SEO
Is Google’s MUM A Search Ranking Factor?
At Google I/O earlier last year, Google announced that it’s exploring a new technology called MUM (Multitask Unified Model) internally to help its ranking systems better understand language.
Dubbed “a new AI milestone for understanding information,” MUM is designed to make it easier for Google to answer complex needs in search.
Google promised MUM is 1,000 times more powerful than its NLP transfer learning predecessor, BERT.
It uses a model called T5, the Text-To-Text Transfer Transformer, to reframe NLP tasks into a unified text-to-text format and develop a more comprehensive understanding of knowledge and information.
According to Google, MUM can be applied to document summarization, question answering, and classification tasks such as sentiment analysis.
Clearly, MUM is a major priority inside the Googleplex – and something that important to the search team had better on the SEO industry’s radar, as well.
But is it a ranking factor in Google’s search algorithms?
The Claim: MUM As A Ranking Factor
Many who read the news about MUM when it was first revealed naturally wondered how it might impact search rankings (especially their own).
Google makes thousands of updates to its ranking algorithms each year and while the vast majority go unnoticed, some are impactful.
BERT is one such example.
Rolled out worldwide in 2019, it was hailed the most important update in five years by Google itself.
And sure enough, BERT impacted about 10% of search queries.
RankBrain, rolled out in the spring of 2015, is another example of an algorithmic update that had a substantial impact on the SERPs.
Now that Google is talking about MUM, it’s clear that SEO professionals and the clients they serve should take note.
Roger Montti recently wrote about a patent he believes could provide more insight into MUM’s inner workings.
That makes for an interesting read if you want to take a peek at what may be under the hood.
For now, let’s just consider whether MUM is a ranking factor.
The Evidence For MUM As A Ranking Factor
When RankBrain rolled out, it wasn’t announced until some six months afterward. And most updates aren’t announced or confirmed at all.
However, Google has gotten better at sharing impactful updates before they happen.
For example, BERT was first announced in November 2018, rolled out for English-language queries in October 2019, and rolled out worldwide later that year, in December.
We had even more time to prepare for the Page Experience signal and Core Web Vitals, which were announced over a year ahead of the eventual rollout in June 2021.
Google has already said MUM is coming and it’s going to be a big deal.
But could MUM be responsible for a rankings drop many sites experienced in the spring and summer of 2021?
The Evidence Against MUM As A Ranking Factor
In his May 2021 introduction to MUM, Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow and Vice President of Search, made it clear that technology isn’t in play. Not yet, anyway:
“Today’s search engines aren’t quite sophisticated enough to answer the way an expert would. But with a new technology called Multitask Unified Model, or MUM, we’re getting closer to helping you with these types of complex needs. So in the future, you’ll need fewer searches to get things done.”
The timeline given then as to when MUM-powered features and updates would go live was “in the coming months and years.”
When asked whether the industry would get a heads up when MUM goes live in search, Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan said yes.
Yes, as with BERT, I’m sure we’ll let every know. We won’t be mum on MUM.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) May 20, 2021
More recently, Nayak explained how Google is using AI in Search and wrote,
“While we’re still in the early days of tapping into MUM’s potential, we’ve already used it to improve searches for COVID-19 vaccine information, and we’ll offer more intuitive ways to search using a combination of both text and images in Google Lens in the coming months.
These are very specialized applications — so MUM is not currently used to help rank and improve the quality of search results like RankBrain, neural matching and BERT systems do.”
He also added that any future applications of MUM will be subjected to a rigorous evaluation process including paying special attention to the responsible usage of AI.
MUM As A Ranking Factor: Our Verdict
Bottom line: Google doesn’t use MUM as a search ranking signal. It’s a language AI model built on Google’s open source neural network architecture, Transformer.
Google will train MUM as it did BERT on large datasets, then fine-tune it for specific applications on smaller datasets. This is what it’s testing with MUM’s use for improving vaccine search results.
Google has mentioned specific ways in which it may be used in the (near) future, including:
- Surfacing insights based on its deep knowledge of the world.
- Surfacing helpful subtopics for deeper exploration.
- Breaking down language barriers by transferring knowledge across languages.
- Simultaneously understanding information from different formats like webpages, pictures and more.
How will you optimize for MUM?
That remains to be seen.
What is for sure: Google search’s intelligence is growing by leaps and bounds.
As Google’s search algorithms become more sophisticated and better able to determine the intent and nuance of language, attempts at trickery and manipulation will be less and less effective (and likely easier to detect).
