Marketing
Google’s indexing issue is now resolved – new content being indexed
It appears that the search engine had some sort of issue getting new content into their index. So either Google had a crawling issue where they weren’t able to crawl new content, or more likely Google was crawling new content but was not able to fully index and process that new content due to some sort of bug or backlog. Now, Google is back to indexing new content, especially on sites that update often, like news sites, within minutes. Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that he doesn’t expect there to be any data loss in Google Search Console related to this indexing issue. It is amazing how dependent so many sites are on Google for a traffic source. Of course, this is where you want your other traffic sources to step up, including social media, direct traffic, email, ads and more.
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Salesforce launches new Datorama marketplace with marketing intelligence at the forefront
Salesforce and Datorama are launching a marketplace for brands and agencies to create and use apps using Datorama’s marketing intelligence capabilities. The new Datorama marketplace will allow developers to build apps for marketers on the Datorama platform, as well as on the Salesforce AppExchange. As data-driven marketers, it can be easy to get lost navigating the complex systems that store your data when you’re trying to compile a report. Many martech vendors are working to develop systems that provide a simplified view into data to solve for this challenge. There are more than 7,000 martech vendors in the space, and digital marketers need to understand better how their various campaigns and programs work. This solution could help marketers by enhancing visibility into their efforts in a single place so they can analyze performance and make the right marketing investments.
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Zendesk buys Smooch to support customer messaging across multiple platforms
Customer service software provider Zendesk announced Wednesday it had acquired Smooch Technologies, a messaging platform focused on conversations between businesses and their customers. Zendesk’s acquisition of Smooch is a sure sign more businesses are aiming to connect with their audiences via messaging on sites and apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Smooch was one of the original platforms that offered the WhatsApp Business API integration when it launched last August. Now, with this acquisition, Zendesk users will be able to engage with WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion users via the Zendesk Chat platform. In addition to WhatsApp, Smooch’s technology will allow Zendesk to further its messaging capabilities via a variety of messaging platforms, including Facebook Messenger, LINE, WeChat, Telegram, Twitter DM, Viber, Kakao Talk, SMS text, RCS and via native web iOS and Android apps.
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Advertising
Google rolling out mobile search redesign with black “Ad” label, favicons for organic results
Google is rolling out a new look for Search results on mobile. Announced Wednesday, the update includes a new presentation of text ads and organic listings. The label now appears at the top of the ad along with the display URL also in black text — above the ad headline for the first time. Organic listings are getting a new favicon treatment, you’ll notice, the site name and bread crumbs appear in black text next to the favicon and both display above the title link in a similar structure to the new text ad treatment. Prior to this update, the site name and breadcrumbs appeared in green text below the title. This update sets the stage for Google to continue to evolve the types of content it shows in the search results, including video, hi-res images, 3D objects, and the types of actions it enables right from the search results. Advertisers, site owners and SEOs will want to be watching for any potential impact on traffic from Google mobile search as this rolls out. The update is coming to mobile first and will be rolling out over the next few days, said Google.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 3, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Adds New Page and Group Ranking Factors into News Feed Algorithm
Facebook has now issued an amendment to that update to also add in new ranking signals for content from the Pages and Groups that people are most interested in. In the new amendment, Facebook says that it recently issued surveys focused on Page and Group content, and what people want to see more, or less of. Based on the responses it’s received, Facebook says that it has updated the News Feed algorithm to “prioritize the Pages and groups we predict an individual may care about most”. What, exactly, that means – and how Page managers can use it to advantage – is unclear. There’s obviously little that Page managers can do now about the time that people have been following their Page, and engagement has always been a factor in boosting Page reach.
