Social Media
Facebook Announces Updated Ranking Factors for Post Comments
We know that more comments and engagement will equate to better organic reach for your posts within Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, as Facebook wants to encourage more of the same behavior, and keep users on platform for longer. So how does Facebook decide which order to show your comments in specifically? Well it depends. If Comment Ranking is on, Facebook says that its system uses the following signals to determine the order in which it displays your public post comments. 1. Integrity signals – This is pretty basic, but if a comment violates Facebook’s Community Standards, the system will remove it. 2. Insights from User Surveys – Facebook is always conducting user surveys, if the surveys indicate that users want to see a certain type of comment, or vice versa, that’s factored in. 3. Engagement Factors – Facebook wants people to engage more, so it makes sense for Facebook to highlight the comments that are already inspiring this type of response from other users. And there are, of course, other, user-controlled factors which will ultimately influence how post comments are displayed. Page admins can hide, and delete comments entirely, which can be helpful if the comments are spam links, off-topic and/or simply not contributing to the wider conversation.
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Pinterest’s Working on a New ‘Complete the Look’ Option to Help Users Find More Relevant Product Matches
Pinterest is now working on a new option called ‘Complete the Look’, which will take into account the products you’ve searched for and provide related recommendations, based on relative trends and other factors. The process essentially broadens its recommendations to visually similar or contextually related products, based on the aforementioned factors. Pinterest trained its model based on a dataset of images which included complete scenes of varying product matches. Pinterest then cropped out the specific products, which enabled the system to recommend similar matches based on what it had learned were relevant partners. The process will help connect more Pinterest users to relevant product matches and recommendations, which could help to further fuel its growing eCommerce ambitions. And with Pinterest leading the social media pack in terms of product discovery, the addition could prove significantly beneficial for users as they seek out just the right companion pieces in various contexts.
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Marketing
Google’s John Mueller Predicts Dynamic Rendering Won’t Be Needed in a Few Years
Google’s John Mueller predicts that dynamic rendering will only be a temporary workaround for helping web crawlers process JavaScript. Eventually, all web crawlers will be able to process JavaScript, Mueller believes. So in a few years’ time relying on dynamic rendering may not be necessary. Mueller made this prediction during a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout when a site owner asked if there’s any reason why they shouldn’t use dynamic rendering. Googlebot can already process every type of JavaScript page, and Mueller suspects all other crawlers will follow suit. What makes this prediction particularly interesting is that dynamic rendering was only introduced last year at Google I/O 2018. Now, a little over a year later, Mueller predicts this innovative solution for serving JavaScript to bots will only be needed for a few years.
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New Research Underlines the Ongoing Mobile Usage Shift, Highlights Audience-Specific Considerations
Based on feedback from over 1,500 US adults, Pew Research looked at the latest internet access and mobile usage habits, and found that the mobile shift is indeed in full force, but is specifically so in two key brackets: younger users, which you would expect, and lower income households. On the first point, Pew found that 37% of U.S. adults now mostly use their smartphone when accessing the internet, which is double the rate it was in 2013. The biggest increase over that period is in younger age groups. That, you would expect, will continue to increase and ripple through over time as smartphone and mobile connection technology improves, lessening the need for users to go online via any other means. In addition, 45% of non-broadband adopters, according to Pew’s data, say they don’t have high-speed internet at home because “their smartphone lets them do everything online that they need to do”. And again, with mobile and connective technology improving, you can expect to see this continue to rise. That finding is particularly interesting because smartphone adoption is generally higher among higher income regions, which, you would assume, would equate to such devices being more exclusive to people with more means. These new findings show that may not be the case. While technology adoption may be lower based on overall income status, the improvement of mobile offerings looks to actually be superseding the need for other alternatives. If you want to connect with lower income audiences, mobile may well be the best way to go in this bracket too, another key consideration in the larger consumption shift.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 25, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter Says its Smyte Acquisition has Helped it Significantly Reduce Crypto-Spam Tweets+
Last June, Twitter announced that it had acquired Smyte, a company founded by former Facebook, Instagram and Google team members which specializes in webspam and fraud detection. The acquisition is part of Twitter’s ongoing efforts to clean up its platform by better detecting bad actors, and removing their profiles and tweets before they have any impact. One of the most positive signs of this initiative is it shows that Twitter is improving its systems, and may be able to use Smyte to better detect various forms of spam and junk on the platform. It may also enable Twitter to address some of its larger concerns with abuse and harassment, which have plagued the app for years. There’s no way of knowing exactly how much of this Smyte might be able to eliminate, but the results reported here certainly show some good signs.
