The Daily Carnage

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What Makes Good Search Queries

NOVEMBER 24, 2025

A good search query tells search engines exactly what someone wants, why they want it, and how urgently they need it.

And as SEO shifts toward conversational queries, AI overviews, and intent-driven SERPs, the quality of that signal matters more than ever.

Instead of “Coffee,” we want “Best light roast coffee for cold brew under $20.”

Great queries consistently share three traits:

Clarity: The query reveals the user’s purpose without guesswork.
Specificity: It narrows the topic and removes ambiguity.
Natural language: It sounds like something a real person would say out loud.

When you target queries like this, you’re able to discover meaningful long-tail keywords, match content to user intent, build authority within a niche, and reduce bounce rates because readers find exactly what they came for.

If your query reflects how people truly search (messy, conversational, and full of context), you’re already optimizing for both human behavior and modern search systems.

Check out Clearscope for more.

Google’s New Metric: Original Conversion Value

NOVEMBER 23, 2025

Google Ads has introduced a new metric, Original Conversion Value (OCV). In practice, it looks like this:

Conversion Value – Rule Adjustments – Lifecycle Goal Adjustments = Original Conversion Value

It reveals the true, unadjusted revenue generated by campaigns. Unlike the standard Conversion Value metric, which incorporates adjustments like Conversion Value Rules or Lifecycle Goals, OCV strips all of these away.

It can be tricky to separate real conversion value from Google’s automated adjustments. Original Conversion Value is helpful for:

Revenue reporting: see true campaign-generated revenue without artificial adjustments
Post-campaign analysis: compare performance across campaigns more accurately
Troubleshooting inflated ROAS: identify when automated bidding is boosting reported value rather than real conversions
Auditing automated bid strategies: understand if Smart Bidding is driving actual results

Head to Search Engine Land for a closer look.

The Creator-First Holiday Marketing Guide

NOVEMBER 19, 2025

Holiday creator campaigns are failing because brands and creators are operating on completely different calendars and incentives.

Later’s new research suggests that the brands winning the holidays are those designing creator programs around creators instead of internal timelines.

By the time most brands slide into a creator’s inbox, those creators have already committed to competing campaigns or they simply don’t have the bandwidth. And then it’s a landslide: rushed briefs, unclear expectations, generic content, and weaker performance overall.

Here’s how to realign your creator planning for max ROI:

Start planning holiday campaigns in Q2, not late summer.
Pitch long-term partnership potential > single activations.
Use hybrid compensation models (base + performance).
Brief creators clearly but leave room for creative ownership.
Diversify channels, especially YouTube and Facebook, where competition is lower.
Expand beyond short-form video with long-form, carousels, and interactive formats.

Get the full scoop from Later.

Reply to The Comments

NOVEMBER 18, 2025

New data from Buffer confirms and illuminates the obvious: replying to comments lifts your overall reach.

When you interact with your audience, algorithms pick up on those signals, surface your activity to more users, and nudge the conversation forward. Plus, replies spark more replies, compounding total engagement.

Posts where the creator replied to comments generated up to 42% more engagement overall, with Threads showing the biggest lift of all.

Here’s how the comment-reply lift looks by platform:

LinkedIn: +30%
Instagram: +21%
Facebook: +9%
X (Twitter): +8%
Threads: 42%

With social posting declining and lurkers outnumbering active contributors, engagement remains the strongest signal of interest for platform algorithms. Replying is one of the easiest ways to spark it.

Check out Buffer’s study for more.

A Text Overlay Formula for Social Ads

NOVEMBER 17, 2025

New research shows that putting just the right amount of text in the right place can lift social engagement and clicks by up to 127%.

Across 4 experiments and 8,200+ real posts, researchers found that text overlays work by balancing visual attention. When the text and imagery don’t compete, and instead feel integrated, people are significantly more likely to click, comment, and like.

But size, placement, and platform all matter, too.

For dynamic visuals like videos and GIFs, medium-sized text performs best, especially when it sits on the edges rather than the center. On static images, it flips: centered and larger overlays tend to win.

Here’s a handy formula for higher performance:

Keep overlays away from the center on videos/GIFs
On Instagram videos/GIFs: use ~11% of the frame (up to 44%)
On X: aim for up to 46% of the frame; peak performance at 24%
On Facebook: medium text sizes outperform small by 127%
Place text on edges for +19–23% clicks
For static images: center the text and size it larger

But it’s still a good idea to A/B test your audience and see what your sweet spot is. Check out Science Says for a look at the study.

