Social Media
Instagram’s Test of Removing Like Counts is Being Expanded to More Regions
Instagram this week is expanding its test of removing like and video view counts to six more regions, including Ireland, Australia and Brazil. Instagram has said that it’s removing likes as part of a broader focus on user wellbeing. Individual users can still see their total like counts in the test, but they’re not publicly displayed, which, Mosseri says, reduces social comparison, and its associated negative impacts. It’ll also be interesting to note the overall effect on like counts – will the lack of a total number increase people’s propensity to like a post, or reduce it? If it leads to more likes, you can bet Instagram will be keen to keep the change, regardless of the other impacts. But if it is fully rolled out, it will lead to other challenges. At the moment, brands looking to work with influencers can use post like counts as a measure in their assessment – someone with a million followers, but four likes on each post, is probably not the ‘influencer’ they claim to be. With this change, you won’t be able to see that. You can still use comments as an engagement measure, and you can ask for engagement stats from the influencer his or herself, based on their analytics. But it adds another challenge, which is a subsidiary consideration for marketers, in particular, to keep in mind.
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Twitter Announces New ‘LiveCut’ Video Editing and Publishing Tool, Which Will Replace SnappyTV
Twitter has this week announced the end of its SnappyTV live video editing tool, and the addition of LiveCut, it’s replacement option, which is fully integrated into Twitter’s Media Studio. SnappyTV is a dedicated tool which live video producers can use to create highlight clips from their broadcasts, in order to share them via tweet and boost engagement. If you’ve seen any sports highlights embedded within a tweet, they likely came via SnappyTV. The new tools enable you to edit clips from live broadcasts, while there are also new scheduling options to help better plan your video content. It’s essentially the same functionality as SnappyTV, but better integrated into Twitter’s existing media management tool. As noted, it’s not for everyone – not all users will have access, and not everyone is obviously broadcasting live video via Twitter in the first place. But for those who are looking to make the most of their live content, it could prove to be a valuable, helpful option in planning and strategy.
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Marketing
Emoji SEO presents opportunities for video
Emoji search has been supported in Bing and Yelp since 2014, and Google has allowed it since 2016. One might assume that searching Google or Bing using emojis would lead to the same results as using the text equivalent (e.g., searching 🍩 would deliver the same results as “donut”), but that isn’t the case. For the most part, emoji-based queries in the search engines yield results that pertain to the emoji itself, but there are interesting opportunities for marketers, particularly with regards to videos in the search results. For emoji-based queries, the website results are typically from emoji resource sites, whereas the video carousel tends to include videos with the emoji itself or the word that matches the emoji in their titles. Those with the queried emojis in the titles often appear ahead of videos without them. Adding an emoji to your video’s title may increase its visibility in the video carousel. Users can search using emojis on both Google and Bing. Including them in your titles, meta description or within your content may increase your organic visibility when emojis are used in search queries. At this point, the optimization opportunity appears to be largest in video search.
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DuckDuckGo Now Handles 40 Million Searches a Day
DuckDuckGo was recently profiled in the New York Times, where it was revealed the search engine is now handling around 40 million searches a day. At last count, in January 2019, DuckDuckGo was serving around 34 million searches a day. This continues the steady growth of the niche, privacy-focused search engine. This leads to the inevitable comparison of DuckDuckGo versus Google. Though DuckDuckGo is growing, Google still holds a decidedly larger share of the search market. That may always be the case, as DuckDuckGo’s focus on user privacy comes with limitations. The important thing, at least from a business standpoint, is whether DuckDuckGo is turning a profit. DuckDuckGo has been profitable for the past 5 years, according to the Times’ report, and recent growth should help ensure that remains the case for the time being.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 29, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook is Letting More Advertisers Place Ads in Search Results
More advertisers can now place ads in Facebook’s search results, a placement that has been in testing since last year. Facebook’s search ads were first rolled out to a select number of businesses in the US in December. Now, it appears a greater number of advertisers are seeing ‘Facebook search’ show up as a placement option when setting up ad campaigns. ‘Facebook search’ is an additional placement option when creating newsfeed campaigns. Facebook search ads, like newsfeed ads, are clearly labeled with a “Sponsored” tag. They can appear either as a static image or in a carousel format. Unlike Google ads, there is no option to target specific keywords or phrases with Facebook search ads. So the best way to show up for various keywords is to make sure they appear somewhere on your business’s Facebook page.