With an NLP technology 1000x more powerful than RankBrain on the horizon, optimizing for human experience is more important than ever.
If you want to get ahead of MUM, focus on what the content you’re creating means for the people whose needs it is intended to meet.
The machines are inching ever closer to fully and completely experiencing that content as your intended reader/viewer does.
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
SEO
4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI
In a significant leap in large language model (LLM) development, Mistral AI announced the release of its newest model, Mixtral-8x7B.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5546272da9065eddeb6fcd7ffddeef5b75be79a7&dn=mixtral-8x7b-32kseqlen&tr=udp%3A%2F%https://t.co/uV4WVdtpwZ%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%https://t.co/g0m9cEUz0T%3A80%2Fannounce
RELEASE a6bbd9affe0c2725c1b7410d66833e24
— Mistral AI (@MistralAI) December 8, 2023
What Is Mixtral-8x7B?
Mixtral-8x7B from Mistral AI is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model designed to enhance how machines understand and generate text.
Imagine it as a team of specialized experts, each skilled in a different area, working together to handle various types of information and tasks.
A report published in June reportedly shed light on the intricacies of OpenAI’s GPT-4, highlighting that it employs a similar approach to MoE, utilizing 16 experts, each with around 111 billion parameters, and routes two experts per forward pass to optimize costs.
This approach allows the model to manage diverse and complex data efficiently, making it helpful in creating content, engaging in conversations, or translating languages.
Mixtral-8x7B Performance Metrics
Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, represents a significant step forward from its previous model, Mistral-7B-v0.1.
It’s designed to understand better and create text, a key feature for anyone looking to use AI for writing or communication tasks.
New open weights LLM from @MistralAI
params.json:
– hidden_dim / dim = 14336/4096 => 3.5X MLP expand
– n_heads / n_kv_heads = 32/8 => 4X multiquery
– “moe” => mixture of experts 8X top 2 👀Likely related code: https://t.co/yrqRtYhxKR
Oddly absent: an over-rehearsed… https://t.co/8PvqdHz1bR pic.twitter.com/xMDRj3WAVh
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) December 8, 2023
This latest addition to the Mistral family promises to revolutionize the AI landscape with its enhanced performance metrics, as shared by OpenCompass.
What makes Mixtral-8x7B stand out is not just its improvement over Mistral AI’s previous version, but the way it measures up to models like Llama2-70B and Qwen-72B.
It’s like having an assistant who can understand complex ideas and express them clearly.
One of the key strengths of the Mixtral-8x7B is its ability to handle specialized tasks.
For example, it performed exceptionally well in specific tests designed to evaluate AI models, indicating that it’s good at general text understanding and generation and excels in more niche areas.
This makes it a valuable tool for marketing professionals and SEO experts who need AI that can adapt to different content and technical requirements.
The Mixtral-8x7B’s ability to deal with complex math and coding problems also suggests it can be a helpful ally for those working in more technical aspects of SEO, where understanding and solving algorithmic challenges are crucial.
This new model could become a versatile and intelligent partner for a wide range of digital content and strategy needs.
How To Try Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Demos
You can experiment with Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, to see how it responds to queries and how it performs compared to other open-source models and OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Please note that, like all generative AI content, platforms running this new model may produce inaccurate information or otherwise unintended results.
User feedback for new models like this one will help companies like Mistral AI improve future versions and models.
1. Perplexity Labs Playground
In Perplexity Labs, you can try Mixtral-8x7B along with Meta AI’s Llama 2, Mistral-7b, and Perplexity’s new online LLMs.
In this example, I ask about the model itself and notice that new instructions are added after the initial response to extend the generated content about my query.
Screenshot from Perplexity, December 2023While the answer looks correct, it begins to repeat itself.
Screenshot from Perplexity Labs, December 2023The model did provide an over 600-word answer to the question, “What is SEO?”
Again, additional instructions appear as “headers” to seemingly ensure a comprehensive answer.
Screenshot from Perplexity Labs, December 20232. Poe
Poe hosts bots for popular LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and DALL·E 3, Meta AI’s Llama 2 and Code Llama, Google’s PaLM 2, Anthropic’s Claude-instant and Claude 2, and StableDiffusionXL.
These bots cover a wide spectrum of capabilities, including text, image, and code generation.
The Mixtral-8x7B-Chat bot is operated by Fireworks AI.
Screenshot from Poe, December 2023It’s worth noting that the Fireworks page specifies it is an “unofficial implementation” that was fine-tuned for chat.
When asked what the best backlinks for SEO are, it provided a valid answer.
