All posts in Uncategorized

Posted by Dr-Pete

In October of 2014, Google launched “In the news”, replacing their traditional news vertical results with a broader range of sources from across the web. Last week, Google’s news results were shaken up again with the launch of “Top Stories”, a card-style set of featured stories. Here’s an example from a search for “John Glenn”:

Even John Glenn’s death somehow can’t escape becoming a Trump story, but that’s a topic for another time. What do we know about the shift to “Top Stories”, and does this indicate a change in the way Google defines what’s newsworthy? Let’s start with the data…

Vital statistics

The following data was captured on Friday, December 9th across a tracking set of 10,000 keywords. These keywords cover a wide range of categories and types. Prior to the changes last week, “In the news” fluctuated on a weekly cycle (peaking mid-week), but occurred on somewhere between 10-15% of the keywords we track daily:

As of Friday, “In the news” had fallen to less than 2% of searches in the tracking set, and “Top Stories” spiked quickly to almost 13% (in the same range as “In the news” previously). None of the searches in our tracking set had both “In the news” and “Top Stories” on the same results page. It seems clear that “Top Stories” is replacing all news searches, and we can expect “In the news” to be completely phased out soon.

The new “Top Stories” UI has two distinct designs. The card-style design above accounted for 78% of the “Top Stories” results in our data set. The remaining 22% looked like this result for “flu symptoms”:

Like the old “In the news” pack, the vertical “Top Stories” list can have from one to three stories. The horizontal version has three stories in every example in our data set (1,011 total).

The Newsmakers

Who’s making the news that makes it into “Top Stories”? Across our tracking data set, we recorded 3,605 URLs appearing in “Top Stories” (some were duplicates, appearing across more than one search). Those 3,605 stories came from 1,319 different domains, suggesting that “Top Stories” is still sampling a very broad set of sources. These were the top 10:

Forbes.com (2.1%)
NYTimes.com (2.0%)
USAToday.com (1.7%)
FoxNews.com (1.2%)
Bankrate.com (1.0%)
Reuters.com (1.0%)
WSJ.com (1.0%)
CBSNews.com (0.9%)
CNBC.com (0.9%)
WashingtonPost.com (0.9%)

The top 10 sources accounted for almost 13% of all stories, and the top 50 accounted for just under 25%. The top 10 generally represented reputable news sources, although you might not think of Bankrate.com as a news source. Bankrate is appearing on commercial searches, such as this one for “buy cars”:

In the context of that particular search, these are fairly reputable sources, but the search itself isn’t one we would usually think of as newsworthy. Like “In the news” before it, Google seems to be casting a wide net with “Top Stories”.

The News-fakers

Given the recent interest in fake news stories, some people have speculated that “Top Stories” is Google’s attempt to address dubious news sources. Google has been fairly quiet so far about the motivation behind “Top Stories”, but my sources suggest that this is primarily a design/UI change. This argument is supported by the fact that “Top Stories” rolled out with a broader redesign, including a new header and updated designs for image results and Twitter results. Additionally, “Top Stories” has been in testing on mobile search for a few months now, prior to the desktop roll-out

Our data also suggests that the number of sources involved in “Top Stories” is still very broad. Is there any evidence of some of the more controversial news sources of 2016? A quick check shows a handful of “Top Stories” results for Breitbart.com, with searches ranging from “second amendement” to “Kellogg’s”:

This is a bit of a grey area – while the Kellogg’s boycott story is certainly newsworthy, and Breitbart’s announcement is the source of that boycott, many people would consider them far too biased to quote as a source on this particular topic. Their inclusion suggests that Google is tapping a very wide range of sources from web results, without necessarily vetting the content of those sources.

Politics aside, other clearly fake sources are popping up in “Top Stories”. Look carefully at this set of three results on a search for “violin”:

While I’m personally a fan of The Onion, I think it’s safe to say that no one should consider the article in the third card to be actual news. The second article, while certainly legitimate, is clearly an opinion piece. Our data set also included a handful of articles from Snopes.com. Here’s one on a search for “lyme disease”:

I’m sure we’re all relieved to know that our Christmas Trees are (probably) not infested with disease-carrying ticks, but while Snopes has become a credible source for debunking bad information, it’s certainly not a traditional news source in most people’s eyes.

What is news?

Google’s job isn’t easy. News is no longer something delivered to us in a 30-minute nightly television program, recapping the same world of hand-picked information for everyone. News is contextual and driven by the information we seek. For example, almost no one would consider Nintendo.com to be a news source, yet take a look at the following set of “Top Stories” results:

These results appeared on a search for “3DS games” – in that context, a recent release on Nintendo’s site is both timely and, in a broad sense, newsworthy. We wouldn’t expect a link to Nintendo when searching for news about the conflict in Syria, but in this context they’re a reputable source.

