#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

Episode 180 contains the important Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of Sep 25-29, 2023.

1. Is Google Lying About Using Clicks in Rankings? A X-Googler Testimony - The debate over whether Google uses clicks as a direct ranking factor has taken a new turn. Eric Lehman, a former 17-year Google veteran who worked on search quality and ranking, recently testified in the ongoing U.S. vs. Google antitrust trial. Lehman stated that Google's machine learning systems, BERT and MUM, are becoming more critical than user data for search rankings. He believes that Google will increasingly rely on machine learning to evaluate text rather than user data.

Lehman's testimony has sparked controversy, especially among SEO experts, who have long questioned Google's transparency about its ranking factors. Google's Gary Illyes, at a recent AMA, confirmed that Google uses historical search data for its machine-learning algorithm, RankBrain. However, he clarified that clicks are not necessarily a direct ranking factor. Instead, they are used for evaluating experiments and personalization.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) also attempted to challenge Lehman's statements by questioning Google's advantage in using BERT over its competitors. Lehman clarified that Google's edge comes from inventing BERT, not from its user data. The DOJ's attempt to impeach Lehman's testimony seemed to backfire, adding more credibility to his statements.

Lehman also touched on the sensitive topic of using clicks in search rankings. He mentioned that Google avoids confirming the use of user data in rankings to prevent people from thinking that SEO could be used to manipulate search results. This adds another layer of complexity to the ongoing debate.

In summary, while clicks may not serve as a direct ranking factor, they are part of a more complex system that includes machine learning algorithms and personalization. Lehman's testimony has reignited the discussion about Google's ranking factors, raising questions about the company's transparency and the future of SEO.

2. 🚨 Is Google Playing Fair? What Business Owners Need to Know About Google's Ad Revenue Tactics! - You might be wondering why Google's advertising tactics should matter to you. Well, Google is the go-to search engine for most people, and it's where your business likely appears in search results. Recent revelations during the Federal Antitrust trial suggest that Google might be prioritizing its own revenue over user experience and fair competition. Here's what you need to know:

1. Push for More Revenue: Leaked emails from Google Ads executives reveal a push to "shake the cushions" to find more revenue. They discussed injecting queries from Chrome and tweaking search rankings to hit revenue targets. This could mean that organic search results—where your business might appear—are being pushed down to make room for more ads.
2. Questionable Ethics: High-ranking Google executives were caught discussing ways to artificially increase search queries to boost ad revenues. They even talked about the impact on Google's stock price and their personal fortunes if they didn't meet revenue goals. This raises questions about the integrity of Google's search algorithms.
3. Controversial Analogy: A senior Google executive likened the company's search advertising business to selling drugs, stating that Google can "ignore users and focus on generating revenue from advertising." This is alarming because it suggests that user experience is secondary to revenue generation.

So, why should you care? If Google is manipulating search results to boost its own revenue, it could affect where your business appears in those results. This could directly impact your visibility and, ultimately, your bottom line.

3. Google's John Mueller Defends Official SEO Advice - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of your online presence that helps your website rank higher in search engines like Google. However, there's a fine line between optimizing your site for Google and overdoing it. John Mueller, Google’s official representative, defended the company's ongoing support for SEOs through documentation, video content, and Q&A sessions. He acknowledges that while some people misuse this information to create "made-for-Google" sites, the majority benefit from it. Mueller states, "Yes, it's also awkward that we're writing how to do well in Google, explaining algorithms, giving technical tips, but even with a minority that abuses that, it doesn't mean we should stop helping sites get the most out of search."

He pointed out that Google aims to benefit the broader web community, not just those who are trying to game the system. While Google may withhold some detai...

Episode 155 contains the notable Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of Apr 3-7, 2023.

1. Microsoft Professional Service Ads Available for Select Verticals Worldwide - Microsoft Advertising has launched Professional Service Ads help consumers connect directly to professionals in a variety of industries such as insurance, real estate, doctor & clinics, tax services and home services. This is great news for agents, advisors, or consultants.

Microsoft is recommending a budget of $100 – $500 per day with a starting bid of $3 – $5. According to internal data from Microsoft, advertisers experienced more conversions at lower costs with Professional Service Ads than text ads. If you need help with getting started then reach out to us.

