TopListWP

4 ways to optimize your responsive search ads

Google’s responsive search ads (RSAs) have existed alongside the original expanded text ads (ETAs) since May 2018, giving marketers more formats for their campaigns. Since then, RSAs have not only become the default but are set to be the sole text ad format going forward.

“As we’ve suspected, RSAs will become the only ad format that you’re going to be able to use, at least as far as a plain text ad,” said Frederick Vallaeys, co-founder and CEO of PPC management software company Optmyzr, in his session at SMX Next.

Marketers would be wise to start optimizing RSAs to stay ahead of their competitors. Here are four tactics Vallaeys recommends marketers use to improve their effectiveness.

Use more headline variants

Headline variants can allow marketers to use more keywords, which can enable their RSAs to reach more potential customers.

“If you give Google more variations then the CTR goes up because they’re able to show the right ad to the right user at the right time,” said Vallaeys.

Analyze asset labels

Google Ads’ asset labels show which assets are performing well and which assets you should replace after the RSAs serve. Vallaeys recommends watching these assets for two weeks, then replacing those that are underperforming.

Review combination reports

The combinations report shows marketers what ad combinations are served up most often. These can provide marketers with insights into how Google’s optimization algorithms are working — and whether any mistakes have been made.

Put smart bidding automation in place

Marketers should combine automation to help prevent ads from showing up to the wrong groups, Vallaeys says.

Read more: 4 ways to optimize your responsive search ads

Campaign creation, search trends and performance insights explanations arrive on Google Ads mobile app

Advertisers can now create campaigns, review Search trends, and view more explanations with performance insights in the Google Ads mobile app, the company announced Friday.

Why we care. The new mobile app features enable greater flexibility for SMBs and PPC practitioners to keep tabs on their campaigns or make adjustments from anywhere.

Search trends on mobile can enable advertisers to quickly identify popular searches that may be relevant to their business. And, advertisers can immediately act on that information since they’re now able to create campaigns within the mobile app.

And, the performance insights explanations can help advertisers identify the causes behind performance fluctuations, even the positive fluctuations. This can help them understand what worked so that they can repeat those tactics in the future.

Read more: Campaign creation, search trends and performance insights explanations arrive on Google Ads mobile app

10 reasons why email is more important than ever

Email is a powerful marketing tool. An email with signatures can be a great way to add a personal touch. If you’re new to email signatures, you may be wondering what they are and why your brand needs them. And if you use corporate signatures already, you may not be getting the most out of them right now. In this post, you’ll get the lowdown on email signatures and what you stand to gain by including this highly underestimated but powerful solution in your marketing mix.

Stop losing opportunities to market your brand

Are you a marketer or a brand that is yet to start harnessing the power of email signatures? It is high time you tapped the enormous benefits of corporate email signatures.

Take advantage of professional email signature solutions to get your branding and marketing message before a target audience who has permitted you to message them.

You have nothing to lose by including your email signature in every outbound email message. But your business has a lot more to gain by strategically positioning your brand for better conversions and engagements.

Read more: 10 reasons why email is more important than ever

Google Search Console rolls out new design

Google has rolled out a new look for Google Search Console aimed at improving accessibility and user experience. If you login to your Google Search Console account at google.com/search-console you will see the new design.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the new design:

Why a new design. Google said this design upgrade is aimed at its efforts to improve accessibility and user experience. “We’re starting a journey to refresh the look and feel of Search Console,” Google wrote on Twitter, “Over the next few months you’ll see small changes in the product with a goal to improve accessibility and user experience in general. We hope you like it!”

Read more: Google Search Console rolls out new design

Advertisers can adapt to supply chain issues without pausing campaigns

The holiday shopping season is typically a boon for online retailers, but this year, supply chain issues coupled with heightened consumer demand have put merchants, and the PPC professionals that work with them, in a difficult position. After all, if there’s no inventory to sell, advertising those products will only lead to wasted budget and disappointed customers.

While demand is likely to level off as we move past the holidays, supply chain issues may linger. For example, furniture retailer IKEA said it expects supply chain-related shortages to last until mid-2022. Without a clear end in sight, retailers may consider halting their paid campaigns or even suspending their partnerships with PPC agencies, which may also have experienced similar client churn at the outset of the pandemic as well.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to going dark with your paid campaigns that can not only help you weather the storm but also put your brand ahead of competitors that do pull the plug on their ads.

Despite the pandemic-era disruption, customers have shown that they’re still looking to spend and support our brands. Maintaining a paid media presence can help you show those customers that, despite these challenges, your brand still seeks to serve them, even if you don’t have the products they’re searching for exactly when they’re searching for them.

Read more: Advertisers can adapt to supply chain issues without pausing campaigns

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SEO community feels blindsided by November core update as Google defends timing

Microsoft list of Bingbot IP addresses released

What digital marketers should know about Google Analytics 4

WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 delayed

A new date will be set for WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 so that 5.9’s exciting new features can be delivered in full, together with the intuitive, cohesive user experience. Beta 1 was originally scheduled for release yesterday and tentatively shifted to today to accommodate this. The overall schedule will be updated to reflect this and give contributors more time to collaborate further on the release.

Why postpone the beta?

WordPress has a specific philosophy of development. Its contributors follow the process that deadlines are not arbitrary. Schedules can shift if the results demand it.

Any changes to the proposed timetable are and must be carefully considered, as changes impact users preparing for the release and contributors contributing time and energies to make it happen.

As WordPress is open-source software, you can follow the discussion in real time on the release squad channel in the Make WordPress Slack group.

So. The choice.

As communicated yesterday (16 November 2021), in #core-editor, a red flag was raised about a blocker to the Beta phase.

There are some others items too. These items could affect the 5.9 Release Candidate (RC) and, likely, the final release. So it is better to allow time to focus on them at this stage.

How long of a delay?

The information that surfaced several hours ago suggests two to three weeks of focused work will produce a significantly better 5.9 version—much better than would a set of quick fixes intended to meet the current schedule.

The release squad is pulling together a revised schedule. Of course, given timezones, the discussion started before some members of the global team were awake for the day. So not every member has had a chance to weigh in. A proposed schedule is pinned in the 5.9 release-leads Slack channel. This proposal could change during the next 24-48 hours.

When will the Beta 1 release happen?

The current best guess is a two-week delay with an additional beta added to the cycle.

What will that do to the rest of the 5.9 release cycle schedule?

Again, please refer to this proposed schedule. A delay in the schedule also has to work with holidays, the end of the year, and the start of 2022.

As always, please add your thoughts to the comments on this post or the Slack discussion. Thank you for everyone’s feedback so far. Together, let’s continue to make WordPress better and better.

