SEO & AI Update: Google Ups Gemini AI Caps, Bing’s New AI Search, & LinkedIn Gets Comment Metrics

Welcome to the second edition of the Previsible SEO and AI Update, where we explore the growing intersection of search and AI and how the two can effectively join to elevate how we search for and find key business answers.

The combined SEO and AI space continues its evolution, and this week brings us industry shifts from Google, Microsoft’s Bing and LinkedIn, along with fascinating new AI report and study data. I hope you’ll find professional benefits in the ten top SEO and AI news items of the week, and enjoy taking a peek at a few of the areas on the fascinating periphery of the two, including looks at both the history of search technology and its future.

Let’s jump right in.

TOP 10 SEO & AI UPDATES OF THE WEEK

Google’s Free Gemini Code Assist Arrives With Sky-High Usage Limits

Google’s latest maneuver to bring greater exposure to its AI initiatives came this week as the search giant began allowing open access to its Gemini Code Assist AI programming tool — previously available only to its enterprise users — including a hefty 180,000 code completions per month limit. Ars Technica

SEO & AI IMPACT: The search industry’s influx of AI has seen a growing number of SEO professionals tapping the technology for coding — either to augment traditional programming methods, to optimize or audit code, or in some cases to try programming for the first time within an SEO framework. Google’s expanded release of Gemini Code Assist offers the latest glimpse into the search leader’s evolving AI plans, and may play a role in attracting more search professional to Google’s premier coding offering.

Microsoft Quietly Tests ‘AI Search Mode’ For Bing

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has begun testing a new form of AI-enhanced search that is more prominently a part of the company’s search experience, featuring greater reliance on sources and citations than traditional search links, and including elements of text motion meant to resemble the prompt responses of popular generative AI tools. MediaPost

SEO & AI IMPACT: Should all or some of Microsoft’s experimental AI Search Mode eventually roll out to Bing’s primary search experience, SEO professionals would have a slew of new areas to target when optimizing for Bing. Even if none of these test elements ultimately end up in Bing, these types of experiments offer valuable insight into the vast range of variables search engine firms consider when delivering AI-driven results.

LinkedIn Rolls Out Comment Impression Counts

Microsoft-owned LinkedIn has begun rolling out a new engagement metric in the form of a tally of how many impressions comments on the professional social networks have garnered, presently only visible to the user who has posted a particular comment. Social Media Today

SEO & AI IMPACT: Having any new engagement data on LinkedIn — even if not yet included in the platform’s own analytics dashboard — can offer marketers and search professionals a new angle on which types of community generated social comments are driving engagement. Company page administrators should soon be able to view a combined comment impression count for the page, while third-party analytics tools that interface with LinkedIn could eventually make use of comment engagement data should the platform add the new metric to its dashboard.

Gartner Survey Reveals Over a Quarter of Marketing Organizations Have Limited or No Adoption of GenAI for Marketing Campaigns

84 percent of the highest-performing marketing organizations have made AI a part of their regular creative workflow — a notably larger portion than the 77 percent seen among all marketing organizations, while some 47 percent reported seeing sizable benefits from adopting generative AI for campaign reporting and evaluation, according to newly-published survey data from Gartner of interest to search marketers. Gartner

SEO & AI IMPACT: As chief marketing officers increasingly report better campaign results through the use of AI, details of how the most successful organizations are using the technology in marketing and SEO will put the spotlight on both which AI tools are driving success — and perhaps more importantly — how creative professionals are best making use of these tools. AI tool usage is often an ongoing cat-and-mouse race, however an increasing number of studies are showing that the greatest differentiator is often the human putting them to use.

Facebook: Sorry, But Live Videos Will Be Deleted After 30 Days

Meta-owned Facebook recently announced that it will for the first time delete the entirety of content in one of its video formats, in the form of its Facebook Live videos, which have changed from enjoying an unlimited amount of time on the social platform to just 30 days. PC Magazine

SEO & AI IMPACT: Marketers and the SEO community join Facebook users worldwide in having one month to archive their Facebook Live video content — in many cases representing nearly a decade of video — by downloading it or transferring it to non-Facebook cloud storage. SEO professionals may face clients in diverse business sectors affected by the platform’s move to delete Facebook Live video after 30 days, as the format has been widely used by everyone from SEO subject matter experts and marketing conferences to funeral homes. Whether the largely unexpected shift by Facebook will be a harbinger of further new content limitations on the platform remains to be seen.

