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Good morning, Marketers, I’m not a big sports fan, but when there’s a domain dispute, count me in.

Those of you who have gone through a rebrand know how much effort goes into it. Unfortunately for Cleveland’s MLB team (which will soon be going by its new name, the Cleveland Guardians), the rebranding effort may have overlooked an important detail: the preferred domain. ClevelandGuardians.com is the official site for the men’s roller derby team of the same name.

The roller derbying Cleveland Guardians have been around since 2011, and on top of possessing the domain, the team also has the Facebook and Instagram accounts. Now, both entities seem to be positioning themselves for a trademark battle.

It wasn’t until four days after the Cleveland MLB team made its name change announcement that it filed for a federal trademark to begin selling merchandise, according to Cleveland 19 News. A couple days later, the roller derby team filed for their own trademark and launched their own online store.

It’s still unclear how this is going to end, but what is clear is that, if an MLB franchise with all the resources at its disposal can commit such an oversight, it could happen to any of us. 

George Nguyen,
Editor

‘Make Every feature Binary’: Bing’s sparse neural network for improved search relevance

Bing has introduced “Make Every feature Binary” (MEB), a large-scale sparse model that complements its production Transformer models to improve search relevance. This new technology, which is now running on 100% of Bing searches in all regions and languages, has resulted in a nearly 2% increase in clickthrough rate for the top search results, a reduction in manual query reformulation by more than 1% and a 1.5% reduction of clicks on pagination.

“When looking into the top features learned by MEB, we found it can learn hidden intents between query and document,” Bing said. As shown in the image above, MEB was able to learn that “Hotmail” is strongly correlated to “Microsoft Outlook,” even though the two aren’t close in terms of semantic meaning. It can also identify negative relationships, like how users searching for “baseball” don’t typically click on pages about “hockey.”

MEB’s more nuanced understanding of content may also help to drive more traffic to brands, businesses and publishers, since the search results may be more relevant. And, its understanding of correlated phrases and negative relationships may enable marketers to spend more time focusing on what customers are really searching for instead of fixating on the right keywords to rank higher — this is especially applicable for rebranding scenarios (are you listening, Cleveland Guardians?). And, for the search industry overall, it may help Bing maintain its position as Google continues to innovate with new technologies like MUM. 

Read more here.

How to limit waste and accelerate ROI in paid search marketing

Having spent the last 11 years surrounded by sales leaders, Amanda Farley, Partner and Director of Accounts and Digital Strategy at SSDM, picked up on some of their biggest successes and opportunities. But recently, she had the idea to apply them outside of the sales box and into her digital marketing campaigns. “This is really what sales and marketing integration is all about,” said Farley recently at SMX Advanced. “It’s about building the relationships, the trust and guiding [buyers] to impactful solutions that ultimately lead into more sales or leads.”

These buyer personas are based on a book called The New Strategic Selling by Robert B. Miller and Stephen E. Heiman. “Your strategy can only begin when you know who your players are,” added Farley. “The best way to think of it is like a football team: every player must be on the field to close the deal.”

• Economic buyer: Has the ability to commit funds to a purchase.
• User buyer: The end-user of your product or service.
• Technical buyer: Ensures all the technical specifications are met.
• Coach: Really wants your solution to win.

When we take this into our marketing efforts, we need to understand what each audience cares about most, what their content preferences are and what channels they’re most likely to engage with.

Read more here.

“We should allocate our budget first to digital because our brand is… um… digital-first.”

Before you switch agencies. “Too often, marketers put the media cart before the strategy horse,” said Marketoonist creator Tom Fishburne, “Media choices should be driven by the specific goals the marketers are trying to achieve. And the most value often comes from an integrated plan that combines multiple channels.”

No thanks. Jason Hennessey found a street pole flyer asking “Do you want to learn SEO?” Apparently, there’s only one correct answer, and it’s in all caps.

But, AdWords. Andrew Bethel spotted this text ad of, well, nothing. It just says “AdWords AdWords.” Interestingly enough, the URL it leads to belongs to a System1 company — System1 owns Info.com, which was the only search engine that seemed to have positive things to say about the Android search choice screen when I asked for comment earlier this year.

How to win against endless AI-generated content

We’re approaching what Ryan Law calls the “search singularity,” according to his blog post for Animalz. “AI writing tools mean that the marginal cost of a blog post is nosediving from multiple skilled person-hours to minutes spent in a freemium SaaS product,” Law said. “In the near future, any company with a modest budget and a functioning internet connection will be able to pump out truly mind-numbing volumes of content.”

The technology is getting better and more accessible. Like any tool, it’s really about the wielder rather than the tech itself. There will be those who use GPT-3-like models to assist in their writing and then there will be the ones who use it to churn out generic content. Since it’ll be so easy to do the latter, Law argues that the industry is headed to a point where the search results may be flooded with homogenous content — the “search singularity.”

Bad content impacts everyone: It makes users lose trust across the board and it makes it harder for us to cut through the noise. There are, however, things that human marketers are great at that can help us continue to achieve our objectives in the face of this deluge of samey content. Law recommends that marketers:

• Focus on information gain. AI can only work with what’s already available, but marketers can uncover new information and conduct interviews and surveys to bolster their content.
• Invest in thought leadership. If we humans are great at one thing, it’s giving you our opinions, which AI-generated content struggles to do. Bringing in elements of industry analysis, storytelling and even personal narrative can help you stand out in this regard.
• Create a new experience. Creativity will continue to be a valuable trait if we ever reach the search singularity. By putting our own spin on something, marketers can create content that resonates with their specific audiences — just look at what Lin-Manuel Miranda did with Hamilton.