Source: WordPress 5.9 Beta 1 delayed

Eftpos added security features go-live as digital upgrades continue

Australian payments provider Eftpos has gone live with new online security features through a handful of payment merchants, ahead of a full rollout next year.

These security features, which include two-factor authentication functionality, has initially been adopted by Till Payments, Fat Zebra, and Eftex.

The rollout of these features is part of Eftpos’ five-year, AU$100 million investment it’s making on digital upgrades to its network, designed to enhance the level of protection up-front for consumers and merchants, rather than retrofitting security to legacy systems.  

“This is a tipping point for Eftpos, online Australian businesses and the digital economy, and it is great to have partners like Till Payments, Fat Zebra, and Eftex onboard,” Eftpos chief Stephen Benton claimed.

“This is a game changer for Eftpos and Australian retailers because retail is quickly transforming to become an increasingly digital marketplace, accelerated by COVID. Big economic benefits could flow from increased competition in addition to enhanced payments security.”

The company said Eftpos payments are already available online for some card-on-file payments where banks have implemented the service for their merchant customers. Since launching the Eftpos digital service that enables LCR last year, Eftpos said it has been subject to zero fraud.

LCR is an initiative aimed at promoting competition in the debit card market and helping to reduce payment costs in the economy.

Source: Eftpos added security features go-live as digital upgrades continue

Rank Math SEO Launches a Content AI Feature

Last week, the popular Rank Math SEO plugin received a major update that includes a new artificial intelligence system. The Content AI feature is a SaaS product that behaves like a personal writing assistant to boost search rankings.

“We built Rank Math’s Content AI feature to revolutionize the content production and optimization process with proprietary AI that gives SEOs and content marketers a competitive edge,” said Bhanu Ahluwalia, Rank Math’s CMO.

The system allows users to research what their content should look like based on a keyword. Each keyword analysis costs one credit. This data is stored on the user’s server, so the same keyword used on multiple posts does not cost extra. Users get five free credits after signing up for a user account with Rank Math. However, they must upgrade to one of the three commercial plans, ranging from $59 to $499 per year, for more.

Each of the commercial plans comes with a specific number of credits. They are marketed as free extras, but they are not “free” for users who want to upgrade for credits alone. The team says they are working on a pricing solution to address this.

Users should see a new Content AI module that they can enable from the plugin’s Dashboard screen. Turning this on creates a new tab under the plugin’s General Settings page for further configuration.

The Content AI feature works with the WordPress editor, the classic editor, Elementor, and Divi. However, the team plans to extend this support to other page builders in the future

Users can then enter a focus keyword from the post-editing screen and click the Content AI button. From there, they can research their chosen keyword, and Rank Math pulls up suggestions from their system.

The scoring system is easy to understand. Above 80 (in the green) is considered “good.” Anything below might need some work based on the plugin’s recommendations.

The primary suggestions from the Content AI center on total words, links, headings, and media. When asked how the numbers were figured, Ahluwalia said, “This is a computation performed based on the top-ranking content in search engine results pages (i.e., characteristics of content that ranks).” It is a proprietary system, so maybe the team is not ready to give away the exact details.

The feature also lets users copy related keywords to use in their posts, offers questions that the content should answer, and lists potential links to use.

Source: Rank Math SEO Launches a Content AI Feature

75+ Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2021 WordPress Deals – Big Savings

Looking for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on your favorite WordPress products? The next few days are the perfect time to buy premium WordPress plugins, themes, web hosting, and tools to grow your business.

As always, to help you find the best deals, we have created the ultimate list of the best WordPress Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals for 2021. Some of these are exclusive just for WPBeginner readers.

These offers are LIMITED TIME only. We’ve indicated the expiration date next to each offer. Some deals are not live at the time of publishing this blog post, but they will be going live throughout this week.

Bonus Giveaways

Some WordPress companies are doing exclusive Black Friday giveaways. Here are the top ones:

• Apple 24 inch iMac (M1) from WPForms
• M1 MacBook Pro from All in One SEO for WordPress
• 24 inch iMac from MonsterInsights
• Win an M1 MacBook Air from OptinMonster
• MacBook Pro from SeedProd
• Apple 13 inch MacBook Pro M1 from WP Mail SMTP
• MacBook Air from Smash Balloon
• M1 MacBook Pro from MemberPress
• MacBook Air from Formidable Forms
• MacBook Pro with M1 from WholeSale Suite Plugin
• MacBook Air with M1 from Advanced Coupons

Source: 75+ Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2021 WordPress Deals – Big Savings

Get your favorite gamer set for 2022 with this PlayStation Plus/VPN Unlimited package on sale for under $50

The VPN Unlimited and PlayStation Plus Subscription Bundle offers a year of premium PlayStation Plus membership, as well as a lifetime of online security for under $50.

If you’re salivating at the thought of the biggest and best games coming to your PlayStation in the coming year, the 2022 calendar is already filling up with some amazing top-shelf possibilities. From God of War Ragnarok to Batman spinoff RPG Gotham Knights, from Horizon Forbidden West to a pair of new Final Fantasy games, 2022 is already shaping up to be a bumper year.

Of course, fans will be missing out on most of what the hottest new games can actually do without a subscription to PlayStation Plus. Right now, you can set your 2022 gaming up the right way now with this package featuring a one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus as well as a lifetime of VPN Unlimited protection, now on sale for just a super-low $49.99 for both from TNW Deals.

Source: Get your favorite gamer set for 2022 with this PlayStation Plus/VPN Unlimited package on sale for under $50

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Google Maps Adds 4 New Features For Local Shopping

Google Ads shopping ads bug results in huge CPC increased; issue now resolved

Freelancers can now offer their services on LinkedIn’s new gig marketplace

SEO community feels blindsided by November core update as Google defends timing

Yesterday, Google announced the November 2021 core update. While there’s nothing new about these periodic algorithm changes, many SEOs are wondering why Google decided to release it right before one of the busiest shopping periods of the year.

The holiday shopping season. The weeks encompassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday already add pressure to businesses looking to meet customer demand as well as their own revenue projections. Throwing a core update into the mix could make this even more complicated. This has made some SEOs wonder if Google is out of touch with both the business and search communities.

The SEO community response. Many in the search community are questioning Google’s timing on this update. Some marketers responded to Google Search Liason Danny Sullivan’s explanation, including SEO Rich Missey, who identified possible issues that could arise with business stakeholders

Read more: SEO community feels blindsided by November core update as Google defends timing

Amazon will stop accepting Visa payments in the UK starting in January

Amazon has announced that it will longer accept payments from Visa cards in the UK, according to Reuters. “As a result of Visa’s continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards as of 19 January 2022,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

Forms of payment are still accepted. The e-commerce platform will continue to accept MasterCard and American Express credit cards, Eurocard and Visa debit cards.