Use of AI by PR Pros Continues to Rise

75 percent of public relations professionals have said that they were using generative AI during 2024 — up 11 percent from the previous year, and a full 47 percent more than shown in March 2023 data, while the number of those expecting to begin using GenAI stood at 13 percent, down from 23 percent in 2023 — two of several findings of interest to marketing and SEO professionals contained in recently-released report data. MarketingCharts.

SEO & AI IMPACT: SEO and public relations share a long and often-intertwined history, and this latest report data shows that GenAI usage is expanding among professionals in both fields. Practitioners in each area are likely to find new areas of overlap — and potential business gains — as both see increasing use of AI technology.

AI and Customer Experience — How Marketers Can Balance Technology with the Human Touch

Despite growing AI tool usage, a scant nine percent of organizations have been considered AI-mature, and while this figure is bound to rise over time, attempting to implement AI without adequate systems and technology teams in place presents sizable challenges, and Ad Age recently took a look at the ups and downs of achieving the right AI and human balance. Ad Age

SEO & AI IMPACT: The swift rise in poor-quality online content generated entirely with AI tools has kept SEO professionals busy, as the industry finds new ways to help businesses stand out in a sea of inauthenticity. As the SEO field shifts to meet these challenges, savvy optimizers harness the power of AI to create authentic content that answers key business questions in ways that purely AI-generated content cannot.

Professional Artists Viewed as More Creative than AI Programs [Report]

AI-generated artwork output created when prompted by professionals artists had significantly greater creativity ratings than output from novice artists, while purely-AI-created artwork generated when given the same instruction as both groups was ranked as being more creative than that of novice artists — one of several findings of interest to AI professionals contained in newly-published research data. American Psychological Association

SEO & AI IMPACT: The study data has highlighted the importance of word choice among AI prompting, as the semantic distance — a measure of how different the words used in prompts were — of experienced artists was shown to result in more creative AI image generation. While the idea of SEO professionals being prompt-whisperers may have caused a bit of a chuckle when generative AI first entered the mainstream, there’s little doubt today of the importance it plays in many areas of technology.

LinkedIn Highlights the Importance of Human Connection in AI Content [Infographic]

Some 67 percent of marketers have said that they feel positive about the possibilities of generative AI, with two out of three marketers having indicated they currently used GenAI tools, according to newly-published LinkedIn study data of interest to SEO professionals. Social Media Today

SEO & AI IMPACT: As society’s view of AI continues to shift — with half of the general population still saying they don’t completely trust AI-driven innovation according to Edelman’s most recently Trust Barometer study — successful SEO professionals stand to gain from understanding the emotional landscape, as LinkedIn’s latest report details.

Workers’ Views of AI Use in the Workplace [Pew Study]

52 percent of U.S. workers have indicated worrying about the ways that AI may change the workplace in the future, while some 36 percent said that they found the same AI technology made them feel hopeful, with workers in the youngest demographic group the most likely to feel overwhelmed by how AI will impact work in coming years, according to recently-released survey data. Pew Research Center

SEO & AI IMPACT: The new Pew data presents a helpful breakdown of who is feeling the most optimistic when it comes to having a greater AI presence in the workplace, and which demographic groups are the most apprehensive — all representing helpful data that marketers and SEO professionals can use to tailor campaigns and optimization efforts to particular audiences.

SEARCH & TECHNOLOGY HISTORY & FUTURE:

The Future of Quantum Computing Is Modular — IEEE Spectrum

A New Microsoft Chip Could Lead to More Stable Quantum Computers — MIT Technology Review

Google’s Quantum Simulator Reveals New Facet of Magnetism — IEEE Spectrum

VOICES OF SEARCH PODCAST LATEST EPISODES:

Akvile DeFazio, president at AKvertise, recently sat down with our chief executive Jordan Koene to share industry insight in a new Voices of Search podcast episode entitled, “Creative Strategies for Designing Scroll-Stopping Social Media Ads.”

FRIDAY FIVE SEO & AI FAVORITES TO FOLLOW:

• Michael King
• Lily Ray
• Rand Fishkin
• Sarah McDowell
• Rebecca Murtagh

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE LATEST SEO & AI UPDATES

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Have you come across a key news item exploring the intersection between SEO and AI that we haven’t covered yet? If so, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

Thanks for taking the time to join us for this week’s edition of the Previsible SEO & AI Update, and we hope that you’ll return again next Friday for another array of the most up-to-date and relevant SEO and AI industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page for even more timely insight.