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Marketing
Google Won’t Display Multiple Featured Snippets For One Page
Google’s John Mueller stated only one set of structured data will be used in search results when a page contains multiple types. When multiple types of structured data are included on one page, Google will automatically determine which type of markup is most appropriate for search results. The decision of which rich result to display in search is based on the searcher’s query. So, using both sets of structured data won’t make you eligible to appear in two different featured snippets.
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Google Search Console adds search within markup and copy with tweaking
Google announced two new features for Google Search Console’s testing tools Monday. Within the Google URL testing tools, such as the AMP test, rich results test and URL Inspection tool, you can now search within your markup to find code, and also you can copy the code and tweak it. Google said this makes checking your rendered markup and adjusting it easier. Ultimately this feature should make debugging issues with your markup for structured data issues faster. It should make it easier to locate the issues you may have with your markup, then test the changes you make to see if it will pass validation by Google.
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Shopify launches machine learning powered network for US merchants
Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify launched its brand new Shopify Fulfillment Network for US-based merchants. The new network uses Shopify’s machine learning-driven smart inventory allocation technology to determine the closest and most efficient fulfillment centers for your business. For SMBs being edged out by giants like Amazon, accessibility to an inventory fulfillment network — and the integrated technologies — could play a key role in helping small businesses stay competitive and allow them to grow. According to Shopify, the new system does not require advanced technical skills. Thanks to this, the system can be used by busy digital marketers operating with limited resources to market products and drive e-commerce sales.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 24, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram’s Working on a New ‘Stop-Motion’ Tool for Stories
According to reverse engineering maverick Jane Manchun Wong, Instagram is developing a new ‘Stop-Motion’ camera option for Instagram Stories, which would provide another way to create interesting video updates, without having to record any actual video at all. The new tool would assist your creation process by ghosting the frame you’re capturing with the previous, so you can ensure that your placement and movement is correct. This, ideally, is intended for a phone camera on a tripod or similar stable device, as the image would then remain exactly in-set, enabling you place the object how you want it in the next movement. As noted, by shooting in stop-motion, you can create video Stories without having to actually create any video. That not only opens up your creative options, but it will also make it easier for more businesses to add engaging movement to their posts. Instagram is yet to announce the feature, but it looks to be developing fast.
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YouTube’s Running a New Test Which Hides Comments on All Videos
The video platform is now testing a new option which would see all video comments hidden by default, with users needing to tap a button to view any comments on a video. All comments on all videos, in this iteration of the app, would be hidden behind a specific ‘Comments’ button. That would mean that if users chose to view them, they would need to make specific effort to do so, which could help reduce issues with spam, abuse, and the spread of concerning content. YouTube comments have always been concerning, the comments section has long been known as a questionable area of the app, which is why YouTube has essentially de-emphasized it by moving it further down from the actual content, and out of view without scrolling. It shows that the platform is looking at more options to protect users, and that it is experimenting with advanced options, which could have a significant impact on the platform’s overall functionality.
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Marketing
Millions of fake Google Maps listings hurt real business and consumers
Google Maps carries approximately 11 million illegitimate local listings, with hundreds of thousands more getting created each month, the Wall Street Journal reported. These fake listings push real businesses further down the local search results, impacting their ability to reach customers and make unsuspecting users easy targets for scammers. Google says it is aware of the problem and that it has plans to do more to combat spammers and scammers taking advantage of local listings. It’s not in the company’s interest to jeopardize user trust, yet as many marketers point out, it stands to profit as local businesses turn to paid ads to regain search visibility. Google’s failure to take down fake business listings and verify real ones is a frustration for many business owners and marketers. The company added that it’s developing new ways — both manual and automated — to fight scammers, but kept specifics under wraps.