“We continue to work toward a resolution, so our cardholders can use their preferred Visa credit cards at Amazon UK without Amazon-imposed restrictions come January 2022,” a Visa spokesperson said in a statement.

Brexit enabled the fee hike. After Brexit, the European Union’s fee limits imposed on credit card issuers no longer applied to the UK, meaning that issuers can freely raise fees. Last month, Visa did just that, increasing its fee from 0.3% to 1.5% for online credit card payments between the UK and EU. It also increased its debit card fee from 0.2% to 1.15%.

Before Visa, MasterCard also raised its fees from 0.3% to 1.5%, according to BBC. It is not clear why Amazon’s new policy only affects Visa.

Other retailers may follow suit. These charges are known as “interchange fees” — transaction fees applied to the merchant’s bank account whenever a customer uses a credit or debit card to pay for a purchase from their store. These fees are paid to the card issuer and cover fraud, bad debt, and handling costs. Naturally, they can apply to all businesses that accept credit or debit, not just Amazon.

Read more: Amazon will stop accepting Visa payments in the UK starting in January

Demand forecasts, consumer interest and audience insights are coming to Google Ads’ Insights Page

Four new features — consumer interest insights, audience insights, change history insights and auction insights, and demand forecasts — will be rolling out in beta to the Google Ads Insights page globally in the coming weeks, the company announced Thursday.

The consumer interest and audience insights enable advertisers to learn more about how customers are searching for their offerings, as well as the themes they’re interested in and the ad copy that most resonates with them.

Zooming out, Google Ads’ product updates and offerings over the last few years have been designed to make advertising easier for SMBs, which may not have the resources to hire a full-time PPC professional or enlist the help of an agency. The Insights page is free and these features are likely to provide actionable information to all advertisers on Google’s platform, but its benefit will be greater for businesses that otherwise may not have had access to these trends.

Consumer interest insights. This feature aggregates and anonymizes the top-performing search query themes that drive performance in your campaigns. It tells you the number of people who searched for each theme, the theme’s growth, and how it performed in your account.

Audience insights. This feature is aimed at helping advertisers learn about the interests and affinities of audiences that are seeing their ads, particularly the user groups that Google’s automation has identified as driving strong performance. Additionally, audience insights can enable advertisers to identify what creative resonates with their audience.

Demand forecasts. Instead of focusing on historical performance trends, demand forecasts use machine learning and past seasonal search trends to predict emerging search interests over the next 180 days.

Change history insights and auction insights. This feature can be used to better understand how shifting auction competition or changes you, the advertiser, made in your account affect performance.

Read more: Demand forecasts, consumer interest, and audience insights are coming to Google Ads’ Insights Page

Twitter rolls back AMP support, no longer sends users to AMP pages

If you are noticing less traffic to your website’s AMP pages coming from Twitter, turns out there is a reason for that: Twitter has subtly updated its AMP guidelines page on its Developer site to say support for AMP will be phased out by the fourth quarter.

How that might affect you. Previously, if a mobile user clicked on a link to your site, Twitter would redirect them to the AMP version of that page if an AMP version was available. Now, that won’t happen and users will just load the native mobile/responsive version of your content.

Thanks for telling us. We’ve heard anecdotally that publishers have been seeing AMP traffic fall, especially since Google started putting non-AMP pages in its Top Stories section. But it was David Esteve, audience development specialist, and product manager at Marfeel and technical SEO consultant Christian Oliveira who spotted the update in Twitter’s documentation.

Read more: Twitter rolls back AMP support, no longer sends users to AMP pages

Google logo schema markup now requires logos to look good on white backgrounds

Google has updated its logo schema markup guidelines to say it is now required for the logos you submit in the schema looks good on purely white backgrounds.

The new guideline. The new guidelines added a new line to the required properties section that reads “make sure the image looks how you intend it to look on a purely white background (for example, if the logo is mostly white or gray, it may not look how you want it to look when displayed on a white background).”

Where the logo can show. Where does this logo show in the Google Search results? It can show in the knowledge panel, maybe top stories and other areas.

Read more: Google logo schema markup now requires logos to look good on white backgrounds

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Google Maps Adds 4 New Features For Local Shopping

Google Maps launches four new features to improve the local shopping experience for customers, which in turn can lead to more sales for businesses.

In addition, Google has published statistics related to local shopping during the holiday season. This includes the most popular times to visit certain categories of businesses, and more.

These are the new features that are now available in Google Maps worldwide.

1. Area Busyness

The new feature, called Area Busyness, combines live busyness trends from individual businesses that are in close proximity to each other.

To access Area Busyness data, open Google Maps and tap on an area to see how busy it is at different times of day.

Google Maps will show you how busy the area is currently, and how busy it’s estimated to be throughout the day.

2. Directory Tab

Google Maps is expanding expanding the Directory tab globally on Android and iOS for all airports, malls, and transit stations.

The Directory tab shows you which stores are in a building, and helps with locating airport lounges, car rentals, parking lots, and more.

3. Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping in Google Maps is now expanding to over 2,000 store locations in 30+ states throughout the US.

Customers can utilize the feature to order groceries from Kroger, Fry’s, Ralphs, and Marianos.

After placing the order, Google Maps will track the order status and allow customers to share their ETA so the store knows when they’ll arrive.

Google estimates that people who use this feature typically wait less than five minutes for their order to be ready for pickup.

4. More Information About Restaurants

When customers leave reviews they can now share details about the restaurant’s price ranges, and whether they offer amenities such as outdoor seating, delivery, curbside pickup, and more.

The information provided in customer reviews will be shown in the restaurant’s main listing.

Source: Google Maps Adds 4 New Features For Local Shopping

The Microsoft Audience Network expands to 18 new markets

Microsoft Audience Ads are now available to all customers in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela, the company announced Tuesday. Prior to this update, this native ad product was only available in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand and the UK.

Why we care

Microsoft Audience Ads appear on the Microsoft Audience Network, which includes sites like MSN, Outlook.com, Microsoft Edge and other Microsoft Advertising partners. Now that the Microsoft Audience Network can reach more audiences around the world, it’s more useful to more advertisers.

Google Launching November 2021 Broad Core Algorithm Update

Google is giving everyone advance notice that a broad core algorithm update will be released later today.