The post MEB or meh? Make Every feature Binary is Bing’s new search tech; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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Good morning, Marketers, “are we there yet?”

That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind: are we really getting closer to the end of the pandemic or are we getting ready for another wave? How do we even know what to prepare for?

Amazon share prices took their biggest drop in a year on Friday, and Etsy, eBay and Wayfair also saw their prices drop, too. The return of pre-pandemic consumer behavior may help explain the slowdown for these companies. But, the seven-day average for new COVID cases is on the rise; it’s currently back to where it was at the end of October.

To the e-commerce marketers among us, I’d like to know what your strategy looks like over the next three to six months: Are you planning for a “normal” rest of the year? Has your supply chain been impacted? What are you doing to navigate that? How will your ad budget change? Did you pivot your content strategy? Please send me an email, I’m gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com (subject line: Sounds like a plan!).

George Nguyen,
Editor

Google math solver guidelines require accuracy

Google has added several new technical and content quality guidelines to its math solver structured data help documentation. The new guidelines list a number of requirements in order to be able to show math solver and practice problem rich results in Google Search.

The technical guidelines require that MathSolver structured data be added to the homepage of your site, your host load settings allow for frequent crawls, canonical URLs are used on each copy of a page (if you have several identical copies of the same math solver hosted under different URLs) and that your math solvers aren’t entirely hidden behind a login or paywall.

The new content guidelines state that “promotional content disguised as a math solver, such as those posted by a third party (for example, affiliate programs)” is not allowed and, if a certain amount of your data is found to be inaccurate, Google may remove your solver until you resolve the issue.

Read more here.

SEOs and e-commerce marketers weigh in on product ranking factors

Over 80% of respondents selected keywords in the name of the product as the most important ranking factor for products in Google Search, according to a study conducted by Joe Youngblood. There was a three-way tie for second place between keywords in the reviews, keywords in the title tag and the number of inbound links. And, internal links took fifth place, with 68.2% of the responses.

Youngblood’s study goes as far as to list the top 20 product ranking factors for Google Search, according to the 35 SEOs and e-commerce marketers that participated in the study. At the bottom of the list are recency of reviews, linking document quantity and number of photos or videos of the product.

Why we care. While reviews and media may not be the most important ranking factors, they’re still worth putting effort into as they may convince prospective buyers to make a purchase. The sample size here is quite small, but it may still be worth taking a glance at the responses to see if your experiences align with that of the participants.

Google Ads Editor v1.7 brings support for Hotel ads and lead form extensions

Google Ads Editor v1.7 will be available in just under a week, on August 9. With this update, advertisers can use the Google Ads Editor to manage their Hotel ads, YouTube audio ads and lead form extensions, and select specific parts of their campaigns to download for offline work.

Why we care. For advertisers that use lead forms or run Hotel and/or YouTube audio ads in the web interface, the Google Ads Editor now supports these features so they can be managed offline. The ability to download specific parts of a campaign may also make it easier for advertisers to work on their campaigns while offline.

Read more here.

Chatbots have been around for decades, but have they gotten any better?

Bing is testing a new chat feature. Sunny Ujjawal caught a glimpse of a chat box on Bing. “This is an experimental AI-powered Chat on Bing.com,” the disclaimer reads. Bing added a CDC coronavirus self-checker chatbot to the SERP last year, but this test doesn’t seem to have a specific application in mind.

Google removes rich result type from performance reports. Google has removed the generic rich result type from GSC performance reports and the API. The company gave us a heads up about this in May, and now it’s officially gone.

Interview with Veruska Anconitano. Women in Tech SEO has a weekly interview series, and this week, Veruska Anconitano, who focuses on helping startups enter non-English-speaking markets, shared her approach to SEO as well as advice for women who are starting out in the field.

Analyzing the performance of various GMB Post types

Sterling Sky’s Joy Hawkins recently shared a case study in which her team manually analyzed clicks (according to Google My Business [GMB]) and clicks and conversions (inside Google Analytics) for over 1,000 GMB Posts from a variety of small businesses. The findings cover the types of Posts that perform best, whether to use titles and emojis, what to include in Post images and what to post about.

• COVID Posts performed the best, followed by event Posts, offer Posts and update Posts. COVID Posts appear higher up in the local knowledge panel, but they’re text-only. Note that COVID Posts actually replace your Posts carousel, so your other Posts won’t be visible anywhere else.
• Posts with titles got almost twice as many clicks and conversions as ones without titles. Just make sure you’re not writing them in all caps — Posts with regularly capitalized titles received nearly twice as many clicks.
• Posts that contained emojis received double the clicks, according to GMB insights, and also got more conversions than ones without.
• Photos that contained text in them received nearly four times the clicks compared to photos without text. Logos don’t seem to count, though, as there was no measurable difference between Posts that contained logos and ones that didn’t.
• The GMB Post types that received the most activity were about specials or discounts. Second to that were ones that contained CTAs. And, the third-best-performing Post type contained a sense of urgency (e.g., same-day appointments).  

The post How do you plan for in-person consumer behavior and COVID at the same time?; Tuesday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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, who should foot the bill?

