Meta's melting factberg, Reuters' giant survey, and optimising for SEO and AI

A roaring start to 2025 in this week's Content Aware as AI and SEO continue to top the agenda

Published: 09:47, 10 January 2025

Last updated: 10:07, 10 January 2025

Corbidge comments on... Facebook fact-finding
100% more Corbidge this week, as our judge and jury of truth looks at Meta Mark's decision to remove the last figment of Facebook fact-checking in favour of crowd-sourced lie-detection techniques. Politically expedient and cheaper to do, but in the right hands perhaps it could evolve to be better than what it is replacing.
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TikTok against the clock
Wired's Makena Kelly asks if the Meta announcement comes at just the right time to pick up the pieces of an imminent TikTok ban - a place where many users currently feel much safer than on Meta's alternatives.
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Mark's Meta "facts" analysed
If the announcement that Meta is ditching fact checkers was itself riddled with questionable information, what hope is left for any semblance of believable news in the Facebook content pipe? Not much, believes fact-checking guru Alexios Mantzarlis.
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Reuters survey: the stats
The Reuters Institute's annual global news survey is out so that's your weekend reading sorted, as well as numerous stats and references for countless presentations. As usual it polls media industry leaders from around the world on pressing matters, this time as varied as news fatigue, AI in the newsroom, journalists vs influencers, search disruption, and much more. Always a must-read.
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Google's automated news podcasts
Google's latest whizzbang thing continues its habit of whizzy things which might make the news industry go bang. Daily Listen is an AI-generated 5-minute audio snapshot of news headlines grouped by user interest, derived from news websites. It's in the test phase just for US mobile users, so there is no feedback yet regarding onward user traffic habits (if any) or ad placements and the like.
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To render or not to render...
The question of rendering content client-side or server-side has always been important for SEO and site visibility, and the rise of AI bots has only made it more relevant to be aware of the advice - particularly after research showed that AI bots don't read JS properly. Weighing in is Google Dev Advocate Martin Splitt with the latest word on how rendering effects SEO in the Googleverse.
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Canada's cash deal heralds false hopes
The maiden C$100m payment from Google to news orgs in Canada is a welcome balancing of the scales between the two parties in the country. But, says David Buttle in Press Gazette, it's not cause for celebration in other media around the world hoping for the same treatment.
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IP vs AI: the overview
If you read Content Aware you are probably well up to speed on the whole 'LLMs stole my lunch' debate, but this podcast brings all the different talking points into one place and is a great summary of all the debate's complexities. Good to remind yourself of the ins and outs, or for sending to others who are in catch-up mode.
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Reminder: Your voice counts
You can either admire the UK government's pace of enquiry to get feedback on the relationship between AI companies and copyright holders. Or, you can believe that announcing a short consultation on the matter days before Christmas smells a bit cynical. Anyway, a reminder that the countdown is on for you to make your views clear on the case of opt- outs, opt-ins, and copyright theft by tech firms.
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Euro data chiefs looks at AI vs GDPR
Aside from the thorny matter of pinched IP being used by AI companies for LLM training, there is the even more thorny matter of LLMs consuming personal information that should be protected under GDPR. The EU's Data Protection body has issued its partial opinion on the questions of AI anonymity, legitimate interest, et al. Whatever the outcome of IP court cases and forthcoming regulations, this has the potential to be just as big to the AI firms.
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Optimising for LLMs and SEO
A good conversation on the subject of how to optimise site pages for consumption by AI and LLM, or conversely what to do do to avoid that scenario.
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Google: SEO ignores URL keywords
Google's John Mueller reiterated that keywords in URLs do not significantly impact SEO rankings, explaining that while URLs are useful for tracking and organising content, page content and other signals matter much more. This underscores the importance of content quality in SEO, reaffirming that optimizing URLs alone won't do much on its own.
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