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LinkedIn Improves Video Marketing Metrics via New Integration with Moat
Video is the best performing content type on all social media platforms, and that includes the professional social network LinkedIn. According to internal data, LinkedIn users are 20x more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post – while for paid content, LinkedIn members now spend 300% more time watching video ads, as compared to time spent with static Sponsored Content. Now, LinkedIn is improving its measurement options for video, to help assure marketers of their actual performance. The platform has announced a new integration with Moat Analytics, which will provide additional, third party data oversight to further validate on-platform video data. Moat’s video performance data has become the industry standard, with several other social platforms already offering supplementary Moat data to solidify their metric offerings (and provide additional, third-party reassurance). LinkedIn says that the integration “gives LinkedIn advertisers the ability to validate their viewability metrics, while also providing traffic quality verification”.
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Twitter Tests New Options to Simplify Common Engagement Actions
Twitter has begun testing two new updates that you’ll likely notice in your process. The first is designed to help users share tweets with their close friends more easily, while the second is a new format for follow notifications which makes it easier to see more information about new followers, and to follow back immediately. First off, on sharing – Twitter is trialing a new option which will prompt users with direct sharing links via DM to the people they most regularly communicate with. Encouraging more DM discussion makes sense, and it’ll be interesting to see if the addition does result in more sharing and interaction switching to Twitter DMs – if, indeed, it is rolled out more broadly. The other test – which has been noted by various users – is a new mini profile card alert for new follows, which makes it easier to get more context about that user, and follow back from the prompt. There’s no guarantee that either of these tests will get rolled out more broadly, and there are, of course, various other updates being trialed in the Twttr test app relating to conversation flow and improving on-platform interactions. It generally takes some time for Twitter to assess, but you can expect some of these changes to start flowing through, and to become visible in your feeds at some stage in the near future.
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Advertising
Google is expanding when it shows ads to ‘people in targeted locations’
Google has been quietly rolling out a change to the location targeting options in Google Ads. The change was first spotted in display campaigns, but now appears to have rolled out for search and shopping campaigns, too. Google has changed the “People in your targeted locations” option to “People in or regularly in your targeted locations.” The old setting of “Reach people in your targeted locations” did not include showing ads to people “who searched for your target locations but whose physical location was outside the target location at the time of searching.” With this change, instead of showing ads to people only when they are physically located in your targeted locations at the time of their search, it will also include people who regularly commute or travel to your targeted locations even when they aren’t physically there when they perform a search. The change is somewhat subtle but important to note. It’s another level of targeting control getting supplanted by machine learning.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 31, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Pinterest Launches New Windows 10 App to Improve Desktop Browsing
The newly listed company is looking to maximize its options by launching an integrated Windows 10 app, which adds Pinterest to your ‘Start’ menu options and facilitates more seamless browsing on PCs. The tool will provide another way for users to browse the platform and search for relevant product matches, extending the utility of the app. And considering that Pinterest is now seeing the majority of its growth in markets outside the US – where, potentially, desktop usage is a more significant consideration – it makes sense for the platform to boost its functionality in this regard. Indeed, according to Pinterest’s first performance report, the platform is now up to 291 million monthly active users, with 206 million of them coming from outside the US. It can obviously be useful for users in western regions also, the new app adds Pinterest into to your main menu options, making it easy to click in and check out the latest Pins.
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Advertising
Google to No Longer Display Text-Only AdSense Ads
In an effort to modernize its advertising products, Google is retiring the text-only AdSense ad unit. Google AdSense will automatically rename existing “Text ads only” and “Display ads only” to simply “Display ads.” In addition to sunsetting text-only ads, Google announced several other changes to AdSense ads which are rolling out in the coming weeks. Google notes that it has been investing heavily in understanding the best ways to increase user interest in ads. Presumably, these changes are designed to make ads more appealing to users, which may then results in more clicks and earnings for AdSense publishers.
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Marketing
“Popular dishes” have arrived in Google Maps listings
Google Maps has added a “popular dishes” section to eatery listings, giving prospective diners a faster way to check out a restaurant’s most talked about food and drinks. he popular dishes section is located within a listing’s overview tab and is already available on Google Maps for Android devices. The section will be rolling out to iOS devices over the next few months. Recommendations and reviews are the bread and butter of the food and beverage (F&B) industry and can have a big impact on the bottom line. Restaurant owners now have one more way to optimize their Maps listings by encouraging their patrons to post photos of their meals and/or leave reviews to build out their popular dishes sections. This can be especially useful for F&B businesses in areas that get a lot of tourism, as Maps can translate reviews and provides a visual accompaniment so customers have an idea of what they’re ordering.
