Read to the end for two very cute blondes at a baseball game.
In today’s edition:
- We talk about voice search… and why it’s more important than ever to optimize for it.
- Sometimes a horse is just a horse, and not a Trojan horse in the WP code after all.
- Can living next to a bitcoin mine actually make you ill? Turns out, yes.
Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?
WordPress Announces AI Partnership to Perplexingly Underwhelming Response
What’s worse?
Announcing that you’re selling your customer’s data to some AI thing-a-majig and everyone losing their minds and getting upset?
Or…
Announcing that you’re selling your customer’s data to some AI thing-a-majig and absolutely nobody cares?
On July 30th, WordPress announced their partnership with Perplexity, a sort of AI-drunk Ask Jeeves reincarnation that still hallucinates wildly and confidently spits out falsehoods as much as any AI, but pretends to be more accurate by providing footnotes and sources.
The tepid response to the official WordPress announcement is a bit strange. Only 5 comments in a week? Ouch.
WordPress claims that this partnership will benefit WordPress users thanks to the revenue sharing model. Under the “Publisher’s Program” Perplexity will cut you a check for a share of ad revenue when your content is featured in response to user queries.
The exact terms of the deal haven’t been shared, but Perplexity’s Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko claims that the revenue share is a “double-digit percentage.”
But if you’re still a bit suspicious, we don’t blame you. Wired has called out Perplexity for bullshitting, violating the Robots Exclusion Protocol and scraping websites without permission.
In short, we’re perplexed as to why this starry-eyed partnership announcement from Automattic hasn’t been met with more skepticism.
P.S. If you want to opt out of using your content for AI training, here’s how. (Not sure it matters though, after reading that Wired article…)
Divi Dashes Out Dashboard Not a Decade Too Early
Hang on though… Move over AI, because everything old is new again.
Evolution, not revolution, is the name of the game these days. So, we were delighted to see Divi joining the dashboard club with Divi Dash! Say that again! Now, say it 5 times fast!
In fairness, Divi Dash as a WordPress Site Manager looks pretty sleek and easy to use. From the video overview, it seems to have plenty of fun features and many others coming soon.
And of course, as we may have hinted at, it doubtless benefits from the 10 or so years of R&D that must have been happening since, oh, I dunno, ManageWP did its thing. Or maybe even, ummm, us.
Anyway, your editorial team looks forward to getting stuck into the delights of the new Divi Dash. If you’ve been playing around with it, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Elegant Themes and Divi Dash dreams!
Everyone Momentarily Panicked When WP 6.6.1 Was Flagged for Trojan Malware
As WordPress 6.6.1 rolled out last week, multiple user reports popped up, complaining that the latest version was triggering trojan alerts.
User @ahnafr11 reported in the WordPress support forums that they got an alarming “Virus Detected” alert when downloading the latest update from the official site, and a warning that “this program is dangerous and executes commands from an attacker.”
Umm.. yikes!
That’s enough to make anyone spit out their coffee, but certain things made users question if this was a real warning or a false positive.
Mainly, WordPress 6.6.1 had already been out for 4 days and hadn’t triggered any warnings, until Windows Defender was updated.
To make a long story short, the problem ended up being an issue with Windows Defender mistakenly identifying an XML namespace as an insecure URL. Oopsies..
To get the full scoop on what happened, check out this Search Engine Journal explanation. But for the meantime, the official word from WordPress admin is just to ignore the false positive until Microsoft fixes it.
¯_(ツ)_/¯
We’ve Expanded to 12 New Hosting Locations 
In case you missed it, we’ve taken the party to 12 new hosting locations worldwide, offering you more choice when it comes to finding a server closer to your website visitors.
Check the list of new locations here.
If you decide to switch to a new location, you’ll find a full guide here.
We did get called out in the comments for no new Canadian locations though. Apologies to our Canuck users, we’ll get you on the next update!
After all, one day Canadians will rule the world, and then we’ll all be sorry.
Mind Bloggling Stats
- WordPress gets most of its downloads on Wednesdays, apparently. Fridays are the least popular day. (Source)
- The average cost of a premium premade WordPress theme is $59. (Source)
- WordPress users publish approximately 70 million new posts every month. (Source)
- There were 119 thousand blog posts written yesterday on Gutenberg alone. (Source)
- WordPress 6.6 has been downloaded 46,900,460 times and counting. (Source)
Deep Dive: Say That To My Interface!
This just in: People be talking to their devices.
“Alexa, tell me something I don’t know!”
Right? I mean, we’ve been seeing the voice search trend grow for nearly a decade now. In 2022, The Smart Audio Report stated that 62% of Americans 18+ used a voice assistant on their devices, and 57% of those made voice searches daily.
Yet voice search is skyrocketing even more in recent years due to improvements in voice recognition technology.
The folks at Global Market Insights say global smart speaker sales will break $30 billion this year. and, if this Statista prediction reported by SemRush is anything to go by, voice search is absolutely worth talking about in 2024:
How To Make Your WordPress Site Voice-Search Friendly
So how do you make sure your site is the one getting pulled up by the ever-so-helpful Siri, Alexa and Google? Is there any way WP can benefit from the rise of voice search?
Aim For The Featured Snippet
According to Backlinko, 40.7% of the answers from voice search come from a featured snippet box. Structure your content with clear headings, concise paragraphs, bullet points and tables to make it snippet-friendly.
Use Conversational Language
In other words, write like you speak! You’ll phrase things in a natural way, just like your website visitors will when making their searches.
Up Your Local SEO Game
75% of smart speaker owners used voice search weekly to discover a local company. For brick & mortar businesses, this means updating your Google My Business, Apple Maps, Bing Places and any other local listings.
Get Structured Data Set Up
Use schema.org markup to provide semantic context about your content’s entities, relationships and actions, making your website easier for search engines to understand. Yoast has a useful ultimate guide to implementing this on your WordPress site.
Loading Speed Matters
Voice search results are loaded 52% faster than average search results. Do everything you can to make sure your site loads like greased lightning!
P.S. We’ve got a guide for that!
Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss
If, unlike Perplexity, you like to properly cite sources you’ve ethically referenced, here are some WordPress plugins for organizing your footnotes beautifully
COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS, ONLY! Nah, just kidding. Drink your coffee, but do try this step-by-step sales workflow from Kyle Van Deusen that will help you Always Be Closing when selling your website services.
Karol Krol reviews Learn WordPress’s recent “Learnings Pathways” glow-up. TLDR: It’s much easier to navigate and Karol is impressed.
On the Shop Talk Show, Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier offer a reassuring and inspiring answer to the question, “Do you think “AI-free” blogs will be a rarity in the future?”
If you noticed WP 6.6 was a little buggy but you haven’t updated to 6.6.1, here’s why you should.
“I, for one, welcome our Corporate Overlords…” Just kidding, can you imagine if we were like that? Check out Doc Pop’s insights on the Fediverse and protecting content creators from big tech dominance.
Coffee Break Distractions
The strange story of how a bitcoin mine caused serious medical issues in a small Texas Town.
People have been using videos of GitLab’s internal Zoom meetings to look busy.
This throw-back search engine curates pages from the days of the classic web.
“We do not, in fact, control the entire internet.” – A relatable Clients From Hell story.
Meet the 11-year-old girl who taught the world to code in 1997
What happens when a real comedian tests out AI-written jokes on stage.
And of course, as promised, two very cute blondes at a baseball game.
