20210921 SEL Brief
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How to set up Google Analytics 4 using Google Tag Manager
Google Analytics 4 introduced a new take on the go-to analytics platform for many marketers. Reimagined from the ground up, with a new interface and tweaked primary metrics, GA4 also requires a different setup process to get tracking tags in place.
Google Tag Manager (GTM) provides an easy, templated route to install GA4 on your site as well as create custom events. In this article, I’ll walk through getting GA4 tracking in place via GTM, as well as cover some basic customization options.
How to set up the main GA4 code
The gtag.js tag is the basic tracking code you need to place on your site. Once you fire this for all pages, you’ll start recording all the default data that GA4 tracks for website visitors.
GTM makes setting up this tag as simple as a few clicks and pasting in an account ID.
Note: If you already have a Universal Analytics tag (analytics.js) firing on your site, you should leave it in place! You can run GA4 alongside Universal Analytics, and you should keep any former Universal Analytics properties active to preserve historical data. GA4 will only record data moving forward from the point in time when you set it up.
Step 1: To start setting up your GA4 tag, navigate to your desired account and container within GTM and select “Add a new tag.”
Step 2: Now, click within “Tag Configuration” to see the options for various types of tags. Select Google Analytics: GA4 Configuration.
Step 3: You’ll see a field to enter your Measurement ID. Find your Measurement ID in your account, and paste it here.
Step 4: Click within the “Triggering” box to choose where you want the tag to fire on your site. In most cases, you’ll likely want GA4 to fire on all pages. However, depending on your setup, you may want to exclude certain pages, such as private login sections.
Step 5: Save your tag, and publish your GTM container to push it live. You should now see GA4 firing on your site. To double-check that you’re actually tracking sessions, check the Realtime section of Google Analytics. You should see your own visit reflected here soon after hitting the site.
Now that you have the basic gtag.js tag in place, you can then move to set up some additional customization, such as adding events.
Setting up event tracking for GA4 in Google Tag Manager
One of the major improvements that came with GA4 was built-in event tracking. Directly within the Google Analytics interface, you can enable Enhanced Measurement to fire events for actions that previously required manually created events, such as scroll activity, outbound clicks, file downloads, and video views.
However, note that there are still limitations to these events compared to more advanced tracking options you can set up through GTM. For instance, the now-built-in scroll tracking option simply triggers a “scroll” event once the user reaches the bottom of the page (measured at the 90% point). By default, you won’t be able to track when the user starts to scroll to earlier points of the page.
The beauty of GTM lies in the ability to easily fire events for a vast array of actions that users could take on the site. We’ll use scroll tracking as an example event setup here, but note that you can use the GA4 Event tag to create events for any triggers that are available in GTM.
Step 1: To start, create a new tag with a Tag Type of “Google Analytics: GA4 Event.” Choose your GA4 ID under “Configuration Tag.”
Step 2: Next, enter the Event Name that you’d like to appear within the Google Analytics interface. In this case, we’re using “scroll” to align with the existing “scroll” event that GA4 tracks.
Step 3: Click on the Event Parameters section to expand it. Here, we can add a custom parameter to send further details about the event to Google Analytics. In this case, we’ll send through percentage values for when people scroll to specific points on a page.
Step 4: We’ll use “scroll_depth” for the Parameter Name. Next, the value will be {{Scroll Depth Threshold}}, a variable within GTM that will pull in the scroll percentages as people interact with the page and data is sent back in.
Step 5: We’ll need to create a trigger to determine the values we want to track. Click in the bottom Triggers section to start a new trigger, and select Scroll Depth Trigger.
You can then choose vertical or horizontal scroll depth and select between tracking based on percentages or pixel depth. With the variety of screen sizes people may be browsing from, the percentage option is likely your best bet here. Add the numbers for the scroll points you want to track, separated by commas.
Step 6: Finally, save the trigger, save your tag, and publish it live. You should now see more detailed scroll data populate when you look at the Events section in Analytics.
You can use the same basic model presented above to fire additional events into Google Analytics. Use the event name that you’d like to populate into Google Analytics, and use parameters to populate additional details.