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Now live: Google 3D images and AR integration in mobile search
Google announced at Google I/O a few weeks ago support for 3D images and AR within search — that feature is now live. Many searchers are able to search for objects such as [shark], [lion], [panda], [alligator] and so on and see those 3D objects in search and then project them into their environments with AR. Numerous apps already support AR to enable consumers to see how furniture and other objects look in their homes or to see what different eyeglasses or makeup would look on them. This shows how Google can start to enable those kinds of capabilities in the SERP for commercial queries. Over the past several months, Google has been dropping hints that image search is something SEOs, webmasters, developers and content producers should pay attention to.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 30, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Officially Rolls Out ‘Go Live with Guests’ Option
The new ‘Live Guests’ option will allow viewers to apply to take part in the conversation, with their avatar appearing on-screen (when permitted to join by the streamer), and their streaming audio available to all viewers. It seems to be a step behind other streaming platforms, with both Instagram or Facebook Live already offering split-screen video guests as an option within their tools. With the social media arms race heating up in the latest AR and Stories tools, audio-only guests feels a little underwhelming. Interesting, but not overly interesting at the same time.
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Instagram is Testing an “Order” Sticker for Stories
Instagram has been spotted testing “order” stickers in stories, which may indicate it’s working on new ways to complete transactions. It’s unclear what functionality this sticker might offer. Instagram has been rapidly expanding its shopping capabilities as of late. However, shopping in stories has been available since last year. Instagram stories are a popular channel for promoting upcoming events, so it would be fitting to let users order tickets from stories. It’s important to note that Instagram hasn’t officially acknowledged that it’s rolling out an “order” sticker.
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Marketing
ALEXA, SCRATCH THAT: AMAZON TO LET USERS DELETE VOICE COMMANDS
Amazon.com Inc. is updating its Alexa voice software to let users delete recordings of their voice using a spoken command, a move that follows criticism of the company’s privacy practices related to its digital assistant. Bloomberg reported last month that some Amazon employees listen to users’ voice recordings as part of an effort to improve the software. In some cases, those workers can access the location of the person whose voice they are transcribing. Amazon’s privacy and user policies didn’t explicitly disclose either practice. Amazon’s move also comes as other technology giants make a point of touting their own efforts to safeguard user data. The company also gave its Alexa privacy website a facelift, adding a bit more explanation on how the software works. The company’s Echo Show 5, a new version of the screen-bearing smart speaker line, announced on Wednesday, comes with a shutter that lets customers cover the built-in camera.
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Advertising
Google sunsetting two bidding strategies in June
Google will retire the Target Search Page Location and Target Outranking Share automated bidding strategies at the end of next month. Instead, advertisers will be encouraged to use Target Impression Share, which encompasses impression share for certain page position targets. The strategies will no longer be available for new campaigns starting in late June. This shift is in line with Google’s introduction of new ad position metrics that focus on the top and absolute top impressions and impression share and plan to eliminate average position reporting later this year. Google suggests using the new impression share metrics when aiming to show your ads in particular locations on the page.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 29, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
LinkedIn Acquires Data Personalization Platform Drawbridge to Improve Ad Targeting
The professional social network has this week announced that it’s acquiring data analytics company Drawbridge in order to utilize Drawbridge’s advanced personalization AI, and further refine LinkedIn’s targeting capacity. Drawbridge’s system utilizes advanced machine learning – “on 100 billion edges” – in order to help marketers construct more accurate audience personas for targeting. Drawbridge, which already works with IBM, Adobe and Salesforce, among others, will integrate its technology into LinkedIn’s systems over the coming months, which will eventually lead to a broader set of targeting and data options being made available to LinkedIn marketers. Drawbridge’s advanced machine learning tools will help LinkedIn’s ad system provide even more accurate, viable audience matches, which should see improvements in LinkedIn ad performance.
