 Much has been written about ChatGPT disrupting the digital world, yet few have described exactly how this scenario would unfold. Others, such as Yann LeCun, Meta’s head of A.I., counter that ChatGPT “is not particularly innovative,” that Meta & others also have such (unreleased) technology, and pointing out that in addition to producing excellent engagements, most of the time, ChatGPT can also produce wildly inaccurate information, albeit in a minority of cases. Given society’s level of mistrust, Meta & others can ill afford to disseminate disinformation, whereas the new kid on the block is less constrained. In the Beginning, there was AltaVista   Daniel Rudy, this blog's author, within inches of Newton's Principia Mathematica, Grantham, England, possibly the most cited science or technology work, in history. Around the turn of the millennium, humanity considered itself fortunate to be able to instantly find information, brought courtesy of AltaVista. Web pages were looked over by human editors whose ratings formed the critically important page rank or order in which web listings appeared. Little did we know that two young Stanford PhD students, by the name of Segei Brin and Larry Page, were about to enable billions of web pages to be sorted by topic and ranked for relevance, without the need for human assessment, which had, by then, become impractical. As with most scientific and technological shifts, their idea was a simple one and later formed the basis for Google’s search algorithm. Articles that had the most citations were considered the most important. On the worldwide web, a backlink is the equivalent of a citation. Furthermore, back links from important web pages (based on their own number and quality of citations), counted for more than back links from less important web pages. By January, 2001, Google had overtaken AltaVista for web searches, since the former’s algorithm provided far better results. Advantages of ChatGPT for Searchers But instead of merely obtaining an article about the topic of interest, how much more enriching the experience would be, to have a deep, iterative conversation about any topic? And, you would be speaking to the equivalent of the most knowledgeable, specialized expert on the planet, who also seemingly knows you, your interests and your level of expertise. This is why Google may fear history repeating itself and becoming AltaVista. That’s also why they brought Brin and Page back to work on search, to help to create their own, similar Chat technology, at lightning speed. If Google (Aphabet) loses the organic (unsponsored) search race, they also lose the sponsored listings that appear with the organic searches, spelling disaster for the company. That’s why Microsoft recently invested an eye-popping $10 billion in ChatGPT. Can anyone spell B-I-N-G, Google’s nearest competitor, owned by Microsoft. A recent study concluded that 70% of ChatGPT’s answers to technical queries were better than Google’s, but that the remaining 30% were sometimes much further off the mark than Google’s.  An Advantage of ChatGPT for Businesses Since search engines love fresh, authoritative content, why not use ChatGPT to write and format your own web pages and blogs for you, optimized for SEO, in a way that’s most pleasing to Google’s search ranking algorithms? That way, your web pages would rank higher, get more traffic and presumably benefit from more and better business! No doubt, Brin and Page will also be looking for ways of detecting pages built with this technology and punishing them as ‘black hat SEO’, meaning web pages built to game the system. It’s no fun being on page 53 of search. Impact on Social Media and other Digital Platforms
Why waste time chatting with some random stranger, half way around the world, when you can chat with a digital entity that will tell you the things you need or wish to hear the most, based on a myriad of metrics about you and your friends and peers. Buckle your seat belts. “The Only Constant Is Change”, which you’re experiencing at an ever-increasing rate. Time will reveal the winners and the losers.
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 Rocket Science Web was recently invited to attend an all day training seminar on the Meta products, where Meta introduced their Performance 5. In today’s dizzying array of digital marketing tools, it’s always good to keep an eye on what’s most important and fundamental to advertising success. Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp etc. has made that task more manageable with their Meta Performance 5. These are 5 key parameters on which digital advertisers should focus, for optimal performance. Note that the headings were created by Meta, but the descriptions are the interpretations of RocketScienceWeb.com. Simplified Ad Sets An old engineering adage is ‘Keep It Simple’. In our zeal to produce ever-better results, many of us over-complicate things by creating an unmanageable set of Ad Sets, Meta’s term for a single, measurable advertising concept. So keep the number of ad sets in line with the advertising budget as well as the required campaign complexity. Broad Targeting Hooray, Meta offers a stunningly granular set of audiences. But did you know that the unit cost goes up, the smaller the audience? So you might be better off targeting a broader audience, even if that audience is less focused. Remember the rules of supply and demand? The less the supply (more targeted audience), the greater the unit cost. RSW believes that the Meta platforms amplify this effect substantially, making it harder to achieve that all-important frequency (the number of times that each member of the target audience saw the ad) , for a given reach (number of people who may have seen the ad, at least once), without spending more money on multiple ads. Mobile-Friendly Video Most of the action, especially on the Meta platforms are portrait or vertical, as opposed to landscape, or horizontal. Meta has basically told us to forget about creating landscape video or still shots. Furthermore, as human attention spans decrease, the advice is to focus on the very fleeting 15 second video. RocketScienceWeb.com says that regardless of video length, video must convey at least three concepts. 1) what the business does 2) what the business does better than anyone else 3) branding, Also, don’t forget, the first three seconds of a video must captivate, otherwise, your audience will be as lost as Gilligan and The Skipper. Ad Testing Do real A/B testing, as supplied by the Meta platforms, not just something that looks like A/B testing. Then start a Darwinian process to see which content survives the ad pool. Conversions AP  You may have heard that Apple has stopped playing nice with Facebook, meaning Apple is no longer supplying Meta with tracking data on the iphone and other devices, which is vital to Meta’s advertising. Google Chrome will soon follow. To help combat this, Meta has introduced its Conversions API, which should be installed on websites, along with the Meta Pixel. Make these 5 concepts part of your checklist, and your digital advertising should produce better results. You'll also know that you're employing best practices on the Meta Social Media Platforms.
