Technology News and Industry Knowledge

Roy Amara’s oft-cited law states, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” This appears to especially applicable to voice and voice search. While there’s been steady growth in the use of voice and virtual assistants since Siri was introduced more than a decade ago , the market hasn’t been transformed. Smart speakers are even a better case-in-point: widely adopted, they’ve failed to become the revolutionary product many had expected. Now survey data from Perficient Digital suggests voice may have hit a plateau of sorts. This is the fourth year the agency has asked over 1,000 U.S. adults about their use of voice, voice search and virtual assistants. Last year, the survey found voice was second only to the mobile browser as the “first choice” entry point for mobile search (with all answers combined, it ranked fourth). The current survey didn’t replicate this “first ch...

When you’re making a decision about a Digital Asset Management partner, consider the following eight areas. File formats and handling One area of differentiation involves the varying abilities to manage a variety of file formats. Though most players say they support the most popular video, image and audio formats, if your workflow requires the use of a specialized format you will want to ensure the vendors you’re considering can fully support that format. User permissions management The content production supply chain can be long and complicated, involving many departments, agencies, freelancers and more. The ability to provide flexible permissions so that the right people have access to the right assets –– and only the right assets –– can be very valuable. More about Digital Asset Management Download our buyer's guide on DAMs today! How Marketers Can Leverage Modern Digital Asset Management For Powerful Workflow Efficiencies What's Digital Asset Management and why ar...

Black “Ad’ labels display above Google Shopping ads across mobile Search, Shopping and Images results. In November, Google quietly changed the way it labels Shopping ads across mobile search results. Now it’s bringing that change to desktop. You can see in the mobile screenshots above, Google displays a black “Ads” label in the upper left corner above Shopping ads on the main search results page as well as the Shopping and Images tabs. That matches the black “Ad” label on that displays on text ads . What’s changing. Soon, the “Sponsored” label that still appears in the upper right above Shopping ads on desktop will be replaced with the black “Ad” label as well. Google is replacing the “Sponsored” label on desktop Shopping ads. This “Ad” label also appears above Hotel ads on travel results pages. You’ll see if first on the main search results page in early July. The new labeling will then roll out on the Shopping tab and in Image Search results in the near future. Why we...

A new tidbit found in the updated Bing Webmaster Guidelines is that Bing now supports rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc” attributes on your links. This is in addition to Bing supporting the rel=”nofollow” link attribute, which we know it has supported since its introduction over ten years ago. New link attributes. These two new link attributes were introduced by Google last September . These are how these attributes are handled. Bing wrote in the guidelines “make a reasonable effort to ensure that any paid or advertisement links on your site use rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” or rel=”ugc” attribute to prevent the links from being followed by a crawler and from potentially impacting search rankings.” rel="sponsored" : The new sponsored attribute can be used to identify links on your site that were created as part of advertisements, sponsorships or other compensation agreements. rel="ugc" : The  ugc  attribute value is recommended for links within user generated co...

Bing has vastly updated its Bing Webmaster Guidelines . The new updated guidelines is broken down into multiple sections including: How Bing finds and indexes your site Help Bing understand your pages How Bing ranks your content Abuse and examples of things to avoid Previous guidelines. It has been a while since Bing updated their guidelines. Bing first published its webmaster guidelines in 2012 . We have those guidelines archived in this screen capture over here . Why update it. Bing updated the Bing Webmaster Guidelines to include the various updates it has made to search over the years. This includes updates to how Bing crawls, indexes, ranks web pages, in addition to how Bing handles search spam. Updated information around the URL submission API , support of rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc” , how Bing indexes JavaScript, the evergreen BingBot , and much more is all discussed in this document. “It was time to modernize and refresh the global Bing Webmaster Guidelines, provi...

