There’s always plenty happening in the fast-moving world of online search and advertising. Here’s a summary of key things that caught our eye last week…
Google has long stressed the importance of “high-quality content” but has provided little, if any, help for those seeking to create it. Until now.
Last month, Google’s Developer Relations Group publicly published five different guides aimed at helping its own creators “striving for high-quality documentation.”
The information provided is not new, unique, original, or even complete. That said, Google’s Developer Documentation Style Guides are an excellent resource for anyone interested in creating the type of high-quality content that users value and search engines reward.
Each guide reinforces the idea that high-quality pages — the kind that rank well in search — are a combination of high-quality code, content and UX.
Bing Ads can now automatically manage keyword bids in an effort to generate the most clicks possible within a given budget. We have never really been big fans of focusing on more clicks as it doesn’t necessarily mean more conversions. While this brings bing parity with AdWords for this feature it could be seen as Bing playing catch up rather than focusing on forward-thinking innovation.
A thought-provoking article from Wired about the increasing manipulation of information provided by Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Prompting this article is what happened as the appalling massacre in Las Vegas unfolded. During this time Google displayed “news” results from trashy rumour mill websites; Facebook promulgated rumours and conspiracy theories; whilst Twitter led users to pass along false information about missing people in the aftermath.
All these services are increasingly relied on by users as primary sources for news and information. According to a survey done in Aug by Pew Research, 67% of Americans get rely to some extent on social media for news. Not surprisingly, the majority of them – 45% – rely on Facebook.
So when these influential platforms fall prey to manipulation, as they did during the Las Vagas massacre, user trust in these services is undermined.
The article points out that this problem is only going to get worse as these services seem to be in a never-ending arms race with miscreants ranging from lone rangers to state-run disinformation machines.
The author makes the point that the solution requires more than an army of brilliant engineers patching holes and building workarounds. A suggestion they make is that these services need to collaborate to fight back, despite the fact that they are also competitors.
As if there weren’t enough ‘fake’ news stories, this one takes the cake.
On 10 Oct the normally credible Dow Jones newswire service reported Google is acquiring Apple for $9 billion. And even more unbelievable, that the deal was pre-arranged with Steve Jobs in his will.
Oops.
Despite every element of the story obviously being false it resulted in a temporary big jump in Apple’s stock price as automated real-time stock trading algorithms reacted to this news.
This embarrassing error has been blamed on a “technical error” (whatever that means) by Dow Jones and the fake news story has since been removed.
After a three-year hiatus, Google is reactivating its short-form Q&A YouTube videos on SEO.
Ask away…
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These search marketing news updates feature articles of interest picked up through the week by the SureFire team.