While “Top Stories” may be primarily a design overhaul for now, I do think that the conscious removal of the word “news” signals Google’s intent. They have to be able to deliver stories in any context, even when traditional, reputable news sources aren’t available (or, at least, when the reputation of those sources is unknown).

If Google sets the reputation threshold too high or restricts “Top Stories” to hand-picked sources, then they’ll only be able to deliver recent news results to a very small set of searches. If they set it too low, then we’ll be inundated with fake news. We’re still a long way from teaching a machine to fact-check, and Google has a tough road ahead.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Read More »

Over the past couple of years, blogs have taken off as the most popular and successful way to translate information to users. Aspiring fashion entrepreneur? Start a blog. Business in need of conversions? Start a blog. Everyone feels like they’re dropping the ball or missing out on some huge opportunity by not having a blog.

While I agree that some content marketing strategy is almost always necessary for any brand or business, I don’t think writing a blog is the best move for everyone. In writing your own blog, you commit to producing unique and quality content on a consistent basis-a task that some business and website owners simply don’t have time to do or a budget to hire someone to do it. If that sounds like you, but you also don’t want to miss out on the benefits of having a blog, there is another option.

In lieu of writing your own blog, a better option might be content curation. The difference is that instead of (or in addition to) writing your own blog content, you source information from other places and funnel it through a carefully curated section on your website.

How It Works

Content curation is really not that complicated to practice, which is part of why it’s such an appealing alternative to writing your own blog without content curation. As a starting point, take a good look at your website, services, and products, and try and pull out a common theme. What industry do you fall into? What’s the basis of your marketability? What would clients most benefit from seeing on your website? You’re curating with your audience in mind, so understanding who that audience is and what they need should always be a top priority.

Once you pull out a common theme, whittle it down to the most specific topic relevant to your business or purpose (this will help users find what they’re looking for, too). When you know the exact theme and topic(s) you want to cover, you can start searching for content to support it.

In researching for content to support your theme, keep the following in mind:

Quality is an important component of effective content curation“Fluff” content has no benefit to you or your usersOnly relevant and knowledgeable information should be allowed in your content curation

Research for content curation will involve looking at industry influencers, investigating what keywords users search for, looking at the content of competitors, and digging deep for the best material.

After compiling the best content, you can decide how you want to present it to your users. Content curation can mean different things for different users, so decide early on in this process if content curation will be the bulk of your posting or if you’ll use the practice to supplement your own content.

Regardless of how you choose to present your curated content (reposting, copy and pasting snippets into other content, using different media, etc.), make sure to always appropriately cite the source from which you’re pulling.

So, who should practice content curation?

Anyone, really, but especially those who don’t necessarily have the means to produce their own content regularly. Furthermore, people who are new to blogging and are seeking to make connections with other producers of content might also benefit from content curation. The authority of sharing reputable and quality content can help you establish the credibility you need to later move into your writing your own blog.

If this sounds like a potentially successful content marketing strategy for you, try working it in to your 2017 plans.

Read More »

Rather than hiring an agency, many people choose to DIY their PPC and keep it in-house, which is great. But an issue our PPC specialists see with many such businesses is a tendency to neglect the use of ad extensions that can garner the most bang for your buck in a good paid search campaign.

What are Ad Extensions?

Ad extensions are a way to format your ads so they show extra information about your business. In short, it’s basically a way to get the most information into your small piece of digital real estate in which your ads exist. The use of ad extensions improves visibility and value for paid ads by improving CTR and conveying more information across a small space.

The use of ad extensions has proved to be an important part of mobile optimization, because users are often looking for specific bits of information in response to their search queries. For example, a location extension will help someone looking for a product or service nearby find your business or call right from the ad. A review extension might be the determining factor that makes someone click your business over another listing in the search results.

It’s also worth noting that ad extensions tend to positively impact your AdWords quality score. The addition of more information about your business/product/service/promotion/etc. for the user improves the quality of the ad, which thereby improves the quality score. This is why ad extensions are one of the many factors that are weighed in the calculation of the quality score.

Types of Ad Extensions

There are two different types of ad extensions: manual and automated. Manual extensions are obviously those you do yourself, and automated extensions are those that AdWords creates and displays when it predicts that they’ll improve your ad’s performance.