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As Instagram Hides Likes, Young Users are Switching to Business Accounts, Exposing Personal Data
New research suggests that a growing number of young users are now converting their personal profiles into business accounts in order to access more in-depth audience data on their post performance. That’s particularly concerning, given that in order to list yourself as a ‘business’ on the platform, you need to provide additional contact info, like a phone number or email address, which is then displayed in your publicly accessible bio. With Instagram lessening its public focus on Likes, maybe, through the advanced metrics available through business profile, young users are looking to maintain their Insta ‘cred’ by sharing these more in-depth figures.
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Marketing
Google is Replacing Voice Search With Google Assistant on Android Devices
Google is reportedly in the process of replacing voice search on Android devices with Google Assistant. According to a report from 9to5Google, the old voice search icon has been replaced with an Assistant icon in the Google app and search bar widget. Google shifting the focus from regular voice search to Assistant is an indication of where Google wants to guide the future of its services. This change could potentially impact a small percentage of organic search traffic to publishers, given the Assistant’s penchant for providing direct answers. When users are given the answers they need from Google Assistant, they don’t have to search and click through to publishers’ sites. Although it’s important to keep in mind that Assistant can’t provide a direct answer for every query.
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Google notifying webmasters to remove noindex from robots.txt files
As part of Google fully removing support for the noindex directive in robots.txt files, Google is now sending notifications to those that have such directives. This morning, many within the SEO community started getting notifications from Google Search Console with the subject line “Remove “noindex” statements from the robots.txt of…” If you get this notice, make sure to ensure whatever you mentioned in this noindex directive is supported a different way. The most important thing is to make sure that you are not using the noindex directive in the robots.txt file. If you are, you will want to make the suggested changes above before September 1. Also, look to see if you are using the nofollow or crawl-delay commands and, if so, look to use the true supported method for those directives going forward.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 26, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Pinterest Unveiled a Set of Mobile Ad Tools
Brands on Pinterest can now more easily create and manage ad campaigns on the network via their mobile devices and set up their Promoted Pins following Thursday’s introduction of mobile ad tools. The new tools are available to all business accounts in the U.S., and the global rollout is under way. They can only be accessed via Pinterest’s iOS and Android applications, and not via the mobile web. Tools available to brands via this new option include adjusting budgets and targeting, pausing ads, editing URL destinations and changing campaign names. On the metrics side, brands can see ad spend, remaining campaign duration, impressions, clicks, click-through rates and saves.
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Snap continues to march forward with solid gains during the second quarter of 2019
Snap, the company behind Snapchat, reported a 48% year-over-year increase in revenue for the second quarter of 2019, reaching $388 million. The upswing continued on the user front as well, with 13 million new daily active users (DAUs) added during the second quarter. Snap now stands at 203 million total DAUs. Of the 203 million total DAUs on Snapchat, 83 million are in North America. Snap reported that 7 to 9 million of the 13 million new DAUs can be accounted to the higher user engagement with its new AR Lenses. The new AR Lenses “brought in new users and re-engaged lapsed users,” the company’s CFO Derek Andersen said. Snap reported it saw more engagement with Lenses created by users during the second quarter than all of 2018. As part of the company’s prepared statements, CEO Evan Spiegel reported 75% of the 13- to 34-year-old population is currently active on Snapchat. “Making us larger than services like Facebook and Instagram among this audience, and demonstrating the broad-based appeal of our service,” said Spiegel, highlighting how Snap is positioning itself against the likes of Facebook and Instagram.