2. Google Is Removing 4 Attribution Models - Google is removing four attribution models (first click, linear, time decay, and position-based) in Google Ads and Google Analytics starting May 2023. Existing conversion actions using the removed models will automatically convert to the data-driven attribution (DDA) model, or advertisers can manually change to the 'last click' model. Google Ads liaison Ginny Marvin, shared on Twitter that “use of rules-based attribution models has dropped significantly with the introduction of DDA 3 years ago. Fewer than 3% of conversion actions in Google Ads use them now. DDA has the broadest adoption & is available to all businesses, with no data requirements.”

So, what happens to conversion actions that are already using these models? Google confirmed any conversion action using the near-deprecated models will automatically convert to the data-driven attribution model. Advertisers can choose the existing ‘last click’ attribution model but will have to make this change for each conversion action manually.

While DDA should be used for optimization, viewing data with these other models can provide useful insights.

3. YouTube Launches A Trial Of Audience Interests - To help creators make informed decisions about the formats they publish or experiment with, YouTube is launching a trial of a new card (aka dashboard) that displays the type of content your audience is watching on other channels. The card includes data about the type of videos your viewer viewers watched elsewhere, broken down by videos, shorts, and livestreams. Before this, YouTube Analytics didn’t give creators metrics on their audience’s viewing activity on other channels.

I really like this feature because the data will guide you on what type of content you should be leaning towards.

4. YouTube Now Allows Eligible Creators To Insert Ads To A LiveStream - YouTube has announced that in the coming weeks, eligible creators will see an Ads automation option in the live control room which allows YouTube to determine when to best insert a mid-roll (aka ads) during a stream. Enabling ads automation is optional and creators can still choose to manually insert mid rolls by clicking the “dollar sign” button in the control room. Creators can skil an upcoming mid roll ad break by clicking the skip ads button in the control room.

5. Google’s Recommendation On How To Prevent An Accidental Indexing Of Staging Sites - Staging sites used for testing and development should ideally not be indexed and the latest episode of Google’s Search Off The Record podcast discusses the challenges of launching websites and preventing staging sites from being indexed by search engines. Here are some of the things you or your marketing team can do to prevent an accidental indexing of staging sites:

1. Make the staging site password protected
2. Have a robot.txt file and block search engines from crawling staging sites
3. Add a “noindex” tag on each page

I prefer option A because it is the easiest. However if you choose to use option B or C then make sure you update the robot.txt or remove the “noindex” tag. Or else your new site will not be crawled.

For more insights from Google’s Search Relations team, listen to the full podcast here.

6. What Google Feels About Using AI To Write Content - While Google's official stance on using AI to write content is just fine, assuming that content was not written to manipulate the search results. If the content is useful, helpful and quality, it doesn't matter if a machine wrote it or a human. If you are using AI to write spam, then that is against Google's guidelines. But Google also added a new section to the people-first content section on "who, how and why" with your content.

When Sumit Gupta asked...

Episode 176 contains the notable Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of August 28 - Sep 1, 2023.

1. Google Announces Lighthouse 11 with New Accessibility Audits, and LCP Bug Fix - Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool to help you find and fix issues slowing down your web application. PageSpeed Insights (PSI) reports on the user experience of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and provides suggestions on how that page may be improved. An open-source tool called Lighthouse collects and analyzes lab data that's combined with real-world data from the Chrome User Experience Report dataset.

Google has released the latest version (v.11) of Lighthouse, an open-source tool that helps developers and webmasters measure the performance of their websites. Lighthouse 11 includes a number of new features and improvements, including:

• New accessibility audits: Website accessibility is not currently a ranking factor and quite likely not a quality signal. However it’s a best practice for a website to function correctly for as many people as possible. Lighthouse 11 introduces thirteen new accessibility audits that help developers identify and fix accessibility issues on their websites.
• Changes to how best practices are scored: Lighthouse 11 has changed the way that best practices are scored. This makes it easier for developers to understand how their websites are performing and what they can do to improve their scores.
• Largest Contentful Paint scoring bug fixed: Lighthouse 11 has fixed a bug that was affecting the scoring of Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). LCP is a measure of how long it takes for the largest content element on a page to become visible.
• Updated Interaction to Next Paint (INP) to reflect it's no longer experimental: Lighthouse 11 has updated the Interaction to Next Paint (INP) metric to reflect that it is no longer experimental. INP measures the time it takes for a user to be able to interact with a page after it has loaded. In my opinion, INP is in line to become an official Core Web Vital in 2024.

These changes make Lighthouse 11 a more powerful and useful tool for developers and webmasters who want to improve the performance of their websites.

