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Year: 2018

Bing 

Bing announces Bing AMP viewer & JSON-LD support in Bing Webmaster Tools

news

Microsoft unveiled two new features within Bing during principal program manager Fabrice Canel’s appearance at SMX Advanced this morning. First, he announced support within Bing Webmaster Tools to debug and view your JSON-LD markup. Second, he announced support for a Bing AMP viewer. Bing AMP viewer Bing AMP viewer will be rolled out this summer and will make AMP-enabled web pages work directly from Bing’s mobile search results. This will work similarly to the way Google returns AMP pages within its mobile search results. Here is a photo of the announcement from…

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google 

Trolls propel Trump to top Google ratings for ‘idiot’

news

The practice, known as “Googlebombing,” is the latest stunt in a longstanding cat-and-mouse game between Google and activists who have the technical savvy to influence search rankings. In the current exploit, several posts on Reddit associating Trump’s name, photo and the word “idiot” received tens of thousands of upvotes, which Google uses as an important ranking signal. Media sources such as The Guardian, Fortune, The Hill and others writing about the story also influenced the placement of images in search results. Often broadly referred to as Googlebombing, this manipulation of…

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Social 

Snap Inc. Responds to Critics of Its App’s Redesign

news

They say humans are creatures of habit which explains why most people are a bit resistant to change. And Snapchat’s recent redesign proved to be a bit too much for its users to endure. A reported 1.2 million Snapchat users have now joined hands in a petition for the app to revert back to its old ways. However, it seems that Snapchat is bent on making those redesigns permanent. In fact, the company issued an official response to the petition by explaining that the changes are meant to enable users to…

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SEM 

Enterprise Call Analytics Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide — updated for 2018

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Inbound callers are proving to be highly engaged with brands, and they convert more quickly than customers who do not use the phone to interact with businesses. According to “Pick Up the Phone: Your Best Customer Is On the Line,” published by Forrester Consulting, the majority of marketers deploying ads that prompt customers to initiate a phone call say those customers convert an average of 30 percent faster and spend an average of 28 percent more. As a result, 70 percent of marketers surveyed by Forrester say they currently use…

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SEO 

How to project SEO traffic levels and avoid saying, ‘It depends’

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Have you ever had this conversation with someone from upper management? Boss: “If we implement your recommendations, how will this impact traffic?” You:  “It depends.” Boss: “If we create a new content project, will it generate a lot of traffic? You: “It depends.” “It depends” is the typical response by a search engine optimization specialist (SEO) to questions about traffic projections and is a top response that infuriates management. As any SEO knows, you can’t predict with any accuracy what a change will do to your traffic, since there are…

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World 

Report: Social media sentiment not predictive of offline brand outcomes

news

The conventional thinking is that social media conversations about brands are representative of broader consumer sentiment in the overall market. However, new research from Engagement Labs finds online discussions and sentiment are not necessarily predictive of offline brand outcomes. Among other things, Engagement Labs sought to answer the question, “Can the social media tip of the [consumer conversation] iceberg predict what is a much larger conversation happening in real life? The answer apparently is “no.” I spoke with Engagement Labs’ Chief Commercial Officer Brad Fay about the research. He indicated…

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World 

Kabbage Teams Up with Ingo Money to Disburse SMB Loans Within Minutes

news

Mobile lender Kabbage has partnered with push payments innovator Ingo Money to speed up disbursement of loans to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) accounts in real-time. The team-up, slated for a summer launch, is welcome news to SMBs that need fast loan payouts for their additional working capital. By leveraging Ingo Money’s “push payments in a box” platform, Kabbage can make the funds available to business debit cards or wallet accounts immediately. Whereas loan application and approval from financial institutions take weeks, online lenders like Kabbage has reduced the entire process…

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Social 

Twitter Gets Rid of 70 Million Fake Accounts in May and June, Cracks Down on Trolls

news

Twitter has been aggressively suspending false accounts in a bid to curtail the spread of fake news. The company’s massive crackdown on trolls and bots have resulted in one million dubious accounts being deleted or suspended per day. According to the Washington Post, Twitter has been coming down hard on fake accounts, trolls, and bots since late last year. The purge of these accounts was reportedly brought about when testimonies from Google and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter revealed that millions more Americans were exposed to fake news…

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Marketing 

Snapchat and Amazon Could Be Teaming Up on a New Visual Search Tool

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Snapchat is seeking to expand its horizons and utilize its camera to go beyond social media with a new visual search feature. This novel search capability and a team-up with Amazon could open a new revenue stream for the company. According to reports, a new Snapchat version for Android smartphones includes a secret code for a new “Visual Search” feature. This new feature, dubbed Project Eagle, can allegedly utilize Snapchat’s camera to send a barcode or product image scans to Amazon. The retail powerhouse will then display the results of…

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SEM 

SEMPO Membership Meeting – Chicago SES 2004

news

Barbara Coll welcomed us, well there are not too many of us here. She started with SFO Regions (Search/Find/Obtain) is just starting, search is really early in the stage. She explains that Search marketing, to be taken to the next level requires education of corporations, consumers and channels. SEMPO has educated the media publishers, the press, the members, and the advertisers. SEMPO does it providing a “huge” amount of materials on the site. Recognition for search marketing this year was huge; Google IPO, MSN Investment, Large Agency Adoption, Advertisers expected…

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