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New Report Suggests Facebook’s Data Scandals Will Impact Trust in its Libra Currency Offering
Facebook’s vision of creating an alternative currency that will better connect the world through its platforms could face some significant challenges in take-up – and that’s before you consider the regulatory concerns already raised by officials. In order to measure the public’s interest in Facebook’s coming Libra currency, and whether people actually intend on using it, messaging and calling app Viber commissioned a survey of 2,000 people in the US and UK (1,000 in each region) to get their impressions of the option. In the US, Viber’s research found that nearly half of all Americans say that they would not trust Facebook at all in regards to keeping their information secure – while less than 3% of Americans say they would be willing to try Libra for payments. Interestingly, those trends hold fairly firm across demographic sets – though younger respondents are more inclined to put their trust in The Social Network. People don’t trust Facebook now, yet for the most part, they haven’t stopped using the app because it’s become a key element in their interactive process, a means to keep them connected to the people and things they care about. If Facebook can provide the same with Libra, these initial concerns will likely dissolve over time.
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Marketing
‘Swipe to Visit’ has arrived on Google Images
Google has launched “Swipe to Visit,” an Images search feature that displays a preview of an AMP-enabled website’s header after a user selects an image result. The user can then swipe up on the preview to load the image’s corresponding web page. Visual searches allow users to efficiently scan and compare many offerings. Capturing high-quality images and optimizing them for search provides one more way for brands to attract users to their websites. This new UI feature may help AMP-enabled publishers get more traffic from their photos by putting their websites a single swipe away.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 25, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram is Testing a New Listing of Stories Mentions to Notify Users
Given the rise of Instagram Stories, it’s no surprise to see that Instagram is now looking to add new notification tools and options to help boost user engagement, and to ensure that people are aware of relevant mentions. The latest tool on this front comes in the form of a new ‘Stories About You’ listing, which is reportedly being tested in the app. The new section would list all the Stories in which a user has been @mentioned or tagged by the Story creator, separating these notifications from your general notifications stream. The option could be particularly beneficial for high-profile users who see a lot of mentions, helping them to better understand their notifications list, and respond to relevant alerts. It might also be beneficial for brands, alerting them to mentions in Stories, and helping to categorize their streams in order to guage related activity.
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Beware of Facebook Libra Scams, Which Are Spreading Across The Social Network
As reported by The Washington Post, a range of scam posts and Pages have started popping up across the web, looking to dupe potential investors who are seeking to get in early on the currency: “Roughly a dozen fake accounts, Pages and groups scattered across Facebook and its photo-sharing app Instagram present themselves as official hubs for the digital currency, in some cases offering to sell Libra at a discount if viewers visit potentially fraudulent, third-party websites.” Crypto scams are relatively common – so much so that Facebook itself implemented a ban on crypto ads earlier in the year due to the proliferation of questionable operators. Facebook has since watered down its action, and given the profile of Libra, it’s not surprising to see scammers looking to tap into the hype, and catch potential investors unaware, relieving them of their cash. As noted, everyone should be very wary of any Libra related ads, on any network, as the currency is not at release stage, has no official release date, and as such, is not at the point where anyone can be offering you any Libra to get a head start on the action.
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Marketing
Google search results not fully rendering for many searchers
There are widespread complaints in the Google forums about the search results not fully rendering when a search is done. This seems to be happening for some searchers on mobile. Google has confirmed the company is working on a fix. If searchers cannot see the search results, even if that is a small percentage of Google searchers, that can lead to a drop in traffic to your web site, which may lead to fewer leads and sales and less revenue for your company. Of course, Google wants its search results to render, so it is working fast to fix the issue.