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Advertising
Google testing carousel of text ads on mobile
It’s already hard to tell how your text ads will render these days — two headlines or three, how many extensions, etc. Now, Google is testing a carousel of text ads on mobile. Spotted by SEMrush, the ads carousel appears under a “People also considered” heading below the first ad. The ads in the carousel appear with two headlines a truncated description line and no ad extensions. This likely looks pretty scary to a lot of advertisers thinking this could tank performance for ads that aren’t in the absolute top position — particularly with the carousel ads getting served in this truncated format. Google will be watching the impact on click volume and click-through rates with this treatment. And it’s not clear if this is also being tested on non-brand terms. The removal of average position metric makes even more sense now. Shopping ads have appeared in a carousel format for some time now — as have various text ad extensions. All of the Shopping ads are in the carousel, though, and you’ve likely noticed they’ve gotten much, much bigger over the years.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 21, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Instagram Will Now Keep All Content Captured in the Stories Camera for Seven Days
nstagram is rolling out another small Stories tweak, this time giving users more options on the content they capture within the Stories camera. The option will make it easier for users to curate their best Stories content – which is often what Instagram is criticized for (promoting shiny, highlight reels of people’s lives, as opposed to real experiences), but is also how users continue to post to the platform. For brands, it could come in handy – now, you’ll be able to take a heap of photos and videos at once, then select the best options to edit and post to your Stories after the fact. You could already do this to some degree by Camera Roll uploads, but this will be native to Instagram, making it a little easier to do.
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Facebook and TikTok Lead in Overall App Downloads in May
Facebook remains the most popular social app, even in terms of new downloads, while TikTok and Snapchat also continue to hold attention. These are the key trends of note in the latest app download rankings for May 2019, as provided by SensorTower. Facebook sits atop the overall chart, showing that privacy concerns and misinformation issues are not slowing The Social Network’s ongoing expansion, at least in terms of audience growth. Facebook’s quarterly reports show that, despite reports of lower usage overall, Facebook has continued its growth momentum. What’s more interesting is the sustained popularity of TikTok, and the resilience of Snapchat – though the latter’s download numbers have reportedly been propped up significantly by the popularity of its ‘Baby’ and ‘Gender Swap; Lenses. TikTok remains the trending app of the moment, and is maintaining its growth momentum – which may be a surprise to many. It’s very difficult to predict which app is a fad and which will stick. These stats show that TikTok is holding, it’s still popular, despite its main surge in notoriety coming some eight months ago.
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Marketing
Google Adds More Social-Like Options to Google My Business Listings
Google is rolling out a new range of Google My Business tools which will provide even more options for brands to maximize their exposure through Google search – and even promote their Google presence through physical stickers, helping to drive traffic. Google will now enable businesses to offer new rewards to customers who follow their business within Google apps, with new ‘Welcome Offers’. In addition, Google will now also enable brands to claim a short name and URL for their business. Google’s also adding new options for cover photos and photo displays, with newly uploaded images showing instantly on Google My Business profiles. Google’s also launching a new website where businesses will be able to download and order custom assets for their business – like physical stickers – in order to help promote bookings, prompt reviews and encourage follows for their Google My Business profile. The tools, as noted, add more social platform type elements for Google My Business profiles – and given the dominance of Google search, they’re definitely worth a look.
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Advertising
Google Ads portfolio bid strategy changes: Removing eCPC, average daily budget replacing target spend
In an effort to help simplify settings, Google said, it is making changes to two portfolio bid strategies. Portfolio bid strategies can be applied across multiple campaigns in a Google Ads account. Starting in July, the target spend setting will no longer be an option when setting up new maximize clicks portfolio bid strategies. Instead, the strategy will use the average daily budgets of the campaigns in the portfolio. The maximize clicks strategy automatically adjusts bids to try to get as many clicks as possible within your budget — or target spend, if you’d set one. Target spend is defined as: “the amount you’d like to spend each day on all campaigns that use this bid strategy. Unlike your budget, target spend isn’t a hard limit. Your daily spend may exceed your target spend at times.” Also in July, enhanced CPC will no longer be available as a portfolio bid strategy. There is no added benefit to using eCPC as a portfolio strategy as opposed to at the campaign level, and Google says they’re “far more widely used” on individual campaigns. These changes follow the announcements that target search page location and target outranking share bid strategies are going away — at the campaign and portfolio levels — this month.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 20, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook’s digital wallet Calibra: What it could mean for marketers
Facebook announced it is launching a financial subsidiary in 2020 called Calibra that will include a digital wallet offered as a standalone app and built into Messenger and WhatsApp. The digital wallet will enable global users to make financial transactions using Libra, the newly formed currency powered by blockchain technology backed by Facebook and a number of leading financial, technology and venture capital organizations, including Mastercard, Uber, PayPal and Andreessen Horowitz. Marketers are paying attention to the cross-border payment capabilities Facebook’s Calibra will offer. “It’s a way for Facebook to bring e-commerce into developing countries, where they don’t have stable currencies or means to pay,” said Steve Weiss, president of the digital marketing agency MuteSix. Whether or not Facebook will be able to drive global e-commerce within its apps via Calibra depends entirely on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency it is helping develop. Creating a way for worldwide users to engage with brands — and purchase from them regardless of their geographic location — could dramatically impact Facebook’s business model and further cement its dominance as a social platform. Much is riding on the success of the Libra cryptocurrency for Facebook. But, should it succeed, marketers are ready for the added e-commerce and customer experience possibilities it could provide.