2. YouTube Creators Can Now Remove Community Guideline Strikes - YouTube has announced that creators will now be able to remove Community Guideline strikes from their channels by completing educational courses. This is a new policy that was introduced in June 2023, and it is designed to help creators learn about the Community Guidelines and how to avoid violating them in the future.

To remove a strike, creators will need to complete a course that covers the Community Guidelines and how to create compliant content. The course is available in several languages, and it takes about an hour to complete. Once the course is completed, the strike will be removed from the channel.

This new policy is a positive step for YouTube creators. It provides them with a way to learn from their mistakes and avoid getting strikes in the future. It also shows that YouTube is committed to creating a safe and positive environment for its users.

3. Your Site's Language Doesn't Protect It From Google’s Penalty - Google can issue manual actions to any site, regardless of the language it is written in. This means that sites written in non-native English can still be penalized by Google if they violate the company's webmaster guidelines.

Google Search Advocate, John Muller was asked if Google penalizes sites written by non-native English writers. Mueller responded that manual actions and algorithm changes are independent of the native language of the authors or the site language. He also said that Google does not have a list of "bad" languages, and that all sites are treated equally.

This means that site owners who write in non-native English need to be just as careful as those who write in English as their first language. They should avoid any practices that could lead to a manual action, such as keyword stuffing, cloaking, and duplicate content.

4. How Googlebot Handles AI-Generated Content 🧐 - Google’s Martin Splitt was asked how Googlebot’s crawling and rendering was adapting to the increase in AI generated content during a webinar produced by Duda. Martin’s answer provided insights into how Google handles AI generated content and the role of quality control. The questioner wanted to know if there are any special processes happening on Google’s end in response to the...

Episode 177 contains the notable Digital Marketing News and Updates from the week of Sep 4-8, 2023.

1. Google August 2023 Core Update - Google has confirmed that the August 2023 core update, which began rolling out on August 22, 2023, has completed on Sept 7, 2023. This is the second core update of 2023, following the March 2023 core update.

FYI: Core updates are major changes to Google's search algorithm that aim to improve the quality of search results. They are not focused on any particular kind of content or website, and they can affect rankings for a wide variety of websites.

The early SEO industry chatter suggested this update was a fairly impactful update compared to previous core updates. The exact impact of the August 2023 core update is still unknown. Google stressed that pages impacted by core updates aren’t necessarily flawed. According to Google, this update focused on improving Google’s overall content assessment. As always, Google advised site owners to focus on quality content as a response to fluctuations in search rankings. Sites that are experiencing a dip should consider conducting an audit to understand which pages were most impacted and for what types of searches. Google also cautioned that improving your website content may not lead to an immediate change in rankings.

2. Google Updates Helpful Content Guidelines: Self-Assess Your Content & Remove Unhelpful Content - Google recently updated its documentation on the helpful content system, designed to identify and demote low-quality content from search results. The updated documentation now states that website owners should self-assess their content to determine if it is helpful to visitors. If website owners find their content unhelpful, they are encouraged to remove it.

Marie Haynes asked Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison:"Google's documentation on the helpful content system talks about recovering by "removing unhelpful content" in order to get the unhelpful content classification removed. Any chance we could get more clarity on this? Do you mean:

-remove parts of pages that contain large amounts of text readers will likely skip over?

-remove entire pages that offer little original value?
-perhaps both?

Does a site need to remove unhelpful content published in the past in order to recover? Or could they focus on simply producing content that is helpful and original from this point onwards. Would that be enough?"

Danny replied: "People should self-assess their content to understand if they believe it will be helpful to visitors. Keep content on pages or entire pages or whatever they believe is helpful. Get rid of things that aren't, if they're looking critically at them as a visitor."

I know that Google does not provide specific guidance on what constitutes unhelpful content. However, the documentation does provide some general examples, such as content that is plagiarized, spammy, or irrelevant to the user's search intent.

Website owners concerned about their content being labeled as unhelpful should carefully review their pages or enlist the help of a trusted third party. How do you all go about assessing if your content is helpful or not?

3. Google Sites: Not Ideal for SEO - Google Sites is a free website builder that allows users to create and publish websites without coding knowledge. The Google site is a hosted website builder that's free and published under a sites.google.com domain, although one can opt to use an actual domain name.

