SEO
12 SEO KPIs You Should (And Shouldn’t) Track
SEO KPIs (key performance indicators) are the most important SEO metrics that are closely tied to business growth. They determine the actions you take, so you should choose the KPIs wisely.
In this article, we’ll go through 12 common SEO KPIs and discuss if and how you should track them.
Search visibility measures how visible your brand is in the market. Sometimes also referred to as SERP visibility, it’s the SEO version of one of the most important marketing KPIs: share of voice (SOV).
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
Yes. Search visibility is one of the most useful and universally applicable SEO KPIs. In fact, it’s arguably the only non-conversion metric that can be closely tied to your business growth.
That’s because there’s a strong relationship between SOV and market share. Generally speaking, the higher your SOV, the bigger your share of the pie.
How to track it
Paste the keywords that matter to you into Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker. Note that these should be the main keywords that encompass what your target audience is searching for (don’t bother with long-tails). Add a tag to easily filter them later on:
From there, head to the Competitors Overview tab and check the Visibility column:
Conversions are important actions your visitors take on the website, such as checking out, signing up, or subscribing to a service. Tracking these for all your traffic sources, including organic, is something most businesses already do.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
Yes. This is arguably the only indisputable SEO KPI. Conversion tracking is the most straightforward way to tie your marketing efforts to your revenue.
How to track it
Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics 4 isn’t rocket science, even though it may seem daunting at first. You don’t need any coding knowledge to do it. The most important thing here is making sure that you track the right conversions.
If you’re running an e-commerce store, the number of conversions, their value, and your average order value make the most sense for you. You’ll have to set up specific e-commerce tracking to do that.
If you offer subscription-based software like us, your best bet is to track leads, trial sign-ups, paid subscriptions and, eventually, even each tier of new subscriptions.
Got the data collection right? In Google Analytics 4, go to Reports > Engagement > Conversions and filter organic traffic sessions using the “Edit comparisons” button:
There’s a lot to be said about the accuracy of conversion reporting and all the nuances regarding the attribution behind it. Generally speaking, you’ll get the most accurate data if:
- You’re using GA4 (you should by now).
- You use the data-driven attribution model as the default (check Admin > Attribution settings > Reporting attribution model).
- You have at least a few hundred conversions a month (to make sure that Google’s black box model has enough data to do its magic).
If you don’t have that many conversions on your website yet, it’s a good idea to also check your assisted conversions using different attribution models. Go to Advertising > Attribution > Conversion paths, select the conversion event you want to analyze, and check the impact of organic search throughout customer journeys:
I recommend checking this resource about attribution modeling if you want to better understand this complex topic.
SEO ROI (return on investment) estimates the business value of all SEO activities in contrast to their cost. The formula is:
SEO ROI = (value of organic conversions – cost of SEO investments)/cost of SEO investments *100
In other words, you need to divide the SEO profit by the associated SEO costs and then multiply that by 100 to get the ROI percentage.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
Only if you’re required to present the ROI by your client, manager, or stakeholders. It’s a great SEO KPI in essence but incredibly difficult to measure properly.
Arguably, the biggest challenge comes to the discrepancy between “investment” and “return” periods. SEO can take a lot of time before the desired results kick in, and you can almost never say with 100% confidence that activity X brought results Y.
However, we can drop the concept of looking at SEO ROI from the whole website perspective. To get as accurate as we can with this metric, we need to get more granular.
How to track it
If possible, measure the ROI on the category, page, or even keyword level. That’s because you can measure well the “return” of ranking with particular pages and tell the “investments” that went into it.
Let’s say you spent $1,000 on paying a content writer who created a nice piece of content meaning to rank and drive conversions. You spent another $1,000 on a link building agency that built a few nice links. You count in $500 by default as your time and the time of your team (e.g., designers, editors) to do the rest of the work. And we’re at $2,500.
After a year, you check Google Analytics and see that this organic landing page drove $5,000 in conversions already. You can already claim 200% ROI on that, and it will likely keep on increasing.
This is a simplified example, of course. If you’re intrigued, head over to my guide to SEO ROI.