Get People to Read Your Emails

NOVEMBER 16, 2025

Inboxes are bursting and brains are fried.

But copywriters have cracked the codes for getting people to open, click, and answer emails.

So, here are the four big ones:

Appeal to self-interest. The fastest way to lose a reader is to start with what you want. Lead with how your message helps them. Make the benefit unmistakable from the first line.
Write a good subject line. A great email no one opens is just a diary entry. Strong subject lines promise a benefit, deliver news, spark curiosity, or blend all three.
Be human. Write like a person talking to another person. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. No handbook jargon.
Have a clear CTA. If you want someone to do something, ask directly. One email = one action. Add a deadline. Make the next step stupidly easy.

Persuasion is a courtesy. It’s removing friction, offering clarity, and respecting the reader’s bandwidth. Read more from Barking Up The Wrong Tree.

And, uh, P.S…. everyone always reads the P.S.

The Great SEO Traffic Decline

NOVEMBER 12, 2025

SEO traffic is indeed dipping in 2025. But not for the reasons you might think.

ChatGPT may be stealing search share, but new data from Grow & Convert suggests that Google’s AI Overviews could be the real cause.

Rankings and impressions are rising, conversions are steady (or growing), and yet clicks are falling. Sites are showing up more often in search results, but fewer users are clicking through.

And this shift aligns with Google’s March 2025 rollout of AI Overviews, which now deliver summarized answers directly in the SERP.

AI Overviews still mention brands, but users often:

Open a new tab to search the brand directly
Click a “dotted” AI Overview link that triggers a branded search
Go straight to the homepage instead of the blog post

Which means traffic that used to be counted as “organic” is now showing up as direct or branded, creating new attribution blind spots.

Basically, SEO is still working, it’s just harder to measure its full impact. Here’s how to adapt:

Add a “How did you hear about us?” field to lead forms
Track both blog and homepage traffic
Monitor branded search volume over time
Include LLM referrals in analytics reports

The target is always moving, huh?

The Great SEO Traffic Decline

NOVEMBER 12, 2025

SEO traffic is indeed dipping in 2025. But not for the reasons you might think.

ChatGPT may be stealing search share, but new data from Grow & Convert suggests that Google’s AI Overviews could be the real cause.

Rankings and impressions are rising, conversions are steady (or growing), and yet clicks are falling. Sites are showing up more often in search results, but fewer users are clicking through.

And this shift aligns with Google’s March 2025 rollout of AI Overviews, which now deliver summarized answers directly in the SERP.

AI Overviews still mention brands, but users often:

Open a new tab to search the brand directly
Click a “dotted” AI Overview link that triggers a branded search
Go straight to the homepage instead of the blog post

Which means traffic that used to be counted as “organic” is now showing up as direct or branded, creating new attribution blind spots.

Basically, SEO is still working, it’s just harder to measure its full impact. Here’s how to adapt:

Add a “How did you hear about us?” field to lead forms
Track both blog and homepage traffic
Monitor branded search volume over time
Include LLM referrals in analytics reports

The target is always moving, huh? Head to Grow & Convert for more.

Social Salaries in 2025

NOVEMBER 12, 2025

The 2025 Link in Bio Social Media Compensation Survey gathered insights from 2,500 respondents from 390+ cities and 40 countries to understand how experience, title, industry, and other factors influence pay.

Key takeaways:

Experience matters. Entry-level salaries increased slightly (3.3%), keeping pace with inflation, but senior professionals with 12+ years in the industry saw a substantial 12% year-over-year increase.
Title impacts pay: No surprise! Social Media Directors saw the biggest salary growth (+14%), while Social Media Managers’ median salaries are now standardized at $85,000, reflecting adjustments for new senior-level titles. Top earners, especially generalists, can make $229,000–$256,000+.
Employment type & industry: Most respondents work in-house (70%), but freelancers and agency workers still report competitive pay. Technology leads in median salaries, followed by ad agencies, while sectors like Food & Beverage, Healthcare, and Beauty saw $10,000+ increases.
B2B vs B2C & company size: B2B professionals earn roughly 10% more than B2C peers, and larger companies generally pay more, though self-employed respondents can compete with mid-sized company salaries.
Gender gap: Women dominate the industry but still earn almost 25% less than men on average. Men are nearly twice as likely to hold director-level roles.

So, entry-level pay and gender equity still need improvement.

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