Manual extensions include Apps, Calls, Locations, Reviews, Sitelinks, and Callouts.

Automated extensions include Consumer Ratings, Previous Visits, Seller Ratings, Dynamic Sitelink Extensions, and Dynamic Structure Snippets.

Does it cost extra?

Not really, because you still pay based on keywords. So, you’ll get charged as usual for clicks on the ad as well as for certain interactions that extensions provide. As is true with headline clicks, the most you pay is the minimum amount required to keep your extensions and ad position.

Why is this important?

While the inclusion of ad extensions may seem like an obvious thing, many people running their own search campaigns tend to overlook it.

“In many ways, the paid areas of SERPs are even more competitive than the organic results, so advertisers should make use of all the tools at their disposal to give themselves an edge over the competition,” Tim Miller, HigherVisibility’s resident Paid Search Specialist says. “Ensuring you have thoughtful ad extensions in place can make a difference in 1, getting your ads in front of more searchers and 2, resonating with those users to click on your ad instead of another.”

Read More »

Originally launched in May, Google’s iOS keyboard features will now be available to Android users.

The post Google launches Gboard keyboard features on Android devices appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Read More »

What if links to stories about someone’s past—stories about defrauding an international business or about medical tourism malpractice—were removed from Google search in your country, not because of your local laws but because someone was able to use the laws of another country. How would you feel about that?

That question may seem simplistic.  But it goes to the heart of a very important debate that is taking place now in Europe, initially between some Data Protection Authorities and, next year, in court. At stake: whether Europe’s right to be forgotten—which allows people in EU countries to request removal of certain links from name search results—should reach beyond the borders of Europe and into countries which have different laws.

Google believes it should not. That’s why, for much of the last year, we’ve been  defending the idea that each country should be able to balance freedom of expression and privacy in the way that it chooses, not in the way that another country chooses.

To be clear: we are not disputing that Google should comply with the right to be forgotten in Europe. We have worked diligently to give effect to the rights confirmed by the European Court of Justice. We have delisted approximately 780,000 URLs to date and have granted fast and effective responses to individuals who assert their rights.  

We have also worked efficiently with Data Protection Authorities when they are asked to review (the small number of) cases that are appealed to them.  Our approach to delisting takes into account the criteria set out by the European Court, as well as guidance from each country’s regulators and courts.  And from the outset, we have delisted links on all European versions of Google Search simultaneously. So links would no longer appear on Google.de, Google.fr and Google.be, and so on.

But some Data Protection Authorities argued that people could still find delisted links by searching on a non-European version of Google such as Google.com.  So in March 2016, in response to the concerns of a number of Data Protection Authorities, we made some changes.  As a result, people using Google from the same country as the person who requested the removal can no longer find the delisted link, even on Google.com, Google.co.kr, or Google.com.mx.

But one Data Protection Authority, the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (the CNIL), has ordered Google to go much further, effectively instructing us to apply the French balance between privacy and free expression in every country by delisting French right to be forgotten removals for users everywhere.  Ultimately, we might have to implement French standards on Google search sites from Australia (google.com.au) to Zambia (google.co.zm) and everywhere in between. And any such precedent would open the door to countries around the world, including non-democratic countries, to demand the same global power.

We agree with the CNIL that privacy is a fundamental right—but so too is the right to free expression. Any balance that is struck between those two rights must be accompanied by territorial limits, consistent with the basic principles of international law. Aside from anything else, it’s plain common sense that one country should not have the right to impose its rules on the citizens of another, especially not when it comes to lawful content.

We are not alone in this view.   A wide range of organisations from all over the world have also expressed fears about the CNIL’s decision and its impact on freedom of speech, press freedom and the right to access information on the Internet, including The Wikimedia Foundation, The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, The International Federation of Library Associations, and The Article 19 Coalition of Human Rights organizations.

The right to be forgotten can sometimes seem complex, and discussions about jurisdiction online certainly are complicated. But this issue is simple: should the balance between the right to free expression and the right to privacy be struck by each country—based on its culture, its traditions, its courts—or should one view apply for all?

Read More »

As underscored during CSEdWeek, navigating the 21st-century world requires new kinds of problem solving skills — and therefore a deeper investment in educators to prepare them to teach the next generation. Google is committed to providing educators with the preparation, resources and support necessary to boost their confidence and skills as computer science educators through CS4HS (Computer Science for High School).

The annual CS4HS awards support Professional Development (PD) providers (research institutions, universities, community colleges, school districts and educational non-profits) dedicated to creating and delivering Computer Science (CS) PD to local communities of teachers. Applications for 2017-2018 funding are now open.