Backlinks are one of the most important SEO ranking factors.
The number and quality of new backlinks pointing to your website generally reflect your SEO, content marketing, and PR efforts, so this is something most businesses pay close attention to.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
Yes, but it’s only suitable as an SEO KPI if you actively build links and keep track of your outreach success. That’s the only way to take into account only links that are worth pursuing.
How to track it
Tracking your outreach success can’t get easier once you’re done with link prospecting, the process of figuring out what backlinks you want to get. Just add a column, note, or comment into your link prospecting sheet that indicates you either got the link or not.
Here’s an example of what newly built link tracking looked like back when I was doing the outreach myself:
You’ll either learn that your outreach was successful by receiving a positive reply or discovering a desired backlink in the Backlinks report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:
Keyword rankings refer to a website’s organic ranking positions in the search results for particular keywords.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
No. Use search visibility as a KPI instead, as it’s a superior metric. But since you need proper keyword research to track it properly, ad hoc keyword rankings could serve as a provisional substitute until you get there.
How to track it
Simply paste a bunch of keywords important to you into Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker.
You can get regular email alerts about the progress of your tracked keywords or just check the Rank Tracker reports once in a while:
Organic traffic represents all non-paid clicks that come from search engines.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
Not unless you’re monetizing your website with display ads. It doesn’t make much sense for other businesses because more traffic won’t necessarily mean more revenue.
For example, HubSpot’s page about typing the “shrug” emoji gets an estimated 65.4K monthly organic visits. But I doubt any of those visits will translate into higher brand awareness, let alone higher sales.
How to track it
The Performance tab in Google Search Console (GSC) is going to give you the most accurate view of your organic traffic over time:
This tells you how many of your pages a search engine has in its index.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
It depends. Seeing the number of indexed pages steadily increasing as you publish new content is a solid indicator that Google doesn’t have problems crawling and indexing your website. But most websites don’t have this problem in the first place.
So consider tracking this number as a technical SEO KPI only if you’re likely to have trouble getting your content indexed in a timely manner. That’s usually the case for large and complex websites only.
How to track it
The best way to keep track of the number of your indexed pages is to check the Pages report in your GSC account. In there, select “All submitted pages” filter to only show pages from your sitemaps:
We’re doing this because your sitemaps should only include URLs that you want to have indexed. Analyzing the number of indexed pages in this segment and relating it to “Not indexed” is, therefore, the best choice for this technical SEO KPI:
Health Score shows the proportion of internal URLs on your website that don’t have technical SEO errors.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
No. It’s a great proxy metric for your overall state of technical SEO, and that’s it. You always need to get more context for any valuable insights. Here’s an example why:
404 HTTP status code is one of those technical SEO issues that will trigger an error in any crawler. Showing that a resource wasn’t found is usually bad for both visitors and search engines. But there’s a huge difference between having a 404 on a well-converting page with high organic traffic and one that’s not very important.
In essence, some technical SEO errors are much more serious than others, but Health Score doesn’t make a difference there.
How to track it
Most SEO crawlers provide Health Score or some alternative metric with different names.
In the case of Ahrefs’ Site Audit, you need to set up a project, start the first crawl, and then check the Health Score in the crawl overview:
Domain Rating (DR) is an Ahrefs metric that shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
No. You can use it to gauge a website’s backlink profile strength, but a deeper analysis is always needed to assess it properly. DR is just another useful proxy metric SEOs like to work with.
If you’re looking for a backlinks KPI, scroll back to “new backlinks.” That’s a much better choice where we can take into account all the important backlink variables.
How to track it
Look up any domain in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, and you’ll see DR as the first metric in the overview box:
Click-through rate (CTR) shows the proportion of SERP impressions that translated into clicks. CTR represents how effective your search engine listing is in attracting people to visit your webpage.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
No. Driving more search traffic by having more engaging SERP listings doesn’t necessarily translate into more sales. Clickbait could do quite the opposite. And yes, Google is far from perfect and still ranks clickbait pages for certain keywords.
