Today In SEO & Search News: May 3, 2017

Today In SEO & Search News: May 3, 2017

My apologies for the gap between our last update and this one.  It’s been a very busy few days here at Beanstalk. You won’t hear me complain about it obviously but it’s good to be able to take some time to write our blog post and due to the gap we’re going to cover a lot of ground.  We’re going to start with the news from last Friday and work our way forward …

Google Might Start Handing Out Social Media Scores
Social rank patentBill Slawski over on SEO By The Sea wrote an analysis of a Google patent that describes a system to assign social media influence scores to people (think Klout but Googley instead). As always Bill does a great job of Cliff Notesing a slog of a read into an easily-understood outline of what Google is claiming and what they might do with it. It’s pretty clear that measuring social metrics and a person’s influence would be in Google’s best interests and reading Bill’s piece is in yours.

Time Is Running Out To Halt Amazon’s March
Anderee Berengian wrote a very interesting piece for Digital Commerce 360 on the march of Amazon. He describes their push into brick-and-mortar, their dominance in online retail and how their marketshare could push to 80% and what online retailers need to do now to stop them. He describes a world where they are the Google of online retail and once you’re Google, it’s very hard for a competitor to even make a dent.

Facebook Testing Video Cover Images
Narcos Facebook Page
Reported on Social Media Today by Andrew Hutchison, Facebook has officially started testing video cover photos for Facebook pages.  The feature is in early testing but Facebook reports that it should be expended in the near future.

Social Media Updates You probably Missed
Debbie Miller wrote a valuable article for Search Engine Journal on some updates to social sites that you might have missed.  She covers a wide array of updates from data range analysis on Facebook to the drop in viewer numbers needed to livestream on YouTube.  A quick ready to just make sure you’re up to speed.

Google Launching Similar Audiences For Search & Shopping
Google announced that they’re rolling out a feature to allow advertisers to target audiences similar to those that visit your website via their search and shopping channels.  They’ve also rolled out a feature to allow advertisers to focus shopping campaigns on existing customers by uploading your email lists and using that data to target your current clients.

Google Testing Shopping Ads On Display Network
Shopping ads on the Display Network
Ginny Marvin over on Search Engine Land covered the announcement that Google will be rolling shopping ads through the display network.  They’ll begin testing with fashion and home design sites. As of May 29 those sites in the pilot will have the feature automatically enabled. It’s going to be interesting to see what this does however as Ginny points out, it was inevitable and I suspect will show good results in specific niches.

300 x 250 Ads Allowed Above The Fold On Mobile
Google announced on thie AdSense blog that the 300 x 250 ad format will now be allowed to appear above the fold on mobile devices.  The assertion by Google is that ads of this size can indeed appear above the fold in a user-friendly way.  I’m not personally sure how they can to that conclusion since the ad isn’t what I’m there for and it not takes up about 50% of the above-the-fold content area but as someone who represents publishers I can say there are some benefits to be had.

Google Testing Grouping Of Reviews
Sergey Alakov spotted and reported on his blog a very interesting and dare I say wise test by Google on how they display and calculate reviews.  It appears they’re testing displaying hotel reviews with a global metric and then dividing that down by how it’s reviews by specific types of individuals s7uch as “couples”, “families, “business travellers”, etc. A really good idea as far as I’m concerned.  Heres’ waht it looks like:

Google displaying reviews by traveler type

The Warnings Are Expanding In Chrome
Google is expanding the warnings that Chrome will deliver for those visiting insecure sites. The warnings won’t just appear on forms that require passwords, credit cards and other confidential information – it will not warn visitors when they’re asked to fill out any form at all on an insecure page.

And that’s it for the day.  If you think we missed anything feel free to add it in the comments below.