Today In SEO & Search News: January 23, 2017

As it's a Monday this post will cover the top news stories of the past 72 hours to help bring you up-to-speed on what you might have missed over the weekend and get you ready for your week. Return Of The Google Dance Attending SMW West? Be sure to hit up the Google Dance. The Google Dance (for those who don't know) is a networking event held at the Google campus.  It was cancelled for a few years but returned last year and is repeating.  They're great events and a chance to see what the campus is really like. For the old-school in the crowd you'll remember that they're named after the infamous Google Dance Updates from back when the algorithms didn't fluctuate constantly and there would simply be a massive update every 4 to 6 weeks.  McDar anyone? A Recap Of Facebook Page Options Kristopher Jones published a solid piece on Search Engine Journal on the various Facebook Page options. Even veteran Facebook Page managers should give it a quick read to make you you haven't forgotten something you knew (it happens to all of us - there's a lot to know in this industry). The Latest Episode Of Webcology The latest episode of Webcology was published.  It was a news episode hosted by Jim Hedger and yours truly. It covered a lot of the news from last week but if you didn't get a chance to read it all - the episode is a good summary (with more than a little opinion of what it all meant). Google Home & Amazon Echo Have A Big Problem In an article over on recode they discuss a major problem facing both Amazon and Google when it comes to their personal assistants based on a study by VoiceLabs. The problem is exemplified by the following stat: if a person enables a voice app there is only a 3% chance they will be a user 2 weeks later. That's a big problem.  Is this opportunity for developers, a sign of issues or just a learning curve. You can read the article and judge for yourself. Google Intercepting Airlines (Traffic) In what I consider to be a pretty dubious tactic Google is intercepting branded flight searches and redirecting it to their Google Flights product. The issue is covered well by Dennis Schaal over on Skift and I recommend the read if you're interested in any industry who could be impacted by a similar move (read: ecommerce, travel, health ...).  Basically, when the searcher has entered a branded query Google pulls from their Google Flights data and pushes down the brands own results. Weird SEO Predictions Larry Kim from Wordstream gives some odd predictions for SEO in 2017. The oddity of them is that they're backed by data and somehow include gems like: "We'll Say Goodbye To Local SEO". An interesting read to be sure. Google Hotel Search Results Adds Pricing Trends Barry Schwartz over on SEroundtable covered a discovery Sergey Alakov. Google is testing the display of hotel pricing trends> As you can tell, we can now see in a bar graph which days are cheapest and by how much.  I'm not sure whether this feature will stick around but it's an interesting test. And that's the day in search.