Bing’s newly updated Webmaster Guidelines documents how the search engines generally decides how to rank web pages in its search results. Bing breaks down how it ranks web pages based on relevance, quality & credibility, user engagement, freshness, location and page load time. The guidelines explains that the search results are algorithmic and not done by hand. “Bing search results are generated by using an algorithm to match the search query a user enters into the search engine with content in our index,” Bing wrote. Bing is continually improving its algorithms, Bing wrote it “designs – and continually improves – its algorithms to provide the most comprehensive, relevant and useful collection of search results available.” Caveat on these ranking factors. Before Bing lists out its ranking factors, Bing explained that ranking is complex and it uses many criteria to deliver search results. Bing wrote “please note that Bing’s complex ranking systems use many criteria to deliver se...

Adding around 30 brands in 24 hours, the growing boycott also now includes Colgate-Palmolive and Beam Suntory. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/adidas-hp-clorox-join-facebook-ad-boycott-as-list-tops-120-brands/580678/

Ambitious pledges from companies like Unilever have the opportunity to spur real changes at Facebook and elsewhere. Stopping paid advertising is only one part of the solution, analysts said. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/marketers-facebook-boycotts-are-just-the-1st-step-toward-change/580761/

Companies investing in long-term marketing are managing to survive the pandemic and still add brand value, according to the latest BrandZ rankings. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/amazons-brand-value-tops-400b-while-tiktok-debuts-on-top-100/580776/

By partnering with Kayne West's former stylist, the AB InBev beer is creating a new lure to draw consumers to its e-commerce site. source https://www.marketingdive.com/news/bud-light-teams-with-fashion-stylist-darryl-browns-midwest-kids-brand-for/580781/

The lack of diversity in the advertising and marketing industry is not a new issue. Despite loads of research on the business benefits of diverse teams, there’s been talk but little action for years to increase Black and minority representation in the industry. During this session of Live with Search Engine Land , which took place during SMX Next last week, I discussed how to accomplish change in your organization with: CJ BLand , co­founder, CEO and principal consultant of the Minority Professional Network, which specializes in DE&I recruiting and retention, marketing, training/speaking and consulting. Zenia Johnson , an account lead at digital agency 3Q Digital who specializes in social media and is passionate about fostering inclusivity and diversity in the digital technology space. Jackie Leung , director of talent acquisition at digital agency Wpromote. She oversees all hiring practices nationwide and leads the agency’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion Initiative. W...

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Evaluating keyword difficulty is one of the most-challenging stages of the keyword research process. Many available software solutions on the market (such as Ahrefs, Mangool Keyword Tool, SEMrush) offer the evaluation of keyword difficulty through th

Website and page authority, as defined by the number and quality of backlinks, is one of the most important search ranking factors . It is also one of the search engine optimization areas where you can gain the most advantage over your competitors. Sure, there are also technical and on-page SEO, keyword research , and content optimization , but there is only so much you can improve in these areas. With link building — the sky’s the limit. This is why it is crucial that you are equipped with the best backlink tools. The best backlink checker will enable you to spot new link-building opportunities, discover the strategies of your competitors, and monitor the health of your backlink profile. In this post, we will focus on some of the best backlink checkers on the market, with one added condition — they have to be available for free, either completely or at least partially. 1. SEO SpyGlass One of those backlink analysis tools that can truly do it all. SEO SpyGlass provides you...

SEO teams are often tasked with improving the organic visibility of an entire organization, yet any given member of that organization can make changes to the site that undo the work of their SEO colleagues . Conversely, when silos are broken down and SEO data and education are provided to every team, businesses stand to increase efficiency across the board. Stephan Bajaio, chief evangelist and co-founder of enterprise SEO platform Conductor, discussed ways to tear down organizational silos and integrate SEO into a company’s culture in a talk during SMX Next last week. “SEO done alone gets lonely results” “You need to actually be engaging other stakeholders within the company who don’t necessarily always have the same KPIs as you,” Bajaio said, explaining that the most common reason organizations don’t succeed with SEO is because of these siloed systems in which each team is focused only on their own performance metrics. Bajaio said there are benefits to having SEO managed in-hous...