Google’s guidance regarding broad core algorithm update are as follows:

• Expect widely noticeable effects, such as spikes or drops in search rankings.
• Core updates are “broad” in the sense that they don’t target anything specific. Rather, they’re designed to improve Google’s systems overall.
• Pages that drop in rankings aren’t being penalized; they’re being reassessed against other web content that has been published since the last update.
• Focusing on providing the best possible content is the top recommended way to deal with the impact of a core algorithm update.
• Broad core updates happen every few months. Sites might not recover from one update until the next one rolls out.
• Improvements do not guarantee recovery. However, choosing not to implement any improvements will virtually guarantee no recovery.

Edward Snowden calls out Google over search engine’s privacy

Edward Snowden, the individual responsible for one of the most significant information leaks in US history, decided on Tuesday that it was time to call out Google’s search engine.

He posted, “Is it just me, or have search results become absolute garbage for basically every site? It’s nearly impossible to discover useful information these days (outside the ArchWiki)” on Twitter yesterday.

When I asked Snowden for clarification if he was talking about Google and he said, “I definitely mean search engines (among others), and Google is the worst by far, even w/o poor results.”

Privacy concerns: Snowden’s biggest gripe, it seemed, was with Google’s search engine being “inaccessible to anyone who cares about privacy.” He called it “hostile” since some scripts required captchas and because of page redirects for mandatory, scripts-required cookies for ad tracking and user tracking.

What happened. Here is the timeline of tweets where this all occurred:

(1) Here is where I drag Google’s Public Search Liaison Danny Sullivan into this, keep in mind, I worked with Danny Sullivan here for years, so there was some humor here in this tweet:

(2) Edward Snowden responds to Danny Sullivan saying he didn’t think he was talking about Google:

Danny Sullivan of Google said he’d pass along the feedback but asked for examples, which Snowden said he is not in a position to give.

Privacy the future? We have seen search engines like DuckDuckGo and Brave slowly gain momentum with promises of privacy first. Plus Google keeps pushing off its Privacy Sandbox solution because it is not satisfying privacy advocates.

Google needs the data for its ad network and Google Ads. That is where the company makes most, by far, of its revenue.

WordPress sites hacked in fake ransomware attacks

Security researchers have found that close to 300 WordPress websites have been defaced to display fake attack notices, in order to trick the site owners into paying 0.1 bitcoin (BTC) for restoration.

Accompanying the ransom demands were countdown timers that were added to create more panic and further arm twist the owners into paying the ransom.

The deception behind these attacks was discovered by cybersecurity firm Sucuri who was hired by one of the victims to perform incident response on the supposed attack.

As soon as they began their investigation, the researchers discovered that the websites’ pages had not been encrypted, and that the notice was fake.

Source: WordPress sites hacked in fake ransomware attacks

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Microsoft list of Bingbot IP addresses released

Microsoft has published its list of IP addresses that Bingbot, the Microsoft Bing crawler, users when crawling your website. Fabrice Canel from Microsoft said, “to help all webmasters, we also published Bingbot IP ranges.”

Bingbot IPs. You can access the current list of Bingbot’s IP addresses over here. It is a JSON file that Microsoft can maintain.

Verify Bingbot. You can also verify Bingbot using this tool and also through the IP addresses listed above. Microsoft explained that you can check whether or not an IP address belongs to Bingbot with this too. This is useful to double-check if traffic in your server logs with requests using a “Bingbot” or “MSNBOT” user agent string is in fact genuine Bingbot IP addresses and that the server making the requests is not simply hiding its true identity. The tool is available in 2 places: inside your Bing Webmaster Tools account under Diagnostics & Tools, and, if you don’t have an account yet, as a public tool at http://www.bing.com/toolbox/verify-bingbot.

Read more: Microsoft list of Bingbot IP addresses released

Some Customer Match features to become available to all policy-compliant advertisers

Google Ads Customer Match will become available to all policy-compliant accounts in the coming weeks, the company announced Monday. However, certain features, like the targeting setting and manual bid adjustments, remain only available to advertisers with a 90-day history of policy compliance and more than $50,000 in lifetime spend.

Alongside that announcement, Google Ads is also introducing an upload preview tool that enables advertisers to see formatting issues and apply suggested fixes directly in the interface.

Read more: Some Customer Match features to become available to all policy-compliant advertisers

Windows 11 update forces users into Edge, regardless of their default browser

An upcoming Windows 11 update will block third-party apps from enabling users to select which browser and search engine Start menu searches open in, according to The Verge. Start menu searches open in the Edge browser, with results from Bing, regardless of the user’s designated default browser and search engine.

Edge-only Start menu search results. Regardless of the user’s default browser choice, Microsoft launches Edge and Bing when showing results for searches conducted from the Windows 10 and Windows 11 Start menu. In Windows 11, searches from the Widgets panel also only open in Edge and Bing.

Read more: Windows 11 update forces users into Edge, regardless of their default browser

Google Ads shopping ads bug results in huge CPC increased; issue now resolved

Google has confirmed a bug with its Google Shopping Ads product where the cost per click (CPC) prices spiked from 50% to over 200% over the weekend. The issue happened last night, Friday, November 12th between 9 pm EST (6 pm PST) through this morning, Saturday, November 13th at 12 am EST (3 am PST).

Confirmation. Google confirmed the issue after 1 pm EST today, November 13th on Twitter saying “The Google Ads system encountered an unexpected issue between 6 pm PST on Friday, Nov 12 – 3 am PST Saturday, Nov 13 that affected Shopping Ads. We identified and fixed the issue. Everything is working as expected now.”

What’s next. It appears that if you were impacted, a Google Ads representative will be in touch with more details. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison from Google wrote on Twitter “impacted advertisers will be notified with more details.” Of course, it doesn’t hurt for you to check your Google Ads reporting and see if you were impacted and then to proactively reach out to Google for help and refunds.

Read more: Google Ads shopping ads bug results in huge CPC increased; issue now resolved

Google now allows the sale of medical tests kits

Google now allows the sale of medical tests kit

Google has updated its Merchant Center policy now allows you to list your medical test kits both at-home results or lab results and over-the-counter test kits in both free and paid Google Shopping.

What is new. Google’s new policy states “medical test kits with at-home results or lab results are now allowed on Shopping ads and free listings. This includes over-the-counter test kits. Every medical test kit must adhere to country-specific regulations.”

What is not new. Google said what is not changing with this policy is that merchants are still responsible for ensuring their products are in compliance with applicable laws and policies. Google said “for example, test kits sold in the U.S. must be FDA-approved or emergency use authorized. Medical test kits will also continue to be classified as Medical Devices.”

