Kick Point Playbook gives you the digital marketing skills you need to grow—whether you want to land more clients, level up your career, or make smarter marketing decisions. Get bi-weekly insights on analytics, SEO, and reporting, curated by Dana DiTomaso and her team. Each issue is packed with expert tips, must-read articles, and free resources like templates and checklists—all designed to help you take action and see real results.
Share
🔷 Are AI Overviews sending traffic to your site? Here’s how to know
Published 2 months ago • 6 min read
How to Track Traffic from AI Overviews, Featured Snippets, or People Also Ask Results in GA4
If you’re seeing your website come up in AI Overviews (AIO), Featured Snippets, or People Also Ask (PAA) results on Google, you’ve probably wondered: are searchers actually clicking through to my site? And if they are, how can I find out what pages they looked at and what actions they take on my site?
In this guide, Dana DiTomaso walks you through setting up tracking in Google Tag Manager (GTM) and GA4 to capture these visits, so you can see exactly how these search features impact your traffic and engagement.
Learn how to:
Extract highlighted text from URLs
Send an event to GA4 when these visits are detected
Report on visitors from these search features and what they do when they’re on your site
Get a clearer picture of how these Google search features drive traffic and learn what those visitors do once they land on your site.
The Analytics Advantage: How Top Performers Quietly Outpace Competitors
What if your competitors are using the same analytics tool as you—but extracting insights you haven’t uncovered yet? Join Jill Quick and Dana DiTomaso on April 15th to discover how top performers use GA4 to outwork, outlearn, and outperform others in their industry. More importantly, they’ll show you how to do the same.
Expect real-world insights, expert tips, and a fresh approach to GA4 that’ll have you thinking, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” No lectures, no finger-wagging—just a behind-the-scenes look at how to unlock GA4’s full potential.
Yes, Google cares about freshness—but it depends on the type of content. If you’re not familiar with content freshness, it refers to how new or recently updated a piece of content is. In SEO, freshness matters for two key reasons:
Trust and Relevance: Your audience expects up-to-date, accurate information.
But freshness isn’t a universal ranking factor. It all depends on the type of content and the search query.
What Is Freshness Distance?
The idea of freshness distance, which is the gap between the newest and oldest ranking content, was first introduced by Ross Hudgens. It’s a useful way to understand when freshness impacts rankings and when it doesn’t.
Building on this, Darren Shaw recently created the Freshness Distance Calculator, which helps SEOs analyze how often content updates matter for specific keywords.
Our SEO team had fun experimenting with the tool, and it reinforced a key takeaway: Google doesn’t always prioritize the newest content—it depends on a keyword’s freshness distance.
Freshness Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All
After analyzing top-ranking pages across different queries, we noticed clear patterns in how often content needs to be updated to stay competitive:
🔆 High-Freshness Topics (Short Freshness Distance) For these topics, newer content tends to outrank older pages, so frequent updates are key. Examples include:
Breaking news (e.g., “Latest Google Algorithm Update”)
Product reviews and comparisons
Trends and seasonal topics
Evergreen guides that rely on up-to-date data
🔅 Low-Freshness Topics (Long Freshness Distance)
These topics remain relevant for years, with minimal updates:
Historical events (e.g., “Who invented the telephone?”)
Foundational concepts and theories
Timeless best practices
How to Apply This to Your SEO Strategy
1. Audit & Monitor Your Keywords
Use the Freshness Distance Calculator to check how often top-ranking content in your niche gets updated. If search intent shifts, adjust your content accordingly.
2. Prioritize High-Freshness Topics
If your keyword has a short freshness distance (e.g., fast-changing trends, product updates, financial news), plan regular updates to stay ahead.
3. Maintain Evergreen Content
Not everything needs a refresh. For low-freshness topics, focus on accuracy and depth instead of constant updates. A yearly check-in is usually enough.
4. Track Competitors
See how often your competitors update their content. If they refresh their pages every few months, you might need to do the same to keep up.
5. Use Structured Data & Publish Dates
Help Google and searchers understand when your content was last updated. Use structured data to highlight “Last Updated” instead of just “Published Date”—this signals freshness to both users and search engines.
Freshness isn’t a universal ranking factor, but it can give you an edge depending on your topic and query intent. Keeping your content relevant, updated, and engaging is the best long-term strategy.
Ranking well is great, but it only matters if your audience actually clicks and reads your content.
How To Track Campaigns In GA4 Using UTM Parameters
Struggling to track where your website traffic is coming from? You’re not alone! Many marketers run into this issue. That’s why we put together this guide for tracking campaigns in GA4 using UTM parameters. Once you understand how GA4 sorts traffic and have set up a consistent process for your team to use UTMs, you’ll get cleaner data and better insights into what’s really driving results.
✨ Bonus, we also share our free UTM Builder & Tracker spreadsheet to help keep your team organized.
