SEO 2021 year in review: Endless updates, title rewrites, GMB becomes GBP, and more

In 2021, SEOs faced a flurry of Google updates (including the highly anticipated yet possibly-overhyped Page Experience update), new search results page features like continuous scrolling, and countless other updates that could potentially affect visibility for their brands — all while operating amid the second year of the COVID pandemic.

From core updates and title change fiascos to improved shopping options and new ways of tracking data, this year was full of surprises. Here’s our look back at the most impactful SEO news, tactics, and tools of 2021.

Google algorithm updates

Core updates. Google released three major core updates — one in June, one in July and one in November. The first caused a lot of search volatility, with tools like MozCast reaching a temperature of 107.3°F on June 3. The July update continued this spike until it all died down around July 12.

On November 17, Google announced a third, somewhat surprising core update, just days before the Thanksgiving holiday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. According to many tracking tools, this update had higher volatility than June and July’s. Due to the speedy rollout and widespread ranking shifts, many SEOs rightfully wondered why Google chose this time of year to release such a large update.

Page title rewrites. Of all the algorithm updates from this past year, the changes to Google’s page title rewrites in the search engine results pages (SERPs) were the most controversial. Marketers began noticing significant changes to their SERP titles around mid-August.

Passage indexing. Google introduced passage indexing, an algorithm tweak that ranks segmented pieces of content on a page, to the SERPs in early February. Google now displays these passages as featured snippets and links users to that particular part of the page.

Read more: SEO 2021 year in review: Endless updates, title rewrites, GMB becomes GBP, and more

It’s A Wrap: December 2021 Google Product Reviews Update Done Rolling Out

Google said on Tuesday, December 21, 2021, that the December 2021 Google product reviews update is now fully rolled out. Alan Kent from Google shared this news on Twitter after I asked him for an update – he said “the Google product review update is fully rolled out.”

The update started 20 days ago on December 1, 2021, so just under a full three weeks as the original announcement said it would take.

Google Product Reviews Update Quick Facts

Here are the most important things that we know right now in short form:

• Name: Google December 2021 Product Reviews Update
• Launched: December 1, 2021 at around 12:30pm ET
• Finished: December 21, 2021 (mostly to all data centers)
• Rollout: It will take about three weeks to fully rollout
• Targets: It looks at product review content
• Penalty: It is not a penalty, it promotes or rewards “insightful analysis and original research.”
• Not a core update: Many are going to say this is a core update, it is not.
• English Only: This is only looking at English-language content right now, this is a global launch but only for English content at this point.
• Impact: Google would not tell me what percentage of queries or searches were impacted by this update.
• Discover: This update can impact your performance in Google Discover, Google previously said.
• Recover: If you were hit by this, then you will need to look at your content and see if you can do better with Google’s advice below
• Refreshes: Google will do periodic refreshes to this algorithm but may not communicate those updates in the future. This may be the first refresh that Google has done, it is the first refresh Google communicated about.

Read more: It’s A Wrap: December 2021 Google Product Reviews Update Done Rolling Out

John Mueller Of Google Providing Webmaster Support on Christmas Again

Google’s John Mueller again, actually since 2007, year-after-year, has jumped into the Google support forums and on social media to answer webmaster questions on Google Search. It is a tradition for him, now 14 years and going. He carves out time to help those on Christmas even and day with their Google search and SEO issues.

This year, on Christmas eve he even did a Google SEO office-hours video hangout to answer questions.

So many were appreciative that John did this on the eve of Christmas.

Here are the previous years of John offering support on Christmas. He did it last year in 2020, 2019 and in 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007. And this year again, he is out there on social media and in the Google support forums helping webmasters.

Here are just some of his responses to webmasters he posted on Christmas eve and day, above and beyond.

Read more: John Mueller Of Google Providing Webmaster Support on Christmas Again

Google Keeps Track Of Algorithm Changes But It’s Hard To Use Even Internally

Alan Bleiweiss, a smart and fun SEO, asked John Mueller of Google if Google has a “Google Book of Secrets” where it stores all the algorithmic changes it makes in a single location. The short answer is, yes, Google does store all the changes it makes but the long answer from John is that it isn’t always useful.

The question came up at the 38:26 mark where Alan asked “does Google have someone tasked with the job of recording each update in a logbook, and noting which aspects of search are impacted? If so, is it called “Google’s Book of Secrets”?”

John Mueller said that yes, Google does document all of the changes it makes but he added that it is hard, even for internal Google purposes, to use that to figure out why a change happened to a specific URL. John said, “it is really hard sometimes to track back, even on our side, which of the changes had an effect here and what caused this difference in rankings.”

Mueller added that even if Google did publish this, which they kind of did in the past, it wouldn’t be helpful. John said, “so even if we gave you this kind of logbook of Google Search change, I think it is really hard to turn that into something useful.”

Read more: Google Keeps Track Of Algorithm Changes But It’s Hard To Use Even Internally

Read more:

PPC 2021 in review: Privacy and automation force advertisers to adapt

Non-stop updates: SEOs share the impact on their day-to-day, work-life balance, and career outlook

Bing launches travel-oriented results pages and a trip-planning hub

Popular WordPress platform Flywheel vulnerable to subdomain takeover, researcher claims

A subdomain takeover vulnerability in a popular WordPress hosting platform could allow an attacker to deploy malicious code to a victim by impersonating a legitimate website, a security researcher claims.