 Google’s Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) is probably the world’s most powerful. Four hours after being taught how to move chess pieces (no instructions on strategy or openings), their AlphaZero chess player was not only able to beat the best human who had ever lived, but also the best machine. AlphaZero was described as having ‘God-like ability’, with strategies never previously dreamt of. This powerful A.I. is also available to help you to win more and better clients, in the form of Google Ads. Ad Creation, Not Just Optimization It’s well known that Google’s Conversion Optimization can bring more clients for less money, as long as well-structured Google Ads/Analytics accounts are in place. What’s less well-known is the fact that Google can actually generate most of the ads and keywords themselves. And, they sometimes outperform experienced human ad creators. This technique is called ‘dynamic ad groups’. Google’s A.I. scans a webpage, multiple web pages or an entire website, generates the ads and keywords, monitors visitor actions and continuously optimizes the ads and keywords in a virtuous circle. Astonishing Results But does this technique really work in the real world? In order to test the A.I., I generated a competitive dynamic ad group, which looked at an entire client website and compared it to what I had created manually. The results were astonishing. I noticed that the robot was outperforming me substantially, so I shifted most of the funds into the robotic ad group, away from the human-created ad group. The account-wide return on investment (ROI) nearly quadrupled from 47% to 166%, as a result.  One week period ending two weeks after the A.I. budget was increased
Man vs. Machine Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes my colleagues and I beat the A.I., but not in this case. When directly comparing the results during the same week, the man-made ad group had an excellent ROI of 144%, but that was eclipsed by the robot’s stratospheric 275% ROI. Furthermore, the robotic cost per conversion was about 70% less, while the conversion rate was five times as great. Maybe someday, the machines will take over from us, but in the meantime, let’s use them to make a lot of money.  When building a multi-national e-commerce website, it’s important for visitors to experience the website in their own language and to be able to make purchases in their own currency. But what if the visitor does not see or indeed understand the drop down menus, which enable the Language and Currency switches. Would it not be better to default to the individual visitors’ standards, even before they see the website? Of course it would. At RocketScienceWeb.com, we offer this ability, which enables far more traffic to your international website, with improved user experience. CURRENCY There are fewer currency considerations than linguistic considerations. The first step is for the website owner to choose a base currency in which to receive funds, for instance, US dollars. Typically, the website owner would pick other major currency options such as the euro, British Pounds Sterling and/or Chinese Yuan. In this instance, four currencies are offered. The widget accesses the visitor’s IP address to determine their location. A visitor in France, would see 110 Euros, if the initial cost is $120. E-commerce platforms such as Shopify convert currencies internally. We take it a step further by implementing various degrees of rounding, so that French visitors see the above rounded price and are spared the confusing $109,67 Euro price. But what happens if one’s ocation currency is not available? In these cases, your base currency appears. For instance, visitors in Israel, would see dollars as their currency, assuming Shekels were not selected as an option by the web designer. If the product sells for $120, Israeli visitors would see $120 as the price. Of course, visitors can select an alternative currency, when available. A travelling businessperson may wish to pay in their home currency and we offer this option. LANGUAGE We base the default language on the visitor’s browser language selection. For instance, an Italian travelling to California would still see the website in Italian, assuming Italian is their selected browser language. Utilizing browser language, rather than IP address for default language also has the advantage of offering those not residing in their country of origin, a more familiar language, as the default. For instance, native Spanish-speakers in the USA may appreciate the cultural sensitivity of having Spanish as the default language and therefore may be more prone to buy from the website. Human vs. Robotic Translators We also set a base language, which is typically the most widely understood, by global web visitors. The next choice is whether to use a machine-based translator such as Google Translate or a human translator, the latter being superior at the current time, but perhaps not forever. We utilize a two-pronged approach; Google Translate is initially used, but after the website is ‘finished’, we recommend a human translator. The problem is that finishing a website is a metaphysical concept, since even mature websites are often changed. Therefore, before utilizing human translators, it’s advisable to be far along in your text content creation, otherwise, you’ll have the nightmare of managing multiple translations on multiple occasions. It’s also worth using a professional translator or translating service. Amateur writers often don’t write as well as they think they do. SEO & OTHER LANGUAGE CONSIDERATIONS Websites always have two audiences, human and robotic, meaning SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or how you will rank in organic search. Producing a human translation is a great start. Your next step should be utilizing a global TLD (top level domain) which is geographically universal, such as a .com, .edu (for teaching institutions) or .org (for non-profits). Next, create separate pathway for your target country and the target language within the country. For instance, Switzerland has several official languages. We recommend the following URL structure.
www.example.com/ch/fr/ — Switzerland, French or www.example.com/ch/it/ — Switzerland, Italian For those whose native language is not available on your website, the default language, often English, is selected. The website visitor can always change this to a language to a more familiar one, via the language selector. If you’re not sure where your web visitors are located, Google Analytics can provide these answers. Even languages with a non-Roman alphabet, such as Chinese, Russian, Arabic or Hebrew may be selected, the latter two being written right to left! For an example of a currency and language switching website, visit SorianoMotori.com., recently built by RocketScienceWeb.com. Different strokes for different folks. Power to the people. Provide a comfortable user experience for your precious website visitors, in their own language and in their own currency and the big bucks will follow. 
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January 2023
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