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TikTok owner ByteDance reportedly building its own smartphone
ByteDance, the owner of apps such as news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, collaboration tool Lark, and short video app TikTok, is reportedly building its own smartphone. The TikTok owner confirmed earlier this year that it had acquired certain patents and some employees from smartphone maker Smartisan, but the company claimed at the time that the acquisition was done to “explore the education business.” The report did not provide details on the design of the smartphone and where ByteDance is planning to launch it, though it was suggested that the company may find it difficult to release it in the United States due to the government’s stance against Chinese telecommunication companies. The selling point of a ByteDance smartphone with TikTok and other pre-loaded apps over a regular smartphone that can just download these apps remains unclear. However, it may work in the company’s favor if the device aims for the low-cost segment and is geared toward the Chinese market, which would distinguish it from what Amazon and Facebook attempted. While rivals such as Snapchat and Instagram are looking to draw users away from TikTok, ByteDance is looking to expand its user base even further with its planned device.
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Marketing
Yoast SEO 11.3 lets you add an image of a person to its structured data graph
Yoast’s latest plugin update lets webmasters include an image, avatar or logo in its structured data graph and adds a new filter that can be used to disable link indexation. Like it or not, rich results are showing up in SERPs more and more. Using structured data markup can help search engines understand your content and display it as a rich result. In this particular case, applying it to the image of a person that a website represents may help surface that image on relevant queries and increase traffic. Along with some bug fixes, Yoast also included a new wpseo_should_index_links filter that webmasters can use if they want to disable link indexation and added support for built-in taxonomies for those that would like to include their blog archive page in the breadcrumb.
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91% of B2B Professionals Say Webinars Are Their Preferred Type of Content
A recent study shows that a vast majority of business-to-business (B2B) professionals prefer engaging with webinars over other content types. According to the results of a study from BrightTALK, B2B professionals say they also engage with industry articles (60%), whitepapers (48%), and blog posts (42%). Over 54% of the B2B participants surveyed for this study say they engage with webinars on a weekly or daily basis. When asked what they’re looking to get out of video content, 84% of survey respondents said they want to stay up to date on what’s happening in their industries. Nearly half of those surveyed say they engage with B2B video content to solve specific organizational problems or issues.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 28, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Adds Alternate Stories Color Notifier for Pride Month
To mark Pride Month 2019, Instagram is adding a new rainbow color ring for Stories which include a Pride-related hashtag. The new option, as noted, will be activated by relevant hashtags, turning your Stories activation border in a multi-colored circle, as opposed to the generic Instagram color tone one. The new Stories ring hasn’t officially been announced as yet, so it may be part of a larger feature release coming this week. It’s an interesting addition though, and one that could open the door to alternate color options for the Stories ring to make them stand out. It could, for example, be used to help users understand what different stories are about – a story about a breaking news event, which uses the relevant hashtag, could be given a different color, helping users find more relevant content in their Stories list.
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Marketing
Starting July 1, all new sites will be indexed using Google’s mobile-first indexing
Google has announced that all new websites “previously unknown to Google Search” will be indexed using mobile-first indexing starting on July 1. Older websites that are still not being indexed using mobile-first indexing will not be switched yet to mobile-first indexing on July 1st but be moved when those web sites are ready to be moved to mobile-first indexing. Unlike old web sites that get notifications when they are moved over, Google won’t send notifications to new web sites because that will be the default state. Mobile-first indexing is simply how Google crawls and indexes the web. Instead of looking at the desktop version of the page, Google looks at the mobile version of the page. In more simple terms, Google is crawling and indexing your web page based on how it renders on a mobile phone versus a desktop computer. Now over 50% of what Google indexes is indexed over mobile-first indexing. If you launch a new website that doesn’t work well in mobile, then you may have issues with indexing and ranking in Google. Make sure to test your site and build them in a mobile-first manner.