Read more: Google now allows the sale of medical tests kits

Google rolls out product feed support to more video campaign types

Google is rolling out product feed support for awareness and consideration Video campaign subtypes, the company announced Friday. The update, which rolls out over the coming weeks, enables brands to show browsable product images below their video ads for campaigns that have “Product and brand consideration” or “Brand awareness and reach” set as the goal.

Previously, Video action campaigns were the only campaign type that could be linked to product feeds from Google Merchant Center.

How it works. When a user is shown your video ad, the panel below the ad automatically expands to show your products. At this time, products only appear when the user’s mobile device is in portrait mode. Selecting an image takes the user to the product landing page, where they can continue the transaction. 

Advertisers must include at least four products in their Merchant Center product feed, with a 1:1 ratio image for each product to be shown (only the primary product image will be used). The Google Ads Help center has more detailed instructions on adding a product feed to your Video campaigns.

Advertisers can now make any Video campaign more shoppable without having to create a separate TrueView for the shopping campaign. “On average, advertisers that add product feeds to their Video action campaigns achieve over 60% more conversions at a lower cost,” Google said, citing its own internal data in which it compared 941 campaigns with product feeds to campaigns without them. While this new feature may help you achieve greater efficiency, it’s always important to test it out for yourself to assess how it may or may not benefit your overall strategy.

Read more: Google rolls out product feed support to more video campaign types

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Google Ads shopping ads bug results in huge CPC increased; issue now resolved

Google has confirmed a bug with its Google Shopping Ads product where the cost per click (CPC) prices spiked from 50% to over 200% over the weekend. The issue happened last night, Friday, November 12th between 9pm EST (6pm PST) through this morning, Saturday, November 13th at 12am EST (3am PST).

Confirmation. Google confirmed the issue after 1pm EST today, November 13th on Twitter saying “The Google Ads system encountered an unexpected issue between 6pm PST on Friday Nov 12 – 3am PST Saturday, Nov 13 that affected Shopping Ads. We identified and fixed the issue. Everything is working as expected now.”

What’s next. It appears that if you were impacted, a Google Ads representative will be in touch with more details. Ginny Marvin, the Google Ads Liaison from Google wrote on Twitter “impacted advertisers will be notified with more details.” Of course, it doesn’t hurt for you to check your Google Ads reporting and see if you were impacted and then to proactively reach out to Google for help and refunds.

How bad was it. Well, look at this chart from one Google Ads advertser:

Source: Google Ads shopping ads bug results in huge CPC increased; issue now resolved

Google: Bolded Text Can Help Your SEO

Google’s John Mueller confirms bolding important text in a paragraph can help your site’s SEO as it allows Google to understand the content better.

This is stated during the Google Search Central SEO office-hours hangout recorded on November 12, 2021.

A question is submitted asking about the benefits of using bolded text.

Is it purely a stylistic choice? Or can it also be utilized for SEO purposes?

Mueller states definitively that it does help SEO.

However, the extent to which it helps is relative to the rest of the content on the page.

There’s more on what that means in the next section.

Google’s John Mueller On Using Bolded Text For SEO

In answering this question, Mueller references a video from former Googler Matt Cutts where this subject was touched on once before.

“This is something that comes up every now and then. I double checked before the session, actually, and Matt Cutts did a video, I think, in like, 2012 or something around that about bolding and strong on pages.”

Mueller adds that Google can usually figure out what’s important on its own, but bolded text makes the message more clear.

SEO Benefits Of Bolded Text Are Relative

Mueller clarifies that the value of bolded text is relative to the rest of the content on the page.

A few snippets of bold text throughout an article can send stronger signals to Google. But bolding all text on a page would add no value at all.

Source: Google: Bolded Text Can Help Your SEO

WordPress Template Plugin Vulnerability Hits +1 Million Sites

WordPress plugin by the makers of Astra Theme patched an XSS vulnerability that can lead to total site takeover and attacks on site visitors

Starter Templates — Elementor, Gutenberg & Beaver Builder Templates

The Starter Templates plugin is published by Brainstorm Force, the makers of the wildly popular Astra WordPress theme. The plugin allows users to use over 280 WordPress templates that help speed up website development.

The templates are made to be compatible with Elementor, Gutenberg, Brizy and Beaver Builder, as well as with the Astra theme.

Stored Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Vulnerability

The Starter Templates plugin by Brainstorm Force was discovered by security researchers at Wordfence to contain a type of vulnerability that allows an attacker to upload a malicious script that is in turn stored on the website itself.

A Stored XSS vulnerability is particularly troublesome because the uploaded script is stored on the server of the attacked site itself.

Website Takeover and Attacks on Site Visitors

“An attacker could craft and host a block containing malicious JavaScript on a server they controlled, and then use it to overwrite any post or page…

Any post or page that had been built with Elementor, including published pages, could be overwritten by the imported block, and the malicious JavaScript in the imported block would then be executed in the browser of any visitors to that page.

This could be used to redirect site visitors to malicious websites, or hijack an administrator’s session in order to create a new malicious administrator or add a backdoor to the site, leading to site takeover.”

Starter Templates Plugin Fixed

The publishers of the Starter Templates plugin were notified by Wordfence of the vulnerability and they promptly patched the plugin in version 2.7.1.

The public changelog for the Starter Templates plugin accurately records the patch:

v2.7.1 – 7-October-2021
– Security Improvement: Validate the site URL before processing the import request.
– Security Improvement: Updated right file upload permission before importing images.

Wordfence Advises that Publishers Update Their Plugin

Wordfence recommends that all publishers using this plugin update to the very latest version of the plugin is 2.7.5 because this newest version also contains important bug fixes.

Source: WordPress Template Plugin Vulnerability Hits +1 Million Sites

Amazon sellers battle the giant’s algorithm-based policy- and decision-making

“Their algorithms are garbage,” said Lesley Hensell Demand, partner in Riverbend Consulting, a firm that helps Amazon sellers overcome a host of challenges, including account de-activation and loss of ASINs (a kind of ISBN number Amazon assigns to products. Riverbend is heavily staffed by former Amazon employees.

There was a lot of discussion about Amazon’s algorithms at the AMZ Innovate event for Amazon sellers in New York City this week. The reason: Amazon sellers are deeply invested in a platform which is essentially too big to be held accountable. They’re at the mercy of policy-making and enforcement which can seem capricious or even be downright mystifying.

Hensell Demand offered a grim tour around the problems sellers can face. Amazon attempts to exert control over pricing decisions by third-party sellers. If, for example, it sees a product from a seller listed at a lower price on a competitor website, it will enforce a price reduction. Because the process is automated (those algorithms), it’s not uncommon for Amazon to confuse a “pack of one,” say, with a “pack of three.” If Amazon believes it detects systematic over-pricing, more penalties can follow.