Setting up GA4 and GTM is easier than you think
If you haven’t yet set up a GA4 property for your site, you should get one in place sooner than later to begin accruing data. GTM helps to make the setup process more seamless for marketers. Go ahead and create your GA4 property, add the tag via GTM, and start experimenting with event setup!
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Mozilla tests Bing as the default search engine for 1% of users; Tuesday’s daily brief
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, do you remember, the 21st night of September?
I associate that Earth, Wind & Fire track with the final days of summer/early days of autumn, when the heat waves get fewer and further between and life seems to settle into a more relaxed pace.
It looks like the weather isn’t the only thing changing, though: In Q1 2021, Expedia Group brought in three times more traffic from paid search on U.S. desktops than Airbnb, Tripadvisor and Booking.com combined, according to a Bernstein report. It also attracted one million more visits from paid search in March of this year than it did in March 2019.
You may recall that Expedia Group once characterized Google as its biggest competitor, and CEO Peter Kern has been open about wanting to reduce the company’s dependence on the search engine. But, travelers responded to the pandemic by seeking out vacations they could drive to, often away from urban areas. Seizing this opportunity, the company focused on markets like the U.S. and poured ad money into promoting Vrbo, its Airbnb competitor. “Vrbo generated 2.1 million display ad visits during the first three months of 2021,” Dennis Schaal wrote for Skift, “double that of sister company Expedia.com, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, and Airbnb combined.”
Diversifying your traffic sources remains important and can help keep your business stable, instead of being at the whim of whatever platform you may be reliant on. However, circumstances can change unexpectedly and when there’s an opportunity on the table, it may make sense to act. Being able to adapt in a timely fashion is critical and search marketers should prioritize that over any single strategy at any given time.
George Nguyen,
Editor
Mozilla tests Bing as the default search engine for 1% of users
Mozilla is conducting an experiment in which 1% of Firefox desktop browsers get set to Bing as the default search engine. The test will run until early 2022 but Mozilla has not disclosed more information, such as why it’s running this experiment or why it’s doing so with Bing.
Last August, Google and Mozilla reached a deal in which the former reportedly paid the browser company between $400 and $450 million per year for the privilege of being Firefox’s default search engine in most regions. It is possible that Mozilla is looking to set up a backup plan for when its contract with Google runs out in 2023.
Why we care. Many SEOs forego Bing optimization in favor of their higher traffic counterpart, but this is another reason to diversify your target search engines. It’s also another reason to potentially invest in Microsoft Advertising. While 1% of users isn’t a lot right now, if the Google deal falls through, having a Bing/Microsoft strategy may be beneficial if Mozilla makes it the default search engine.
Ads proliferate in Amazon search results as ad prices surge
“For consumers looking for toothpaste on Amazon, getting to unpaid results requires two full swipes up on the mobile app,” Annie Palmer wrote for CNBC. The e-commerce platform used to feature two or three sponsored products at the top of its results, but now, there may be as many as six ads that appear above any organic listings — and, there are even more promotions as you scroll down.
Sponsored product ads accounted for about 73% of merchants’ ad spend on Amazon in Q2, according to Merkle. And, the CPC for Amazon search advertising was $1.27 in August, a 47% increase from a year ago, according to a survey of 300 Amazon merchants conducted by Canopy Management. Last year, Marketing Land (now known as MarTech), conducted a survey in which 81% of Amazon advertisers said they planned to increase their ad spend on the platform over the course of 2020 — it looks like that trend won’t be slowing down anytime soon.
Why we care. On Amazon, more ads means less visibility for unpaid listings. This creates a tough environment for merchants that aren’t able to advertise on the platform. The situation only gets worse for sellers in product categories that Amazon has entered, with its “Amazon Basics” line of products, for example.
Higher CPCs also mean that brands with bigger budgets may have an advantage. There are no dedicated ad slots in the search results, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC, which may be a mixed blessing: more ad slots may make ads less expensive, but they’ll also take up space that might have gone to unpaid results.
