What with all the recent news about bombings in Middle Eastern countries, climate change and natural disasters, or the Russian election hacking, they all sound as bad as describing how a rotten apple looks. And this is where Google can be put to good use. We use Google features in our day-to-day lives, from work to school and even random stuff such as buying things online, or specifically just to search for anything. One of these features commonly utilised is Google Assistant, a system which is powered by artificial intelligence to generate help such as quick access to a music playlist on your phone. Even getting help about cooking recipes can be done through this, so it not only provides mobile device assistance but also works for household activities and you kind of have to say “Hey Google” to get started. Google is doing an extended version of this, and in a recent experiment only in the US, Google Assistant will now also respond to a request that says “Tell Me Something Good” (Search Engine Land, 2018). And it triggers and filters good news to flood up the search results. That sounds something. So how does this new feature work? Filtered search results are collected news articles from the Solutions Journalism Network who curates and summarises positive stories from different media publishers and outlets. Their purpose is to empower people from all the negativity that poses to discourage readers and alike from all the current news about problems everywhere in the society. Google is looking forward to creating and explore this unconventional tactic, so we can expect to see more updates about this soon.
And just so you know, this system will work on any devices equipped with Google Assistant. So make sure you install it first, and if you feel like you need to break free from all the fatigue of burnt-out news and such, just ask for some positive stories from Google Assistant and get energized with a mix of balanced news diet. This is what it means to have digital marketing in the palms of your hand.
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It was recently confirmed that Google Analytics has already started the beta testing a new feature which is dubbed as the “Google Signals.” According to reliable sources, the new feature can be considered as a beneficial tool for site owners and digital marketers since it comes with the cross-device reporting function along with several remarketing capabilities. It was also revealed that the new Google Signals enable the users who decided to activate the said feature on their accounts to take advantage of the new set of advertising features that the company continues to enhance to be able to understand its customers across devices better. Aside from that, a post published by Search Engine Journal hinted that the new Google Signals was also designed to implement some upgrades on the existing advertising features to allow Google Analytics to provide the following. 1. Remarketing Google Signals allows remarketing with Google Analytics. This means that the can serve ads in Cross Device-eligible remarketing campaigns for the benefit of users who successfully turned their Ads Personalization on. 2. Advertising Reporting Features With the introduction of the Google Signals, the Analytics will now be collecting additional information from users who have turned their Ads Personalization feature on. 3. Cross-Device reports By utilising the aggregated data obtained from users who already turned on their accounts’ Ads Personalization, Google Analytics will be able to come up with a model behaviour that will represent a whole user base that operates across various device types. Given the number of additional and useful features it provides, many SEO practitioners and digital marketers are considering the idea of giving the Google Signals a try. Thus, Google has provided a specific set of steps that will allow users to access the new feature. These are as follows.
First Step: Sign in to Google Analytics. Second Step: Click the “GET STARTED” found in the blue notification banner right at the top of the page. Users can also navigate to the Property column > Tracking info > Data Collection and carefully follow the instruction provided in the blue dialogue. Third Step: Click on the information and activation panels. Fourth Step: Carefully read the information regarding the new Google signals and then click “CONTINUE.” Fifth Step: Activate Google signals Finally, Google announced that the availability of the Google Signals’ activation option would roll out to all users in the coming weeks. Google finally implemented a new and groundbreaking update on its Google Assistant, and this news delighted a lot of digital marketers. This is because the latest improvements on the Google Assistant enabled it to read the latest news on Google out loud. Thus, those who are trying to promote content in news form can now benefit from this innovation. Aside from that, many SEO experts and digital marketers strongly agree that Google’s current move in improving the functionality of the Assistant can be considered as a great leap since the previous version of the said feature was only capable of reading brief snippets of stories that were published by a selected number of publishers. Also, it can be remembered that the users of the previous version of the Google Assistant have very limited control over the content that the feature can read for them. Apart from the confirmation that a new capability was introduced, it was also revealed that the updated Google Assistant is now capable of searching for news about specific topics particularly those that the users would want to explore.
