💡Something you need to know this week

Hi

Good morning and HAPPY THANKSGIVING to those on the other side of the pond!

I heard from some US clients on Friday that it’s the best of holidays because you can take some time off either side for a super long break, and there are no gifts or decorations – it’s just good food and relaxing. Maybe, with hindsight, the people telling me this weren’t doing the catering, because I seem to remember Monica in Friends getting pretty stressed about dinner. But I guess anything’s as stressful as you let it become.

Ha! I need to remember those wise words as we hurtle into December next week and I can feel my chest tightening.

On the topic of Monica though, we’re going to see Friends the Musical on Saturday night! I’ll report back if it’s any good!

Making the headlines this week…

If you haven’t heard, OpenAI have launched ChatGPT Shopping Research – which is huge.

No matter what business you’re in, if ChatGPT is telling the world it can help them choose the right product, this could effect your business. Either directly or via ripples.

It basically does all (well, “lots of”) the research for you when you’re choosing what to buy – and they’ve launched it just in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Some of the examples they give on their website of how you can use it are “Find the quietest cordless stick vacuum for a small apartment,” “Help me choose between these three bikes,” or “I need a gift for my four year old niece who loves art”.

Rather than a 4 word search in Google, you can now ask questions with a lot more detail and nuances, and then have an ongoing conversation to filter things further.

One report I read reiterated the rule that ecommerce companies have known since 2010:

Whoever controls the beginning of a shopping journey controls the money.

And now OpenAI will control a lot more journeys. Where this will lead things in 2026, we’re yet to see – but I’ve got some ideas I’m going to write up before Christmas.

When it comes to getting yourself mentioned by OpenAi, the case studies and research are still showing 3 key things you need to do – be authoritative, have good citations across the web, and include Structured Data on your website.

If you haven’t read or watched my (free) guide on how to do all of those things, get it here – you won’t need to enter your email.

An explainer…

It has been brought to my attention this week though, that lots of people still don’t really get what Structured Data is. So they’re hearing how important it is, and why they need it, but they don’t know what it actually means.

I did an analogy based reel about it this week, but do you know – sometimes, even though code can be daunting, I think it’s easier to just literally see an example of what is being talked about. So that’s what I blogged about yesterday. Just clearly walking you through why wrapping some words in extra bits of code (or getting a tool to do it for you) is better for robots than just you writing a sentence.

Now might be a good time to mention that if you want to get Structured Data for your brand, and you want to do it in 5 minutes, without learning to code, and without spending much on it, that I’ve made a Black Friday promo code for TalkingWeb subscribers so that you can get AIProfiles (my product) for just £19.80 a year (on going – every year you renew, it’ll be at that price). Use the code NOV25 – it’s valid until the end of Sunday.

You can create an account and use the code today, even if you come back another time and add more to your profile.

On the grid:

My Insta this week has been all about explaining Structured Data, so you can see the posts here – including some photos of me dressed as She-ra when I was 21, because it’s obviously highly relevant. (It is, I was working for Revlon at the time and they’ve been mentioned in a big piece of research this week as a brand who don’t appear in ChatGPT mentions largely because they have no structured data on their website.)

Fave tool of the week:

If you don’t mind the personal plug, because it’s so relevant to this email, I’m going to mention AIProfile’s free FAQ generator this week. If you don’t have FAQs on your website, add some pronto. And if you can do it via Structured Mark up, all the better (remember code NOV25 until the end of Sunday).

The generator will look at your website and create some amazing questions and answers which you can copy and paste, or use on your profile if you sign up. You don’t have to use everything it gives you, you can cherry pick or edit or add your own alongside.

OK that’ll do for today. Have a great week, enjoy Thanksgiving, and don’t spend too much on Black Friday.

Lisa

Lisa Freeman

​https://www.instagram.com/talking.web