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People Are Spending More Time on Instagram, at the Expense of Facebook and Snapchat
Adults in the U.S. will spend the same number of average minutes per day on Facebook and Snapchat this year as they did in 2018, but they will devote more time to Instagram, according to the latest figures from eMarketer. The consultancy principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson said in a release, “Features like Stories, influencer content and video are all contributing to more engagement and a slow but steady uptick in time spent on Instagram”. Williamson said of Facebook, “Facebook’s continued loss of younger adult users, along with its focus on downranking clickbait posts and videos in favor of those that create ‘time well spent,’ resulted in less daily time spent on the platform in 2018 than we had previously expected. Less time spent on Facebook translates into fewer chances for marketers to reach the network’s users.” She added, “Gains in digital video viewing are putting pressure on social time and gaming is also creating new competition for user attention.
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23% of Small Businesses Say Visual Content is Most Effective
A recent study shows that nearly a quarter of small business owners believe visual content is highly effective. This data comes from a survey featured on Visual Objects, a sister website of Clutch and The Manifest, that shows how businesses publish website content in 2019. A recurring theme throughout the study is the emphasis on publishing new content regularly. Currently, almost three-quarters of small businesses (74%) publish website content monthly. When small business owners were asked what types of content they publish, these said: Company information – 67%, Visuals – 58% and Product descriptions – 51%.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 27, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Will Reportedly Launch its ‘GlobalCoin’ Cryptocurrency Next Year
Facebook’s plan, is to build its own transaction network which would facilitate funds transfers across borders, without the need for deals with local banks and/or financial regulators. That could enable Facebook to become a global marketplace, with users in all regions able to quickly and easily make safe, on-platform purchases – which could also extend beyond Facebook and into Messenger, WhatsApp, and importantly, Instagram. Ted Livingston, the founder and CEO of another messaging platform, Kik, published a post on Medium in which he explained how Facebook’s first step will likely focus on helping people who are working in foreign countries to send money to family back home via remittances. Facebook, Livingston says, will focus first on remittances, then adding more and more options for spending money within its apps. This could include bill payment options, food ordering, topping up phone minutes, etc. Facebook’s longer term plans could open up a whole new digital eco-system, which would not only make Facebook a more essential utility for millions – if not billions – of users, but it could also transform the eCommerce landscape entirely.
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Twitter Is Experimenting With Different Ad Loads for Different People
Twitter confirmed that it is testing changes to ad loads in its feed with certain users. A spokesperson for the social network said, “We are always running experiments with our ad experience, including with the various aspects of ad frequency and targeting. We welcome feedback on how people feel about the ads they see via the down arrow on tweets.” Much in the same way other social platforms like Facebook and Instagram operate, not all Twitter users see the same ad load, and factors including how ads influence their use of the platform help determine how many ads they see.
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Snapchat’s Working on New Music Rights Deals to Enable Users to Add Songs to Their Snaps
Snapchat is reportedly looking to establish new rights deals with major music labels, which would enable Snap users to add popular songs to their snaps. Snap is not seeking to build a music-streaming service to compete with Spotify or Apple Music, and is only looking to enable music clip sharing via Snap, providing more tools for users, and more exposure for artists. How, exactly, Snap would utilize song snippets is not clear, but you would hope that the company would be able to provide some creative tools to capitalize on such, and maximize attention.
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Marketing
Google moves hotel pricing chart into the SERP
Google is starting to show hotel price charts in search results. These graphs have been a popular feature of Google travel properties and were tested in search last year. Searchers can use arrows to move forward and back in order to see historical pricing trends for particular hotel properties. Google has been upgrading its various travel properties at an accelerating pace. Travel is a critical vertical, worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually in consumer and business travel spending, according to the U.S. Travel Association. Google’s travel property upgrades and enhanced search results are part a bid for more of those ad dollars, as the company captures an increasing share of consumer traffic and conversions.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 24, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Adds Support for Landscape Videos in IGTV
Instagram has announced that IGTV publishers will be able to upload horizontal format videos to IGTV, straying from its initial focus on more immersive, vertical viewing. IGTV was essentially built to tap into the rising consumption of vertical video, largely popularized by Snapchat. And while catering to audience demand makes sense, it does feel like a compromise. That could see more content uploaded to IGTV, as YouTube creators won’t have to reformat their posts, but it won’t necessarily help IGTV differentiate. More content on IGTV will likely lead to more viewers, so Instagram could well win out with this update.