Furthermore, the Google Assistant when used along with smart speakers can easily read through the desired new articles that a user is interested in hearing. The same command can also be utilized on smart displays allowing it to play relevant videos on YouTube. Google also hinted that the Assistant is designed to give credits to publishers by revealing the name of the publication as well as provide article suggestions for the user to listen to and provide the useful links where such stories can be read in full. Google has begun the transitioning of accounts from the older version of the Google AdWords or currently dubbed as the Google Ads into the new one. It can be remembered that the primary purpose of the said update is to allow digital marketers, site owners and advertisers with a range of new resources help them conveniently manage the complicated procedures that come along with paid search advertising. It was revealed that the new version of the Google Ads interface offers a lot of new features that are intended to assist digital marketers and advertisers obtain the new insights needed to boost their sites’ performance. Also, the current version of the interface is offered with artificial intelligence or AI as well as some machine learning features that are accessible to automate key optimisations easily. Thus, the users of the interface can now focus more attention on developing the best account strategies and analysis. To provide a clearer view of the picture, this article provides some of the other notable features of the new interface and, these are the following. 1. New standard dashboard
Upon logging into a specific Google Ads account, users can now see the new account overview which is displayed in a dashboard format which offers the standard performance metrics with some of the key metrics that enable users to conveniently check the overall performance of the account. The new dashboard also allows users and advertisers to easily understand the specific performance direction which will soon be trending. Thus, they can easily make better optimisation decisions. 2. New recommendations engine The latest version of the Google Ad interface also comes with the new and more robust recommendations engine. This feature is intended to provide the user with the recommended optimisations that are based on the actual performance of a campaign as opposed to its goals. This feature also enables automated optimisations that a user can immediately implement with just a few clicks. Finally, the feature provides PPC marketers with the needed optimisation guidance that helps them determine the things that they can do with the available data provided by the recommendations engine. 3. New custom dashboards The new interface also offers a feature that enables the users to create customised dashboards. In doing this, they can place, mix and match dozens of data fields into the dashboard to come up with a real-time version that shows the necessary performance metrics that are important to them. It was recently confirmed that Google has finally expanded its “Featured Snippets,” a piece of news which delighted a lot of digital marketers and owners for this will allow them to boost their content promotion more conveniently. The news regarding the snippet’s expansion also hinted that the improvement has allowed the company to include the buttons intended for the Google Suggest, a function that was announced last January. It was revealed that the improvement made on the Featured Snippet currently allows it show navigational buttons that resemble the shape of a “chiclet” to automatically show when a user tries to enter vague search queries especially those with more nuanced variations. Such buttons will then help the user to easily navigate towards a more specific response. Upon seeing the images of the feature, many SEO experts were convinced that the newly-introduced navigational buttons look like an extension of Google’s Suggest feature. Also, a majority of these experts agree that the new feature provides users with the opportunity to have the applicable search suggestions that offer a navigational element. But despite of the improvements seen by a lot of users, Google has not yet issued any official announcement. However, the changes mentioned earlier are now visible in various searches along with a lot of reports that this was tested across multiple browsers. Also, any user can test this using their queries. Aside from the positive features mentioned above, SEO experts believe that these functions will most likely enable Google to bring more traffic to websites which can provide more specific information to users. Finally, this can also be regarded as a win-win situation for websites and users that offer and search for less generic content. It was recently found out that the latest speed update on mobile search algorithm implemented by Google dubbed as the “Speed Update” has had minimal to no impact on the search results that it is targeting prompting a lot of digital marketers and site owners to reduce their focus in improving the speed of the pages that they maintain. Link Assistant conducted a test in periods covering both the time before and after Google has rolled out the Speed Update. This also involved analysing the top 30 positions for every 33,500 queries per 1 million URLs. Instead of getting the anticipated results, the test found out that the correlation of a page’s speed optimization was almost the same before and after the implementation of the Speed Update. The data obtained by the same study by Link Assistant also showed that there is there is no correlation between the metrics of the FCP (First Contentful Paint) & DCL (DOM Content Loaded) and ranking position.
Based on the data obtained by the Link Assistant’s study, it was revealed that the actual growth of average First Contentful Paint/ DOM Content Loaded metrics prior and after the implementation of the Page Speed Update was minor. In fact, it is measured to about 0.030 seconds and 0.028 seconds respectively. Due to this, it is quite correct to conclude that there is a minimal-to-no impact on the search results one week after the rolling out of the Page Speed Update. The study also noted that the only thing that has changed due to the update was the performance of web pages. According to Link Assistant, the Optimization Score points of an average web page which occupies the first 1-30 positions in the mobile search ranking has improved by 0.83 within three months. Given these results, a majority of digital marketers who are engaged in mobile SEO will most likely reduce the efforts that they exert to boost the loading speed of their mobile pages. Google finally confirmed that they had removed the tool used by a lot of digital marketers and site owners for public URL submission. Upon hearing the confirmation, many SEO practitioners were somehow alarmed since they consider this a major blow against their content promotion campaigns given that most of them heavily rely on such tool to promote the products and services that they offer. After giving the confirmation, Google also provided some advice to individuals or groups who are most likely to be heavily hit by the newly-implemented changes. In fact, it is advising the users of the removed tool utilise their Search Console’s Fetch & Submit tool. Also, Google informed their users that they can now notify Google regarding new pages using a sitemap file. Unfortunately, most of the Google users who regularly use the recently-removed tool are not yet acquainted with the Search Console’s Fetch & Submit tool which is being introduced as an option. This prompted a lot of SEO experts who are familiar with the new tool’s mechanism were quite quick in accommodating the immediate knowledge.