And then there’s the reported practice of simply copying a successful product and putting Amazon branding on it. According to Hensell Demand it has even been known for Amazon to approach the manufacturer and offer to place a larger order than the successful seller.

Source: Amazon sellers battle the giant’s algorithm-based policy- and decision-making

2022 could be the year of 8K monitors: Here’s why

The first 8K monitor to launch was the Dell UltraSharp UP3218K 8K back in May 2017, nearly five years ago. It remains the only one of its category with an extremely high price tag (several thousand dollars/pounds) and lacking newer technology, like HDMI 2.1.

This may all change in 2022 though. TechRadar Pro contacted a number of monitor vendors – and Dell rivals – that have confirmed plans to release 8K – and/or 5K monitors – in 2022.

A spokesperson for Benq said their models are likely to arrive in Q2 2022 at the earliest while NEC – reinforced by its partnership with Sharp – confirmed that 8K displays are on its future roadmap.

Coming soon?

None of the manufacturers confirmed the screen size of their future models or pricing, but we expect a hefty price tag, as the new products will target users looking for large format display, monitors for video editing and monitors for photo editing.

Other companies we got in touch with (MSI, Lenovo, Asus and HP) have yet to confirm whether they will still go ahead with displays with 5K or 8K screen resolutions. IIyama has no plans for 8K monitors in 2022 while Dell told us that it wouldn’t comment on future product releases.

Nvidia, Intel and AMD embracing 8K

2022 will also – hopefully – be the year where the current global supply chain problems will go away bringing prices down while more video editing software developers will add 8K video compatibility to their products. 

Other improvements we expect to see in 2022 are the native support for 8K-over-HDMI for onboard graphics (given the lesser appeal of DisplayPort as a universal video connector) and more widespread availability of Thunderbolt 4 both on laptops and desktop PCs. 

Source: 2022 could be the year of 8K monitors: Here’s why

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Freelancers can now offer their services on LinkedIn’s new gig marketplace

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Freelancers can now offer their services on LinkedIn’s new gig marketplace

LinkedIn has officially launched a marketplace that competes with platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, giving freelance SEO and PPC professionals a new place to market their services. The LinkedIn Service Marketplace, which first launched as a beta in March, has already attracted two million users, according to LinkedIn.

How it works for service providers. Professionals can set up a service page from their LinkedIn profile, as shown above. Your service page will show an overview of the services you provide, ratings and reviews from previous clients and whether you have mutual connections with a prospective client. Service pages are linked to your profile, so your identity and page are connected.

The service page also has a dashboard that can be used to manage requests, messages, reviews and client lists.

How it works for potential clients. Potential clients can search for freelance service providers through LinkedIn’s search functionality, using the “Services” filter. They can also submit a request for a proposal or message a provider without having to connect with or follow them first.

Read More: Freelancers can now offer their services on LinkedIn’s new gig marketplace

Google Drops Sites Hosted on SiteGround

SiteGround has confirmed a serious issue that has caused Google to stop crawling many sites hosted there since Monday. Publishers are panicking as web pages and ecommerce store products drop out of Google.

SiteGround has posted various updates to the problem but it is still unclear what exactly is causing the issue. That in turn is causing more concern with some publishers to tweet that they are done and moving away to other web hosts.

Problem Apparently Started On Monday

The problem at SiteGround began on Monday when publishers noticed Google had stopped crawling their sites.

“Really fast”? This issue has been going on since Monday. Small businesses and websites that rely on Google traffic now have lost four days of revenue because of Siteground. Do you think that’s acceptable?

— Kim (@ichangedmyname) November 11, 2021

SiteGround Initially Denies Problem at Their End

SiteGround initially tweeted on Wednesday that they could not identify any problems on their end.

“We’ve received reports that a number of Google bot networks cannot crawl some websites using our DNS service.

After thoroughly audit of our DNS, we can confirm there is no blocking on our end that prevents such crawling, nor we see any logs suggesting an issue with our systems.”

SiteGround “Escalates” Issue to Google

SiteGround next punted the issue over to Google, apparently assuming the problem was there and that Google could fix it.

“We have escalated the issue to Google and we are working to troubleshoot and identify the cause of the problem. We will keep you updated once there’s more information or the problem is fixed.”

SiteGround Denies Problem at Their End

SiteGround followed up by distancing themselves from the problem with a subsequent tweet to essentially say they can’t fix it because nothing on their end is broken.

SiteGround Passes Ball to AWS and Google

Eventually SiteGround seemed to identify a problem on Thursday morning, tweeting: 

“Update on the issue reported by some users regarding Google bots unable to crawl their sites:
We traced it down to a network issue between AWS Global Accelerator service and Google. We’re collaborating with engineers from both teams to fix it. We appreciate your patience!”

Source: Google Drops Sites Hosted on SiteGround

Facebook says short posts have the most views while hate speech drops on platform

On Tuesday, Facebook published its Q3 2021 transparency reports, including reports on its most widely viewed content and community standards enforcement. The Widely Viewed Content Report shows a clear pattern in the top 20 most viewed posts and the Community Standards Enforcement Report shows that the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook has decreased for the fourth consecutive quarter.

The top 20 most widely viewed posts. As was the case in Q2, when Facebook published the first edition of its Widely Viewed Content Report, the top 20 posts cumulatively accounted for about 0.1% of all U.S. content views. “Our goal is to be transparent about our most viewed content, and to shed light on the fact that while an individual piece of content might be viewed by a very large number of people, Facebook is so large that the content will only represent a small fraction of total views in News Feed in the US that quarter,” the company said, “In short, it is not very common for different people to see the same content in their News Feeds.”

Hate speech is down quarter-over-quarter. In Q3, there were three views of hate speech for every 10,000 content views, according to the report.

Source: Facebook says short posts have the most views while hate speech drops on platform

YouTube Removes Dislike Counts On All Videos

YouTube is removing public dislike counts on all videos, though the dislike button will remain available for users to customize their recommendations.

This permanent change follows an experiment earlier this year where YouTube removed dislikes to see if it would help reduce “dislike attacks.”

“As part of this experiment, viewers could still see and use the dislike button. But because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior.”

According to YouTube, when users collectively dislike a video it’s a form of harassment against creators. Removing public dislike counts is designed to reduce said “harassment.”

YouTube is removing public dislike counts on all videos, though the dislike button will remain available for users to customize their recommendations.

The button is now a tool viewers can use to customize the recommendations they receive across YouTube.

Channels can see how many dislikes their videos receive, if they choose to, in YouTube Studio along with other metrics.