Another reason why you shouldn’t obsess over CTR is that many things outside your control can affect that. SERPs are an ever-changing environment.
And last but not least, CTR is useless on an aggregate level of your whole website. It only makes sense to track and optimize CTR as a page-level metric because that’s the scope you optimize for.
How to track it
Open up your Performance report in GSC, switch to the Pages tab, and check the CTRs of your specific pages:
Core Web Vitals (CWV) are a set of three technical SEO metrics related to your website speed and user experience.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
No. Google has been using CWV as a minor ranking factor since June 2021. As the word “minor” implies, you can’t expect any significant ranking boost even if you have perfect CWV scores across your whole website.
Focus on CWV has its place in SEO, but it’s been a bit overhyped. If any or all of those three CWV metrics are very bad, it’s likely a good idea to try and fix them. But they don’t even remotely qualify as an SEO KPI.
How to track it
There are many ways to track CWV, but the most straightforward is to check your GSC account under the Core web vitals report:
Engagement metrics give you an idea of how engaged visitors are with your website. Most people know them from Google Analytics, and they include metrics such as Bounce Rate, Engagement Rate, Time on Page, or Avg. Session Duration.
Should you track it as an SEO KPI?
No. These metrics usually don’t even reflect on your SEO growth, let alone business growth. But many marketers are obsessed with them for some reason.
In short, here are three reasons why these should only be used as secondary SEO metrics at best:
- They’re easily skewed by inherently flawed tracking in analytics software and mistakes in tracking setups.
- The methodology of calculating some of those metrics is rather bad.
- They become somewhat useful only after you segment them on a page level for a specific traffic source.
If you’re interested in learning more, I dive deeper into all these reasons in our guide to interpreting and improving Bounce Rate, one of the most commonly used and known engagement metrics.
How to track it
Most of your reports in Google Analytics will show these engagement metrics by default. As I mentioned earlier, if you plan to analyze them, it’s best to filter your report to show specific pages for one traffic source:
Final thoughts
It may have surprised you that only the first two SEO KPIs in this list got an absolute yes from me. Well, choosing the right objectives and respective KPIs is the main part of creating a great marketing strategy. And with all things strategy, it’s more about choosing what not to do. In this case, which SEO metrics not to pay too much attention to.
There are uses for all the listed metrics, though. It’s generally a good idea to keep track of them all. Some of them nicely correlate with your chosen KPIs and can even be a better choice for assessing your day-to-day SEO work. Just think twice before giving a certain metric too much importance.
Last but not least, tracking the right KPIs isn’t a panacea for your SEO. You need to learn how to analyze and interpret them to make the most informed decision. Critical thinking, knowledge of your data, and tracking platforms and basic statistics belong to the desired skill set here.
Got any questions? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
56 Google Search Statistics to Bookmark for 2024
If you’re curious about the state of Google search in 2024, look no further.
Each year we pick, vet, and categorize a list of up-to-date statistics to give you insights from trusted sources on Google search trends.
Check out more resources on how Google works:
Learn more
SEO
How To Use ChatGPT For Keyword Research
Anyone not using ChatGPT for keyword research is missing a trick.
You can save time and understand an entire topic in seconds instead of hours.
In this article, I outline my most effective ChatGPT prompts for keyword research and teach you how I put them together so that you, too, can take, edit, and enhance them even further.
But before we jump into the prompts, I want to emphasize that you shouldn’t replace keyword research tools or disregard traditional keyword research methods.
ChatGPT can make mistakes. It can even create new keywords if you give it the right prompt. For example, I asked it to provide me with a unique keyword for the topic “SEO” that had never been searched before.
“Interstellar Internet SEO: Optimizing content for the theoretical concept of an interstellar internet, considering the challenges of space-time and interplanetary communication delays.”
Although I want to jump into my LinkedIn profile and update my title to “Interstellar Internet SEO Consultant,” unfortunately, no one has searched that (and they probably never will)!
You must not blindly rely on the data you get back from ChatGPT.
What you can rely on ChatGPT for is the topic ideation stage of keyword research and inspiration.
