No surprise that it’s been another big week in search and SEO. Here are the top stories that crossed my radar this week.
How Google Algorithms Work Together
I published a piece earlier this week on how Google’s algorithms work together over on Search Engine Journal. We discuss how the various algorithms communicate with each other today and more importantly perhaps, the direction they’re going in and what this means for search marketers and how we need to react.
Google’s Annoying Ads Tool
Matt Southern over at Search Engine Journal reported on what some might say is an ironic story that the king of online ads has created a tool to identify annoying ads on your site but in an effort to assist advertisers from annoying their visitors and dare I say to help them avoid quality devaluations they’re done it. I also suspect that it’s an effort to find flaws in their current systems. Starting next year Chrome will begin automatically blocking the ads on problematic sites so this is likely an effort to allow users to see which would be blocked and let Google learn where their systems may be making mistakes.
WSJ Loses Traffic After Dropping Free PageViews
Google has a program called First Click Free which allows visitors from Google to assess articles from publishers free where normally it would require a subscriptions. This allows Google to better index said content and gives their users a perk. Tell the Wall Street Journal left the program and lost a reported 4% of their traffic though they are also reporting an increase in paid subscriptions. This was expected on WSJ’s part and the moved forward regardless. After all – Google can’t rank what it can’t read.
Apple Adds indoor Locations To Apple Maps
In an announcement at the developer conference Apple announced that indoor locations such as malls and airports are now accessible in maps for iOS 11. A move that brings them more up to speed with Google. Also at the conference was announced the addition of Do Not Disturb While Driving which blacks out a user’s screen and disables notifications which a user is driving. There is an emergency override and an auto-response to messages informing the sender of the situation.
Debbie Miller over at Search Engine Journal does monthly roundups of the top social media stories. It’s always on my recommended reading list. This one includes Facebook’s announcement that they’ll support AMP and some great info on how to move your social campaigns forward.
WordPress 4.8 Rolled Out
Wordpress 4.8 rolled out this week. The major areas of enhancement were in the widgets which are not far more intuitive and those who aren’t comfortable with coding can now more easily add images and video to them. I recommend reading the announcement in the link above which includes some interesting info on link boundaries and info for developers.
Why You Shouldn’t Do Organic Social
Avinash Kaushik is a bright guy and when he talks it’s wise to listen. Well this week he published a post advising marketers to stop organic social media efforts and what’s more – he provided the data to back it. Even if you’ll be continuing your social efforts (and in my opinion there are good reasons to) it’s a must-read to wrap your brain around some of the limitations and often dis-proportionate costs involved to help better manage time and expectations.
Google Rolls Out Tab-Based Local Panel
Barry Schwartz over on Search Engine Land covered the rollout of a new local user experience. Tabs now appear in the results allowing users to quickly and easily navigate between company information and reviews. Something to think about related to this … Google is right now putting a LOT of attention on reviews. Keep that in mind as we move forward.
Google Sells Off Boston Dynamics
Over on ARS Technical they reported on the sale of Boston Dymanics by Google to a Japanese robotics company Softbank. The details are still not available as to what the purchase price was but it was apparently due to the inability to commercialize the product. Hopefully Softbank keeps up the good work as here’s what they’d accomplished. 🙂
And that’s the weeks news. If you think we missed anything please feel free to add it to the comments below and in the meantime … enjoy the weekend because it’s almost certainly going to be another hectic week ahead.