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Google Adds “Request a Quote” Button to Business Listings in Search Results
Google is automatically adding a large “Request a Quote” button to eligible business listings in search results. The button also appears in mobile search results when the business name is searched for. Specifically, businesses that have opted into the Google My Business messaging feature will have the “request a quote” button added to their listing. Searchers can now request quotes from businesses without ever visiting the business’s website. It can all be done within Google’s services. Clearly, that’s not great for traffic. But the purpose of a business website, for the most part, is to generate leads.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 24, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Will Now Allow Users to Both Retweet and Retweet with Comment on the Same Tweet
This week, Twitter has announced that users can now both retweet and retweet with comment on the same tweet, which up till now has been limited to either one or the other option. The option will provide more capacity to add your own context to every tweet, while also sharing the original message. But here’s the concern – the capacity to double share tweets may also be abused by people who are seeking to get maximum amplification for their own messages. That could lead to a lot of message duplication – and of course, you can just unfollow people who do this repeatedly. But you can bet a heap of social media marketing folk will be keen to test whether retweeting and retweeting with comment on every message helps to boost tweet amplification, and gives them an extra push in expanding their message. It seems like it will be a fairly minor addition, but the capacity for overuse is something to monitor.
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LinkedIn Adds New Services Listings for Profiles to Help Freelancers and SMBs
LinkedIn is rolling out a new option which will enable freelancers and SMBs to list the services they provide on their LinkedIn profile, and be found for the same in search results. The new option will enable users to add a section on their profile which showcases the various services they provide. LinkedIn has also added this as a search option, meaning that when people go seeking people who offer the same, they’ll be able to filter their results based on this new section. It’s another way in which LinkedIn users can utilize the platform to connect with business opportunities – and given the rising amount of freelancers, particularly in the US market, and where the trends are headed, it definitely makes a lot of sense. The freelance, or ‘gig’ economy, does come with additional economic considerations and challenges, but the fact is that, as connectivity improves, people’s options are expanding, and that’s leading to more of us working for ourselves.
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Advertising
TrueView for action inventory extends to Google video partners
Google is opening up Google video partners inventory to TrueView for action ads. TrueView for action video ads are specially tailored for performance advertisers with a call-to-action banner that appears during and after the video plays. If you’ve found success on YouTube with TrueView for action ads, this can help you extend your campaigns’ reach to sites and apps on Google’s video partner network. However, it’s important to note that the environment and units are a bit different than native YouTube inventory and video partners may perform quite differently. Video partners inventory can appear across all devices as an interstitial in a video player. On mobile apps, they can also appear as rewarded video units.
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Microsoft Updates Dynamic Search Ads With Longer Titles & Descriptions
Microsoft Advertising is updating its dynamic search ads with longer titles and an additional description field. This now makes Microsoft’s dynamic search ads more comparable to Google’s. Microsoft recommends using the additional description field to make ads more specific with attention-grabbing information. This update available in countries where Dynamic Search Ad campaigns are supported: US, UK, France, Germany, Canada, and Australia.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 23, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Pinterest Adds New Self-Help Tool to Assist Users Dealing with Mental Stress and Fatigue
Pinterest is rolling out a new set of self-help tools which are designed to assist users who are dealing with mental health issues by offering quick exercises that they can follow along with, right from the app. Pinterest says that its users conduct “millions of searches” related to emotional health on the platform every year, which is what prompted this new initiative. Mental health has rightfully become a key focus for social media apps in recent times, with various reports showing that social media usage itself can be linked to psychological harm. As Pinterest notes, these simple tools are not designed to replace professional care, while searches related to self-harm will still be routed to relevant off-platform resources. But these quick, immediate response activities may help users in need at different times, providing another way to help ease the stress and provide guidance – as opposed to basic keyword search results.
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Facebook Identifies Significant Privacy Flaw in Messenger Kids App
Messenger Kids, the child-friendly variation of the company’s messaging flagship tool has suffered its first major blow – as reported by The Verge, over the past week or so, Facebook has been informing parents of children who have been using Messenger Kids of a flaw within its permissions process, which could have exposed their children to content from unapproved users. That violates the core promise of Messenger Kids, which is designed to provide parents with full control over who their children interact with – and the reassurance that comes with that. Regardless of the scale in question, the problem is that it again highlights a significant flaw in Facebook’s process, and the company’s capacity to manage information and user privacy. This is especially relevant in this case, not only because young, vulnerable users are impacted, but also because this is the core functionality of the app – this is the one key thing that this specialized version of Messenger is supposed to be designed to avoid.