More accurately, who should pay for digital service taxes (DST)? Earlier this week, Google announced that it would be passing on a 2% “regulatory operating cost” surcharge to advertisers’ invoices for ads served in India and Italy — the company is already doing this for ads served in Austria, Turkey, the UK, France and Spain.

These fees are imposed by regulators on companies that sell ads (e.g., Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc). “Typically, these kinds of cost increases are borne by customers and like other companies affected by this tax, we will be adding a fee to our invoices, from November,” a Google spokesperson told the UK’s City A.M back in September.

It’s true. One way or another, taxes imposed on companies usually end up getting paid by customers. If the motivation behind these taxes is simply to bring in more tax revenue, then it probably doesn’t matter to regulators whether a platform or its customers are paying. But, the thresholds for these taxes seem to suggest that large businesses are the target.

Take, for example, the UK’s DST thresholds: a company must make more than £500 million in global digital services revenues and £25 million in UK digital services revenues within a 12-month period to be subject to the tax.

While encouraging competition may not be a primary driving force behind these DSTs, it’s hard to imagine that it’s not a related subject, given the criteria above. Either way, taxes increase the overall price of a good or service, which affects how much of it we can buy, and that could have real implications for businesses that rely on advertising to generate revenue.

I’m still doing my research on this topic, and I’d love to hear your opinion. Send your thoughts to gnguyen@thirddoormedia.com (subject line: My two cents on that 2%).

George Nguyen,
Editor

Analyzing the top 10 YouTube results

Semrush recently conducted a YouTube SEO study based on 15,000 keywords that triggered a featured video in the SERP. Then, it took a look at the top 10 YouTube results for each of those keywords. The findings seem to be in line with many of the YouTube best practices that I’ve seen. The study found that:

• 45% of videos were between three to five minutes, and 5% were shorter than one minute.
• 52% of videos ranking for “how-to” keywords are longer than five minutes. For the general sample, it was only 33%.
• More than half of the videos that ranked in the first position have more than 50 words in the description.
• Only 8% of videos with timestamps rank in position one — so while they may be important for UX, they’re not crucial to ranking highly.
• Title similarity with keyword ratio, number of views, and video duration were the most important parameters, according to the machine learning model Semrush used.
• 18% of videos were from channels that have less than 1,000 subscribers, so even smaller channels can find themselves among the top 10.

How-to content has been a topic of interest as of late, and the study zooms in specifically on those videos as well. You can read the entire study over at the Semrush blog.

Google’s local ads tips for the back-to-school shopping season

More than half of North American back-to-school shoppers say they’ll check for in-store inventory online before going into a store and 48% will shop at stores that offer curbside pickup or contactless shipping, according to Ipsos data commissioned by Google. To help retailers take advantage of these consumer preferences, Google has published a list of local ads solutions.

• Get your local inventory online: Businesses that don’t yet have a local inventory feed can use Pointy from Google, a hardware device that attaches to a point-of-sale barcode scanner to pull its title, image and description to add it to Surfaces across Google. Pointy is free for eligible retailers until September 30.
• Local inventory ads: These ads enable brick-and-mortar stores to showcase their inventory online. They can also indicate immediate curbside pickup or pickup later options.
• Local campaigns: This campaign type can be used to promote your locations. Local campaigns measure and optimize specifically for store visits and local actions (calls and clicks to driving directions), and appear across Google Maps, Search, YouTube, Gmail and the Google Display Network.

Read more here.

Start the week off with some food for thought regarding “the algorithm”

“The algorithm” isn’t a singular thing. Understanding that many algorithms may be working together to power a platform is crucial to optimizing for that platform. Lea Kissner, head of privacy engineering at Twitter, has a great thread on this topic.

Google recommends one primary video per page. If you’re applying video structured data, Google’s John Mueller recommends doing it to just one main video per page.

“Pretty much.” This one’s for those who love doge and SEO memes. Tip of the hat to Izzi Smith.

From carrot to stick: The dam has broken on COVID vaccine mandates

“It took mandates to eradicate smallpox and eliminate polio,” Nicole Wetsman wrote for The Verge, “We control measles, diphtheria, and other infectious diseases by requiring kids get their shots before going to school. When vaccines aren’t required, uptake tends to stay low — it’s one reason rates of HPV vaccination aren’t as high as health experts would like, even though the shots can prevent cancer.”

Much of the marketing data that’s been published for Q1 and Q2 2021 show increased consumer demand (compared to last year) across verticals — we’ve even published a few of those figures in this newsletter. These positive signs were made possible by the COVID vaccine, but the future isn’t looking so promising now that new cases have spiked, giving way to the “fourth wave.”

As a society, we’ve stalled out on administering the vaccine. Incentive programs, ranging from free beer to baseball tickets and now, possibly even a $100 payment to newly vaccinated Americans, have only succeeded in nudging people who were on the fence. It seems that businesses and governing bodies are recognizing that mandates may be necessary to curb the threat of the Delta variant.

Last week, the Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs one of the country’s biggest health systems, became the first federal agency to introduce a mandate. Then, President Biden announced that all federal employees would have to get vaccinated or undergo regular COVID testing and other protocols. The private sector is moving in the same direction: Google, Facebook and Lyft have announced that only vaccinated employees may return to the office.