Posted by Paddy_Moogan Over the years, I’ve often referred to our link building work as “campaigns”, which isn't wrong, but isn’t completely right, either. I think that as an industry we need to alter our mindset to focus on what link building should be: an ongoing, integrated, business-as-usual activity. Link building processes that work for brands now and that will continue to work in the future need to sit closer to the rest of the business. This means tighter integration with other disciplines, or at the very least, acknowledgment that link building isn’t a siloed activity or dark art like it used to be. In this post, I’d like to propose how we should think about link building and share some ways to make it more sustainable, efficient, and effective. The problem with campaigns I want to start by being super clear on something, and I make no apologies for reiterating this throughout this post: Link building campaigns aren’t a bad thing. My core point is that they should be ...

It’s safe to say that the U.S. has badly fumbled its response to COVID-19 and the pandemic will be with us through at least the end of 2020. That means consumers will probably remain cautious about returning to hotels, restaurants, retail stores, gyms and salons for the foreseeable future. Varying levels of consumer comfort. In a recent coronavirus-response consumer survey, the Pew Research Center found : 79% of U.S. adults are now comfortable going to the grocery store. 53% would feel comfortable going to a hair salon. 44% would feel comfortable eating in a restaurant (dine-in). 23% would feel comfortable at an indoor sporting event. There are significant differences in attitudes by age category and party affinity, among other variables. In the hospitality vertical, a new survey from TripAdvisor found that in choosing a hotel: 92% of U.S. adults surveyed said cleanliness is the most important factor in selecting accommodations. 84% said cleanliness or sanitization certific...

Prominent brands and civil rights groups are leading the charge for a July 2020 boycott of Facebook Ads . They want to see changes implemented to the platform and are organizing under the hashtag #StopHateForProfit.  Whatever your views on these issues, it’s important to make an informed decision about how your business will approach this boycott. We offer you inspiration for an alternative media plan if you do decide to divert funds from Facebook Ads.  Facebook Ads-free July media plan Here are some media planning ideas to help shift advertising dollars while continuing to drive momentum with marketing efforts in July. In general, keep in mind testing of new tactics and platforms can take time to build traction — allow for leeway on performance targets. Also, remember Instagram and WhatsApp are owned by Facebook and aren’t viable alternatives if you want to fully participate in the boycott.  Example media plan: DTC beauty brand The following hypothetical direct-to-...

Google is testing a new feature in Google Search Console called Google Search Console Insights. It gives Search Console users deeper reporting into the performance of the site and its pages, including page views, average time on page, referring sites information and more from Google Analytics. Google Search Console Insights. Google has not officially announced anything about Google Search Console Insights, but Search Engine Land has obtained information on this new feature from various sources. Users can get Google Analytics data right in Search Console, including: Pages views overall. Page views of individual pages. Average time spend on the site overall. Average time spend on individual pages. Traffic to your site from organic search versus social versus direct traffic. Top referring links from other web sites. Newest referring links from other web sites. Social media traffic broken down by each site, such as Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and more. Googl...

Google is the company in the strongest position to capitalize on the massive online-to-offline (O2O) economy. I discussed Google’s dominant position linking the digital and physical worlds, Google My Business’ evolution and the future of local search as a more distributed phenomenon in my SMX Next keynote last week. Nearly every ‘enterprise’ is a local business. The term “local business” is often misunderstood and typically conjures up images of mom and pop stores and very small businesses. But any business that transacts offline or sells products and services in a physical place is effectively a local business. The logos below are just as much local businesses as are small merchants. That’s because the majority of their transactions happen in the physical world (COVID-19 is changing that but more in a minute). National and global brands that are ‘local businesses’ Online-influence offline spending. Most marketers have heard a statement that goes something like this: “roughly ...