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Marketing
Google Maps App Updated With Ability to Edit Business Information
Google has updated the Maps app on iOS, allowing business owners to edit their listing information without leaving the app. This will make it easier for verified owners and managers to edit their business profile. Business owners may find this feature especially helpful when looking up their own listing in Google Maps. Maybe you changed your hours or stopped offering a particular service, and the change isn’t reflected in the business listing. Now you can update the information immediately in the Maps app, rather than leaving the app and using a mobile browser or the Google My Business app.
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Advertising
Microsoft Advertising rolling out experiments A/B testing tool globally
Experiments is rolling out globally for testing ad copy, landing pages and bidding strategies and modifiers. Similar to drafts & experiments in Google Ads, experiments in Microsoft Advertising allows you to set up a duplicate of your campaign and run a test on a segment of its traffic. “This way, you can run a true A/B test within a campaign to determine whether a particular update will work well for you and your business,” wrote Subha Hari, senior program manager and Piyush Naik, principal program manager, for Microsoft Advertising in the announcement.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 21, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Adds New Warnings for Accounts Which Are Close to Being Banned
Instagram is taking a more active role in stamping out anti-social and concerning behavior on its platform, introducing new tools – and even removing post like counts – in order to focus on user well-being. The latest measure on this front is an update to its policy enforcement processes, which will see the platform implement time-based accruals of policy violations, which will also enable the implementation of new warnings for accounts that are close to being banned. The measure will give Instagram more capacity to take action against repeat offenders by limiting their capacity to stay just within the rules by removing the violating posts. Now, they’ll also have an ongoing record, so even if they do take action on the highlighted posts, they could still face penalties for ongoing concerns.
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Marketing
Google adds JavaScript SEO basics to its Search developer’s guide
On July 18, Google added a JavaScript SEO basics section to its Search developer’s guide. It includes general descriptions of how Google processes JavaScript as well as some best practices. In addition to an overview of how Googlebot crawls, renders and indexes JavaScript web apps, the guide provides basic tips, accompanied by links to more detailed Google resources, including the following: Describing your page with unique titles and snippets; Writing compatible code; Using meaningful HTTP status codes; Using meta robots tags and Fixing images and lazy-loaded content. JavaScript is a powerful tool for developers and can enhance the user experience. Understanding how Googlebot processes your JavaScript-powered web apps can help you make them more discoverable, which may ultimately increase your organic visibility and bring in more traffic to your site.
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Google Confirms Cause of Missing GMB Reviews – Will They Ever Come Back?
Google confirmed the cause of missing Google My Business reviews, an issue that may not be resolved any time soon. Several weeks ago SEOs began to notice Google My Business reviews were going missing. The company says legitimate reviews were inadvertently removed from business listings during Google’s efforts to remove fake reviews. If you take it at face value – legitimate reviews were accidentally removed and they may or may not be restored. Time will tell whether the issue gets resolved. In the meantime there’s nothing business’s can do as the problem is all on Google’s end.
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Advertising
Heads up, advertisers: Facebook is shrinking mobile News Feed ad space
Beginning August 19, posts and ads in the mobile News Feed will display at a 4:5 aspect ratio, which means they’ll be shorter than at the original 2:3 aspect ratio. For advertisers, this means ads will show fewer lines of text and the maximum height for photos or videos in the ad will be reduced to fit new design. According to Facebook, the new ad layout will only allow for three lines of text, after which users will see a prompt to display more of the text. That’s a change from displaying as many as seven lines of text before the “See More” prompt. Ad copy will need to be tighter than ever to get your messages across — or entice users to click to “See More.” Videos will also need to be optimized for the new size, otherwise they will be automatically “masked” when the changes take effect next month.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 19, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter’s Trying Out New Icons to Add More Clarity to Reply Streams
Last September, Twitter revealed that it was working on a set of radical changes to how tweet replies were presented, adding in new signals which highlighted replies from the original tweeter, identified responses from connections, and so on. And now, Twitter’s rolling out another version, using icons instead of words to delineate conversational contributors. The new icons are less intrusive, but still provide the same additional context. You just need to know what each icon means. Twitter’s trying to be more transparent, more inclusive in its testing, which has merit, but it also highlights just how long it can take, and makes Twitter seem like it’s afraid to take decisive action. But it is moving. Slow, but this latest test shows that it is getting there. It’s not perfect yet, but maybe, with the addition of color-coding for each icon or something similar, it could be right, it could fit in and help better clarify tweet replies.