A good example of the said effort manifested when Search Engine Journal published an article which tries to educate many Google users. According to the post, users can submit a URL to Google’s index via Search Console by following the steps below. Step 1: Conduct a fetch request for a URL using the Fetch feature. Step 2: Click the “Request indexing” icon located near the fetch icon within the fetch history table. Step 3: Choose the desired crawling mechanism. The tool comes with a feature that allows users to select whether they want the single URL to be crawled or that new URL along with its direct links. Step 4: Click “Submit” icon to have the request queued Given these steps, many SEO experts are expecting that the users will soon become familiar with the new tool’s functions. However, Google hinted that they would allow site owners to submit up to 10 individual URLs daily. Finally, Google revealed that they would only allow verified site owners to submit URLs from their sites. YouTube will now be using hashtags on videos to help users conveniently search for as well as discover more videos of similar topics. Upon hearing the news, a lot of digital marketers and site owners agreed that YouTube’s move is quite beneficial since this will assist them in promoting their content to the site’s users. It was recently revealed that the hashtags would start to appear on videos that YouTube users have viewed using the Android mobile app and the web browsers but will not be shown in the iOS app. YouTube allows these hashtags to appear above the title of the video in blue text to enable users to search YouTube for more videos with the same hashtags. They can do this by clicking or tapping a specific hashtag that they want to use for a search.
Also, the site’s users are also allowed to type a hashtag directly into the search bar and conduct a manual search for related videos with a similar hashtag. Aside from that, news reports explained that the new update from YouTube enables the creators to use hashtags by including them in the description of a video. However, it was recently learned that the first three hashtags included on a video description would be allowed for display above the title. Also, creators can also add hashtags directly within the title of the video. But to do these techniques, Creators are required to follow YouTube’s policies in using hashtags which includes not using hashtags that promote hate speech and harassment, or those that intentionally redirect users to misleading content. The same set of hashtag policies also prevents users from over-tagging, which is according to YouTube’s definition as acts of using 15 or more hashtags within a single video. Finally, YouTube stressed out that violations of the hashtag use policies will most likely result to the site’s ignoring of hashtags, removal of a video from the site’s search results, or the removal of the same from the platform. Instagram has recently implemented a significant update which most digital marketers believe as the company’s way of improving the platform’s user experience. It was found out that the recent update allows Instagram users to see the online status of the friends that they have direct messaged. In a post published by Search Engine Journal, it was revealed that the new feature that Instagram introduced seems to work the way the Facebook Messenger does. This means that a green dot is now found on the profile picture of an Instagram user, indicating that he or she is online. Furthermore, the same post also explained that the green dot or the online indicator is designed to appear in the DM inbox of a user as well as on its friend’s list in case he or she would share a post from their feed. However, the online status of an Instagram user will only be visible to his or her followers. Also, the online indicator will be visible to people that the user has previously direct messaged. Given this setup, it is quite clear that Instagram still values the privacy of its users. This is because the online indicator is only visible to people that a user is connected to.
In addition to that, users of Instagram are given the option to control how to broadcast their online status. Users who don’t want to broadcast their latest online status can turn this off via the account’s setting menu. Those who want to broadcast their status can use the same feature to make them visible to their followers. Finally, Instagram hinted that the new feature is now available to all iOS and Android users who are using the updated version of the app. Twitter has recently announced that the company is currently locking suspicious accounts. Aside from that, Twitter also hinted they will remove these accounts from the follower count. Such move is at some point presently referred to by many digital marketers and SEO experts as the purge. When asked to comment about the latest announcement many site owners firmly believe that Twitter’s move was intended to boost the amount of trust that Twitter users have towards the company while availing the services it provides. Aside from that, many SEO experts have come up with some significant impacts that the recently-implemented Twitter purge will most likely cause to social media marketing. Among the most notable of these are the following. 1. Provide more benefits to advertisers
One of the most significant impacts that the Twitter purge provides social media marketing is providing more benefits to advertisers. The purge does this by eliminating a lot of suspicious accounts. Since probably millions of suspicious accounts are removed, advertisers are given a chance to save money by preventing them from running ads on such accounts. Thus, the amount of budget that they are wasting by airing ads on suspicious accounts that usually don’t cause them any good is significantly reduced. Also, the removal of suspicious and usually fake accounts allows advertisers to place their ads on actual consumers. As a result, the positive effect of their promotional campaigns is boosted since these will most likely count more. 2. Twitter becomes more transparent and worth trusting. The purge is also a good way for Twitter to boost its degree of transparency to users and advertisers. Since a lot of suspicious accounts are locked and eventually removed from the follower count, advertisers will be encouraged to place more ads on Twitter mainly because the company clearly shows that they are quite responsive to the needs of advertisers particularly in helping them maximise the output of the promotional content that they are running using the platform. Also, the latest move will surely encourage new users to use the platform given that a comprehensive check is in place to make sure that the actual Twitter community is made up of real users that are driven by their desires to connect with each other virtually. 3. Provide more benefits to honest users The purge can also provide more benefits to honest users. It does this by reinforcing the credibility of individuals and groups operating on Twitter as well as allow the user to conveniently determine who to trust. Furthermore, the purge is also expected to boost Twitter users’ interactions since they are more confident that their tweets will be read and impact real people. |
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November 2018
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