Today In SEO & Search News: April 17, 2017

Today In SEO & Search News: April 17, 2017

I write today’s update sitting at in an airplane at 30,000 feet on route to Conversion Conference.  For a moment I thought about being annoyed by the lack of ergonomics involved with typing on a laptop that’s positioned too closely to ones body and then I thought to myself, “Dave, you’re blogging while sitting in a chair in the sky.”  Turns out I’m right.  Time to be amazed at technology and get on with blogging.  So … what’s happened since our last update? Let’s jump right in.

Patent 1 Of 2 – Google Controling User Behavior
Google patent on controlling user behavior

Article one of a two part series that I wrote for Search Engine Land was published late last week.  The article covers a recently granted Google patent that outlines systems for controlling and correcting user behavior in situations where the system recognizes that an action being taken may prevent a known future action the user intends to take. It’s an incredibly interesting patent with very significant ramifications for SEO, PPC and the future of search and how we engage with it.

How To Launch A New Website
Rand Fishkin took to the screen again this week to help folks undersand the steps involved with launching a new website.  It’s basically a description of many of the fundamental issues that can go wrong and what you need to do to avoid them.  A good refresher for the veteran who hasn’t done it in a while and a must watch for the newbie about to try it for the first time.

Google Updated Blog Search Format
Matt Southern for Search Engine Journal covered the quiet rollout of a new format for blog-related searches. If you now perform a search for blog (ie a query like “tech blogs” or “seo blogs”) you’ll now on both mobile and desktop find the top results are either in carousel format or rich lists.  Matt’s posted some examples of what they look like but you can easily run any query that ends with “blog” and you’ll see it in action.

YouTube Drops Threshold To Livestream
YouTube has significantly dropped the threshold required to initiate a livestream from 10,000 subscribers to 1,000 reported Matt Southern for Search Engine Journal. The channel must also be verified and not have had any restrictions placed on it in the last 90 days but that’s a pretty low barrier to entry. This will be extremely useful for a lot of smaller niches and companies just starting into their serious growth.

Google Launching A Job Services
And in case you weren’t tired of hearing his name – Matt Southern also covered the likely launch of a hiring services launched by Google.  You’ll find the Google signup page here where it’s pretty clear what the intent will be though information now is very limited.  There’s been a lot of discussion on a range of site about privacy concerns, etc.  It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Google Makes Land Grab
Over on Forbes they’re covering the announcement that Google has acquired over 1200 acres of land just outside Reno (and near Tesla’s factory).  The rumor is that it’ll be for a new datacenter as well as a possible test track for their autonomous vehicles.  I have a sneaking suspicion that we’re going to see something cooler than driverless cars however and would almost bet we’re going to see human-carrying drones under development there.

Google Vendor Violates Guidelines Landing Google In Hot Water
Business Insider covered the story of a vendor responsible for manual quality raters at Google using InfoWars specifically as an example of a low to medium site.  Screenshots were acquires proving the situation.  Google noted that this goes against their policy and no specific sites are ever to be used as an example to maintain the integrity of the system. That said, the vendor was not fired as of this posting so …

And that’ all we have for today.  If you think we missed any stories we invite you to add them in the comments below.