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Year: 2020

Marketing 

IBM: Strong Cloud Revenue Growth Powers Q3

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IBM today announced third-quarter 2020 earnings results. Although overall revenue was slightly down again cloud revenue was up big. “The strong performance of our cloud business, led by Red Hat, underscores the growing client adoption of our open hybrid cloud platform,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM chief executive officer. “Separating the managed infrastructure services business creates a market-leading standalone company and further sharpens our focus on IBM’s open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities. This will accelerate our growth strategy and better position IBM to seize the $1 trillion hybrid-cloud opportunity.”…

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Bing 

Bing Brings On Halloween With a Spooky Map, Cortana Costume Suggestions & A Horror Movie Game

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Ask Cortana “What should I wear for Halloween?” or “Guess the horror movie” to play Bing’s Halloween-themed game. Bing is gearing up for the holiday weekend, launching Halloween-related Cortana searches and a spooky Bing map that includes locations for haunted houses throughout the US, UK and Canada. For anyone who still doesn’t have their costume figured out, Bing recommends asking Cortana, “What should I wear for Halloween?” Cortana also has a new “Guess the horror movie” game to keep you occupied while you’re waiting to go trick-or-treating — the phrase…

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google 

Google tests local ads in Maps auto-suggest results

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A local ads shows up as you start typing. Google is testing ads for local businesses in Google Maps auto-suggest search results. Thibault Adda, local search specialist at Darden Restaurants, noticed and tweeted about it Thursday. As he typed a search for “Seafood restaurant,” an ad for the seafood restaurant chain Red Lobster appeared in the auto-suggest results before he completed the search query, as you can see in the screenshot he shared. Screenshot: Thibault Adda. Google confirmed with us that this is an experiment. “We’re always testing new ways…

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Social 

For First Time, Twitter Will Show Promoted Tweets From Accounts You Don’t Follow

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Look out, Twitter users: More advertising is coming to your Twitter stream, even from accounts that you don’t already follow. Twitter announced Tuesday that its Promoted Tweets program is expanding to “a small number of users,” and a Twitter help page explains where those ads might appear: At the top of relevant search results pages [… Look out, Twitter users: More advertising is coming to your Twitter stream, even from accounts that you don’t already follow. Twitter announced Tuesday that its Promoted Tweets program is expanding to “a small number…

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SEO 

A WordPress safety plan for SEOs and developers

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How to protect your WordPress site from attack and keep it safe and secure. WordPress powers an astonishing one-third of all websites these days. It has been the CMS platform of choice for our community since the mid-aughts when many of WordPress’s SEO features were implemented. It is therefore relentlessly attacked, largely for SEO spam reasons, but attacks can escalate to much worse. Here’s a look at some WordPress fundamentals and ways to ensure your WordPress site stays safe. Is WordPress safe? The latest version of WordPress is very safe…

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SEM 

Are you changing keyword bids too often?

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It’s great to proactively manage your paid search accounts, but columnist Ted Ives makes the case for backing off a little when it comes to bid adjustments. The AdWords advertising system utilizes an auction-like process to decide which advertisers’ ads get to show and in which order. By bidding higher or lower, you can appear at higher or lower positions — depending on what your competitors are bidding. Account managers use many approaches for setting and tweaking bids over time, and bid optimization is one of the oldest features in…

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Latest News 

IRS Under Investigation For Illegally Tracking Americans via Their Phones

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The IRS is under investigation by the US Treasury’s Inspector General for purchasing smartphone data to illegally track Americans. The issue began when Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to the Inspector General demanding the IRS be investigated. According to the letter, the IRS had been purchasing bulk data from a company named Venntel. The information contained location data from Americans’ phones, based on the various apps they use. According to Motherboard, a Wyden aide has said “the IRS wanted to find phones, track where they were…

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Marketing 

Customizable Amazon Sponsored Display ads go live globally

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Add brand logo and custom headlines to product targeting ads. Amazon has rolled out the ability for eligible advertisers to add their brand logo and customize the headline in Sponsored Display ads. The customized Sponsored Display units can run on product description pages, customer reviews, shopping results pages and under the Featured Offer. The ads render responsively to fit inventory units on the web, mobile and in-app. Advertisers can add customization to Sponsored Display ads. Sponsored Display ads can target by views, product or interest. However, when a logo and…

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Bing 

Bing Launches Their Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool

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A year after Google launched their mobile-friendly testing tool, Bing has launched their own similar version, the Bing Mobile Friendliness Test Tool. Bing announced the release of their mobile friendliness test tool today. This was promised to us back in May 2015, when Bing told us they were working on a mobile-friendly Bing ranking algorithm. It was actually expected in the late summer but was delayed. The tool evaluates a page to check if it is mobile-friendly based on these criteria: Viewport and Zoom control configuration Width of page content…

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google 

Web Stories are coming to Google Discover

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Web Stories is being expanded to show in more Google areas. Google announced it is now bringing the Web Stories feature (previously known as AMP Stories) to Google Discover. So not only can you find Web Stories in Google Search and some other supported platforms, it is now also going to surface in Google Discover – in the Google iOS and Android app. The announcement. Google said “Today we are bringing visual and immersive Web Stories to Discover which is part of the Google app on Android and iOS. The…

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