ChatGPT is a large language model trained with massive amounts of data to accurately predict what word will come next in a sentence. However, it does not know how to do keyword research yet.
Instead, think of ChatGPT as having an expert on any topic armed with the information if you ask it the right question.
In this guide, that is exactly what I aim to teach you how to do – the most essential prompts you need to know when performing topical keyword research.
Best ChatGPT Keyword Research Prompts
The following ChatGPT keyword research prompts can be used on any niche, even a topic to which you are brand new.
For this demonstration, let’s use the topic of “SEO” to demonstrate these prompts.
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On A Topic
What Are The {X} Most Popular Sub-topics Related To {Topic}?
The first prompt is to give you an idea of the niche.
As shown above, ChatGPT did a great job understanding and breaking down SEO into three pillars: on-page, off-page & technical.
The key to the following prompt is to take one of the topics ChatGPT has given and query the sub-topics.
What Are The {X} Most Popular Sub-topics Related To {Sub-topic}?
For this example, let’s query, “What are the most popular sub-topics related to keyword research?”
Having done keyword research for over 10 years, I would expect it to output information related to keyword research metrics, the types of keywords, and intent.
Let’s see.
Again, right on the money.
To get the keywords you want without having ChatGPT describe each answer, use the prompt “list without description.”
Here is an example of that.
List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Keywords For The Topic Of {X}
You can even branch these keywords out further into their long-tail.
Example prompt:
List Without Description The Top {X} Most Popular Long-tail Keywords For The Topic “{X}”
List Without Description The Top Semantically Related Keywords And Entities For The Topic {X}
You can even ask ChatGPT what any topic’s semantically related keywords and entities are!
Tip: The Onion Method Of Prompting ChatGPT
When you are happy with a series of prompts, add them all to one prompt. For example, so far in this article, we have asked ChatGPT the following:
- What are the four most popular sub-topics related to SEO?
- What are the four most popular sub-topics related to keyword research
- List without description the top five most popular keywords for “keyword intent”?
- List without description the top five most popular long-tail keywords for the topic “keyword intent types”?
- List without description the top semantically related keywords and entities for the topic “types of keyword intent in SEO.”
Combine all five into one prompt by telling ChatGPT to perform a series of steps. Example:
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4, and Step 5”
Example:
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 and Step 5. Step 1 – Generate an answer for the 3 most popular sub-topics related to {Topic}?. Step 2 – Generate 3 of the most popular sub-topics related to each answer. Step 3 – Take those answers and list without description their top 3 most popular keywords. Step 4 – For the answers given of their most popular keywords, provide 3 long-tail keywords. Step 5 – for each long-tail keyword offered in the response, a list without descriptions 3 of their top semantically related keywords and entities.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On A Question
Taking the steps approach from above, we can get ChatGPT to help streamline getting keyword ideas based on a question. For example, let’s ask, “What is SEO?”
“Perform the following steps in a consecutive order Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4. Step 1 Generate 10 questions about “{Question}”?. Step 2 – Generate 5 more questions about “{Question}” that do not repeat the above. Step 3 – Generate 5 more questions about “{Question}” that do not repeat the above. Step 4 – Based on the above Steps 1,2,3 suggest a final list of questions avoiding duplicates or semantically similar questions.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Using ChatGPT Based On The Alphabet Soup Method
One of my favorite methods, manually, without even using a keyword research tool, is to generate keyword research ideas from Google autocomplete, going from A to Z.
You can also do this using ChatGPT.
Example prompt:
“give me popular keywords that includes the keyword “SEO”, and the next letter of the word starts with a”
Tip: Using the onion prompting method above, we can combine all this in one prompt.
“Give me five popular keywords that include “SEO” in the word, and the following letter starts with a. Once the answer has been done, move on to giving five more popular keywords that include “SEO” for each letter of the alphabet b to z.”
Generating Keyword Ideas Based On User Personas
When it comes to keyword research, understanding user personas is essential for understanding your target audience and keeping your keyword research focused and targeted. ChatGPT may help you get an initial understanding of customer personas.