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Twitter Permanently Bans Prominent Political Commentators Over Use of Fake Accounts
In its latest efforts to rid its platform of bots, fake profiles and general misuse, the micro-blog giant has banned prominent anti-Trump personalities Brian and Ed Krassenstein, over their alleged use of fake accounts and purchased interactions to boost their presence and reach. Twitter has previously banned prominent right-wing commentators under its hate speech policies, while it’s also implemented reach restrictions on ‘anti-social’ tweets. Ideally, by making an example of misuse in this way, Twitter will be able to make such processes too risky, as the damage to a users’ credibility can be difficult to recover from after they’re caught out. The more than can be done to remove the fakers, the better – which, hopefully, will eventually extend to those looking to market themselves as ‘influencers’ based on artificially inflated follower counts.
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Facebook Employees Are No Longer Receiving Commissions on Sales of Political and Issue Ads
Global elections public policy director Katie Harbath told Emily Glazer and Jeff Horwitz of The Wall Street Journal that the social network’s sales employees are no longer compensated based on goals related to the purchase of political and issue ads, both in the U.S. and globally. Harbath also pointed out that the tools that potential political and issue advertisers must use are predominantly self-service, with Facebook employees only providing help with the registration process those advertisers are required to undergo, as well as when ads are stalled in the review process and other customer-service tasks. “It doesn’t matter if you’re running for president or running for city council: You have access to the same tools and level of support” – said Harbath. The company has considered doing away with political ads altogether, but decided against doing so, with Harbath telling that Facebook views political and issue ads on its platform as a civic responsibility.
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Marketing
Google brings ‘end-to-end’ food ordering to Search, Maps, Google Assistant
Google’s unofficial new mantra is “helping users get things done” (GTD). To that end, Google is making its many channels, properties and ads much more “transactional.” Transaction fees are part of Google’s strategy to monetize the Assistant. One manifestation of this GTD ethos is bringing food ordering into Google Assistant, Google search and Maps. For some time Google has linked to third-party ordering and delivery services in the Knowledge Panel online. This experience proceeds directly from the GMB profile on both Android devices and iPhones. Users click on the “Order Online” button and then choose delivery or pick up. If they choose delivery, they select a provider and then menu items. Payment happens with the default credit card the user has set up in Google Pay. From a user-experience perspective, the new food-ordering process is an incremental change from what was already available. And the move is part of a larger effort by Google to reduce consumer friction, remove steps between discovery and purchase and control more transactions directly, rather than handing them off to (slower) third parties.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 23, 2019
/by Corey PadveenMarketing
Google’s indexing issue is now resolved – new content being indexed
It appears that the search engine had some sort of issue getting new content into their index. So either Google had a crawling issue where they weren’t able to crawl new content, or more likely Google was crawling new content but was not able to fully index and process that new content due to some sort of bug or backlog. Now, Google is back to indexing new content, especially on sites that update often, like news sites, within minutes. Gary Illyes from Google said on Twitter that he doesn’t expect there to be any data loss in Google Search Console related to this indexing issue. It is amazing how dependent so many sites are on Google for a traffic source. Of course, this is where you want your other traffic sources to step up, including social media, direct traffic, email, ads and more.
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Salesforce launches new Datorama marketplace with marketing intelligence at the forefront
Salesforce and Datorama are launching a marketplace for brands and agencies to create and use apps using Datorama’s marketing intelligence capabilities. The new Datorama marketplace will allow developers to build apps for marketers on the Datorama platform, as well as on the Salesforce AppExchange. As data-driven marketers, it can be easy to get lost navigating the complex systems that store your data when you’re trying to compile a report. Many martech vendors are working to develop systems that provide a simplified view into data to solve for this challenge. There are more than 7,000 martech vendors in the space, and digital marketers need to understand better how their various campaigns and programs work. This solution could help marketers by enhancing visibility into their efforts in a single place so they can analyze performance and make the right marketing investments.