Carousels and publishing anonymously: Not unless you can help it
Brands that arbitrarily publish blog content anonymously, hear me now. When asked how publishers should handle E-A-T best practices when authors don’t want to reveal their real names due to safety concerns, Google’s John Mueller replied that it’s best to add author names where you can. “If you can’t do it for any content, and it’s all basically ‘trust us’, then I don’t know how users are supposed to deal with that,” he added. Safety is number one, but if that’s not your reason for publishing without author bylines, just know that it could hurt your organic visibility.
Should you use a carousel? No, not according to shouldiuseacarousel.com. I hate/like that carousel the information is displayed on is a bit too fast for me to read, which, I suspect, is common for many others as well. Tip of the hat to Myriam Jessier for bringing this to our attention.
Google’s automotive search features disrupt the industry. Google seems to have launched new car-related search features that provide detailed specifications about models, including pricing, sale listings, configurations and so on. “In a lot of cases, OEMs also don’t provide all the data you see so we need to look for other sources to fill the gaps. This manual work results in our data team working year-round to add all this data in a categorized structured format,” Matt Smith, executive director of SEO at Edmunds.com, said on Twitter, adding, “We add all the schema or we won’t get search features or knowledge graph rankings. Google then takes our hard work and shows it however they want… But what are you going to do, lose your snippets?”
What We’re Reading: ‘Outcomes > input’: The hustle culture fallacy
As a child, I once told my father I wanted to be rich. “How?” he asked me — I told him I’d work hard. He disapproved, telling me that I needed to work smarter, not harder. Seemed like generic advice at the time, but with the glorification of “hustle culture,” I can better appreciate the wisdom.
In Rand Fishkin’s blog post for SparkToro, the search industry veteran scrutinized some of the principles that underpin hustle culture, like the belief that anyone can get ahead if they work hard (which downplays socioeconomic privilege) or that those who work hard are simply better.
“The logical move is to either A) work genuinely hard or B) pretend and posture as though I work hard. We can easily rule out C) honestly share that my journey, like most successful entrepreneurs, is 80% luck, 20% talent, maybe less,” Fishkin wrote.
The takeaways are that, if he had slowed down in his earlier years, he probably would’ve still achieved the same level of success, if not surpassed it. And, that there are other factors that contribute to success, like luck — it’s just a lot less flashy to brag about how fortunate you are.
When I was a radio journalist, I worked a lot harder than I do now. But, that career was relatively short (only a few years) because I ultimately burned out and was desperate for something more sustainable. I really think I got lucky with my current role — without my knowledge, a colleague had vouched for me before I had even completed interviews. If you’ve been similarly fortunate, consider paying it forward.
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Google provides some reasons why it won’t use your HTML title tags; Monday’s daily brief
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, autumn officially starts on Wednesday (if you’re in the northern hemisphere).
But, in my neighborhood, the fall and Halloween decorations started popping up over the weekend, which reminded me that many marketers are in the midst of preparing for the holiday shopping season.
Last Thanksgiving, online sales increased 20% YoY, hitting a record consumer spend of over $5 billion. And, nearly half of those transactions happened on smartphones, which was another record. Though we wished the pandemic would’ve receded by now, it’s still around and consumers may now be even more accustomed to e-commerce or hybrid shopping options.
I haven’t done any of my holiday shopping yet (and I expect many others, as well), so there’s still time to promote your goods and hopefully tap into the most profitable time of year for merchants. If you’re looking for ways to increase the organic visibility of your products, here are a few resources to bookmark and share with your team:
- Holiday shopping SEO: Last-minute tips and techniques for e-commerce sites
- Google announces new deals sections, promotional tools and expanded reporting ahead of the holiday shopping season
- FAQ: All about Google Shopping and Surfaces across Google
George Nguyen,
Editor
Google explains why it made the title change to the search results
For the past few weeks, Google told us it was using the designated HTML title tag 80% of the time. But, on Friday, the company said it is using as-is title tags 87% of the time, a seven-point increase: “Title elements are now used around 87% of the time, rather than around 80% before,” Google wrote.