Example prompt:
“For the topic of “{Topic}” list 10 keywords each for the different types of user personas”
You could even go a step further and ask for questions based on those topics that those specific user personas may be searching for:
As well as get the keywords to target based on those questions:
“For each question listed above for each persona, list the keywords, as well as the long-tail keywords to target, and put them in a table”
Generating Keyword Ideas Using ChatGPT Based On Searcher Intent And User Personas
Understanding the keywords your target persona may be searching is the first step to effective keyword research. The next step is to understand the search intent behind those keywords and which content format may work best.
For example, a business owner who is new to SEO or has just heard about it may be searching for “what is SEO.”
However, if they are further down the funnel and in the navigational stage, they may search for “top SEO firms.”
You can query ChatGPT to inspire you here based on any topic and your target user persona.
SEO Example:
“For the topic of “{Topic}” list 10 keywords each for the different types of searcher intent that a {Target Persona} would be searching for”
ChatGPT For Keyword Research Admin
Here is how you can best use ChatGPT for keyword research admin tasks.
Using ChatGPT As A Keyword Categorization Tool
One of the use cases for using ChatGPT is for keyword categorization.
In the past, I would have had to devise spreadsheet formulas to categorize keywords or even spend hours filtering and manually categorizing keywords.
ChatGPT can be a great companion for running a short version of this for you.
Let’s say you have done keyword research in a keyword research tool, have a list of keywords, and want to categorize them.
You could use the following prompt:
“Filter the below list of keywords into categories, target persona, searcher intent, search volume and add information to a six-column table: List of keywords – [LIST OF KEYWORDS], Keyword Search Volume [SEARCH VOLUMES] and Keyword Difficulties [KEYWORD DIFFICUTIES].”
Tip: Add keyword metrics from the keyword research tools, as using the search volumes that a ChatGPT prompt may give you will be wildly inaccurate at best.
Using ChatGPT For Keyword Clustering
Another of ChatGPT’s use cases for keyword research is to help you cluster. Many keywords have the same intent, and by grouping related keywords, you may find that one piece of content can often target multiple keywords at once.
However, be careful not to rely only on LLM data for clustering. What ChatGPT may cluster as a similar keyword, the SERP or the user may not agree with. But it is a good starting point.
The big downside of using ChatGPT for keyword clustering is actually the amount of keyword data you can cluster based on the memory limits.
So, you may find a keyword clustering tool or script that is better for large keyword clustering tasks. But for small amounts of keywords, ChatGPT is actually quite good.
A great use small keyword clustering use case using ChatGPT is for grouping People Also Ask (PAA) questions.
Use the following prompt to group keywords based on their semantic relationships. For example:
“Organize the following keywords into groups based on their semantic relationships, and give a short name to each group: [LIST OF PAA], create a two-column table where each keyword sits on its own row.
Using Chat GPT For Keyword Expansion By Patterns
One of my favorite methods of doing keyword research is pattern spotting.
Most seed keywords have a variable that can expand your target keywords.
Here are a few examples of patterns:
1. Question Patterns
(who, what, where, why, how, are, can, do, does, will)
“Generate [X] keywords for the topic “[Topic]” that contain any or all of the following “who, what, where, why, how, are, can, do, does, will”
2. Comparison Patterns
Example:
“Generate 50 keywords for the topic “{Topic}” that contain any or all of the following “for, vs, alternative, best, top, review”
3. Brand Patterns
Another one of my favorite modifiers is a keyword by brand.
We are probably all familiar with the most popular SEO brands; however, if you aren’t, you could ask your AI friend to do the heavy lifting.
Example prompt:
“For the top {Topic} brands what are the top “vs” keywords”
4. Search Intent Patterns
One of the most common search intent patterns is “best.”
When someone is searching for a “best {topic}” keyword, they are generally searching for a comprehensive list or guide that highlights the top options, products, or services within that specific topic, along with their features, benefits, and potential drawbacks, to make an informed decision.