For the full article click here
Zendesk buys Smooch to support customer messaging across multiple platforms
Customer service software provider Zendesk announced Wednesday it had acquired Smooch Technologies, a messaging platform focused on conversations between businesses and their customers. Zendesk’s acquisition of Smooch is a sure sign more businesses are aiming to connect with their audiences via messaging on sites and apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Smooch was one of the original platforms that offered the WhatsApp Business API integration when it launched last August. Now, with this acquisition, Zendesk users will be able to engage with WhatsApp’s 1.5 billion users via the Zendesk Chat platform. In addition to WhatsApp, Smooch’s technology will allow Zendesk to further its messaging capabilities via a variety of messaging platforms, including Facebook Messenger, LINE, WeChat, Telegram, Twitter DM, Viber, Kakao Talk, SMS text, RCS and via native web iOS and Android apps.
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Advertising
Google rolling out mobile search redesign with black “Ad” label, favicons for organic results
Google is rolling out a new look for Search results on mobile. Announced Wednesday, the update includes a new presentation of text ads and organic listings. The label now appears at the top of the ad along with the display URL also in black text — above the ad headline for the first time. Organic listings are getting a new favicon treatment, you’ll notice, the site name and bread crumbs appear in black text next to the favicon and both display above the title link in a similar structure to the new text ad treatment. Prior to this update, the site name and breadcrumbs appeared in green text below the title. This update sets the stage for Google to continue to evolve the types of content it shows in the search results, including video, hi-res images, 3D objects, and the types of actions it enables right from the search results. Advertisers, site owners and SEOs will want to be watching for any potential impact on traffic from Google mobile search as this rolls out. The update is coming to mobile first and will be rolling out over the next few days, said Google.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 22, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Continues to Work on New Option to Share a Link to an Individual Story
Instagram continues to work on its option for sharing your Instagram Story via a unique link, with reverse engineering expert Jane Manchun Wong spotting a new variation of the share option in the back-end of the app’s code. The addition, if it does get rolled out, could be a big help for brands who are looking to maximize their investment in Stories creation. Some businesses have been hesitant to go ‘all-in’ on Stories due to the ephemeral nature of the option, with the content that you’ve spent time and effort creating disappearing after only 24 hours. With the capacity to link back to a Story, the promotion potential is far greater, which could prompt more businesses to utilize the option. By providing a link, you could promote your Story in your email newsletter, your email signature, on other social platforms – it opens up a whole range of off-platform considerations for getting people back to your Insta presence.
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LinkedIn Follows Facebook’s Lead with New Ad Transparency Tab on Pages
With political interference on social media becoming an increasingly significant issue, the platforms themselves are working on new tools and options to help users better understand why they’re being targeted with certain ads, who they’re being targeted by and what other campaigns a company may be running. This week, LinkedIn has followed the lead of Facebook and announced the addition of a new ad transparency tab for LinkedIn company pages, which will provide oversight into all the ads a company has run on the platform over the preceding six month period. Now, you’ll be able to check a listing of all the ads any company is running, providing more perspective on how they’re looking to reach their target customers on the network. That type of competitor research can be hugely valuable in planning your own campaigns.
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YouTube to Stop Showing Full Subscriber Counts
Starting in August 2019, YouTube will begin showing abbreviated subscriber counts anywhere that a channel’s numbers are displayed. Exact subscriber counts will be shown for channels with less than 1,000 subscribers. For channels with more than 1,000 subscribers, YouTube will abbreviate public subscriber numbers on a sliding scale. The company didn’t mention why this change is being made, but, I’ll say the YouTube community has developed an alarming obsession with other channels’ subscriber counts. So much so that when two YouTubers are fueding, users will set up live feeds showing the other users’ subscribers counts going up or down. By not making full subscriber counts available to the public, YouTube is likely trying to put an end to this obsession before it becomes even more problematic.
