Welcome to another edition of The SEOs Diner's Club! Each week, I bring you a digest of the latest SEO updates and AI-driven insights, all crafted to fit into just a few minutes of your time. With over a decade of experience in SEO, my goal is to break down the week’s most important developments into a quick, insightful read. This way, you stay ahead of the curve in less than seven minutes. Let's jump into what matters this week!

Embrace the Future with AI Agents: The ChatGPT Task Planning Revolution

While artificial intelligence accelerates the transformation of digital marketing, ChatGPT's new task-planning feature opens the doors to a new era for professionals.

This innovation allows you to save time by automating repetitive tasks and focusing on strategic work. We'll examine this feature with 10 practical examples and discuss how this tool can be integrated into your strategies.

What is the ChatGPT Task Planning Feature?

ChatGPT's task planning feature is a new addition currently in beta and offered to Plus, Pro, and Team subscribers. This beta version offers flexible task scheduling, automatic notifications, and integration with various platforms. This way, tasks can be defined automatically at specific times or intervals and work even when you're offline. You can receive notifications via email or push notifications when tasks are completed. This feature is active on Web, iOS, Android, and macOS platforms, with Windows application integration expected shortly.

How to Use It?

Task planning is quite easy:

1. Activate the "Scheduled Tasks with GPT4-o" option

2. Define task details and set timing

3. Manage your tasks from the chat interface or the "Tasks" tab. You can access this tab from the profile icon.

4. Edit, pause, or delete your tasks

If you enable notifications in your ChatGPT account settings, you can receive notifications about your created tasks via email or push notifications.

Currently, each user can create a maximum of 10 active tasks simultaneously.

AI-Powered Task Planning with ChatGPT: Practical Examples

Here are useful application examples:

1. Daily SEO and AI News Summary

   • Task: Create a summary of the latest SEO and AI news every morning at 07:00

   • ChatGPT Command: "Every day at 07:00, create a news summary summarizing the latest developments in SEO and artificial intelligence and send it to me via email." Task scheduling should be set daily at 07:00. Notifications should be set to email.

2. Brand Mentions Monitoring (Via Bing Index)

   • Task: Track daily mentions of the brand on the internet and send notifications

   • ChatGPT Command: "Track daily mentions of [brand name] on the internet and send me email notifications only when there's a new mention." Task scheduling should be set daily, and the brand name should be specified. Notifications should be set to email.

3. Content Ideas Generation

   • Task: Generate weekly content ideas about specific topics

   • ChatGPT Command: "Generate blog post, article, or video content ideas weekly about the specified ([enter topics or keywords here]) topics and send them to me via email." Task scheduling should be set weekly, content topics or keywords should be specified, and email notifications should be selected.

4. Short Video Script Creation

   • Task: Create a short video script about an SEO topic every day

   • ChatGPT Command: "Create short video (shorts) scripts about SEO topics daily and send them to me via email. If you want, consider the latest [XXXX's YouTube channel] video." Task scheduling should be set daily, and email notifications should be selected.

5. SEO-Friendly Content Writing

   • Task: Write SEO-friendly blog posts about specific keywords and topics

   • ChatGPT Command: "Write SEO-friendly blog posts about the specified ([enter keywords and topics here]) keywords and topics and send them to me via email." Task scheduling can be set daily or weekly, and keywords and topics should be specified in detail, with email notifications selected.

6. Social Media Content Planning

   • Task: Create weekly SEO content drafts for specific social media platforms

   • ChatGPT Command: "Create weekly SEO-related content drafts for [Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.] platforms. Create separate content for each platform and send them to me via email." Task scheduling should be set weekly, social media platforms should be specified, and email notifications should be selected.

When using these commands, you can add extra details to customize your tasks. For example, you can specify a particular tone, define sources, or provide instructions about the output format. You can also adjust the frequency, timing, and notification settings according to your preferences. ChatGPT tasks will both save you time and make your SEO work more efficient.

Why Should You Use ChatGPT Task Planning Feature?

• Time-Saving: You can focus on strategic work by automating routine tasks

• Efficiency: You can work without having to remember or track tasks

• Error Reduction: Minimizes manual errors

• Customization: Features can be shaped exactly according to your needs

ChatGPT's task planning feature stands out as an innovation that lightens professionals' workloads and provides effective time management. You can integrate this feature to optimize your work process by taking inspiration from the examples above and significantly increasing your productivity.

Google's Market Share Falls Below 90% for the First Time!

According to Statcounter data, Google's search engine market share fell below 90% in the last three months of 2024. This development signals important changes in SEO strategies.

Google experienced a dramatic drop in market share in the last quarter of 2024, falling below 90%. This is the first since 2015. The biggest drops were observed in Asian and US markets. Google's general dominance weakened, especially due to competition in Asia. Alternative search engines like Bing, Yandex, and Yahoo managed to increase their market share.

What Can You Do?

• Investment in Alternative Search Engines: Aim to generate traffic from platforms like Bing by optimizing content on these channels

• Focus on Local and Regional SEO: Examine regional search trends, especially in Asian and US markets

• Use AI-Supported Tools: Track the rise of AI-based search engines and optimize your content accordingly for these tools

Why Important for SEO Professionals?