The company listed the following as common reasons why it won’t use your HTML title tag:
- Empty or half-empty titles (” | Site Name”)
- Obsolete titles (“2020 admissions criteria – University of Awesome”)
- Inaccurate titles (“Giant stuffed animals, teddy bears, polar bears – Site Name”)
- Micro-boilerplate titles (“My so-called amazing TV show,” where the same title is used for multiple pages about different seasons)
The SEO community is still mixed on this: Some are optimistic that Google will improve in this area, while others are asking for an option to opt out. If you noticed changes to your click-through rate from the Google search results, it may be related to these changes. Hopefully, the changes are positive since it is a win-win for Google to provide titles that its searchers want to click on. If not, Google said it will keep making improvements. It’s critical that SEOs continue to provide feedback on the adjustments to the title tag system, as well as any changes that play out in real-time.
Instagram is testing ‘Map Search’ in Australia and New Zealand
Instagram has launched “Map Search” as a test for its users in Australia and New Zealand, according to SocialMediaToday. This new feature enables users to discover businesses and other locations of interest via the in-app map (shown above), which can be accessed via the map icon in the Discovery tab. Selecting a location on the map shows users a business’ information, public posts tagged at that location and the associated Instagram account for that business (if applicable).
Why we care. If this feature rolls out more widely and hits the right notes with users, it could help local businesses connect with more potential customers, many of which are likely to be nearby and looking for places to visit, shop or dine at. This may also mean that local business owners will have to pay more attention to curating their presence on the platform.
Instagram has steadily added more e-commerce support over the years. One would hope that e-commerce support would be integrated into map listings, offering even more flexibility for local businesses.
Accessibility that won’t ding your SEO, independent reviews mentioned in GMB profiles and considerations for starting your own agency
“I don’t see a problem.” Google’s John Mueller says the search engine doesn’t take issue with hidden text if it’s for accessibility, “partially because the accessibility elements usually aren’t the keywords you’re trying to rank for,” adding that, “If they were the only mention of your main keywords on your pages, that would be trickier.”
“Reviews on independent sites” seen on GMB profiles. There have been more and more reports of GMB profiles that include text like “200+ reviews on independent sites.” Tip of the hat to Joy Hawkins, who first brought this to our attention. We’ve reached out to Google to see if it’s willing to provide any details.
7 things to know before starting a PPC agency. Kirk Williams, owner of ZATO Marketing, shares three reasons why starting an agency in 2022 may be harder than ever, and four reasons why it may be easier than ever.
What We’re Reading: Documents reveal Facebook’s weak response to human traffickers and drug cartels on its platform
“Scores of internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show employees raising alarms about how its platforms are used in some developing countries, where its user base is already huge and expanding,” Justin Sheck, Newley Purnell and Jeff Horwitz wrote, “They also show the company’s response, which in many instances is inadequate or nothing at all.”
Facebook employees have flagged human traffickers operating in the Middle East, luring women into abusive employment situations or sex work. In Ethiopia, armed groups used the platform to incite violence against ethnic minorities. The article goes on to discuss organ selling, pornography, cartels recruiting teens to attend hit-man training camps and more.
“The company took down some offending pages, but took only limited action to try to shut down the activity until Apple Inc. threatened to remove Facebook’s products from the App Store unless it cracked down on the practice,” Sheck, Purnell and Horwitz wrote, explaining that Apple’s threat was in response to a BBC story about maids for sale.
Facebook’s attitude on these issues seems to be that it is “simply the cost of doing business” in those regions, according to Brian Boland, a former Facebook vice president in charge of partnerships with internet providers in Africa and Asia. This claim seems to be substantiated by the documents the WSJ reviewed: “In an internal summary about the episode, a Facebook researcher wrote: ‘Was this issue known to Facebook before BBC enquiry and Apple escalation?’ The next paragraph begins: ‘Yes.’”
The article goes on to explain a few reasons why this has been allowed to happen, language being one of them. If anything, these excuses work to highlight the company’s priorities, which apparently don’t include the safety of its users in those regions.