People need to stay employed to continue providing for their families and businesses need to stay operational to pay their staff. Nobody wants to give their employees ultimatums, but every government entity and business that does so sets a precedent, making it easier for smaller organizations to follow suit. “Mandates won’t fix [the COVID] problem on their own, but they’re one more strategy that could help,” Wetsman wrote, “At this point, we need all the help we can get.”

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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, in one of our featured stories below, I covered how Google decides to rank different vertical search elements, such as the image carousel or news box, in the search results.

Gary Illyes explained about the process but also said that Google determines when to show images or videos or top stories boxes in the search results based on what it learns from searchers’ actions. So, if a lot of people click on image results from the main search results page, it is a sign that Google may want to show an image carousel box on that page.

This click data is not used for individual search results (i.e., to rank page A over page B or to rank image X over image Y). Google is using the click data to see if people are going from the web results, to the image or video results and if they do that a lot, Google may decide to show an image or video carousel box in the search results. Got the difference? 

Barry Schwartz,
Click analysis consultant

How Google ranks features like news, videos, features snippets

Gary Illyes from Google explained in a recent podcast how Google Search ranks its vertical search results, i.e., news, images, videos, etc, within the core search results. Why does Google show an image carousel for a specific query in the fourth position and why does Google show videos for another query in the top position? 

Google uses a number of methods for this but Gary Illyes explained that each index or feature bids, like you would in an auction, for each position. So a video carousel can bid based on the weights Google assigned it, to be in position three or position four and Google’s overall universal search system will figure out where to place it. Google also decides when to show a feature based on click data, which is super fascinating as well. This gets a bit technical, so we recommend you read more.

Read more here.

Display & Video 360 gets new frequency and reach metrics

Google is adding a dedicated data visualization in Display & Video 360 (DV360) to show reach gains for each campaign that spans across channels and has a frequency goal set at the campaign level, the company announced Thursday. In addition, DV360 will also calculate the added reach advertisers get for each Programmatic Guaranteed deal using DV360’s frequency management solution.

Why we care. Having access to real-time reach gains can help advertisers gauge their campaign performance and manage their programmatic campaigns across channels. This new data visualization may also enable advertisers to save time that might otherwise be spent experimenting to test the impact of their frequency management strategies across various media types. And, the added reach data for Programmatic Guaranteed deals can help advertisers understand how those deals add to the incremental reach they get for their frequency management efforts. 

Read more here.

Google no longer allows multiple instances of fact check markup per page

Google has updated its technical guidelines for Fact Check structured data, saying that a page must only have one ClaimReview element and that multiple fact checks per page is no longer allowed.

The revised guidelines now say “to be eligible for the single fact check rich result, a page must only have one ClaimReview element. If you add multiple ClaimReview elements per page, the page won’t be eligible for the single fact check rich result.” Previously, the guidelines said “a single page can host multiple ClaimReview elements, each for a separate claim.” But that is no longer the case, now you can only have one ClaimReview element per page, not more, to be eligible to show fact check rich results in Google Search.

Why we care. If your site does show fact check rich results in search and you are using multiple ClaimReview elements on a single page, you may want to remove all ClaimReview elements but one. Google’s guidelines now only allow one per page and thus your rich results for Fact Check may stop showing if you are marking up more than one per page.

Quality threshold, nofollow vs sponsored and Google Ads script beta

Google quality threshold. Gary Illyes of Google explains that if you are on the edge of Google’s quality threshold, you can see your pages pop in and out of the index and search results. You’ll probably want to improve your quality if you see that.

Nofollow vs rel sponsored. When Google announced the new link spam update this week, there was been a lot of confusion around using rel=nofollow vs rel=sponsored. You do not, I repeat, do not, need to switch your nofollows to rel=sponsored according to Google.

Localized site signals. If you have an English site and then a localized French language site, Google generally will give the French site its own signals, apart from the English site, said Gary Illyes.

Google Ads scripts beta experience. Google Ads launched a beta version of the new Google Ads scripts experience. To see it, open your script and switch on the new scripts experience (Beta) toggle above the code. More details over here.

We’ve curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.

• Advances in TF-Ranking – Google AI Blog
• Author Scores for Recommendations at Google – Go Fish Digital
• Daily SEO Fix: Auditing for Technical SEO Problems with Moz Pro – Moz
• Quiet Week After The Google Link Spam Update But Maybe A Blip Happening Now – Search Engine Roundtable
• Update to Advertiser Identity Verification Policy (July 2021) – Google Advertising Policies Help

The post Did Google admit it uses click data for search? Not really.; Friday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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, I need your help.

I’m hoping you’ll take three minutes to complete our Event Participation Index survey.

The team here at Third Door Media has been hard at work programming our third virtual learning journey of the year, SMX Convert, which will be on August 17. We’re also looking ahead to next year’s line-up of events and we need to know how you feel about in-person and virtual events. We publish the results so that all marketers who are wrestling with these decisions can have some data to work with. Please make your opinions heard by filling out our quick survey.

Keep on scrolling for the latest news. And for those who, like me, sometimes struggle with navigating the challenges that arrived with the pandemic and our transition away from it *knock on wood*, I’ve written a special section at the end of this newsletter that highlights the importance of mental health and provides a few tips that can help you take back some control over your life — hang in there, you’re tougher than this.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Instagram is disabling interest and activity-based targeting of underage users

Beginning in a few weeks, advertisers will only be able to target Instagram, Facebook and Messenger users under the age of 18 (or older in certain territories) based on their age, gender and location, Instagram announced Tuesday. As such, previously available targeting options, such as those based on interests or activity on other sites or apps, will become unavailable to advertisers. This policy change will roll out worldwide.