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Facebook Adds 22 New, Free Training Modules to Facebook Blueprint
The Social Network has announced the addition of twenty-two new digital marketing training courses as part of its free Facebook Blueprint education platform. This new update, as noted by Facebook, will include additional Instagram insight, which will no doubt be of interest to the many marketers looking to build their presence on the rising platform. In addition, Blueprint also offers official, Facebook ads certification courses to help prove your skills and expertise. The new Blueprint courses will be available at facebook.com/blueprint at the end of the month. Facebook says the new courses will initially only be available in English, but it’s looking to add support for more than 30 additional languages by the end of the year.
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Twitter is Removing the Option to Tag Your Precise Location in Tweets
Twitter has announced a small, but interesting, update, with the removal of the capacity to tag your precise location within your tweets. It likely won’t have any significant impact – as Twitter notes, most people don’t use the option anyway. But it is still worthy of note, particularly as a data tracking tool, as it could lessen the platform’s capacity to track location data. At least, it could in theory. Given that the option is built into Twitter’s back-end code, the app will still be able to track your exact location anyway, if you have the capacity switched on. Location tracking isn’t on by default, but even if it’s no longer an option for your tweets, if you’ve chosen to switch it on in the past, Twitter can still use it. With users increasingly concerned about the information they share, the platforms themselves are now taking more steps to reassure people that they are not being monitored, and their data is not being logged every moment.
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Advertising
Price extensions now supported in Microsoft Advertising Editor
Price extensions launched in Microsoft Advertising a little over a year ago, allowing advertisers to show products and pricing in-text ads in mobile and desktop search results. Now you can manage those extensions in Microsoft Advertising Editor. That means you can manage them in bulk and much more quickly. From the Shared LIbrary in Editor, you will be able to add headers, descriptions and prices, including currency.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 19, 2019
/by Corey PadveenAdvertising
Google Announces New 3D Ad Creation Tools and New Live and AR Ad Options for YouTube
Google is looking to provide more advanced ad tools, with the addition of a new platform for creating 3D ads, and new AR and Live options for YouTube promotions. First off, Google has announced its new ‘Swirl’ 3D display ad format, which will help brands provide a more interactive, engaging experience. Swirl ads will enable brands which have existing 3D assets to build them into their ad units. Over on YouTube, Google is also rolling out another immersive ad format, though this time through AR, with an opportunity to virtually try on make-up when viewing related content. Called ‘Beauty Try-On’, the new format will enable video viewers to check out related looks while following along with YouTube creators. And finally, YouTube is also looking to help live-stream creators maximize their live content, by rolling out a new ad option which will enable creators to run their YouTube live stream content within display ads, which will prompt the user to click through to see more. Each of these new tools offers unique considerations for advertisers, and will facilitate more engaging campaign types, which will likely help to boost campaign performance, and, eventually, raise consumer expectation.
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Spotify has expanded its ads capabilities with podcast listener targeting
Advertisers can reach Spotify Free podcast listeners, and in select markets, they’ll also be able to narrow their campaigns to certain podcast categories, such as “Comedy,” “Lifestyle & Health” and “Business & Technology.” .S. podcast ad revenue grew 53% in 2018, according to the IAB, and with 32% of Americans (age 12+) having listened to a podcast in the past month, according to Edison Research, marketers and platforms are seeing untapped potential. Spotify is looking to entrench itself early to become a leading platform in the sector. Insufficient campaign conversion data has been a barrier to growth for podcast advertising. Marketers have attempted to overcome this by using direct response calls to action (such giving listeners a unique code or URL) or by launching campaigns aimed at awareness. Targeting at scale has also been limited. Spotify’s newest capabilities help begin to address those limitations.