Why we care. Facebook is suffering in more ways than one: Its reputation has taken hit after hit since 2016 and it only seems to have gotten worse with COVID misinformation last year. In January, the company revealed that it actually lost daily active users in the US in Q3 and Q4 last year, despite a pandemic that forced more people online. Average time spent on Facebook by US users has also been on a steady decline (from 41 seconds in 2017 to 37 seconds in 2021), according to eMarketer.
For brands that rely on Facebook, this may mean that your target audience on the platform is shrinking and that there may be fewer opportunities to reach those individuals. This might get worse before it gets better as more users are following their beliefs and refusing to support companies that are complicit with human rights violations. And, I have to imagine that the users in these regions are associating the social media network with such violations, which may hinder its growth abroad.
The post Google provides some reasons why it won’t use your HTML title tags; Monday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.
New Feature Update – Mobile App
We’ve just made some exciting new updates to our Mobile Mortgage CRM App. This update includes new features that will help you locate partners from your location, increased security functions, and call/email opt-out all from your Mobile Mortgage CRM App!
BNTouch mobile app that gives you access to almost all of your CRM functions on the go. Giving you the ability to run and grow your mortgage business from anywhere!
Let’s explore these new features within the BNTouch Mortgage CRM App.
Partner Radar
Quickly find and visit partners around you (from your database).
Partner Radar feature allows you to quickly find and visit partners around you that are linked to your database. This feature was created by popular demand, and we hope you find this a useful tool located partners nearby. Please see the image below of what you should expect from the Partner Radar added feature.
Biometrics for Added Security
Biometrics for additional security enables biometrics or Face ID/Touch ID (for iOS) access to the app.
Users can access this function in the menu under “Settings” if they then open the sub-tab “Security”. Tapping “Enable Biometrics” will prompt for a fingerprint scan on Android and (ostensibly) a finger or face scan on iOS devices. Please see the image below on how to access Biometrics.
Call/Email Opt-Out
Email/Call opt-in or opt-out from contacts through the app.
Open a client record (from the My Pipeline, Last Records, New Records, Record Search, etc.) Once inside, tap “Contact Info” in the bottom tab (Note that this isn’t the same as the “Contact Info” top-sub-tab within the “Info” bottom-sub-tab-use the “Contact Info” icon at the bottom of the screen). There, scroll to the “Cell Phone, Email, and Street” fields, there will be toggle switches that users can tap to set the status to a minus sign or checkmark, representing opted-out and opted-in. Please see the image below on how to access this feature.
Want to learn more about the new mobile CRM? Click the button below to check out our feature breakdown which includes a fifteen-minute walkthrough video about Bntouch’s Mobile Mortgage CRM App.
Want To See The Mobile Mortgage CRM App In Action?
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Mozilla tests Bing as the default search engine for 1% of users
“Mozilla is running an experiment on 1% of the Firefox desktop population currently, which sets the default search engine to Bing in the web browser,” said Martin Brinkmann for ghacks.
Search choice is an ongoing issue. We’ve written about search choice before as it’s been a topic of conversation even beyond the search community:
- Ecosia says it will boycott ‘search choice’ auction on Android in Europe
- Google to offer mandated ‘search choice’ to EU Android users in 2020
- Google drops the auction from its search choice screen
- Google’s search choice screen had virtually no effect on search market share, perhaps by design
- The case for advertising on search engines other than Google
Google is the usual default. “Like all browsers, Mozilla Firefox automatically configures a browser to a default search engine for performing searches via the address bar,” wrote Lawrence Abrams on BleepingComputer. Chrome obviously defaults to Google, but so do Brave and Firefox.
Last August, Google and Firefox reached a deal where Google paid Mozilla “between $400 and $450 million per year for the privilege of becoming the Firefox web browser’s default search engine in most regions,” said Brinkmann.
The new test. “The study started on September 6 and it will run until early 2022, likely January 2022. About 1% of Firefox desktop users may notice that the default search engine is changed when the installation of Firefox is picked for the experiment,” explained Brinkmann. Why are they running this test with Bing? Mozilla hasn’t disclosed the reason, but most of their revenue comes from search engine deals.