Why we care. If you’re managing Instagram, Facebook or Messenger ad campaigns that target minors based on their interests and activities across the web, then you’ll need to find an alternative way to reach them as you’ll be losing access to those targeting options in the coming weeks.

Read more here.

85% of users who did holiday research on Reddit made a purchase based on their research

We’re approaching the midpoint of summer, but for e-commerce marketers that means it’s time to look ahead to the upcoming holiday shopping season. Often overlooked in traditional campaigns, Reddit can be a tremendous resource for shoppers researching what to buy and 85% of users who did holiday research on the platform made a purchase based on what they found, according to the company’s recently launched holiday guide.

October is an opportune time to get in front of users exploring their potential purchases as the platform sees a 2.7x increase in daily shopping and gifting conversations during this month. Advertisers may also be able to take advantage of auction efficiency in October as well, since it’s just before the peak of shopping season. Additionally, 34% of Reddit users shop in-stores for last-minute gifts between December 1 and Christmas day, making it a good time to drive awareness for in-store sales.

Twitter’s Shop Module pilot adds a product carousel to profiles

Twitter has launched Shop Modules, a dedicated section at the top of profiles where brands can showcase their products, as a pilot, the company announced Wednesday. The Shop Module pilot is currently rolling out with a handful of brands in the U.S., and only people in the U.S. who use Twitter in English on iOS devices are currently able to see the module.

Why we care. If this feature receives a wider rollout, Shop Modules may help bridge the gap between audiences discussing a brand and discovering that brand’s products on Twitter. Additionally, the user bases of social media platforms vary by factors like age, gender and education level. This new feature may be especially useful for B2C or D2C brands whose target audiences are particularly active on Twitter.

Read more here.

Service areas in local business listings, Olympic athletes in AR and the marketing data diet

Google local business listings in Search displays service areas. It would appear as though Google is testing a new label for displaying local business service areas. When you click on a region in the “Areas served” section, all the areas the business supports are overlaid. A tip of the hat to Ben Fisher who first brought this to our attention.

Are marketers welcomed guests or party crashers? This week’s Marketoon takes us through the various stages of data intrusion at the hands of unsavvy data management.

Olympic athletes in 3D & AR in Google Search. Olympics fans can see some of the more well-known athletes in 3D via Google’s augmented reality technology. Check it out by going to Google.com on mobile or in the Google app and scrolling down to the “Athletes in 3D” section.

By now, burnout is a given…but it doesn’t have to be

“Thank goodness 2020 is behind us, the vaccine is here and I can pick up my life where I left off!” — that was my immediate reaction after my second vaccine dose. To my unfortunate surprise, shadows of that traumatic period continue to peak around the edges of my life. It seems I’m not the only one: four in ten U.S. adults have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder; that’s four times the rate reported from January to June 2019, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“To muster the energy for reentry into non-pandemic life, people need more than a vaccine and a vacation; they need validation of their experience, a broader reckoning with how they lived before March 2020, and tools to dig out from more than a year of trauma,” Lucy McBride wrote for The Atlantic, in which she cites hustle culture, toxic stress and poor access to affordable healthcare as factors that conspired to make Americans among the least healthy populations in wealthy countries — and that’s before we even had a pandemic.

Many of us are already resuming parts of our pre-pandemic lifestyles, but that can also introduce new stressors, like returning to the office. To help cope, McBride offered the following advice: 

• Accept that there will be anxiety and that the accumulated stress may have physical manifestations. “Normalizing these attitudes can help remove the shame and self-stigma of feeling unwell,” she said.
• Being at the mercy of the pandemic can make you feel like you don’t have agency over your own life, so it may be necessary to take back control where you can. “Reassessing and simplifying our home life, work, and relationships can be a good place to start,” she recommended, “With limited space in our schedules and brains, we must populate our calendars with intention.”
• And, advocate for the recognition of burnout within your own company and community. This makes it easier for people to show compassion, which can also do wonders to reduce stress and anxiety.

Adopting these pointers has helped me rebound from quite a few bad days — even yesterday, as a matter of fact. “Evidence also shows that people who experience trauma and adverse childhood events, particularly those that are sustained, are at significantly higher risk for developing subsequent medical problems such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease,” McBride wrote, so taking care of your mental wellbeing may also carry positive benefits for your long term physical health as well.

The post Twitter pilots a new product carousel that can appear in profiles; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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 work for a business that cares about making its content accessible to all?

In our industry, we’re used to speaking of legislation in terms of antitrust or privacy, but for this newsletter intro, I’d like to shift our focus to another piece of landmark legislation: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) — its 31st anniversary was yesterday. The ADA is directly responsible for the employment of so many people because it requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations, and we’re a more inclusive, stronger society for it.

In addition to brick-and-mortar facilities, ADA protection also extends to websites. Between 2018 and 2019, there were over 2,200 lawsuits filed in federal courts, and although some were aimed at notable brands like Dunkin’ Donuts,  Bank of America, Domino’s Pizza and Nike, the majority were directed at SMBs. Today is a fine day to ask yourself and your team, “Are our sites ADA compliant?”