We need to equip educators with the knowledge, resources, and support to create CS content that meets students’ needs. CS educators provide students with lifelong skills that enable them to solve problems and develop unique solutions. “A lot of students come out of school able to push the right buttons, but don’t know how to approach real-world problem solving. We need to teach students how to tackle problems that seem unsolvable,” says Leanne Cameron, lecturer of educational studies at Australian Catholic University.

While not every child will become a computer scientist, every child should have the opportunity to explore and create with computing. “When students learn to code, they open the door to invent powerful things that can empower them and their communities,” says Dr. Yue Li, a teacher at South China University of Technology.  All students need to develop the computational thinking (CT) skills that will help them develop critical workplace skills for the new global economy.

CS4HS funding enables computer science education experts to meet teachers where they are and deepen their skills and confidence in CS and CT. Since 2009, the program has impacted more than 40,000 teachers and one million students in 40 countries. Here are a few of their stories:

Uniting a nation in CS education

Australian Catholic University responded to Australia’s newly mandated Digital Technologies curriculum by creating a compulsory course that will help all pre-service teachers in their Bachelor of Education programs learn how to teach CS and CT. Over 2,000 pre-service teachers have completed the course to date. This course has also been open-sourced so that other universities can use the content to prepare their teachers. Beyond their open source content, ACU’s nationwide workshops have connected in-service teachers to Google partners such as CS Unplugged and Adelaide University’s free online MOOCs for teachers to help scale professional development and online communities of practice.

Meeting teachers where they are, based on local needs

South China University of Technology works with the Guangzhou Education Information Center to expand the availability of MIT App Inventor throughout China, for example, by establishing a China-based App Inventor server. App Inventor was specifically chosen because an overwhelming majority of students have access to mobile technology rather than traditional non-mobile computers. With App Inventor, students can create their own mobile technology. South China University of Technology used CS4HS funding to organize App Inventor workshops for over 200 local teachers from 2014 to 2016, helping them build programming skills so they can encourage their students to design and build their own apps.

Building scalable platforms and content

Catrobat, a non-profit initiative based at Austria’s Graz University of Technology, used CS4HS funding to help teachers gamify computer science concepts. Catrobat built Pocket Code, a free app that students can use to create games and animations on their Android phones. To date, Pocket Code has approximately 26,000 installs on active devices and 250,000 downloads on Google Play. Alongside the game, they also created a free online course to teach users how to use the app to teach CS in their classrooms, with over 650 teacher users thus far. The app and course make coding education easy, accessible and fun and students just need internet access and a smartphone to get started.

Pocket Code students use their self-designed app, a hybrid project of art, German, and programming,  which connects a tablet to a skateboard to control student-generated artwork in the vocabulary game.

Creating institutional partnerships for lasting success

Western Wyoming Community College professor Carla Hester-Croff used CS4HS funding to create a workshop for Wyoming middle and high school teachers. Working alongside the University of Colorado Boulder’s Scalable Game Design project, Hester-Croff built upon the success of other CS education experts and customized the workshop content to local teachers’ needs. This resulted in incredible impact in a rural area with few CS resources. Teachers now incorporate game design and programming into classes like biology and environmental science – for example, creating a computer simulation to predict the spread of a communicable disease. “Our workshops have shown teachers that they don’t need to be afraid of computer science,” Hester-Croff says.

You can read more about the organizations and individuals who are doing great work in CS professional development on our website. You can also watch our Hangout on Air on Dec. 14 to learn about the ripple effect of CS4HS and how it is growing and supporting local communities of teachers. By supporting teachers, we help them to inspire their students and equip them with critical problem solving strategies to solve the complex challenges of the future.

Read More »

 

Early in 2016, we promised that this would be the year that influencer marketing would become mainstream.

We wrote about the progress that influencer marketing made in 2016, but as a marketer, you always need to be looking forward to be prepared for what the future holds. So what direction can we expect influencer marketing to take in 2017?

We’ve seen the tactic grow, but we’ll see it explored in 2017. Here are a few things that we expect to see in the New Year:

Less is more

Influencer marketing’s growth across each individual network can largely be credited to the growth of the big player “celeb” influencers. The Logan Paul’s and Andrew Bachelor’s of the social world. These are the big names who are getting the headlines from mainstream outlets like “60 Minutes,” taking the marketing tactic away from a niche specialty among forward-thinking marketers, to an everyday occurrence.

