. The thing is, it reflects the tone you speak to it in. This is nothing magical. It’s just math that is trying to predict the way you want it to talk.

Here’s a thread on using Bing AI chat to find a site’s duplicate content.

Google translate, but using a clone of your voice:

https://twitter.com/aleemrehmtulla/status/1653010980232634368?s=20

MidJourney Tips

Use MidJourney to create colouring pages for kids.

The prompt for the image I used for this newsletter: https://s.mj.run/vDVEZ1–_UI pixar cartoon of the woman in this picture being incredibly excited about AI

Other things I found interesting

Canada’s Bill C-18, the Online News Act  is proposed legislation that is worth paying attention to. According to Global News this law would require companies like Google to pay Canadian media companies for “linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.” A few months ago Google stopped showing news to a percentage of Canadian searchers as a test of what things might look like if this law should pass.  

Vice Media Group (behind Vice and Motherboard) is preparing to file for bankruptcy

A WordPress vulnerability is affecting sites using the WPCode – Insert Headers and Footers plugin.

Google published a blog post called the beginning of the end of the password. Passkeys are a new way to sign into apps and websites. This sounds like something we will hear a lot more about soon.

Local SEO

Some are seeing “chat with a live agent” in their GBP. There’s a discussion here amongst local SEO’s on how to get it.

Interesting local case study:

GBP services are now showing on desktop in a new design:

Does hiding your address kill your rankings? Many are saying this is causing big losses for local SAB’s. 

Adding GBP attributes can help with rankings.

SEO Jobs

Looking for a new SEO job? SEOjobs.com is a job board curated by real SEOs for SEOs. Take a look at five of the hottest SEO job listing this week (below) and sign up for the weekly job listing email only available at SEOjobs.com.

On-Site / Tech SEO Manager ~ SearchTides ~ $65k-$75k ~ Remote (US)
Off-Site SEO Strategist ~ SearchTides ~ $60k-$85k ~ Remote (US)
SEO Strategist ~ Loganix ~ $25-28/hr ~ Remote (Washington, US)
SEO Manager ~ Benzinga ~ Remote (US)

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This week’s content:

  • Why does this site rank without SEO? It’s helpful!
  • Why I’m likely going to BlueSky (but still using Twitter)
  • Using Reader Revenue Manager to sell my courses
  • Detailed thoughts on neural networks and Google’s algorithms

I will be sharing more and more on my new process for thoroughly assessing sites’ past, present and potential future in the age of AI search in upcoming Subscriber content.

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