YouTube acknowledges that the decision to remove dislike counts will not sit well with everyone:

“We heard during the experiment that some of you have used the public dislike count to help decide whether or not to watch a video. We know that you might not agree with this decision, but we believe that this is the right thing to do for the platform.”

Source: YouTube Removes Dislike Counts On All Videos

Gmail is awash with bait attack phishing emails

Cybercriminals have begun researching potential victims in order to collect information that will help improve the odds of their phishing attacks being successful.

According to a new report from the IT security company Barracuda Networks, these bait attacks are one technique employed by cybercriminals to test out email addresses they’ve acquired and see who is willing to respond.

The firm’s researchers surveyed 10,500 organizations to find that just over 35 percent of them were targeted by at least one bait attack in September 2021 with an average of three distinct mailboxes per company receiving one of these messages.

As the emails sent out in bait attacks don’t include any phishing links, malicious attachments or malware, they’re able to bypass many email security systems and arrive successfully in organizations’ inboxes.

Source: Gmail is awash with bait attack phishing emails

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What digital marketers should know about Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 (or GA4) is a completely new version of Google Analytics. The goal of this post is to share the key differences between Google Analytics 4 and the previous version of Google Analytics that you are probably familiar with and highlight the key features that you should be aware of as a Digital Marketer.

What makes Google Analytics 4 unique

If you were around back in 2013 you might remember when the last version of Google Analytics was launched, called “Universal Analytics”. At that time, you needed to update your tracking code to migrate to the new version, but everything else stayed pretty much the same.

Unfortunately, this is not true about the upgrade to Google Analytics 4. Data is collected differently, stored differently, and even visualized differently. All of this change can be frustrating, but GA4 is quite a bit more advanced than the previous version. Those Digital Marketers who migrate to the new version will be rewarded with an Analytics tool that provides a better representation of user behavior, respects user privacy preferences, and allows you to spend less time collecting and aggregating data. 

This is possible because of three technologies that Google has been working on for the past few years.

From goals to conversion events

As you may recall, a user completes a goal in Google Analytics when they take some action during their session. If the action is taken multiple times during the session, we would still only count that as a single goal completion.

GA4 has eliminated the concept of a goal and replaced it with conversion events.

Read more: What digital marketers should know about Google Analytics 4

Google is hiring a Search Quality Analyst to fight search spam

Google is hiring a new Search Quality Analyst who would work on fighting spam in the Google Search results. A new job posting by Google is currently accepting applications, the job seems to require you to be available to work on-site at the Mountain View, California office.

Job details. The job description defines the job of a Search Quality Analyst as someone who “will be working to measure and prevent inorganic user behavior through enforcement and development of our webmaster guidelines.” It also requires you to “support search ranking launches through qualitative and quantitative analyses.” As a Search Quality Analyst, Google said, “you will solve problems across data sets, with the power of Google’s technology to identify issues occurring in Google Search and related product areas.”

Make a difference. Google said this job will make a difference and have a “direct impact on users every day.” Plus you will get to work “closely with engineers and other analysts to launch algorithms and lead efforts that improve the overall search experience.” In short, you get to understand the search ranking algorithms in a deeper way and actually work on overall search quality.

Responsibilities. Google lists out these are the core responsibilities of the job:

• Prevent abuse of Google Search by analyzing search trends, identifying inorganic activity, and developing solutions.
• Solve analytical problems and apply analytical methods as needed within datasets.
• Engage cross-functionally with a wide variety of people and teams. Work closely with Engineers and Analysts to lead the development of long-lasting solutions.
• Prepare and present recommendations to multiple levels of stakeholders.

Read more: Google is hiring a Search Quality Analyst to fight search spam

Google’s New Business Profile: When Search Becomes a Political Tool

Google recently rebranded Google My Business as “Business Profile.” They have been heavily promoting the new name and features via email to get small businesses to interact with the new search and maps interface. Clicking though I discovered Google had an additional and more nefarious use for this campaign.

I was shocked that the first call to action wasn’t an invitation to edit my listing or even an incentive to buy Google Ads. It was a call to support Google’s fight against possible antitrust regulations.

With all of the buzz around the rebranding, Google apparently couldn’t resist the opportunity, however brazen, deceptive and totally misguided, to enlist the small business community in its antitrust fights.

Read more: Google’s New Business Profile: When Search Becomes a Political Tool

Google Confirms Intrusive Interstitials Ding Will Apply To Desktop Sites

With the Google page experience update coming to desktop sites in February 2022, that means that intrusive interstitials as a signal will also apply to desktop sites. John Mueller of Google confirmed this on Twitter saying “Yes, that’s my understanding. Essentially all of the Page Experience factors would then apply to desktop too.”

One of the factors of the page experience update is to not have intrusive interstitials. While that first only launched as a mobile signal back well before the page experience update – back in 2016-2017 – it will now apply to desktop sites.

Here is where Glenn Gabe pointed it out and John Mueller confirmed:

Read more: Google Confirms Intrusive Interstitials Ding Will Apply To Desktop Sites

SEOs Feel That Optimizing for Page Experience Wasn’t Worth It

When Google’s Page Experience update began rolling out in June, SEOs were sold the dream that this would be what pushed them ahead of their competitors on SERPs. 

Many of us had spent months optimizing for Core Web Vitals and other page experience ranking signals, and if you were one of them, you know that it was anything but easy. In fact, preparing for Page Experience was such a massive undertaking that Google gave us an unprecedented amount of forewarning – a full year – to get our sites up to scratch. For a search engine that loves nothing more than pulling the rug out from under us, this seemed to signal that the update would be colossal.

So, we got to work, and we worked for months. A reward for our efforts was dangled like a carrot – but, as George Nguyen at Search Engine Land pointed out in a blog, many SEOs feel this reward was never received. 

Now that the Page Experience update has been live for a couple of days shy of two months, we can begin to evaluate the effects. And it’s safe to say that very few SEOs, if any, have seen significant ranking changes since Core Web Vitals became a set of ranking signals. Even sites that originally had terrible scores and managed to get them all in the green barely reaped a single reward, and many are saying the time investment simply wasn’t worth it.

Read more:  SEOs Feel That Optimizing for Page Experience Wasn’t Worth It

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WordPress Security Just Leveled-Up

The runaway popularity of WordPress and the open source nature of the WordPress ecosystem has made it an intense target of hackers. Security has long been a major issue with WordPress. That may have changed recently when the commercial arm of WordPress recently acquired a security company which may help internalize security and reduce hacking incidents.

Third Party Plugin and Theme Developer Vulnerabilities

Common vulnerabilities like Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and WordPress API exploits happen because of sloppy coding practices from third party developers in the WordPress ecosystem.