If you’re unsure where to begin, Microsoft’s Christi Olson has summarized “10 principles of digital accessibility for modern marketers” to help you get started. Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of new factors, like page experience, affect the rankings, and while accessibility isn’t currently a ranking factor, never say “never.”

George Nguyen,
Editor

Google publishes timelines for Privacy Sandbox proposals

Google recently published a timeline reflecting the stages of development for various categories of Privacy Sandbox initiatives. The timeline provides search marketers with a general idea of when the initiatives should be ready for adoption. That can give marketers some indication as to whether the company will meet its new deadline (late 2023) to deprecate third-party cookies.

Transition period: Stage 1 (in which APIs for each use case are available for adoption) is currently forecasted to begin Q4 2022. Sometime after that, we should have a clearer picture of what advertising with Google looks like as third-party cookies are phased out.

Read more here.

Google fixing two search bugs; review snippets and soft 404 detection

Google has confirmed it is resolving two bugs, one related to review stars showing in the search results and another related to how Google processes soft 404 documents. The two issues seem to be unrelated.

Over the past couple of days, Google Search has, for the most part, stopped showing review snippets — the image above shows the same results screenshotted two days apart. And, Google recently changed how it detects soft 404 pages, which caused some to see spikes in soft 404 errors but not clearly seeing if those pages were in the Google index or not. Both of these issues can directly affect your traffic from Google Search, so when the company does fix them, it may lead to more traffic.

Read more here.

New business openings remained strong in Q2 across categories, according to Yelp

In Q2, new local businesses opened in record numbers and across numerous sectors, according to Yelp. In categories like home, local, professional and automotive services, new business openings were higher than they’ve been since 2017-2018. Business owners may feel more confident thanks to widespread vaccine rollout and pent-up consumer demand — a phenomenon I’ve seen referred to as “rage spending.”

The economy is rebuilding its momentum and people are rethinking their lifestyles in the wake of the pandemic. We’ve seen massive shifts in the labor force, with many workers using their newly found leverage to find better, higher-paying jobs. While I’d like to say that “the pandemic is gone for good,” my guidance in today’s introduction still applies: never say “never.”

Why we care. Daily new COVID cases in the U.S. have spiked again and we’re currently at about October 2020 levels. The silver lining is that we have access to several effective vaccines, which should help keep businesses staffed and operational, and we have experience. Platforms have built features that enable businesses to pivot and convey important information to customers, and many marketers have developed new protocols to help them communicate with their audiences. Let’s hope the health of the nation and the economy continue to improve, but let’s also make preparations in case the latter half of 2021 resembles 2020.

Are you Team Google or Team BackRub?

It’s news to me. I just learned that at one point, Sergey Brin and Larry Page called their search engine “BackRub,” because it analyzed backlinks. Just imagine: BackRub Maps, BackRub+, BRMail, BackRub Shopping… So, what’s got a better ring to it? Vote here.

Google Maps updates “dangerous” Ben Nevis route. “Mountaineering groups said the dotted line crossed ‘potentially fatal’ steep, rocky and pathless terrain, while a suggested walking route for a different mountain, An Teallach, would lead people over a cliff,” the BBC reported. I’ve followed Google Maps directions on trails before and it hasn’t always turned out great — I’m glad this is now on the company’s radar, but I wonder if they’ll be able to resolve this issue at scale.

A Facebook group for SEO memes. I LOL’d.

The EU gives Google two months to improve hotel and flight search result transparency

Yesterday, the European Commission told Google that it has two months to improve how it presents flight and hotel search results and explain how it ranks them. If it doesn’t meet the deadline, the company may face sanctions.

“The latest grievance centres on the prices on its services Google Flights and Google Hotels,” Foo Yun Chee wrote for Reuters, “The final prices for these should include fees or taxes that can be calculated in advance, while reference prices used to calculate promoted discounts should be clearly identifiable, the EU executive and national consumer watchdogs, led by the Dutch agency and the Belgian Directorate General for Economic Inspection, said in a joint statement.”

In the U.S., Google is already showing why it ranked a specific search result, so I imagine this won’t be a huge leap for the company to achieve. However, some of the EU’s regulatory tactics seem to have an end goal (like more transparency or increasing competition), but also leave a lot of wiggle room, which companies are sure to take advantage of — for example, the auction that initially powered the search choice screen, which Google ultimately had to drop due to pressure from regulators and competitors. If vague instructions are given, don’t be surprised when the result isn’t exactly what you were hoping for.

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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 Google Ads’ new strike system has y’all feeling a lot of feelings.

And with good reason. I’ve seen a few tweets already from advertisers dealing with ridiculous ad violations. This can be especially hard to explain to clients who don’t get why a giant tech company like Google doesn’t have available or adequate support channels to figure out these issues, too. Imagine how hard it is for SMBs or those trying to figure it out themselves, too. 

This seems to be an issue on the local SEO side too, in my personal experience. I once had a client whose GMB got suspended. A small business owner, he DIY’d his listing and couldn’t figure out how to fix it. So he just created another one. When he finally got through to GMB support, the help person told him to delete the listing that was associated with his very profitable YouTube account. This is about the time he called me in a panic for emergency help.

I saw a job posting for a position at Google that ended with this almost-proverb: “Know the user. Know the magic. Connect the two.” Maybe Google’s too big to see the IRL, in-the-weeds perspectives of those of us who are in the thick of it every day. It seems like a perfect sentiment on the face of things, but the execution seems lacking overall. 

