In short
Google AI Overviews tracking changed—analytics can’t identify AI-overview traffic anymore due to link formatting updates; marketers should pivot by building content around questions users ask major AI tools. Also covers LinkedIn “collaborative posts,” Kraft’s TSA-friendly ranch packaging, and Polymarket’s alleged deceptive ad practices.
Guests
No guests mentioned; it’s a solo host episode.
Key claims
Over 90% of previously trackable AI-overview clicks are now untrackable; the best workaround is finding overlapping “top questions” across ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Perplexity/Grok and building offers/content around the shared ones.
Notable examples
Rocky IV, Armageddon, Top Gun, and Jaws as patriotic July 4th movies; Kraft ranch TSA-friendly packaging; Polymarket paying creators with fake winning-bet posts.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOGoogle AI Overview Traffic Changes
0:45 to 4:38
Discussion on changes in Google AI overviews affecting website traffic tracking.
“So Google used to use a piece of code called a scroll to text fragment.”
New LinkedIn Collaborative Posts Feature
4:38 to 5:18
Overview of LinkedIn's new collaborative posts feature and its marketing potential.
“LinkedIn, I don't know if you saw this, they announced collaborative posts.”
Kraft's Innovative Ranch Dressing Packaging
5:18 to 6:06
Discussion on Kraft's new TSA-friendly ranch dressing packaging and its marketing impact.
“So we all know that the World Cup is going on and there's all these people from all around the world that are here.”
Polymarket's Controversy in Advertising
6:06 to 6:40
Discussion on Polymarket's deceptive advertising practices and its implications.
“If you're in the marketing world or in the business world, and you're not really understanding these prediction markets, you really need to spend some time in them.”
Polymarket's Controversy in Advertising
6:50 to 7:13
Discussion on Polymarket's deceptive advertising practices and its implications.
“Listen, if you are, that you can design your emails in under 22 minutes.”
Top Patriotic July 4th Movies
7:28 to 10:36
Discussion on the best July 4th movies and the host's personal picks.
“We're here, it's July 4th this week, and let's talk about, I saw this on Today Show and they got it all wrong.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for what's up this week from the Do This, Not That podcast, and there's so much going on. So, AI overviews in Google. Something has radically shifted. So maybe you've noticed a sudden mysterious drop in your website traffic that is showing that it's coming from AI overviews. So when you go in to see all your traffic coming to your website and you have been able to see, oh, this is coming from the Google AI overviews, now you actually can't tell that it's coming from the AI overviews.
0:50like what what are you talking about well this just came out from search engine journal and spent a hot topic in the google analytics reddit community so basically here's what's going on in plain english before when a user clicked a link inside of one of the google ai overviews you know you go to google you ask it about something and then it gives you kind of that ai summary that's the Google AI overview. So Google used to use a piece of code called a scroll to text fragment. And if you ever looked at a URL in your analytics dashboard, you notice this like giant ugly string of text. And at the very end of that giant string of text link, there is a pound symbol, you know, the hashtag symbol, and then there's that wavy symbol and the word text.
1:36Well, that is how we were able to see that people were clicking through from AI overview links that Google was giving back. We were saying, oh, this is coming from AI overview traffic, but Google just updated everything it's doing and they moved the links out of the side panels and put them directly in line with the text. And because of this design shift, that tracking code is gone. So now it's like over 90 % of the AI traffic that we were able to track as of this moment, we can no longer track the source, which makes our jobs a lot harder because we don't actually now know what it is that we are doing that's actually working to get us to show up in these AI overviews.
2:24So one simple little trick, because this is all happening right now, that we've been doing a lot that anybody could do, regardless of anything, you should be doing this, is you really want to figure out, well, what are people for my sector or people interested in my product or my service? What are they asking the AI tools? Because really, whatever they're asking the different AI platforms, Claw, Chagipiti, Perplexity, Grok, Gemini, doesn't matter. That is what you should be building your marketing around. That's what your offer should be, business, consumer, nonprofit. That's what your blog title should be, your podcast titles, your social posts should be about the things that people are asking of these platforms.
3:04So here's one really simple thing that you can do. Okay. You go to the five major AI tools. You go to Chachapiti, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and you ask it, all of them, the exact same question. You say, okay, and let's say you're on Chachapiti. You'll say, what are the top 50 questions that somebody would ask you that is interested in this product, this service, this industry sector, whatever it is that you're in, what are the top 50 questions that someone would ask you? Okay. Now you take that same thing and you ask that exact same thing, not just to Chachapiti, but you ask it to Claude and Gemini and Perplexity and Grok.
3:46And then you take all of the answers, the 50 questions you got from each of these different platforms, and you put them in one doc and you dump it into Chachapiti or Claude or whatever, and you say, okay, which of these 50 questions showed up on every platform, on all five of the major platforms? And you'll find there's going to be like five or six questions that actually showed up across all the platforms. Those questions are what you should build your offer around. That's what you should build your content around. Business, consumer, nonprofit, it doesn't matter. Because for two reasons, number one, that's what everybody wants to know about your product, your service, your category.
4:25But number two, if you lead with that, that is going to allow you to show up on all the different AI platforms. So that's a very easy trick that you can do right now that costs you no money, it saves you a lot of time, all of that. What else is going on? LinkedIn, I don't know if you saw this, they announced collaborative posts. It's not fully out there yet, but collaborative posts, which you've all seen on Instagram forever, where now what's gonna happen is, let's say a brand wants to do a post with a creator, or you have one of your leadership in your company and your company page, you wanna do a collaborative post, you're now gonna be able to do on LinkedIn what you could do on Instagram and have people basically releasing the same post at the same time, sharing in that engagement and collaborative posts do incredibly well on Instagram.