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Marketing
Google closes Chrome Incognito Mode loophole to improve privacy
Google is beefing up Chrome’s Incognito Mode. The company confirmed in a blog post on Thursday that it is closing an API-related loophole that made it possible to detect when people were privately browsing in Chrome. Google explains that some publishers with paywalls had been using the loophole to “deter metered paywall circumvention.” In other words, publishers were able to detect the availability of the FileSystem API, which would return an error message in Incognito Mode. They could then potentially infer that the user was trying to circumvent paywall metering and compel the user to log-in, return to public browsing mode or otherwise prevent that person from accessing the desired content. There’s no clear data on how many users take advantage of private browsing to avoid metered paywalls, but Google acknowledged publishers would be impacted by the change. These changes may compel more publishers to reduce or abandon metering and embrace a “hard paywall.” In other words, no free content. That could frustrate searchers who would encounter more links that have registration or subscription screens, creating a poor user experience.
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Advertising
Parallel tracking for Google display ads: Mandatory as of July 31
Starting July 31, 2019, advertisers that are using third-party tracking parameters will need to have made the switch to parallel tracking. Parallel tracking helps speed up landing page load times by separating tracking parameters from the landing page URL. With parallel tracking, the landing page and the tracking functionality loads separately. No more waiting for click trackers and any related redirects to load before the user can get to the landing page. Parallel tracking will soon be the standard method for handling third-party click measurement. It will be coming to video ads later this year, Google said Wednesday.
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Paid Search Gets Majority Of Digital Budget Amid Privacy, Tracking, Ad-Blocking Concerns
It’s hardly surprising that data privacy, tracking, and ad blocking top the list of concerns for digital advertisers. A study released Thursday from Marin Software analyzes responses from more than 450 B2B and B2C digital marketing professionals in the U.S. and the UK to understand their top priorities, challenges and opportunities for 2019. The data confirms that paid search remains the dominant digital ad channel — taking 39% of the total budget, at least among Marin’s clients, where paid social trails with 18% and display with 16%. Marketers cite three main challenges when it comes to their search campaigns. They are challenged to hit specific volumes, achieve investment and return on ad-spend targets, and integrate product feeds. Marketers cite three main challenges when it comes to their search campaigns. They are challenged to hit specific volumes, achieve investment and return on ad-spend targets, and integrate product feeds.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 18, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram’s Test of Removing Like Counts is Being Expanded to More Regions
Instagram this week is expanding its test of removing like and video view counts to six more regions, including Ireland, Australia and Brazil. Instagram has said that it’s removing likes as part of a broader focus on user wellbeing. Individual users can still see their total like counts in the test, but they’re not publicly displayed, which, Mosseri says, reduces social comparison, and its associated negative impacts. It’ll also be interesting to note the overall effect on like counts – will the lack of a total number increase people’s propensity to like a post, or reduce it? If it leads to more likes, you can bet Instagram will be keen to keep the change, regardless of the other impacts. But if it is fully rolled out, it will lead to other challenges. At the moment, brands looking to work with influencers can use post like counts as a measure in their assessment – someone with a million followers, but four likes on each post, is probably not the ‘influencer’ they claim to be. With this change, you won’t be able to see that. You can still use comments as an engagement measure, and you can ask for engagement stats from the influencer his or herself, based on their analytics. But it adds another challenge, which is a subsidiary consideration for marketers, in particular, to keep in mind.