“Mozilla might want to have a backup plan when the search contract with Google runs out in 2023. Google may be interested in extending the search deal, but if the deal falls through, Microsoft would be one of the few remaining options for Mozilla,” said Brinkmann.
Why we care. Many SEOs often forego Bing optimization in favor of their higher traffic counterpart, but this is another reason to diversify your target search engines. It’s also another reason to potentially invest in Microsoft Advertising. While 1% of users isn’t a lot right now if the Google deal falls through having a Bing/Microsoft strategy may be beneficial if Mozilla makes it the default search engine.
The post Mozilla tests Bing as the default search engine for 1% of users appeared first on Search Engine Land.
SEO testing for continuous improvement; Friday’s daily brief
Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily.
Good morning, Marketers, and I’m not going to lie.
Every time I write the Friday newsletter it takes a lot not to type, “It’s Friday. Friday! Gotta get down on Fri-hi-day-hay. Everyone’s looking forward to the weekend, weekend.” I sing it to myself every Friday newsletter. So there. I sincerely hope you sing it to yourself all day long too.
It makes me think about when this song first came out. It went viral pretty quickly. We all cringe-listened because it wasn’t good but it sure was delightful. If you’ve worked in marketing for a while, there’s a very high chance you’ve been asking how to make some client or company asset “go viral” like this song.
Of course, we know it’s not that simple. There’s a special combination of factors (often completely out of our control) that make phenomenons take off like Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” Search marketing (even PPC) is more about the long game — the testing, the learning period, the slow accumulation of links and content, etc.
But in the end, the slow build is better than the firecracker hit. While the viral song only pops up when I force it on people, what we’re building will continue to serve us, our businesses, and the searchers looking for answers online.
Oh, and I hope your weekend is all partying, partying! Yeah! Fun, fun, fun!
Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content
How to test your content site strategy for continued improvement
Assessing the effectiveness of your content strategy is an integral part of growing your organic visibility as well as furthering your skills as an SEO. Techniques like forecasting can help you estimate the value a piece of content or site change may generate for your business, but failing to record the real-life performance associated with those changes and comparing them with your forecasts may mean that you’re overlooking takeaways that can be used to improve future initiatives.
At SMX Convert, Alexis Sanders, SEO director at Merkle, shared the tactics that she uses to analyze site strategies for continued improvement. While the techniques mostly pertain to content, they can also be applied to other aspects of a site, like user experience.
- Forecasting: Clickthrough rate curve estimates can help you predict incremental traffic lift. “We [calculate] that using the search volume multiplied by the clickthrough rate of our forecasted rank subtracted by our current rank,” Sanders said.
- Case studies: Maintain a record of your internal case studies and links to relevant articles about case studies for initiatives that you may want to attempt in the future. Accumulating all this information will help you get a better idea of how your proposed content may perform.
- Competitive research: Competitors’ rankings, estimated traffic and search volume are going to be the most useful metrics for forecasting. You can use this information to estimate whether you’ll outperform a competitor based on what you’re going to do and your level of authority within the space.
- Pre-reads: Interviewing a small sample of your target audience can help you gather feedback and refine your content, as well as inform you about potential hurdles like readability and accessibility.
- Split testing: Ensure that search engine bots are receiving the experience you want them to. If there is the potential for search engine bots to find one of your alternative experience URLs, it’s best to 302 redirect to the main URL.
How and why you should pause paid search (for science)
With the right structure and parameters, pausing paid search can be an invaluable source of data for PPC professionals.
When it comes to demonstrating return, Sr. Paid Search Analyst at Uproer, John Smith wagers most PPC professionals measure some variation of total revenue over total cost: “If it’s high, we’re doing well. If not, we rethink and rework until we hit the ROAS we want.”
That’s not inherently bad. It’s a quickfire estimate of efficacy, and Smith says he finds himself doing the same thing, but “the problem is that number doesn’t tell us much. It doesn’t tell us if we actually lost money buying users who would have converted anyway. And it doesn’t show what might have happened if we simply didn’t spend.”