Now, Google's John Mueller shared additional details on Google Sites and SEO after someone asked him why Google did not index his Google site. Here is what John replied:

"Taking a step back, websites created on Google Sites can and do get indexed in Google Search. However, the URLs used in Google Sites are hard to track since the public version can differ from the URL you see when logged in. To be blunt, while it's technically indexable, it's not ideal for SEO purposes and can be complex for tracking in Search Console. If SEO is your primary consideration, exploring other options and checking the pros and cons before committing might be worthwhile. For performance tracking in the Search Console, you could also use your domain name for the Google Sites content. Using your domain name makes it easier to migrate, should you choose, and allows you to verify ownership of the whole domain for Search Console. "

P.S: The Google Sites service is popular with link spammers who create links on Google subdomains in a tactic c...

1. Snapchat+ Reaches 1 Million Subscribers & Adds New Features - Snapchat+ launch was covered in Episode#115. And now it seems that in 6-weeks, Snapchat+ has crossed 1 Million subscribers. FYI: Snapchat+ is a premium membership tier available for $3.99 per month that grants access to exclusive features. At launch time, it had the following features:

• A Snapchat+ badge.
• “Ghost trails,” which is the ability to see where your friends were in the past 24 hours.
• The ability to see who rewatched your snaps.
• The option to designate a “best friend” and pin them to the top of your feed.
• Various exclusive icons and themes.

And now here are the new features that Snapchat has added:

• Priority story replies: Your replies will be more visible to influencers and celebrities.
• Post-view emoji: Show people a specific emoji after they view your snaps.
• Bitmoji backgrounds: More options when selecting a background for your bitmoji.
• App icons: Change the Snapchat icon on your Home Screen to one of several new designs.

Snapchat+ seems to have better features than the comparable subscription service Twitter Blue. And Twitter Blue is about a $1 more per month ($4.99). While Twitter hasn’t revealed how many premium subscribers it has. However, there’s evidence suggesting the service isn’t doing well. According to Twitter’s Q2 2022 earnings report, revenue from ‘subscriptions and other’ sources is down 36% year-over-year.

2. Pinterest Announces “Hosted Checkout” For Shopify Merchants - Pinterest claims that the Hosted Checkout shopping experience removes multiple steps from the checkout process, making it simpler than ever for people to shop on Pinterest—and for merchants to sell. According to them “This new purchasing process removes friction from the shopping process—making it simpler and faster for people to complete the purchase.”

Prior to hosted checkout, when shoppers wanted to shop from a product Pin, they has to click the Pin, visited the retailer’s own site and go through extra steps to add products to their cart, enter payment and shipping details, etc.

With hosted checkout, shoppers will pick the exact product they want—think colors or sizing. Then, they tap “Buy” to enter the hosted checkout experience via Shopify where they will enter details like shipping and payment.

In my opinion, it does eliminate couple of steps in the checkout process. The hidden benefits of this integration are:

a.) The time delay from transferring a shopper from Pinterest to Shopify store is eliminated

b.) Better conversion data that would otherwise be lost due to Apple’s ATT update.

3. 3 New Types Of Shopping Ads On TikTok - Advertisers can now run shopping ads on TikTok with three different formats to choose from. They are:

• Video shopping ads - Video shopping ads allow advertisers to create shoppable videos for display on the For You page. This ad type combines features from existing TikTok ads — collection ads and dynamic showcase ads. Video shopping ads will dynamically combine video creative and product cards into different variations. The format can be either product-specific to drive sales or a broader brand message to drive consideration. As TikTok gathers data, it will optimize a campaign’s performance by dynamically choosing the top converting combinations. When a user taps on the ad, TikTok will create an in-app landing page to better determine a user’s intent to buy. These pages let shoppers learn more about products and redirect users to a retailer’s site when they’re ready to purchase. Collection ads and dynamic showcase ads will remain available until the end of the year, then TikTok plans to phase them out in favor of video shopping ads.
• Catalog listing ads - Catalog listing ads allow advertisers to promote product catalogs at scale with new placements across TikTok. Something advertisers may appreciate about catalog listing ads is that they’re not required to create video content. The ads allow brands to get in front of the TikTok audience without making videos, which is a first. Instead of video, catalog listing ads pull product images from a retailer’s catalog and promotes them in shoppable placements. Users discover the ads through branded content on the For You page.
• Live shopping ads - Live shopping ads are specifically designed to promote live shopping streams. The ads help direct people from the For You page to a live shopping event. TikTok says these ads can boost traffic to a live shopping event by getting it in front of people who are ready to buy.

The new advertising formats are accessible in TikTok Ads manager th...