5:11So there's a big new change. It's barely out there from LinkedIn. They just announced this like this past week, but collaborative posts are coming. You know what else is here and coming? Kraft stepped it up. So we all know that the World Cup is going on and there's all these people from all around the world that are here. OK, and they're discovering American food. One of the big foods that they're discovering is ranch dressing. Well, Kraft did something extremely awesome. They and this is not a joke. They introduced a TSA friendly packaging for ranch dressing because everyone's taking the big ranch dressing and shoving them in their bag to fly home.
5:47Kraft got on. And this is the thing. Being able to move this fast, this is how you win now in your marketing, in your products, and everything that you're doing, being of the moment. So I'm very pro craft jumping on this, and ranch dressing needs to be global. I don't understand why it's not global. Some of the other things going on that we saw this week, polymarket. If you're in the marketing world or in the business world, and you're not really understanding these prediction markets, you really need to spend some time in them. But polymarket, which is one of the leaders in the prediction markets, did something that was a little not cool this week.
6:18Okay. And they're in some hot water according to the wall street journal. So what happened was poly market, uh, is now being accused of being involved with deceptive ad practices. Why? Because the company paid a bunch of creators to post about winning big bets on social media, but the bets were all fake, not good. Right? So that's really bad. So poly market's kind of like not no bueno on that. So before we get to completely ridiculous topic, which are my top July 4th movies of all time. I'm going to tell you what they are. I want you to know that this podcast is exclusively sponsored. This one right here by Knack.
6:54K-N-A-K. Listen, if you are, that you can design your emails in under 22 minutes. The most beautiful, best in class emails. My company designs all of our emails using Knack. You can design your landing pages. You could have everybody on your team kind of interacting in one place and Knack is it. I've been using Knack forever. If you're not familiar with Knack, go to knack.com, K-N-A-K.com slash demo. I am telling you this will change your marketing, your email, your landing pages, your SMS, everything. All right, check it out, knack.com slash demo. All right, let's get into the July 4th. We're here, it's July 4th this week, and let's talk about, I saw this on Today Show and they got it all wrong.
7:37What are the greatest, most patriotic July 4th movies of all time? Well, anybody who disagrees with this should block me. The number one is Rocky IV. There is no debate that Rocky IV gets you more fired up, let's go USA, than any other movie. I mean, the fact that what happened with Apollo Creed in that movie, I don't think it's a spoiler. That movie's been out for a very long time. I don't think Apollo Creed should have fought Dolph Lundgren. That was just a bad matchup. But Rocky IV is amazing. My number two is Armageddon. I have no idea what this has to do with July 4th, but I love Armageddon when you got Ben Affleck and you got Bruce Willis and Liv Tyler and they're going to save the world and they fly out to an asteroid.
8:26Great movie. Then you got Top Gun, which of course, I mean, hello, whatever. But the one that people sleep on is Jaws, the shark movie. Jaws literally took place over July 4th weekend. Like literally took place over July 4th weekend. If you don't think Jaws is one of all-time great July 4th movies, you don't know what you're talking about. So these are the best movies. What will I be watching this July 4th? Well, because I have no life, I'll be watching Love Island because this is a very important show. They just recoupled back up after Casa Amor. It was dramatic, okay? And so I'm very invested in what's going on with Love Island.
9:04I have no life. I appreciate you. And if you get a minute, check out my book. All the not-author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. Stupider people have done it. We made it to the USA Today National Best Seller List, okay? And we're trying to kick cancer's butt. Grab this book. It would mean the world to me. You rock. And we'll see you at the next one. Later. Wait, don't go anywhere. There's two really important things I want to tell you. First off, my book is out. Stupider people have done it. And I don't know how, but this book has made it to the USA Today bestseller list, one of the top books in the entire country.
9:43Now, all net author proceeds are going to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. And between this book and things that we're doing, we've now donated$130 ,000 in the fight against cancer. If you buy this book, if you buy the Kindle, the audio on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, anywhere, money is going to fight cancer. We need your help. Please grab a copy of Stupider People Have Done It. The second thing is I want to work with you. I want to amplify your brand. I want my agency to help you get more customers, more subscribers, more whatever. I want to partner with you in so many different ways. All you got to do is go to jschwedelson.com.
10:21jschwedelson.com. And then there's a button in the upper right-hand corner that says partner. Fill out that form. Let's work together. Let's do stuff. And if this wasn't the worst podcast you've ever heard, it would be amazing if you follow the show, if you leave a comment, if you tell your friends about it. I appreciate you and go out there and crush it.
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Something quietly broke inside Google this week, and most marketers won't notice until their AI Overview traffic disappears from the dashboard. Jay Schwedelson walks through what changed, why over 90% of that traffic just went dark, and a free 5-minute trick using ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Grok to figure out exactly what your content should be built around. Stick around for the LinkedIn move everyone copied from Instagram, Kraft's genuinely clever ranch dressing play, and a deeply unserious ranking of the best July 4th movies ever made.
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Best Moments:
(00:50) Google stripped the tracking code, and over ninety percent of AI Overview traffic just went dark
(03:01) Ask all five AI tools the same question to find what your content should actually be about
(04:44) LinkedIn borrows collaborative posts from Instagram, and it is a bigger deal than it sounds
(05:27) Kraft rolls out TSA-friendly ranch dressing for the World Cup crowd, smuggling it home
(06:01) Polymarket gets caught paying creators to fake big-bet wins
(07:43) Ranking the best July 4th movies, with a strong case for Jaws at number one