Screenshot from Poe, December 2023Compare this to the response offered by Google Bard.
Screenshot from Google Bard, December 20233. Vercel
Vercel offers a demo of Mixtral-8x7B that allows users to compare responses from popular Anthropic, Cohere, Meta AI, and OpenAI models.
Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023It offers an interesting perspective on how each model interprets and responds to user questions.
Screenshot from Vercel, December 2023Like many LLMs, it does occasionally hallucinate.
Screenshot from Vercel, December 20234. Replicate
The mixtral-8x7b-32 demo on Replicate is based on this source code. It is also noted in the README that “Inference is quite inefficient.”
Screenshot from Replicate, December 2023In the example above, Mixtral-8x7B describes itself as a game.
Conclusion
Mistral AI’s latest release sets a new benchmark in the AI field, offering enhanced performance and versatility. But like many LLMs, it can provide inaccurate and unexpected answers.
As AI continues to evolve, models like the Mixtral-8x7B could become integral in shaping advanced AI tools for marketing and business.
Featured image: T. Schneider/Shutterstock
SEO
OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X
OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT a little over a year ago, has recently taken to social media to address concerns regarding the “lazy” performance of GPT-4 on social media and Google Reviews.
This move comes after growing user feedback online, which even includes a one-star review on the company’s Google Reviews.
OpenAI Gives Insight Into Training Chat Models, Performance Evaluations, And A/B Testing
OpenAI, through its @ChatGPTapp Twitter account, detailed the complexities involved in training chat models.
Screenshot from X, December 2023The organization highlighted that the process is not a “clean industrial process” and that variations in training runs can lead to noticeable differences in the AI’s personality, creative style, and political bias.
Thorough AI model testing includes offline evaluation metrics and online A/B tests. The final decision to release a new model is based on a data-driven approach to improve the “real” user experience.
OpenAI’s Google Review Score Affected By GPT-4 Performance, Billing Issues
This explanation comes after weeks of user feedback about GPT-4 becoming worse on social media networks like X.
Idk if anyone else has noticed this, but GPT-4 Turbo performance is significantly worse than GPT-4 standard.
I know it’s in preview right now but it’s significantly worse.
— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) November 8, 2023
There has been discussion if GPT-4 has become “lazy” recently. My anecdotal testing suggests it may be true.
I repeated a sequence of old analyses I did with Code Interpreter. GPT-4 still knows what to do, but keeps telling me to do the work. One step is now many & some are odd. pic.twitter.com/OhGAMtd3Zq
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) November 28, 2023
Complaints also appeared in OpenAI’s community forums.
Screenshot from OpenAI, December 2023The experience led one user to leave a one-star rating for OpenAI via Google Reviews. Other complaints regarded accounts, billing, and the artificial nature of AI.
Screenshot from Google Reviews, December 2023A recent user on Product Hunt gave OpenAI a rating that also appears to be related to GPT-4 worsening.
Screenshot from Product Hunt, December 2023GPT-4 isn’t the only issue that local reviewers complain about. On Yelp, OpenAI has a one-star rating for ChatGPT 3.5 performance.
OpenAI is now only 3.8 stars on Google Maps and a dismal 1 star on Yelp!
GPT-4’s degradation has really hurt their rating. Hope the business survives.https://t.co/RF8uJH1WQ5 pic.twitter.com/OghAZLCiVu
— Nate Chan (@nathanwchan) December 9, 2023
The complaint:
Screenshot from Yelp, December 2023In related OpenAI news, the review with the most likes aligns with recent rumors about a volatile workplace, alleging that OpenAI is a “Cutthroat environment. Not friendly. Toxic workers.”
Screenshot from Google Reviews, December 2023The reviews voted the most helpful on Glassdoor about OpenAI suggested that employee frustration and product development issues stem from the company’s shift in focus on profits.
Screenshots from Glassdoor, December 2023This incident provides a unique outlook on how customer and employee experiences can impact any business through local reviews and business ratings platforms.
Screenshot from Google, December 2023Google SGE Highlights Positive Google Reviews
In addition to occasional complaints, Google reviewers acknowledged the revolutionary impact of OpenAI’s technology on various fields.
The most positive review mentions about the company appear in Google SGE (Search Generative Experience).
Screenshot from Google SGE, December 2023Conclusion
OpenAI’s recent insights into training chat models and response to public feedback about GPT-4 performance illustrate AI technology’s dynamic and evolving nature and its impact on those who depend on the AI platform.
Especially the people who just received an invitation to join ChatGPT Plus after being waitlisted while OpenAI paused new subscriptions and upgrades. Or those developing GPTs for the upcoming GPT Store launch.
