This vodka brand—Three Olives—created The Generager. It generates custom party rager themes. What was the recommended attire for my rager, you ask? Regency dresses made from rock band t-shirts. And honestly, that really fits the bill if you know me.

…Except I have only tasted alcohol once in my life and that was when my French bartender gave my virgin mojito to a disappointed gentleman and gave me the gentleman’s beer. So throwing a rager isn’t exactly my MO. But I thought the whole “let’s generate custom party ideas for people” was a cool attention grabber for this brand.

Hayley

​GOOGLE’S ROUTINELY UPDATING HOW THEY RANK SEARCH RESULTS​

This broad core update started October 5. It’s the third one from Google this year, and it’ll take a week or two to kick into full effect. May the organic traffic odds be in your favor.

​IS GOOGLE “CHANGING” QUERIES TO SHOW SHOPPING-FOCUSED SERPs?​

An internal Google slide about semantic matching was shown during Google’s antitrust case. And Megan Gray, previously an attorney for the FTC, wrote an opinion piece about the slide in Wired. Buuuut, Wired took down the piece, deciding “the story does not meet our editorial standards.” So, that sets the stage for the following info.

Megan explained that people don’t see much wrong with using semantic matching when it means showing search results for synonyms (i.e. results for novel appear when you search book). However, she claimed that this new info meant something more like this:

​GOOGLE CLEANING UP SPAM IN SEARCH RESULTS​

“This spam update aims to clean up several types of spam that our community members reported in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages,” says Googley Google.

​UPDATES TO GA4 FEATURE HELPS CONFORM TO PRIVACY LAWS​

The Data redaction feature in Google Analytics 4 helps prevent accidentally sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google.

​GOOGLE HAS NEW REQUIREMENTS FOR PEOPLE SENDING BULK EMAILS​

Starting Feb 2024, If you send 5000+ emails in one day, and you want Gmail emails to get what you’re sending, then you need to: (1) authenticate your email, (2) provide a one-click unsubscribe option, and (3) meet Google’s spam rate threshold.

​META’S GENERATIVE AI FEATURES ARE COMING TO ALL ADVERTISERS​

Meta’s been testing these ad features and now they’re becoming widely available. The features are: (1) background generation, (2) image expansion, and (3) text variation.

​GOOGLE’S CREATING A PERSONALIZED ASSISTANT WITH AI & BARD​

This new “assistant” sounds like they’re aiming for something a few steps closer to Iron Man’s Jarvis. And it’ll be powered by—yooooou guessed it—AI! plus Bard. The new Assistand with Bard could help you make your grocery list or find info tucked away deep in your inbox. It’s only available to beta testers right now.

​AMAZON REPORTEDLY USED A SECRET ALGORITHM TO JACK UP PRICES​

Listen, where is the gOoD nEWs?!?!? But yeah, good ol’ Wall Street Journal found that Amazon used a secret algorithm (goodness gracious) to figure out how high it could raise prices before its competitors stopped increasing their prices as well.

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OTHER UPDATES

​FAQ rich results show on 17% of Google SERPs, down from 54%​

​Apple considered acquiring Microsoft’s Bing and partnering with DuckDuckGo as alternatives to Google​

​​Canva magic studio​

Canva’s new Magic Studio added some fun items and a good bunch of them are available in the free version. I haven’t been able to narrow down which features are paid only, but here’s the new fun stuff:

• Want the word “fun” in blue letter balloons on your design? Type the word “fun” and ask Canva to turn the letters into blue balloons. AND IT WILL.
• Do you wish you’d worn the blue blazer in that headshot? Well ask Canva to turn your white shirt into a white shirt with blue blazer. AND IT WILL.
• Have a square photo that you want to fill up a vertical space? Canva will imagine what the background would look like and create more of the photo to fit that space.
• Want to move your photo subject from slightly off-center in a picture to fully-centered? Canva will let you move the subject over!

I’m pretty jazzed.

​READ THIS IF THE PRESSURE SOMETIMES GETS TO YOU (OR YOUR EMPLOYEES)​

The article talks about how monkeys crack under pressure. For the pressured—this will make you feel less alone. Plus, give you some ideas for overcoming pressure. For the manager—you might be interested to hear which reward patterns create the most cracks in the monkeys’ cool.

Some of the links in my newsletters are affiliate links. So sometimes I get monies (aka dollary doos, aka sweet sweet dough) when you buy or sign up for some of the stuff I mention—at no extra cost to you.