If you use Google Tag Manager (GTM), you might have seen Google’s recent email about "unauthorized modification of your GTM container." Starting April 10, 2025, GTM will automatically load a Google Tag before any Ads or Floodlight events fire. This raises concerns about duplicate tracking and mismatched tag recommendations.
If your GA4 setup is already in GTM, you might not need to change anything, but it’s worth checking to avoid unexpected issues. It also appears that if you use a variable for your measurement ID, GTM assumes you don’t have a tag and may try to load one anyway.
✨ Managing the Hype of the New: How to Keep Clients On-track
Clients love chasing the latest marketing trends, but not every new tool or tactic is worth the hype. Jumping on trends without a strategy can waste time and resources. The key is to focus on what actually drives results and to help clients understand when a new approach makes sense, and when it’s just a distraction.
⚡ Use ChatGPT Operator to Check Your Rankings Immediately Following a Google Core Update
Google’s March 2025 Core Update is rolling out, and keeping track of your rankings can help you understand any changes. Marie Haynes shares a way to use ChatGPT Operator to check rankings quickly without manually searching for each keyword. By pulling top keywords from Google Search Console and running them through ChatGPT Operator, you can get a quick snapshot of your performance and adjust as needed.
📆 Is Your “Date Updated” Killing Your CTR? This SEO Case Study Says Yes
Abby Gleason found that displaying both "Date Published" and "Date Updated" led to a 22% drop in CTR because Google often pulls the older date, making fresh content look outdated in search results. The fix is simple: stick to one date, the most recent update, to avoid confusion and improve click through rate.
🤖 5 Early Observations about The New Google AI Mode in Test
Google is testing AI Mode, a new search experience designed to handle more complex queries using advanced reasoning and multimodal capabilities. Aleyda Solis tested it and found that while AI Mode provides well-structured answers with clear source links, it’s not as effective for product-focused searches, where traditional results still perform better.
Search is changing, and Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Perplexity don’t rank content the same way Google does. Instead of traditional SEO metrics like rankings and backlinks, brand mentions, citations, and referral traffic from AI tools are becoming more important. Crystal Carter breaks down how to measure and optimize your visibility in LLMs, from tracking mentions to analyzing AI-driven traffic in GA4.
You’re already part of the team—now help us grow the fan club! Refer your digital marketing and analytics friends to the newsletter and earn exclusive rewards.
Refer 2 people: Get a shout out from Dana DiTomaso on LinkedIn
Refer 6 people: Get access to an exclusive presentation from Dana on Unpacking GA4 Explorations
Sharpen your local SEO skills at LocalU's Global Virtual Conference tomorrow on March 26. You'll get cutting-edge strategies, expert insights, and a live Q&A with each speaker.
Join Dana DiTomaso's session, The Analytics Tool You're Probably Still Avoiding, to learn how to make GA4 work for locally-focused businesses. Whether you're refining your approach or looking for fresh insights, this conference will equip you with the tools and knowledge to succeed. Don't miss out!
Today's edition of The Playbook Huddle was brought to you by Jessie Low and Kyra Piper. Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here!
PO Box 68171 RPO Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre, Edmonton, Alberta T6C 4N6 Unsubscribe · Preferences
Kick Point Playbook
Insights that fuel action. Learn, apply, and grow your marketing skills.
Kick Point Playbook gives you the digital marketing skills you need to grow—whether you want to land more clients, level up your career, or make smarter marketing decisions. Get bi-weekly insights on analytics, SEO, and reporting, curated by Dana DiTomaso and her team. Each issue is packed with expert tips, must-read articles, and free resources like templates and checklists—all designed to help you take action and see real results.
Hello Reader, Thank you for attending today’s webinar, Making the Move From Search Optimization to Answer Optimization with Wil Reynolds! If you missed the webinar or want to rewatch it, here’s the replay link → We had an incredible discussion about how the future of SEO is evolving beyond rankings—and why marketers should be focusing on where (and how) real answers are being delivered across AI, social, and search. Key takeaways: We’re in the answers business, not just the SEO business....
How to Verify Consent Signals Are Being Received Correctly in GA4 for Modeling Eligibility and GDPR Compliance You put a consent banner on your site. That’s great! But here's the problem... Just because your banner looks nice doesn't mean GA4 is actually respecting what your visitors choose. We see this mistake all the time during analytics audits. The banner is there, sure. But the data? Still flowing in before getting consent. Oops. Here's what you should check right now: Is data being sent...
GA4 Explained: The Essential Guide to Page Path, Page Location, and Other Page Data Page path versus page location versus page path + query string… if you find yourself getting tripped up by these GA4 dimensions and are stuck navigating messy reports, you’re not alone. Knowing which dimension to use can seriously improve your reporting! In our latest guide, Dana DiTomaso breaks down what each dimension actually tracks, when to use them, and how picking the right dimension makes all the...