As AI advances, professionals in these fields must remain agile, informed, and responsive to technological developments and the public’s reception of these advancements.
Featured image: Tada Images/Shutterstock
SEO
ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites
ChatGPT Plus subscriptions and upgrades remain paused after a surge in demand for new features created outages.
Some users who signed up for the waitlist have received invites to join ChatGPT Plus.
This has resulted in a few shares of the link that is accessible for everyone. For now.
Found a hack to skip chatGPT plus wait list.
Follow the steps
– login to ChatGPT
– now if you click on upgrade
– Signup for waitlist(may not be necessary)
– now change the URL to https://t.co/4izOdNzarG
– Wallah you are in for payment #ChatGPT4 #hack #GPT4 #GPTPlus pic.twitter.com/J1GizlrOAx— Ashish Mohite is building Notionpack Capture (@_ashishmohite) December 8, 2023
RELATED: GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After ‘Unexpected’ Delays
In addition to the invites, signs that more people are getting access to GPTs include an introductory screen popping up on free ChatGPT accounts.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023Unfortunately, they still aren’t accessible without a Plus subscription.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023You can sign up for the waitlist by clicking on the option to upgrade in the left sidebar of ChatGPT on a desktop browser.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, December 2023OpenAI also suggests ChatGPT Enterprise for those who need more capabilities, as outlined in the pricing plans below.
Screenshot from OpenAI, December 2023Why Are ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Paused?
According to a post on X by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, the recent surge in usage following the DevDay developers conference has led to capacity challenges, resulting in the decision to pause ChatGPT Plus signups.
we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit 🙁
the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.
you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 15, 2023
The decision to pause new ChatGPT signups follows a week where OpenAI services – including ChatGPT and the API – experienced a series of outages related to high-demand and DDoS attacks.
Demand for ChatGPT Plus resulted in eBay listings supposedly offering one or more months of the premium subscription.
chatgpt plus accounts selling ebay for a premium 🫡🇺🇸 https://t.co/VdN8tuexKM pic.twitter.com/W522NGHsRV
— surya (@sdand) November 15, 2023
When Will ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Resume?
So far, we don’t have any official word on when ChatGPT Plus subscriptions will resume. We know the GPT Store is set to open early next year after recent boardroom drama led to “unexpected delays.”
Therefore, we hope that OpenAI will onboard waitlisted users in time to try out all of the GPTs created by OpenAI and community builders.
What Are GPTs?
GPTs allow users to create one or more personalized ChatGPT experiences based on a specific set of instructions, knowledge files, and actions.
Search marketers with ChatGPT Plus can try GPTs for helpful content assessment and learning SEO.
Two SEO GPTs I’ve created for assessment + learning 👀👇
1. Content Helpfulness and Quality SEO Analyzer: Assess a page content helpfulness, relevance, and quality for your targeted query based on Google’s guidelines vs your competitors and get tips: https://t.co/LsoP2UhF4N pic.twitter.com/O77MHiqwOq
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023
2. The https://t.co/IFmKxxVDpW SEO Teacher: A friendly SEO expert teacher who will help you to learn SEO using reliable https://t.co/sCZ03C7fzq resources: https://t.co/UrMPUYwblH
I hope they’re helpful 🙌🤩
PS: Love how GPT opens up to SO much opportunity 🤯 pic.twitter.com/yqKozcZTDc
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023
There are also GPTs for analyzing Google Search Console data.
oh wow. I think this GPT works.
Export data from GSC comparing keyword rankings before and after an update and upload it to ChatGPT and it will spit out this scatter plot for you.
It’s an easy way to see if most of your keyword declined or improved.
This site was impacted by… pic.twitter.com/wFGSnonqoZ
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 9, 2023
And GPTs that will let you chat with analytics data from 20 platforms, including Google Ads, GA4, and Facebook.
Google search has indexed hundreds of public GPTs. According to an alleged list of GPT statistics in a GitHub repository, DALL-E, the top GPT from OpenAI, has received 5,620,981 visits since its launch last month. Included in the top 20 GPTs is Canva, with 291,349 views.
Weighing The Benefits Of The Pause
Ideally, this means that developers working on building GPTs and using the API should encounter fewer issues (like being unable to save GPT drafts).
But it could also mean a temporary decrease in new users of GPTs since they are only available to Plus subscribers – including the ones I tested for learning about ranking factors and gaining insights on E-E-A-T from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, November 2023Featured image: Robert Way/Shutterstock
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