Here’s the latest instalment of Digital Marketing Reads, a roundup of some of the more interesting articles we’ve read lately in the digital marketing world.
Do Reviews Still Matter? Study Looks At Changing Consumer Behavior
According to this article, people place less importance on reviews in 2025 than they did in previous years, and see star ratings as a vanity metric rather than an accurate indicator of quality.
Google remains the top review platform, while Facebook has declined in trust and other platforms like YouTube and Instagram have grown in influence in the past few years.
That’s not to say that customer reviews don’t matter anymore – quite the opposite! If you’re a business owner, you should be present on multiple platforms where users can leave you a review (not just Google!). Rather than focusing on garnering 5-star Google ratings, you should encourage your customers and clients to write a thoughtful and truthful review of their experience with your business.
And don’t forget to respond to your reviews! The way a business responds to its reviews is just as important as the reviews themselves, especially when it comes to criticism and complaints.
Google March 2025 core update rolling out now
As you may have heard, Google has released the March 2025 core update, which will take up to two weeks to complete. As with previous core updates, it aims to improve the quality of search results.
This is the first core update of 2025, following the December 2024 update. Google core updates typically cause ranking fluctuations, with recovery possible between updates. As always, digital marketers and website owners should monitor search performance and focus on quality content to adapt to these shifts.
While no specific recovery actions are advised for sites negatively impacted, Google emphasises creating helpful, people-first content. If you think your site may have been impacted by this update, it’s important to WAIT until the update has finished rolling out and not make any hasty changes to your site. Remember, it’s not uncommon for a site’s rankings to fluctuate while a Google update is being rolled out and then stabilise when it’s done.
If, after the core update is complete, you feel like your website has suffered a drop in search rankings, get in touch with our Mildura digital marketing team and we’ll sort you out!
AI Writing Fingerprints: Identify (& Fix) AI-Generated Content
New research shows that AI writing models, including ChatGPT and Claude, leave identifiable “fingerprints” in their text, making it possible to determine which AI tool generated a piece of content with 97.1% accuracy.
Each AI model has unique linguistic and formatting tendencies, such as ChatGPT’s structured explanations and Claude’s concise summaries. These patterns persist even after text is rewritten or translated, which has tangible implications for both content authenticity and AI detection.
The bottom line? AI can be an amazing tool for completing tasks faster in your business, but you need to ensure you read through its output and make little tweaks to it to give it a *human touch* (i.e. don’t just copy and paste text that ChatGPT generates and call it a day).
To make AI-generated content more human, you can vary sentence structure, replace certain phrases, adjust formatting, and add personal insights. As search engines improve their AI detection, it’s essential to blend AI with human creativity to produce valuable content that will rank highly in searches.