Example:
“For the topic of “[Topic]” what are the 20 top keywords that include “best”
Again, this guide to keyword research using ChatGPT has emphasized the ease of generating keyword research ideas by utilizing ChatGPT throughout the process.
Keyword Research Using ChatGPT Vs. Keyword Research Tools
Free Vs. Paid Keyword Research Tools
Like keyword research tools, ChatGPT has free and paid options.
However, one of the most significant drawbacks of using ChatGPT for keyword research alone is the absence of SEO metrics to help you make smarter decisions.
To improve accuracy, you could take the results it gives you and verify them with your classic keyword research tool – or vice versa, as shown above, uploading accurate data into the tool and then prompting.
However, you must consider how long it takes to type and fine-tune your prompt to get your desired data versus using the filters within popular keyword research tools.
For example, if we use a popular keyword research tool using filters, you could have all of the “best” queries with all of their SEO metrics:
And unlike ChatGPT, generally, there is no token limit; you can extract several hundred, if not thousands, of keywords at a time.
As I have mentioned multiple times throughout this piece, you cannot blindly trust the data or SEO metrics it may attempt to provide you with.
The key is to validate the keyword research with a keyword research tool.
ChatGPT For International SEO Keyword Research
ChatGPT can be a terrific multilingual keyword research assistant.
For example, if you wanted to research keywords in a foreign language such as French. You could ask ChatGPT to translate your English keywords;
- The key is to take the data above and paste it into a popular keyword research tool to verify.
- As you can see below, many of the keyword translations for the English keywords do not have any search volume for direct translations in French.
But don’t worry, there is a workaround: If you have access to a competitor keyword research tool, you can see what webpage is ranking for that query – and then identify the top keyword for that page based on the ChatGPT translated keywords that do have search volume.
-
Or, if you don’t have access to a paid keyword research tool, you could always take the top-performing result, extract the page copy, and then ask ChatGPT what the primary keyword for the page is.
Key Takeaway
ChatGPT can be an expert on any topic and an invaluable keyword research tool. However, it is another tool to add to your toolbox when doing keyword research; it does not replace traditional keyword research tools.
As shown throughout this tutorial, from making up keywords at the beginning to inaccuracies around data and translations, ChatGPT can make mistakes when used for keyword research.
You cannot blindly trust the data you get back from ChatGPT.
However, it can offer a shortcut to understanding any topic for which you need to do keyword research and, as a result, save you countless hours.
But the key is how you prompt.
The prompts I shared with you above will help you understand a topic in minutes instead of hours and allow you to better seed keywords using keyword research tools.
It can even replace mundane keyword clustering tasks that you used to do with formulas in spreadsheets or generate ideas based on keywords you give it.
Paired with traditional keyword research tools, ChatGPT for keyword research can be a powerful tool in your arsenal.
More resources:
Featured Image: Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock
SEO
OpenAI Expected to Integrate Real-Time Data In ChatGPT
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, dispelled rumors that a new search engine would be announced on Monday, May 13. Recent deals have raised the expectation that OpenAI will announce the integration of real-time content from English, Spanish, and French publications into ChatGPT, complete with links to the original sources.
OpenAI Search Is Not Happening
Many competing search engines have tried and failed to challenge Google as the leading search engine. A new wave of hybrid generative AI search engines is currently trying to knock Google from the top spot with arguably very little success.
Sam Altman is on record saying that creating a search engine to compete against Google is not a viable approach. He suggested that technological disruption was the way to replace Google by changing the search paradigm altogether. The speculation that Altman is going to announce a me-too search engine on Monday never made sense given his recent history of dismissing the concept as a non-starter.
So perhaps it’s not a surprise that he recently ended the speculation by explicitly saying that he will not be announcing a search engine on Monday.
He tweeted:
“not gpt-5, not a search engine, but we’ve been hard at work on some new stuff we think people will love! feels like magic to me.”
“New Stuff” May Be Iterative Improvement
It’s quite likely that what’s going to be announced is iterative which means it improves ChatGPT but not replaces it. This fits into how Altman recently expressed his approach with ChatGPT.