Though they’ve made influencer marketing popular, what’s made it successful is the use of “micro-influencers”. These are creators who may not have the audience size of some of these big names, but they’re creating the type of content that grabs a consumer’s attention–and they’re able to much more authentically connect much more authentically with their followers.

Often with the celeb -influencers like Kim Kardashian, they have their following because of who they are rather than what they create. In our time in influencer marketing working with some of the top brands, we’ve found that the best results come from the people who’ve built engagement with their audience based on what they’re creating. The “micro-influencers”, as they’ve often been called, have come into prominence in 2016 and will see their heyday in 2017.

Influencer relationships approached more as partnerships

The brands that will find success with influencer marketing in 2017 are the ones who will approach their relationships with their influencers as business partnerships, and not as line cooks who can churn out content for them.

Too often, brands use influencers as an opportunity to just promote their brand to a large audience. And they would tell the influencer to share about their brand in exchange for some free product. But as influencer marketing has grown, influencers are now able to command the respect they deserve for the amazing work that they’re creating.

Building a relationship with the influencer means actually collaborating with them on the program, and getting their input on what will work with their audience in order to ensure that ever-important authenticity. This is why communities such as Snapfluence, which defend the creator’s position, are so important. These communities help to level the equate both sides of the table to bring everyone on a fair and even playing field to build amazing programs.

Creating meaningful experiences

The brands that find success with influencer marketing in 2017 will do so by creating meaningful experiences for their audiences. The type of experiences that are both interactive and tangible for your community.

In 2016, TAKE5 set out to have influencers capture the remixed TAKE5 bar’s new branding by creating a series of experiences throughout 2016 that “remixed” everyday occurrences. At SXSW, they invited influencers to the TAKE5 Swag Exchange to swap their unwanted swag for some awesome remixed swag– like a free Uber ride, or a line-sitter, or a year’s worth of candy bars. The experience embodied the fun, surprising and uncommon spirit that the brand was trying to inspire in its content creators.

We expect to see more brands provide their communities with direct and unique ways to interact with the brand and its influencers.

Decline in influencer “networks” and “marketplaces”

With 2016 came the rise of influencer “networks”, or rosters of influencers that are purported to have some degree of exclusivity to the network over others. These networks were billed as the simplest way to find influencers for your brand, and–due to the “exclusivity”– the easiest way to negotiate rates with the best influencers.

But like dating sites, we all know people rarely belong to just one network. Influencers and daters alike join multiple networks in order to increase their odds of being found. Discovery on these networks was also found to be pretty limiting as the searching was restricted to just the individuals in their databases. And moreover, these networks also tended to treat the influencers simply as commodities that could be bought and sold for your brand’s need, ignoring their unique ability to create amazing content for your brand.

In 2017, we’ll see a decline of these supposedly exclusive networks and a rise in agnostic searches that find the true best match for your brand’s program.

A network agnostic strategy

Many 2016 marketing predictions called for a huge surge in Vine campaigns, and in the same year, we saw the network shut down.

With social networks constantly evolving – new ones growing, old ones shutting down, features constantly being added or removed – we forecast a more network agnostic strategy for brand influencer marketing programs in 2017. This will allow for an increase in focus placed on the right audiences to target and the best ways to do that with various networks for each campaign.

FTC will clamp down

In 2016, we saw a lot of enforcement on the part of the FTC on various influencer marketing programs. Brands such as from Warner Brothers and Lord & Taylor saw the FTC crack down on their activations due to a lack of clear disclosures.

And all signs point to the FTC continuing this enforcement in 2017. Brands will need to prioritize ensuring that their programs abide by all of the FTC rules and regulations on influencer marketing in 2017.

Self-regulation from brands and agencies

With so much growth and change in 2016, it’s no wonder there were so many mistakes from influencers like Scott Disick and from brands like Lord & Taylor. Influencer marketing is still operating like the Wild West, with brands and influencers alike attempting to determine the best way to connect with audiences and stay within the rules.

In 2017, we’ll see more brands and influencers learning from their own mistakes and the mistakes of others (after all, there are plenty of resources sharing best practices). Will there still be slip-ups, mistakes, and fit tea posts? Absolutely. But we’ll see incremental improvements and even more badass campaigns.

If 2016 was the year of growth for influencer marketing, 2017 will be the year where it all comes together. The growth that has occurred over the past year has led to a few bad practices among brands and influencers, but we’ve already seen glimmers of hope in both parties correcting these practices. In 2017, we’ll see influencer marketing grow up to become a more meaningful and practical marketing tactic.

By Brian Zuercher is CEO & Founder of SEEN, and a contributor to Search Engine Watch 

Read More »