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Marketing
Google Search Console drops preferred domain setting
Google announced it is no longer supporting the preferred domain setting in Google Search Console. In short, this feature is not moving from the old Google Search Console to the new version. Google is removing this feature because it is now able to pick the preferred domain for you based on various signals Google ingests. You can now communicate to Google your preferred domain through good site architecture. If you are currently depending on Google to select your preferred domain through this setting, you can no longer depend on that. You will need to ensure that your canonical URL listed in Google has not changed with this announcement. Google did not say if it will communicate in any way to webmasters, publishers or developers through Search Console if this resulted in your site switching its canonical URL in Google’s index. Instead, you need to audit your Google results to ensure no changes were made.
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Google is Reportedly Adding Timestamps to YouTube Videos in Search Results
Google has been spotted testing the addition of timestamps for certain types of YouTube videos in search results. The timestamps allow users to jump directly to key moments within the video without having to sit through content they’re not interested in. This may prove to be quite a useful feature for searchers, especially in today’s world of monetization where the length of YouTube videos is extended for the purpose of inserting a greater amount of mid-roll ads. At the same time, it could be argued that Google is taking viewing time away from videos by inviting users to skip to specific parts. While that may be the case, the video creators are inviting users to do the same by publishing timestamps in their own video descriptions.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 18, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook reveals Libra cryptocurrency, with lofty goals
Facebook Inc revealed plans on Tuesday to launch a cryptocurrency called Libra, the latest development in its effort to expand beyond social networking and move into e-commerce and global payments. Facebook has linked with 28 partners in a Geneva-based entity called the Libra Association, which will govern its new digital coin set to launch in the first half of 2020, according to marketing materials and interviews with executives. Facebook has also created a subsidiary called Calibra, which will offer digital wallets to save, send and spend Libras. Calibra will be connected to Facebook’s messaging platforms Messenger and WhatsApp, which already boast more than a billion users. In recent years, cryptocurrency investors have lost hundreds of millions of dollars through hacks, and the market has been plagued by accusations of money-laundering, illegal drug sales and terrorist financing. Markus Feber, a senior German lawmaker in the European Parliament, called for the European Union to begin work on regulating cryptocurrencies. Facebook hopes it can bring global regulators to the table by publicizing Libra, said Kevin Weil, who runs product for the initiative. The Libra Association plans to raise money through a private placement in the coming months, according to a statement from the association. Partners in the project include household names like Mastercard Inc, Visa Inc, Spotify Technology SA, PayPal Holdings Inc, eBay Inc, Uber Technologies Inc and Vodafone Group Plc, as well as venture capital firms like Andreessen Horow.
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Facebook to remove ‘Company Overview’ and ‘Biography’ fields from Pages
Facebook is alerting Page owners that it is removing a number of fields from Page info starting August 1, 2019. The fields to be removed include Company Overview, Biography, Affiliation, Personal Interests and maybe more, according to a tweet from Matt Navarra. Anyone managing a Facebook Page will need to revisit information listed in the fields scheduled to be removed, and add the information they want to remain visible to the Page’s description. The fields being removed are listed under a Page’s “About” section and, most likely, will not impact a Page’s performance. SMBs and public figures whose primary online existence are their Facebook Pages may have important information in those fields. Editing the Page description to include the soon-to-be deleted information will make sure those details remain intact.
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Pinterest Announces New Third-Party Partnerships to Expand its On-Platform Shopping Options
Pinterest’s aim is to become a key hub for online shopping, with advanced product discovery and matching features that align with user needs, and help to guide them to relevant products. Pinterest has this week renamed its third-party partner program, and added new technology partners to facilitate expanded product listing capacity. The new focus for Pinterest Partners is shopping, with a range of tools that will be able to help connect businesses direct to the platform, streamlining their product listing and promotion processes. This aligns with Pinterest’s broader push to integrate direct shopping options, including product catalogs, automated ‘Shop the Look’ Pins and the coming addition of ‘Complete the Look’ listings, which will recommend complementary products based on automated matching. These new partnerships will help Pinterest build upon this, and continue its ongoing growth strategy.