He remarked:
“And it does kind of suck to ship a product that you’re embarrassed about, but it’s much better than the alternative. And in this case in particular, where I think we really owe it to society to deploy iteratively.
There could totally be things in the future that would change where we think iterative deployment isn’t such a good strategy, but it does feel like the current best approach that we have and I think we’ve gained a lot from from doing this and… hopefully the larger world has gained something too.”
Improving ChatGPT iteratively is Sam Altman’s preference and recent clues point to what those changes may be.
Recent Deals Contain Clues
OpenAI has been making deals with news media and User Generated Content publishers since December 2023. Mainstream media has reported these deals as being about licensing content for training large language models. But they overlooked a a key detail that we reported on last month which is that these deals give OpenAI access to real-time information that they stated will be used to give attribution to that real-time data in the form of links.
That means that ChatGPT users will gain the ability to access real-time news and to use that information creatively within ChatGPT.
Dotdash Meredith Deal
Dotdash Meredith (DDM) is the publisher of big brand publications such as Better Homes & Gardens, FOOD & WINE, InStyle, Investopedia, and People magazine. The deal that was announced goes way beyond using the content as training data. The deal is explicitly about surfacing the Dotdash Meredith content itself in ChatGPT.
The announcement stated:
“As part of the agreement, OpenAI will display content and links attributed to DDM in relevant ChatGPT responses. …This deal is a testament to the great work OpenAI is doing on both fronts to partner with creators and publishers and ensure a healthy Internet for the future.
Over 200 million Americans each month trust our content to help them make decisions, solve problems, find inspiration, and live fuller lives. This partnership delivers the best, most relevant content right to the heart of ChatGPT.”
A statement from OpenAI gives credibility to the speculation that OpenAI intends to directly show licensed third-party content as part of ChatGPT answers.
OpenAI explained:
“We’re thrilled to partner with Dotdash Meredith to bring its trusted brands to ChatGPT and to explore new approaches in advancing the publishing and marketing industries.”
Something that DDM also gets out of this deal is that OpenAI will enhance DDM’s in-house ad targeting in order show more tightly focused contextual advertising.
Le Monde And Prisa Media Deals
In March 2024 OpenAI announced a deal with two global media companies, Le Monde and Prisa Media. Le Monde is a French news publication and Prisa Media is a Spanish language multimedia company. The interesting aspects of these two deals is that it gives OpenAI access to real-time data in French and Spanish.
Prisa Media is a global Spanish language media company based in Madrid, Spain that is comprised of magazines, newspapers, podcasts, radio stations, and television networks. It’s reach extends from Spain to America. American media companies include publications in the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Panama. That is a massive amount of real-time information in addition to a massive audience of millions.
OpenAI explicitly announced that the purpose of this deal was to bring this content directly to ChatGPT users.
The announcement explained:
“We are continually making improvements to ChatGPT and are supporting the essential role of the news industry in delivering real-time, authoritative information to users. …Our partnerships will enable ChatGPT users to engage with Le Monde and Prisa Media’s high-quality content on recent events in ChatGPT, and their content will also contribute to the training of our models.”
That deal is not just about training data. It’s about bringing current events data to ChatGPT users.
The announcement elaborated in more detail:
“…our goal is to enable ChatGPT users around the world to connect with the news in new ways that are interactive and insightful.”
As noted in our April 30th article that revealed that OpenAI will show links in ChatGPT, OpenAI intends to show third party content with links to that content.
OpenAI commented on the purpose of the Le Monde and Prisa Media partnership:
“Over the coming months, ChatGPT users will be able to interact with relevant news content from these publishers through select summaries with attribution and enhanced links to the original articles, giving users the ability to access additional information or related articles from their news sites.”
There are additional deals with other groups like The Financial Times which also stress that this deal will result in a new ChatGPT feature that will allow users to interact with real-time news and current events .
OpenAI’s Monday May 13 Announcement
There are many clues that the announcement on Monday will be that ChatGPT users will gain the ability to interact with content about current events. This fits into the terms of recent deals with news media organizations. There may be other features announced as well but this part is something that there are many clues pointing to.
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