September 2020 - Latest News, Headlines at Peter Zmijewski

Marketers hopeful for late 2021 in-person conferences

September 30, 2020 news

But as virtual events take root in the community, attendees have clear opinions on cost and format, according to our latest Events Participation Index. Marketers’ already low expectations that they could safely attend in-person events this year have bottomed out, according to our latest Events Participation Index, which isn’t surprising as the planet passed a grim milestone of 1 million deaths tied to COVID-19 this week. But despite concerns over second and, in some cases, third waves of the virus beginning to show, many of the 350 professionals we surveyed…

Bing

Bing Results & Ads Now Live On AOL Search

September 29, 2020 news

The Bing-AOL search deal announced last year went into effect over the weekend. It was announced last year, but now it’s official: “Bing powers AOL’s web, mobile, and tablet search, providing paid search ads and algorithmic organic search results to AOL’s properties worldwide.” Citing comScore data, Microsoft now says that Bing is behind “close to one-third of US PC web searches.” Beyond providing web search results for Siri on Apple devices, most of the Bing search volume is on the desktop. Last April, Bing crossed the 20-percent market share threshold…

google

The new releases are from Google’s Search Open Sourcing team. Detlef Johnson on September 23, 2020 at 8:15 am More Last year, Google open sourced the code for the robots.txt parser used in its production systems. After seeing the community build tools with it and add their own contributions to the open source library, including language ports of the original parser written in C++ to golang and rust, Google announced this week it has released additional related source code projects. Here’s what’s new for developers and tech SEOs to play with. C++ and Java. For anyone writing their own or adopting Google’s parser written in C++ (a super fast compiled language), Google has released the source code for its robots.txt parser validation testing framework used to ensure parser results adhere to the official robots.txt specification as expected, and it can validate parsers written in a wide variety of other languages. Additionally, Google released an official port to the more popular Java language. Modern Java is more widely used in enterprise applications than C++, whereas C++ is more typically used in core system applications where performance needs demand it. Some Java-based codebases run applications today for enterprise SEO and or marketing software. Testing and validation. Requirements for running the test framework include JDK 1.7+ for Apache Maven, and Google’s protocol buffer to interface the test framework with your parser platform and development workstation. It should be useful to anyone developing their own parser, validating a port, or utilizing either of Google’s official parsers, and especially for validating your development of a port to a new language. How difficult would this be to use? We should note these are relatively approachable intern-led projects at Google which ought to be consumable by moderate to higher level programmers in one or more of these languages. You can build a robots.txt parser using practically any programming language. It adds perceived authority, however, when your marketing application runs the exact same parser that governs Googlebot. Why we care. If you, or your company, has plans to write or has written a crawler which parses robots.txt files for directives looking for important information (not just) for SEO, then this gives you incentive to evaluate whether using Google’s parser in C++, Java, or one of the other language ports is worth it. The Java parser in particular should be relatively easy to adopt if your application is already written in Java.

September 28, 2020 news

The new releases are from Google’s Search Open Sourcing team. Last year, Google open sourced the code for the robots.txt parser used in its production systems. After seeing the community build tools with it and add their own contributions to the open source library, including language ports of the original parser written in C++ to golang and rust, Google announced this week it has released additional related source code projects. Here’s what’s new for developers and tech SEOs to play with. C++ and Java. For anyone writing their own or…

SEO

The anatomy of an SEO robocall scheme

September 25, 2020 news

With a lot of believable lies behind multiple companies, it becomes clear why it’s so difficult to hold these businesses accountable. Here’s a step-by-step look at what happened during my robocall. On Oct. 11, 2018, I received a phone call and discovered that Classy Brain (my company) was in existential crisis. The end was near – Google was after me. The future looked grim. My clients would leave me one by one. I’d have to lay off employees, close my doors, and “Shutter” my location in Moz Local. My silver…

SEM

What’s going on with Google brand CPC?

September 24, 2020 news

Brands may be at Google’s mercy when it comes to the price of branded traffic, but Columnist Andy Taylor outlines steps they can take to reduce their CPC pain. In Q1 and Q2 of 2017, Merkle (my employer) reported on a positive trend for advertisers that showed a decline in brand cost per click (CPC) year over year. The CPC of brand terms is often determined by Google’s algorithm as opposed to the competitive landscape, so brands are often left to Google’s mercy in determining the price paid for this…

Barry Diller: TikTok Deal Is A Crock

September 23, 2020 news

“The whole thing is a crock,” says legendary internet mogul Barry Diller. “It starts, obviously, simply to say we want to protect the security of Americans from anything that could happen to them by using TikTok. It has now morphed into this kind of ludicrous game match between tossing ownership here, control there, etc. Its original aims are out the window and in has just come a whole political mismatch. The whole thing has been stirred up for no great good reason.” Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp…

Marketing

This decade’s most important marketing question: What data rights do advertisers possess?

September 22, 2020 news

Google’s move to reduce advertisers’ visibility into search terms reporting raises big questions about data access in the age of automation. With Google’s latest decision to strip Search Terms data insights from advertisers (some agencies have reported around 25%-30% or more of data loss), the frustrated outcry has caused some to begin throwing around lawsuit language. Specifically, there seem to be three main reactions to this change: Those who believe that advertisers own the data outright, or at least the data is part of what they are paying for, and…

Bing

Bing iOS App Gets Barcode Scanner For In-Store Price Comparison, Uber Integration & GIF Support

September 21, 2020 news

Bing releases version 6.1 of their mobile app for iOS, bringing nice new and welcome features to the app. Bing has just released version 6.1 of their iOS app, which is now available as an update within the App Store. Version 6.1 brings several changes, including barcode scanning for price-comparison shopping, Uber integration, animated GIF support and other user experience changes and optimizations. Price Comparison Barcode Scanner When you are in a store and want to see if the store is selling the product for a good price, Bing will…

google

A new era has arrived in local search: Google’s Local Trust Pack

September 19, 2020 news

The variables that drive performance for LSA extend beyond the prominence, relevance and proximity factors we have built strategies for. We are in the midst of a transformation in local advertising. Google has a new form of trusted answers that are revealed through a unique and compelling sponsored ad unit. The advertisers that participate in this new layer of trust are proudly displayed next to a green, check-mark badge. This designation is quickly becoming the symbol of trust for Google users. Google is so confident in the consumer value of…