Search Shorts: A title tag case study, why no one cares about your content and limiting PPC waste
- Tackling 8,000 title tag rewrites: A case study. Dr. Pete recently dug in to over 50,000 Moz title tags to understand the impact of Google’s rewrite update.
- You want to know the truth about content marketing? Nobody cares about your product or service.
- A new way to approach your PPC personas. Learning from the sales process to limit waste and accelerate ROI.
What We’re Reading: UN says we should cool it on AI that could potentially affect human rights
“The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Wednesday called for a moratorium on the sale and use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems that threaten human rights until adequate safeguards are in place to ensure the technology will not be abused,” according to Al Jazeera.
The AI in question refers to those that affect “who gets public services and decide who has a chance to be recruited for a job” with the idea that data collection isn’t totally private and can risk discrimination against those online.
But there could be even wider implications for search engines and search marketers if the moratorium were to actually take effect. Bachelet released a report detailing “the risks of AI technologies, and emphasising that while AI can serve as a force for good, it can also cause catastrophic effects if used irresponsibly.”
“The complexity of the data environment, algorithms and models underlying the development and operation of AI systems, as well as intentional secrecy of government and private actors are factors undermining meaningful ways for the public to understand the effects of AI systems on human rights and society,” said the report.
Yes, AI does help search marketers, but Google’s unfettered and undisclosed use of it could potentially be contributing to this discrimination. We’ve seen it before when Google Ads settings allowed advertisers to discriminate against people multiple times.
Will a moratorium actually take effect? Probably not. AI is so ingrained in our technology now. But we could benefit from more transparency around how big tech is using it.
Hat tip to Doug Thomas for the heads up on this news.
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Google explains why it made the title change to the search results
Google has confirmed that it not only made a change to what title it shows in the search results but also disclosed how much of a change it actually was. For the past few weeks, Google said it was using your chosen HTML title tag 80% of the time. Now Google said it is using as-is title tags 87% of the time, a seven-point increase: “Title elements are now used around 87% of the time, rather than around 80% before,” Google wrote.
Why the change. “We’ve used text beyond title elements in cases where our systems determine the title element might not describe a page as well as it could. Some pages have empty titles. Some use the same titles on every page regardless of the page’s actual content. Some pages have no title elements at all,” said Google. The company then listed off other reasons why it won’t use your HTML title tag:
- Half-empty titles (” | Site Name”)
- Obsolete titles (“2020 admissions criteria – University of Awesome”)
- Inaccurate titles (“Giant stuffed animals, teddy bears, polar bears – Site Name”)
- Micro-boilerplate titles (“My so-called amazing TV show,” where the same title is used for multiple pages about different seasons)
- and more.
Guidance. Google also gave some guidance on how to encourage the search engine to show your HTML titles: “Focus on creating great HTML title elements. Those are by far what we use the most.” Google reshared the help document on titles, that it recommended SEOs read. “Consider the examples in this post to understand if you might have similar patterns that could cause our systems to look beyond your title elements. The changes we’ve made are largely designed to help compensate for issues that creators might not realize their titles are having. Making changes may help ensure your title element is again used. That’s really our preference, as well,” the company also added.
But Google is not done and said, “Our work to improve titles will continue.”
Are titles getting better? Time will tell if these changes Google made actually made things better. We saw some SEOs earlier this week saying the titles were starting to look better. Dr. Pete Meyers from Moz recently published a large case study on the title rewrites as well, but it is hard to say when Google made the changes and when the case study data was pulled from.
Many SEOs are still not pleased with Google making such wide-sweeping changes, even if it was only 20% of the time (and is now 13% of the time). And, this explanation doesn’t cut it for them:
It’d “be great if this is what [Google] was doing but it’s not what they are doing. They need to stop or give us a way to opt out. They take out brand names, move brand names, remove pipes make dashes, take out key terms from several of our good titles etc. Let us opt out,” tweeted Kristine Schachinger, digital strategist and SEO consultant. “Here we go…again,” added Tess Voecks, director of SEO project management at Local SEO Guide.