Carolyn Lyden,
Director of Search Content

Google says your redirects only need to stay up for a year

For the sake of SEO and Google being able to trace your changing URLs, Gary Illyes told Twitter that any redirects should stay up for a minimum of one year. However, you may choose to keep them up longer for the sake of users (nothing is more annoying than clicking a link to a new site and getting a 404).

The “clock” for this one year of redirection starts when Google initially crawls and recognizes the redirect — not necessarily when your team implements the change. This could be another reason to keep it for longer than the year mentioned.

Why we care. This is the first time Google has officially confirmed that the signals passed through redirects last forever even after a redirect is moved, if the redirect is live for over a year. If you have stakeholders or clients that really want to remove redirects for whatever reason, it is safe to do so from an SEO perspective after that one-year mark (specific to Google Search).

Read more here.

Why did Google rank this result? They’ll tell you

Google is rolling out a new SERP feature that tells you why a result was ranked the way it was. This feature is an expansion to the about this result box that launched in February 2021.

Google Search can show the terms it matched on the web page and your query, including the terms that were related but not direct matches. Google also lists if links from other websites influenced the ranking, if the results had related images, if there were geographical reasons for the result ranking and more.

The company is now rolling this out in the U.S. for English results. We expect it to be visible in almost 100% of queries in the U.S. later this week. Google said it will expand this to more countries and languages overtime.

Why we care. Search marketers always wanted to know why Google ranked a specific site for a given query. Well, Google is now giving you pretty detailed clues into why. Of course, this is not detailed ranking weights and signals, but it does tell you if the words match or match closely, if people link to the site, if there are geo-specific reasons and more.

Read the list of factors we found here.

The SEO Periodic Table: Architecture success factors

How your site is built helps search engines know what your pages are about. These elements include everything from the URLs you use and the page load speed to your security and crawlability.

The most critical element here is Crawl (Cr). If a search engine can’t crawl and index your pages, you’ve got no hope of appearing in the search results at all, let alone ranking well. Next comes Mobile (Mo) first, which represents optimizing your content so that mobile searchers can see everything that desktop users see on your site. Hand in hand with Mobile is Speed (Sp). Not only do page load delays frustrate users and decrease conversions, but Google has also made it clear that speed is a ranking factor.

More nuts-and-bolts architecture concerns include the proper handling of Duplicate (Dd) content by setting canonical URLs – this gets back to the above-mentioned algorithmic crackdown on sites simply copying other sites’ content without their permission. Additionally, using appropriate contextual keywords in your pages’ permalinks or URLs (Ur) sends a signal to the engines and users that the page contains the info they’re seeking. And, of course, a secure site — HTTPS (Ps) — is table stakes at this point.

This year we’ve also added two new elements to keep up to date with search engine changes like Core Web Vitals and the page experience update. Structure (St) is all about the information architecture of your site. We’ve also added Parity (Pr) which means that your site should offer the same user experience regardless of what device a searcher or website user is on.

Download the whole SEO Periodic Table

Social Shorts: Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok

Twitter is working on a dislike button. “Twitter writes that iOS users may see upvote and downvotes in several different styles (up and down arrows, a heart icon and a down arrow, and thumbs up and thumbs down icons) and that it’s testing the feature to ‘understand the types of replies you find relevant in a convo, so we can work on ways to show more of them.’ Currently, votes are not public,” wrote Ian Carlos Campell for The Verge.

Social media managers, rejoice! Instagram data now spans 60 days. And it’ll expand even further to 90 days of data later this summer, according to a tweet from Vishal Shah, VP of Product at Instagram. This update will be a big deal in helping both marketers and SaaS tools show trend data over time. We love something that makes our jobs easier.

TikTok’s new Spark Ads to boost native content. “Spark Ads enables brands to amplify existing organic videos that fit their campaign objectives such as video view and conversion with great flexibility and efficiency,” said the TikTok For Business Editorial Team in the announcement. 

What We’re Watching: TikTok’s algorithm — Great for advertisers but weird if you zoom out

“A Wall Street Journal investigation found that TikTok only needs one important piece of information to figure out what you want: the amount of time you linger over a piece of content. Every second you hesitate or rewatch, the app is tracking you.”

That’s the summary of this 13-minute video on WSJ that digs into just how TikTok’s algorithm figures out its users’ interests and then takes them down very niche rabbit holes of content. The publisher created over 100x bot accounts and assigned them specific interests and then had them watch over 100k videos on the social media app. 

TikTok says “shares, likes, follows, and what you watch all play a role in what TikTok shows you.” But the WSJ found that TikTok actually only needs one metric to target users so specifically: how long you linger over a piece of content. “Through this one powerful signal, TikTok learns your most hidden interests and emotions.”

This video highlights the debate we’ve been seeing play out on multiple channels. When search marketers have access or targeting based on this very specific data, it also means we can customize our advertising to those very niche audiences. If you love pets and TikTok figures out that you love French bulldogs in particular, advertisers can use that to make distinct ads to serve that particular audience. 

But audiences may not realize that lingering on specific types of TikTok videos gives both the social media company and potentially advertisers that information — which as the video proves, can be very personal. 

It’s the classic paid advertising conundrum: audiences want targeted advertising, but they’re afraid of giving up their personal data to get it.