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Marketing
Google not indexing recent content?
A potential bug with Google search this morning is not bringing up content from many news outlets posted within the past hour. You need to filter the Google search results to just show pages found within the past hour. Google otherwise will show you content, but just not within the past hour. It’s not just site command searches that aren’t working properly, either. Searches for “search engine land” and “nytimes” with the past hour filter on bring up entirely unrelated results. This appears to be a bug but we are not sure if this is an indexing bug, a bug with Google’s search filters and tools or something else. If you are publishing timely and fresh content around news topics, searchers using Google may not be able to find this content.
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Daily Minute Master Series – May 21, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Re-Vamps IGTV to Better Align with Rising Consumption Trends
Instagram has this week given the format of IGTV a refresh, which, as noted by TechCrunch, is more aligned with Snapchat and rising short-video tool TikTok. Instagram has done away with the categories and the lower screen, horizontal feed of videos, opting for a singular feed of algorithmically-defined content that plays through, one-by-one, while it’s also added larger video tiles, which you scroll through vertically. The larger tiles are a lot like Snapchat’s Discover, while the singular feed – as opposed to showcasing categories – takes cues from TikTok. The idea is, fairly obviously, to tap into content trends which have proven popular in other apps (the same as Instagram has done with Stories), but whether that will make IGTV more appealing is hard to say. It remains to be seen whether IGTV can become a more significant part of the Instagram experience, and these changes don’t really align enough with evolving consumption trends to suggest it will become a more compelling option.
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SEMrush expands to Amazon with Sellerly for product page testing
The company, recently infused with $40 million in funding to expand beyond Google, Bing and Yahoo insights, has launched a new product called Sellerly specifically for Amazon sellers. “By introducing Sellerly as a seller’s buddy in Amazon marketing, we hope to improve hundreds of existing Amazon sellers’ strategies,” said SEMrush Chief Strategy Officer Eugene Levin in a statement. Sellerly is currently free to use. Amazon sellers connect their Amazon accounts to the tool in order to manage their product pages. Sellers can make changes to product detail pages to test against the controls. Sellerly collects data in real time and sellers can then choose winners based on views and conversions. Optimized product detail pages on Amazon is a critical aspect of success on the platform. As Amazon continues to generate an increasing share of e-commerce sales for merchants big and small, and competition only increases, product page optimization becomes even more critical.
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Google updates Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines
Google updated its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines for the first time since July 2018. The refreshed guidelines add more detailed directions regarding interstitial pages and content creator expertise, and buckets “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) within “Page Quality” in certain sections. The Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines are what human quality raters use to evaluate websites and SERPs. They don’t directly affect rankings but their judgments are used to improve Google’s search algorithm. The inclusion of “E-A-T” within “Page Quality” may reflect how Google wants its quality raters to approach evaluating content. The increased emphasis on interstitial pages within the Distracting Ads/SC section may also mean that webmasters and advertisers who use those techniques in an intrusive manner may see lower ratings. And, the more detailed guidance regarding content creator expertise may put questionable or lower-quality content under more scrutiny.
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Google Ads Introduces Three New Bidding Strategies
Google has introduced three new bidding strategies for Google Ads advertisers that offer more flexibility than Smart Bidding. 1- Campaign-level conversion settings: advertisers will be able to set conversion goals at the campaign level. Google notes that this will be especially useful for accounts that have clearly differentiated campaign goals. 2- Seasonality adjustments: advertisers have been asking for more control with regards to seasonality beyond what is offered by smart bidding. One way seasonality adjustments could be used is to schedule an adjustment for periods of time when conversion rates are expected to spike. 3- Maximize conversion value: maximize conversion value is a new bidding strategy that allows advertisers to optimize for the most conversion value within a specified budget. 4- Value rules: lastly, in the coming months, Google Ads will be rolling out value rules which let advertisers differentiate conversion values based on characteristics like location, device, and audience. With value rules, advertisers can customize conversion values so they align more closely with business goals.
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