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Twitter Announces New ‘LiveCut’ Video Editing and Publishing Tool, Which Will Replace SnappyTV
Twitter has this week announced the end of its SnappyTV live video editing tool, and the addition of LiveCut, it’s replacement option, which is fully integrated into Twitter’s Media Studio. SnappyTV is a dedicated tool which live video producers can use to create highlight clips from their broadcasts, in order to share them via tweet and boost engagement. If you’ve seen any sports highlights embedded within a tweet, they likely came via SnappyTV. The new tools enable you to edit clips from live broadcasts, while there are also new scheduling options to help better plan your video content. It’s essentially the same functionality as SnappyTV, but better integrated into Twitter’s existing media management tool. As noted, it’s not for everyone – not all users will have access, and not everyone is obviously broadcasting live video via Twitter in the first place. But for those who are looking to make the most of their live content, it could prove to be a valuable, helpful option in planning and strategy.
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Marketing
Emoji SEO presents opportunities for video
Emoji search has been supported in Bing and Yelp since 2014, and Google has allowed it since 2016. One might assume that searching Google or Bing using emojis would lead to the same results as using the text equivalent (e.g., searching 🍩 would deliver the same results as “donut”), but that isn’t the case. For the most part, emoji-based queries in the search engines yield results that pertain to the emoji itself, but there are interesting opportunities for marketers, particularly with regards to videos in the search results. For emoji-based queries, the website results are typically from emoji resource sites, whereas the video carousel tends to include videos with the emoji itself or the word that matches the emoji in their titles. Those with the queried emojis in the titles often appear ahead of videos without them. Adding an emoji to your video’s title may increase its visibility in the video carousel. Users can search using emojis on both Google and Bing. Including them in your titles, meta description or within your content may increase your organic visibility when emojis are used in search queries. At this point, the optimization opportunity appears to be largest in video search.
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DuckDuckGo Now Handles 40 Million Searches a Day
DuckDuckGo was recently profiled in the New York Times, where it was revealed the search engine is now handling around 40 million searches a day. At last count, in January 2019, DuckDuckGo was serving around 34 million searches a day. This continues the steady growth of the niche, privacy-focused search engine. This leads to the inevitable comparison of DuckDuckGo versus Google. Though DuckDuckGo is growing, Google still holds a decidedly larger share of the search market. That may always be the case, as DuckDuckGo’s focus on user privacy comes with limitations. The important thing, at least from a business standpoint, is whether DuckDuckGo is turning a profit. DuckDuckGo has been profitable for the past 5 years, according to the Times’ report, and recent growth should help ensure that remains the case for the time being.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 17, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Rolled Out a Tool in the U.K. for Users to Report Scam Advertising
Facebook rolled out a special tool exclusive to the U.K. that enables people to report ads that they believe to be scams or misleading. Facebook users in the U.K. who encounter an ad that they believe to be a scam or misleading can click the three dots that appear in the top-right-hand corner of every ad on the social network, clicking Report ad, clicking Misleading or scam ad and, finally, clicking Send a detailed scam report. The social network has a dedicated internal operations team in place to handle reports submitted via the tool, and that team will take down ads that are in violation, as well as investigate trends and suggest improvements to the process. A Facebook spokesperson said in an email, “While the tool is currently available on Facebook in the U.K., we’re certainly not ruling out the possibility of taking something like this to other markets if it works well.”
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Marketing
DuckDuckGo expands its maps UI with a few familiar features
Privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo announced that it has expanded its local search capabilities with a dedicated maps tab, map re-querying and local autocomplete. Earlier this year, the search engine adopted Apple’s MapKit JS framework to power its map-related searches. In line with its focus on privacy, DuckDuckGo maintains that it does not send any personally identifiable information to Apple or any other third party, nor does it retain location information sent by browsers after a session ends. Map re-querying, which can be useful to limit generic searches like “vegan” to a desired area, allows users to refine local searches while staying in the expanded map view. Prior to this, each new map-related search required users to return to DuckDuckGo’s regular search page. These latest features are likely to improve its user experience, which may help it maintain growth momentum. Although its share of global search traffic is tiny, it’s worth looking at how referral traffic to your site from DuckDuckGo has been trending. DuckDuckGo is also an ad syndication partner of Microsoft Advertising.