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Facebook’s Working on a New ‘Preview’ Option for Page Posts
Facebook is currently testing a new ‘Preview’ option for Page posts which would enable you to see what your update is going to look like before you hit ‘Share’. The option could help Facebook Page admins to better manage their posts and output, ensuring that what they aim to publish, and what actually appears, match up. It would also help highlight errors and mistakes before they happen – if you get into the habit of checking the preview, you’ll be able to catch errors and/or formatting problems before you go live, which could help reduce clumsy looking slip-ups. Of course, you can already do this, in large part, via the existing Page publishing tools – if you schedule a post, you can view it from your scheduled list and see what it’s going to look like to your Page fans. But if you’re publishing live, you’ll often skip that step. This would enable you to maintain awareness of how your posts are going to look in all instances.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 17, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Announces Updated Ranking Factors for Post Comments
We know that more comments and engagement will equate to better organic reach for your posts within Facebook’s News Feed algorithm, as Facebook wants to encourage more of the same behavior, and keep users on platform for longer. So how does Facebook decide which order to show your comments in specifically? Well it depends. If Comment Ranking is on, Facebook says that its system uses the following signals to determine the order in which it displays your public post comments. 1. Integrity signals – This is pretty basic, but if a comment violates Facebook’s Community Standards, the system will remove it. 2. Insights from User Surveys – Facebook is always conducting user surveys, if the surveys indicate that users want to see a certain type of comment, or vice versa, that’s factored in. 3. Engagement Factors – Facebook wants people to engage more, so it makes sense for Facebook to highlight the comments that are already inspiring this type of response from other users. And there are, of course, other, user-controlled factors which will ultimately influence how post comments are displayed. Page admins can hide, and delete comments entirely, which can be helpful if the comments are spam links, off-topic and/or simply not contributing to the wider conversation.
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Pinterest’s Working on a New ‘Complete the Look’ Option to Help Users Find More Relevant Product Matches
Pinterest is now working on a new option called ‘Complete the Look’, which will take into account the products you’ve searched for and provide related recommendations, based on relative trends and other factors. The process essentially broadens its recommendations to visually similar or contextually related products, based on the aforementioned factors. Pinterest trained its model based on a dataset of images which included complete scenes of varying product matches. Pinterest then cropped out the specific products, which enabled the system to recommend similar matches based on what it had learned were relevant partners. The process will help connect more Pinterest users to relevant product matches and recommendations, which could help to further fuel its growing eCommerce ambitions. And with Pinterest leading the social media pack in terms of product discovery, the addition could prove significantly beneficial for users as they seek out just the right companion pieces in various contexts.
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Marketing
Google’s John Mueller Predicts Dynamic Rendering Won’t Be Needed in a Few Years
Google’s John Mueller predicts that dynamic rendering will only be a temporary workaround for helping web crawlers process JavaScript. Eventually, all web crawlers will be able to process JavaScript, Mueller believes. So in a few years’ time relying on dynamic rendering may not be necessary. Mueller made this prediction during a recent Google Webmaster Central hangout when a site owner asked if there’s any reason why they shouldn’t use dynamic rendering. Googlebot can already process every type of JavaScript page, and Mueller suspects all other crawlers will follow suit. What makes this prediction particularly interesting is that dynamic rendering was only introduced last year at Google I/O 2018. Now, a little over a year later, Mueller predicts this innovative solution for serving JavaScript to bots will only be needed for a few years.
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New Research Underlines the Ongoing Mobile Usage Shift, Highlights Audience-Specific Considerations
Based on feedback from over 1,500 US adults, Pew Research looked at the latest internet access and mobile usage habits, and found that the mobile shift is indeed in full force, but is specifically so in two key brackets: younger users, which you would expect, and lower income households. On the first point, Pew found that 37% of U.S. adults now mostly use their smartphone when accessing the internet, which is double the rate it was in 2013. The biggest increase over that period is in younger age groups. That, you would expect, will continue to increase and ripple through over time as smartphone and mobile connection technology improves, lessening the need for users to go online via any other means. In addition, 45% of non-broadband adopters, according to Pew’s data, say they don’t have high-speed internet at home because “their smartphone lets them do everything online that they need to do”. And again, with mobile and connective technology improving, you can expect to see this continue to rise. That finding is particularly interesting because smartphone adoption is generally higher among higher income regions, which, you would assume, would equate to such devices being more exclusive to people with more means. These new findings show that may not be the case. While technology adoption may be lower based on overall income status, the improvement of mobile offerings looks to actually be superseding the need for other alternatives. If you want to connect with lower income audiences, mobile may well be the best way to go in this bracket too, another key consideration in the larger consumption shift.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 14, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Facebook Acquires Indian eCommerce Marketplace Meesho to Increase Operations in Indian Market
The Social Network has this week announced that it has acquired Indian social commerce market Meesho in order to further expand its presence in the rising Indian market. The acquisition will enable Facebook to better connect with eCommerce opportunities in the region – which could become increasingly important as Facebook also seeks to roll out its GlobalCoin cryptocurrency – initially focused on funds transfers in the Indian market – in the coming months. If Facebook’s on-platform payment process works, the company could quickly build its own, on-platform marketplace, and become an essential utility for connecting Indian users with quick and easy payments in varying forms. If Facebook can make it a key element within the Indian marketplace, that will be a huge win, and will provide a huge boost for the currency and Facebook’s on-platform network moving forward.