The post Why did Google rank this site? Well, now they’ll tell you; Friday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land.

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, that was quite a reaction.

On Tuesday, I asked for your thoughts on a four-year degree specifically for PPC or SEO. Thank you to the many professionals who responded — you should’ve received a reply from me!

“My first reaction to your question was to say that a PPC/SEO degree would be useless, because everything you learned in the first year would be obsolete by the second or third year,” Rachel J. said, putting forth an opinion that was shared by many of you, “But then, as I reflected on my own marketing degree, I realized that the things I was taught weren’t tactical, they were evergreen concepts that would help build an understanding of marketing as a practice.”

Colin C. pointed out that updates from platforms and top-down government legislation would also impact the value of such a specific degree — “A digital marketing degree that includes the whole package, including need-to-know technical competencies is, to my mind, more worthwhile.”

And, I felt like Joseph J.’s take would resonate with the SEOs among us: “You go through the course and 8 Core Updates already got pushed live on Google, now you have to relearn a few things unless it was taught to you during the courses.”

What I uncovered, that I wasn’t expecting, is the desire for a curriculum that encompasses the day-to-day campaign work that we do and marketing principles that can prepare us for the next step in our careers. As someone who programs SMX, your responses are noted.

George Nguyen,
Editor

Users can now leave more detailed restaurant reviews on Google

Google has expanded restaurant reviews to enable users to include price range, the type of meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.) and whether they got take out, delivery or dined in. This feature is now available for mobile users on Android or iOS, and it is live for all restaurants in the U.S., with more countries and categories rolling out in the future. 

While this is a user-oriented feature, restaurant owners can also use these expanded reviews to improve their customer experience and identify competitors that also offer delivery or operate in the same price range, for example.

Google has told us that filtering searches using this information isn’t possible right now, but that doesn’t mean that capability won’t eventually roll out — I have a strong hunch it will. If it does, users will have a new way to find the exact dining experience they’re looking for. And, Google has said that it plans to extend expanded reviews into more categories, so the impact this has on the restaurant industry will eventually be felt across other local business sectors.

Read more here.

Say goodbye to the standalone Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value strategies

In April, we reported that later this year, advertisers would only see the Target CPA (tCPA) and Target ROAS (tROAS) Smart Bidding strategies as optional fields bundled with the Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value strategies, respectively. Well, we’re not quite at that point yet, but we are a bit closer.

“Advertisers will soon only see the updated fields Maximize conversions with an optional target CPA, or Maximize conversion value with an optional ROAS,” a Google spokesperson told Search Engine Land. “We have not yet and will not be switching existing Target CPA and Target ROAS strategies to these new fields (that will happen next year with much advance notice). This will have no impact on bidding behavior.”

So, if you don’t see the standalone Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value strategies, this is why. There’s no word yet on when Google will switch advertisers’ tCPA and tROAS strategies to the new fields, but we’ll keep you posted when we find out.

Google announces new deals sections, promotional tools and expanded reporting ahead of the holiday shopping season

Ahead of the holiday shopping season, Google is launching new sections in its search results to showcase deals, rolling out tools to highlight promotions and expanding reporting capabilities in Google Merchant Center.

“Deals related to your search” is a new section within the Shopping tab that shows discounted or competitively priced products. And, when users search for deals during major retail sales events, like Black Friday, Google will show a new carousel that highlights relevant deals (shown above). When uploaded via Google Merchant Center, these promotions and deals are automatically shown to users on the Shopping tab, even if the retailer or manufacturer isn’t running ads on Google.

The company also rolled out the ability to indicate that a promotion is only available to first-time customers, and promotions can now be highlighted in the Shopping tab — this can be done through Google Merchant Center. And, the best sellers report in Merchant Center is getting expanded to include historical best seller data and relative demand data, both of which can be used to help retailers decide what to stock as they prepare for major shopping holidays.

Read more here.

The reviews are fake but the threat is real

“One would therefore assume, with Google’s world-leading AI that can translate 109 languages  and identify poison ivy in the wild from a photo, the company should be able to spot obvious fake reviews,” wrote Mike Blumental, co-founder of LocalU and GatherUp, for his publication NearMedia, “And if that’s in fact the case, they should then be able to create a review environment that doesn’t help bad businesses look good.”

Fake reviews undermine all of the hard work that business owners and staff put in to improve their products, experiences and service. In articles and blog posts, the harm that these reviews inflict is usually an abstract concept — but in Blumenthal’s piece, entitled “The High Cost of Fake Reviews,” he opts for a concrete example of one business, Kelly Lift Equipment, that has defrauded customers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Having a 4.2-star rating, 123 reviews and a GMB listing with an address, hours of operation and phone number, Kelly Lift Equipment passed the at-a-glance legitimacy test for many, including Bill Scalise, whose experience was the basis for this article. Scalise, and many other victims, didn’t bother to dive deeper into the reviews or cross-reference the business’ BBB page prior to engaging with it — an oversight that would’ve revealed the scam he was walking into. Ultimately, it cost him nearly $18,000. Another victim said she was scammed for $120,000. That’s money that they no longer have, and money that doesn’t go towards supporting a reputable business.

Blumenthal’s takeaway was that, while buyers can and should be aware, platforms have a responsibility to ensure that their reviews can be trusted, especially when the platform regularly boasts about how capable its AI is.

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