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Why Google dropped Bing Discover pages from its index
Earlier this month, Google dropped a subset of Bing’s website from its index. The Bing Discover pages were completely dropped out of Google’s search results and resulted in Bing losing millions of pageviews from Google search. Google’s webmaster guidelines say, “Use the robots.txt file on your web server to manage your crawling budget by preventing crawling of infinite spaces such as search result pages.” Google specifically has said for a long time they do not want search results in its search results. And Bing Discover was just that. If you go against Google’s guidelines, no matter how big or small you are, Google may eventually take action against the site. You can lose millions of visitors as a result. Read and understand Google’s webmaster guidelines, stay within those guidelines and do not risk your site from being penalized or removed from Google search.
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Google to Discontinue the AdSense App for iOS and Android
Google is deprecating the AdSense app for iOS and Android in the coming months. By the end of 2019, the apps will be completely removed from all app stores. Google says the decision to sunset the AdSense app was made after the company conducted a review of its mobile strategy. There’s room to grow when it comes to AdSense on mobile. Google says only a third of users access AdSense from mobile devices. Although that’s still a fair amount of people who will be affected by these upcoming changes.That’s all the information available at this point. More details about the improved web interface will be released later this year.
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Daily Minute Master Series – July 16, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Tests ‘Suggested Moderators’ to Help with Group Administration
Facebook’s continued push to boost groups usage sees another wrinkle added this week, with a new test of ‘Suggested Moderators’ – group members which Facebook’s system has identified as people who may be able to help you manage your online community. The new option will suggest group members as potential moderators based on their frequency of contribution and interactions within the group. In this sense, it’s similar to Facebook’s recent push on ‘Top Fans’, those identified within your group/s as key contributors based on their frequency of interaction. This new groups initiative may be following a similar line – if you turn your most engaged group members into moderators, that will likely make them feel more connected, and see them engage even more often. In this sense, it may be less about needing help to manage your community as it is to boost activity overall by establishing stronger bonds.
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Snapchat’s Testing a New, Dedicated Tab for its Exclusive Snap Shows
Snapchat is also testing out a new way to boost exposure for its exclusive content, with a new section, separate from Discover, focused solely on Snap’s owned content. The new ‘Shows’ section would make it easier to binge on Snap’s original content, while also staying on top of new episodes and programs as they launch. Snapchat remains hugely popular with younger users, and the addition of a dedicated Shows tab, along with these new programs, could prove a big lure for advertisers looking to reach those younger markets. In addition to new programs, and the test of its Shows tab, Snapchat has also recently launched two new initiatives to help up and coming creators – its ‘Animated Comedy Creator’ and ‘Scripted Comedy Creator’ programs. The aim of these programs, according to Variety, is to help creators envision to next generation of shows, directed towards an increasingly mobile audience.
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Marketing
Google may be testing shareable search results snippets
Several people are sharing screenshots on Twitter of a feature in the Google search results that lets you share search results. It has three icons, one to share, one to open the cache page and one to open the result in a new window. You can access this feature if you are in this beta test by clicking on the three dots on the top right of the search results. Google has tried sharing search results through Google+ and other means over the years. Here is Google trying it out again. Any change to the Google search results interface can impact traffic from Google search to your website. Although this seems like just a test and even so, it doesn’t seem like an interface that would impact traffic all that much.
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Google says shortnames bug resolved, local listings restored
The problem that was causing Google My Business (GMB) listings to disappear when shortnames were added has apparently been resolved, according to Google. A spokesperson informed last night that all missing listings have been restored. Google did not specifically comment on the issue of disappearing reviews, which several SEOs said was also happening after adding shortnames. Previously, Google said disappearing reviews was a distinct technical issue unrelated to shortnames. Shortnames should become a very helpful and potentially effective marketing and branding vehicle for local businesses, as well as a convenient search shortcut for consumers. They could evolve also into an informal analytics tool.
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