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Marketing
Google launches new search menu with icons
After a few months of testing it now appears Google has started rolling out the new search bar with icons. Instead of just using text to show the various search categories or verticals for news, video, images, maps, shopping and so on – Google is showing icons that represent those categories as well. Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that this is now rolling out to searchers today. Throughout the day we have seen numerous reports from readers that they are seeing the new Google search bar. Now we are able to see this consistently on all browsers we are testing it on. Any change to the user interface of one of the most used web sites in the world will be noticed. Will it impact search marketers or SEOs? As we said before, this change will probably not impact us much but it does give a new fresh look to the Google search results page.
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Google tests showing weekly site visits in automated ad extension
Google has several types of automated extensions that can display in search ads — seller ratings, call extensions, dynamic sitelinks, etc. It’s currently testing a new version that highlights a site’s popularity. Spotted by Kristie TC Liu, digital marketing strategist at KoMarketing in Boston, the automated extension on a WeWork ad says, “10K+ visits this week” and is preceded by a people icon. “We’re always testing new ways to improve our experience for our advertisers and users, but don’t have anything specific to announce right now,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. Google is always running tests. If this one proves successful — presumably the success metric here is click-through rate — and rolls out, it could mean a boost for more popular sites.
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Google Maps displaying redirect notice alerts when users click on business website URLs
For approximately five days now, if a searcher tries to click your website URL within your Google Maps listing, they will receive a “redirect notice” from Google. The notice reads: “The previous page is sending you to [the URL you clicked on],” and then adds, “If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.” This is likely causing a drop in traffic from Google Maps and may be impacting local businesses in terms of foot traffic and website traffic. Is this a feature or a bug? Did Google intentionally make this change or was this change made by mistake? Since Google has not responded yet, we don’t know how long it will take for the issue to be resolved. If people are getting these notices when trying to click over to your website, it might surprise them, concern them, or possibly scare them not to click through to your website. This may result in less traffic to your web site, potentially less visits from customers to your physical location, and ultimately less revenue for your company.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 13, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
LinkedIn Officially Launches Photo Tagging, Adds Video Within Messaging
This week, LinkedIn has released a blog post outlining a few of those smaller updates, officially confirming the addition of photo-tagging, while also outlining its new video messaging functionality. LinkedIn’s photo-tagging option has actually been available to most users since April, but the platform has now officially launched the functionality to all users. In order to further tap into the rising video trend, LinkedIn has also added a new option to record video clips with its messaging process. Video is big on LinkedIn – according to LinkedIn’s own stats, its users are 20x more likely to share a video on the platform than any other type of post. This option adds to that capacity, and provides another way to make your messaging stand out on the platform. LinkedIn is also moving the messaging and post buttons within the app to make them easier to access at all times. And lastly, LinkedIn notes that users can now find all the groups they’re part of, and the hashtags they follow, on the right side of their feed on desktop – “or by clicking on your profile picture at the top left on mobile”. This will enable people to better curate and manage the news updates they see on the platform.
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Marketing
Yoast SEO 11.4 adds FAQ structured data, UX improvements
Yoast SEO’s latest update enhances its FAQ blocks by automatically generating structured data to accompany questions and answers. The update also introduces some UX improvements and addresses issues with AMP pages when viewed in Reader mode. The corresponding FAQpage structured data will be generated in the background and added to Yoast’s structured data graph, which may help search engines identify your FAQ page and figure out how it fits into the overall scheme of your site. At this year’s I/O conference, Google announced support for FAQ markup, which may mean that searchers will be presented with FAQs as rich results more frequently. Being able to easily and efficiently equip our FAQ sections with structured data can yield better odds of earning prominent placement on SERPs.