The two most common points of failure are when software coders fail to sanitize what is being input or uploaded to a WordPress installation. 

WordPress Security Company Acquired by WordPress

Jetpack, a division of the commercial arm of WordPress, Automattic, announced that it is acquiring the popular WPScan WordPress security suite company. WPScan provides resources that enable the WordPress and WordPress security ecosystem to fight back against security issues quickly. Jetpack is a suite of WordPress tools that also includes a security component.

WordPress security is an important area for WordPress because it’s what competitors cite as a weakness in WordPress. So on that level it makes sense for Jetpack to acquire a company with a proactive stance on WordPress security.

Why WPScan is Important

WPScan is a database of vulnerabilities.

WPScan also provides:

An API for accessing the database

WPScan Security Scanner, a Command Line Interface (CLI) scanner

A WordPress security plugin

WPScan Database

WPScan is first and foremost an openly available database that records WordPress vulnerabilities and makes the information available via an API.

The information about WordPress vulnerabilities is hand curated by WPScan and contributors.

WPScan WordPress Security Scanner

WPScan also provides WPScan WordPress Security Scanner, which is a Command Line Interface scanner that is free for non-commercial use for scanning a website for vulnerabilities that are recorded in the WPScan database.

WPScan WordPress Plugin

Lastly, WPScan offers a free plugin that scans a website to determine if the WordPress installation itself and/or installed themes and plugins have vulnerabilities. The plugin uses the WPScan database API to check for vulnerabilities. The daily scan is said to fall within the free tier of API usage.

Why Did Jetpack acquire WPScan?

Jetpack’s stated reason for acquiring WPScan is to open up the data even more and to continue it as a resource for the entire WordPress ecosystem.

WordPress Security Will Improve

The founders of WPScan are going to work for Automattic as part of the deal that culminated in the acquisition.

Source: WordPress Security Just Leveled-Up

Google is hiring a Search Quality Analyst to fight search spam

Google is hiring a new Search Quality Analyst who would work on fighting spam in the Google Search results. A new job posting by Google is currently accepting applications, the job seems to require you to be available to work on-site at the Mountain View, California office.

Job details. The job description defines the job of a Search Quality Analyst as someone who “will be working to measure and prevent inorganic user behavior through enforcement and development of our webmaster guidelines.” It also requires you to “support search ranking launches through qualitative and quantitative analyses.” As a Search Quality Analyst, Google said, “you will solve problems across data sets, with the power of Google’s technology to identify issues occurring in Google Search and related product areas.”

Make a difference. Google said this job will make a difference and have a “direct impact on users every day.” Plus you will get to work “closely with engineers and other analysts to launch algorithms and lead efforts that improve the overall search experience.” In short, you get to understand the search ranking algorithms in a deeper way and actually work on overall search quality.

Responsibilities. Google lists out these are the core responsibilities of the job:

• Prevent abuse of Google Search by analyzing search trends, identifying inorganic activity, and developing solutions.
• Solve analytical problems and apply analytical methods as needed within datasets.
• Engage cross-functionally with a wide variety of people and teams. Work closely with Engineers and Analysts to lead the development of long-lasting solutions.
• Prepare and present recommendations to multiple levels of stakeholders.

Qualifications. Here is a listing of all the qualifications to apply for this job:

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience working with one or more of the following languages: SQL, HTML, PHP, JavaScript, Python, Go and/or C++.
• Experience in data analysis, or working as a data scientist, abuse analyst, or law enforcement investigator.
• Experience managing projects and defining project scope, goals, and deliverables.

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree in a quantitative discipline.
• Experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or experience as a webmaster.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Source: Google is hiring a Search Quality Analyst to fight search spam

Is Domain Name a Google Ranking Factor?

The Claim: Domain Name as a Ranking Factor

You’ve probably heard a client or someone in SEO say something like: “Exact match domains generate instant credibility.”

“It’s the best investment you could make.”

“It gives you a competitive edge.”

It was true — back in the day. The Hotels.com domain sold for $11 million in 2003, making it one of the most expensive domain name purchases of all time.

Domain Name as a Ranking Factor: The Evidence

There’s a lot of chatter online about domain names and their impact on rankings.

Does Domain Name Affect Ranking?

In 2011, Bill Slawski investigated Google’s exact match domain patent and uncovered insightful nuggets of information.

He theorized that it is possible that keywords in domains work better, according to the patent.

How Important is Exact Match Domain Name?

The fact is, exact match domain names were always gray hat feeding into the black hat world. Exact match domains are pure baloney from a ranking factors standpoint.

Domain Name as a Ranking Signal: Our Verdict

While there are exceptions to every rule, you want to properly evaluate your goals for the domain when it comes to your domain name.

Speaking of exceptions, there is one here with our verdict: and that is when it comes to pure navigational searches.

For example, if someone searches for a domain (e.g., Facebook), they are specifically looking to navigate to that domain (eg., www.facebook.com), via a Google search (vs. typing in the URL or opening the site via a bookmark). In that case, the fact that Facebook is Facebook will help Facebook rank for that query.

Source: Is Domain Name a Google Ranking Factor?

Buying fake Justin Bieber tickets could see your phone infected with malware

Scammers are increasingly leveraging call centers to carry out cyberattacks and infect their victims with malware after first roping them in by using PayPal invoices and even tickets to Justin Bieber’s upcoming 2022 world tour as lures, experts have warned.

According to a new report from Proofpoint, the firm’s security researchers have observed an increase in attacks that rely on victims to call scammers directly and initiate the interaction after receiving an email with their phone number. 

However, there are two types of these attacks, with one using free remote assistance software to steal money while the other, which is frequently associated with BazaCall, uses the BazaLoader malware disguised as a document to compromise a victim’s computer and gain access to their online accounts.

Source: Buying fake Justin Bieber tickets could see your phone infected with malware

Microsoft Teams is finally getting the update you’ve all been waiting for

Working together with others outside your organization in Microsoft Teams will soon be possible thanks to a new update to Microsoft’s online collaboration tool.

Working together with others outside your organization in Microsoft Teams will soon be possible thanks to a new update to Microsoft’s online collaboration tool.

Workgroups often extend beyond one’s organization with employees connecting with multiple external stakeholders including customers, vendors and partners. However, up until now, users had to rely on different software or even personal apps to collaborate with them.

Not only does this require employees to use multiple apps which takes longer and can reduce their productivity, it also creates security risks for both workers and their companies.

For this reason, Microsoft is currently working on two updates that leverage Microsoft Teams Connect and the secure access capabilities of Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to make cross-organizational collaboration easier for businesses.

Source: Microsoft Teams is finally getting the update you’ve all been waiting for

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