Google's dominant market share above 90% for a long time was the cornerstone of many SEO strategies. However, this decline could create a new power balance among search engines. Particularly the rise of alternative search engines like Bing encourages SEO experts to invest in different platforms. Additionally, the popularity of AI-based response engines brings new opportunities and risks in search engine optimization.

For SEO experts, this change serves as a warning to increase diversity and develop strategies for different search engines. Google's efforts to maintain leadership could accelerate algorithm changes, so it's critical to closely monitor changes. Now is the time to act!

Why Can't SEO Tools Reflect Reality in 2025?

Traffic estimation issues of SEO tools and data deficiency problems are on the agenda. How does a transformation in SEO strategies become necessary with Google's changes?

The SEO world continues to evolve, but as of 2025, two critical issues stand out: SEO tools' traffic estimates not reflecting reality and many popular tools becoming unable to provide data with Google's new updates.

You should watch Ryan Stewart's video about this topic.

The Difference Between Estimation and Reality

SEO tools continue to be critical tools for digital marketers with keyword rankings and traffic predictions. However, changes made by Google this week showed that there are problems not only in traffic estimates but also in data flow. Tools like Semrush, SimilarWeb, Rank Ranger, and SE Ranking couldn't provide data until they adapted to Google's new protocols.

Google Update: Data Crisis

With its change on January 15, 2025, Google affected many SEO tools. Updates in API and automation protocols made it difficult for these tools to pull SERP data. While platforms like SimilarWeb solved the problem causing interruption within 18 hours, this situation showed the following in the SEO world: Google's tightening controls will seriously test the adaptation speed of tools.

Also, another announcement from Google is making JavaScript mandatory for Google Search. This move made bot-based data-pulling methods more complex and prevented many SEO tools from working as effectively as before.

What Does It Mean for SEO Experts?

These two problems necessitate serious strategic changes for SEO experts:

• Reevaluate Traffic Estimates: Google's AI-supported summaries and increasing ad volume have changed the perception of organic traffic. Traffic estimates no longer reflect SERP's complex dynamics.

• Check Data Reliability: Due to Google's strict controls, it has become critical to verify the accuracy of data provided by SEO tools with different sources.

• Develop Flexible Strategies: Adopt a more balanced approach with social media, email marketing, and paid advertising strategies by reducing dependency on SEO tools.

Adapt to the New Reality

Google's new norms require us to question the data provided by SEO tools more than ever. Data deficiency, errors in traffic estimates, and the rise of AI and ads in SERP force SEO experts to turn to more creative and flexible strategies.

The data interruptions experienced this week serve as a warning: SEO tools can be guides, but you determine the strategy. Focus on Search Console, user behaviour analyses, and other holistic data sources to see the bigger picture.

TikTok Ban: New Strategies Required for US Brands

With the TikTok ban, brands in the US could lose access to 170 million users—time to redirect advertising budgets to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

The US Supreme Court approved the law requiring TikTok to transfer its US operations. If Chinese ByteDance doesn't sell TikTok, the application could lose access to 170 million US users. Brands should quickly replan their TikTok campaigns.

• Deadline: The period set for ByteDance to transfer TikTok is January 19, 2025

• Risks: The application could be removed from Apple and Google stores

• Alternatives: Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts could benefit from TikTok's downfall

What Can You Do?

The TikTok ban could be a turning point for digital marketers with customers in America. Here are some steps I recommend to adapt:

• Redirect Campaigns: Shift your advertising budget allocated for TikTok to alternative platforms like Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts

• Data Security Priority: Carefully choose your platform to ensure user data security

• Diversity is Important: Don't base your entire strategy on one platform. Diversification offers a more robust marketing strategy in the long term

Why Important?

TikTok's shutdown could directly affect marketing campaigns targeting especially the younger generation. TikTok's unique algorithm and user interaction models created an important market opportunity.

The TikTok ban means a big change not only for users but also for brands and marketers. This development makes strategy change mandatory in the digital marketing world.

This Week in AI: Tools, Services, and Insights

AI is reshaping digital marketing. Let’s dive into the latest developments and practical applications driving industry innovation.

• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), or AI-supported SEO, emerges as a concept to understand the effects of AI-supported tools on digital marketing and SEO. This innovative approach draws attention, especially with the rapid development of content production tools working with generative AI. You must read Seer Interactive's article about GEO.

• According to Aleyda Solis, a comprehensive process is needed to integrate Large Language Models (LLMs) into your SEO workflow. Also, it's important to learn ways to maximize the potential of generative AI while implementing verification systems.

• Google-Ipsos's new study shows that AI usage is increasing globally but remains at lower-than-expected levels in North America. While AI usage rate reaches 48% in emerging markets like Nigeria, Mexico, and South Africa, this rate remains at 29% in the US and Canada. The report emphasizes that optimism towards AI is increasing globally; however, users in these regions still have concerns.

• Midjourney is preparing to make a revolutionary breakthrough in AI-supported visual production. Version 7, to be announced in January 2025, will offer photo-realistic output and VR-compatible 3D models with enhanced command understanding capability and "NeRF-like" technology. It will push artistic boundaries with its user-focused development process.

Support My Newsletter:

If you find my content valuable, consider buying me a coffee to support my work. Your contribution will help me continue sharing the latest SEO developments. Let's achieve more together!

Best,

Mert Erkal