Others are more optimistic that Google took SEO feedback into consideration: “Wow, this is exactly what I asked for in yesterday’s post: (1) a more conservative approach, and (2) more transparency on the reasons for rewrites. Kudos to Google for listening and adjusting,” said Dr. Pete Meyers. “Interesting clarification of Title Tag ‘Update’ stating Google are trying to improve badly constructed or misleading Titles rather than update all your Title tags. Plenty of evidence to suggest that it has not rolled out perfectly (E.g. below) but I’m sure it’ll improve,” added Dan Nutter, head of SEO at Clarity At Speed.
Why we care. If you noticed changes to your click-through rate from the Google search results, it may be related to these changes. Hopefully, those changes are positive since it is a win-win for Google to provide titles that its searchers want to click on. If not, Google said it will keep making improvements. It’s critical that SEOs continue to provide feedback on the adjustments to the title tag system as well as any changes that play out in real-time.
The post Google explains why it made the title change to the search results appeared first on Search Engine Land.
LenderHomePage And LeadMailbox Modernize Lead Management for Mortgage Companies
Santa Ana, Sept 16, 2021 – LenderHomePage announced today a new partnership with LeadMailbox designed to help mortgage companies streamline and enhance their lead management process. The new integration addresses the problematic disconnect modern lenders face when utilizing mortgage CRM and POS software from different providers.
Implementation of cloud-based POS and CRM software increased dramatically in the past five years and is a cornerstone of digital transformation. The top benefits of digital transformation include a 45% revenue growth (Deloitte, 2020), a 20-30% increase in customer satisfaction (McKinsley, 2019), and improved operational efficiency (PTC). However, there remains the challenge of seamless integration between the aggregator’s POS and CRM as data between the two does not always populate accurately, thus, requiring manual data entry.
The automated transaction between Loanzify POS and LeadMailbox CRM addresses this major issue by eliminating the time-consuming, error-prone, and redundant manual data entry, thereby allowing the mortgage companies to take full advantage of the platforms’ and originator’s revenue-generating potential. This deep integration improves customer experience and retention, automated lead nurturing, increases lead quality and revenue, accelerates the loan lifecycle, and improves data accuracy.
Since 2003, LenderHomePage has been a market leader in innovative mortgage technology development. They are the designer of highly acclaimed mortgage software products, including Loanzify POS and Loanzify Mortgage Mobile App, enabling mortgage companies of all sizes to create better operations efficiencies and deliver an omnichannel experience for their consumers.
LeadMailbox is a cloud-based CRM lead management system that organizes, distributes, and analyzes mortgage leads for improved lead qualification and lead nurturing. The intelligent solution enables mortgage companies to modernize their sales processes with features such as Insta-Call, customizable lead distribution, lead scoring, and metrics.
“Customization and integrations are purpose-built in all of our software products,” states Rocky Foroutan, CEO of LenderHomePage. “With technology and industry demands constantly evolving, having a robust and agile platform is key in remaining competitive and unlocking new revenue opportunities. We’re thrilled to partner with LeadMailbox as part of our shared goal to provide a more digitally advanced and intuitive digital mortgage experience for all.”
About LeadMailbox:
LeadMailbox is a complete CRM and lead management platform. Utilized by thousands nationwide, LeadMailBox dramatically improves conversions through lead aggregation, SMS and telephony solutions, email campaigns, and custom reporting. www.leadmailbox.com
About LenderHomePage:
Since 2003, LenderHomePage.com is the leading provider of a secure and compliant cloud-based digital mortgage platform that powers lender websites, mobile apps, and mortgage POS solutions. Mortgage lenders of all sizes use LenderHomePage.com’s customizable and scalable solutions to enhance borrower experience, streamline the mortgage process, and increase Loan Officer productivity and efficiency.
About Loanzify:
Loanzify POS by LenderHomePage is part of a suite of innovative productivity solutions developed for the modern mortgage professional.