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Google Search Console Now Shows 90 Days of Search & Discover Data
Google is making an adjustment to the performance report in Search Console, which will now display 90 full days of data by default. This change will affect data shown for clicks from search results and clicks from the Discover feed. The content shown in Discover is tailored to an individual’s search and browsing activity. As long as your content is indexed in search results it is eligible to appear in Discover. Discover only appears on mobile devices, so it primarily surfaces mobile-friendly web pages. It may help even more if the content is an AMP page.
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Bing now supports batch mode for submitting URLs to Bing
Bing announced it has added support to submit URLs to the search engine in batch mode. That means instead of making an API request for each URL you submit to Bing, you can batch multiple URLs into a single API request. Bing said it supports up to 500 URLs per batch submission. If you launch a brand new site and that site is large, it can be useful to batch the URL submissions for efficiency. This also comes into play when you restructure your web site or maybe even start using the Bing indexing API for the first time. As we said before, Bing has taken a turn when it comes to discovery. It wants webmasters and publishers to push it content versus crawling and indexing content in the traditional manner.
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Daily Minute Master Series – June 12, 2019
/by Corey PadveenSocial Media
Twitter is Now Testing its ‘Hide Replies’ Option Among Users in Canada
Back in March, Twitter confirmed that it was testing a new option which would enable users to hide selected replies from their tweets, offering a new way for people to control their on-platform experience. Canadian users can now try out the functionality, which some will see as a means to remove dissenting opinions from the stream, and others will see as a welcome update to maintain a level of civility on the platform. Being able to hide selected tweet replies will enable users to have more control over their Twitter experience. There are risks of misuse, which is why Twitter is testing it on a relatively small scale to begin with, but it could end up being a valuable, helpful option, removing trend-jackers and spammers, and facilitating a more engaging tweet stream.
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Facebook launches new market research app after pulling similar app in January
Facebook has rolled out a new Study from Facebook marketing research program that involves users downloading an app to collect data from their phone. The company said the the information it collects will go toward product development initiatives. Facebook is promoting the program by running ads asking people to participate. If someone clicks on an ad, they’ll will be asked to register — and if they qualify — will be asked to download the Study with Facebook app from the Google Play Store. Facebook is compensating users for participating in the market research program, but did not give details on how much money users would earn. (Facebook’s previous research program paid users $20 a month to have the app installed on their phone.) Facebook said it is not collecting user IDs, passwords or any content like photos, videos or messaging. Facebook’s mismanagement of user data has been a thorny issue for marketers. Advertisers have reaped the benefits of the company’s ad targeting capabilities, but marketers want safe platforms — and channels — where their messaging can be heard without the risk of people’s data being misused, or worse, stolen.
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Marketing
Google June 2019 core update finished rolling out on June 8
Danny Sullivan from Google confirmed that the June 2019 core update that began rolling out on June 3rd finished rolling out on June 8th. It takes time for these updates to roll out because Google has many servers and data centers around the world, and it takes time for them all to get this update. We saw some early data around this, while it was still rolling out. Heck, even large publications like the Daily Mail and now CCN, among others are publicly saying how badly this update hit them. Google has not given us data on how large of an impact these updates are, like it used to with some Panda and Penguin updates, but did say it announces these core updates because they are “noticeable.” When Google releases larger updates, knowing when the update began and ended is useful for tracking traffic increases and decreases in our analytics. The timestamps help us understand if a site got hit by a specific algorithm update, technical issue, or other issue that might be unrelated.
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Google Trends gets integrated into Data Studio via free third-party app
UK-based marketing firm StrategiQ has released a Google Trends connector for Data Studio. Initially developed for its own clients in July 2018, the now-free tool allows users to extract search trend information directly into their Data Studio reports. Google Trends data has long been a resource for gauging keyword traffic, content planning and assessing daily as well as long term search trends. This solution helps to consolidate that valuable information onto Data Studio, where you can create custom reports to share with clients and colleagues. Google has yet to release an official integration for Trends and Data Studio. Since this is a free, third-party offering, StrategiQ does not provide a service-level agreement or guarantee a minimum uptime.
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