The alleged security flaw was discovered in Flywheel, a platform that offers WordPress hosting and related services.

Takeover

A subdomain takeover occurs when an attacker gains control over a subdomain of a target domain, usually when the subdomain has a canonical name (CNAME) in the Domain Name System (DNS), but no host is providing content for it.

“This can happen because either a virtual host hasn’t been published yet or a virtual host has been removed,” Ahmed Elmalky, who discovered the issue.

The exploit

In a recent blog post, Elmalky claimed he was able to exploit the vulnerability by finding a page that was hosted by Flywheel but wasn’t set up correctly.

He subscribed to Flywheel for $15, created a site, and linked it to the vulnerable subdomain, thus taking it over.

The mitigation

In order to protect against this simple but potentially damaging attack, end users should audit available DNS records and make sure they are aware of how exactly they are used and what type of services or applications are managed on them, Elmalky said.

Response

A spokesperson for WP Engine, of which Flywheel is a part of, said: “We have reviewed all of the posted information, both in the… article and the linked researchers’ articles, and believe this is an artifact of customer-managed DNS records on any platform with a shared IP space, not just Flywheel.

“In other words, though the researchers call out Flywheel, the issue is not specific to Flywheel, nor does Flywheel manage customer domain records.

“On the responsible disclosure front, we are unclear as to whether the researchers notified anyone, given that we have both a public vulnerability disclosure program and an abuse email address that is closely monitored by multiple teams.”

Source: Popular WordPress platform Flywheel vulnerable to subdomain takeover, researcher claims

Google Ads not serving fully on Gmail

Google Ads are not serving to all Gmail users, specific to Gmail users on desktop browsers. Google confirmed the issue in the Google Ads status dashboard over here.

What is the issue. Google said the issue is around Google Ads not being served, and thus the ads not being displayed, to users who use the desktop version of Gmail, Google’s email service.

When did it start. The issue started yesterday, December 23rd, at around 2pm ET or 7:01 PM UTC.

When will it be resolved. Google has not given us an estimated time for the issue to be resolved but the company promised to provide an update by Dec 25, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC “detailing when we expect to resolve the problem,” the company said.

Why we care. If you are running Google Ads for Gmail users, then you may see a dip in the number of ads being served. This is a known issue that Google is working to resolve.

Source: Google Ads not serving fully on Gmail

Multiple State of the Word Attendees Test Positive for COVID-19

Matt Mullenweg’s 2021 State of the Word address was held in New York City nine days ago with a live studio audience. On Sunday, December 19, all in-person attendees were notified by email that they were possibly exposed to COVID-19 after one of the attendees tested positive.

Although proof of vaccination was required at the door, multiple people have reported recent infections after traveling home from the event. Aaron Jorbin tweeted about his case today, and four more have been reported in a private channel on Post Status Slack.

There’s no way to know for certain whether the attendees who contracted COVID-19 caught the virus at the State of the Word, as many of them traveled from far away places and had meetups with other attendees outside of the main event.

Concerns about the lack of masks and no requirement for rapid tests began popping up prior to the event. From the perspective of viewing the livestream, masks were scant and attendees were quite close together in a small space.

The day before the event, the WHO warned that evidence suggested the new Omicron variant could escape prior immunity and would lead to surges with a high transmission rate. Studies were already showing reduced effectiveness of existing vaccines against the variant. On December 13, New York governor Kathy Hochul announced a new temporary indoor mask mandate for public spaces, which could be bypassed by requiring vaccines for entrance.

When asked how the State of the Word’s coordinators decided on the precautions, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy said the event met the local guidelines while allowing attendees to make their own choices for anything beyond the requirements.

Source: Multiple State of the Word Attendees Test Positive for COVID-19

WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 Fixes 20 Bugs, Polishes Workflow for Switching to a Block Theme

WordPress 5.9 beta 4 was released this week with fixes for 20 bugs since beta 3. There are a few important changes to note in this release regarding how the WordPress admin will direct users who are exploring block themes.

Prior to a fix in beta 4, it was possible for users to switch to a block theme within the Customizer. This has been changed so that users will see a banner notifying them that the block theme is incompatible, if they try to switch within the Customizer. Here’s the commit message:

“Starting in 5.9, block themes are not compatible with (do not support) Customizer; rather, they use the Site Editor. Viewing installed themes in Customizer, this commit adds an overlay message to alert users and give them a way to activate the block theme. Clicking on the “Activate” button activates the block theme and redirects back to the Appearance > Themes interface, where the user can then enter the Site Editor for customization.

Non-block themes are not affected by this change and continue to work in Customizer.”

Source: WordPress 5.9 Beta 4 Fixes 20 Bugs, Polishes Workflow for Switching to a Block Theme

Google punches itself in the face by discontinuing the Pixel Slate

Imagine, if you will, a runner five miles into a marathon. At this stage they would have barely started, covering just 20% of the overall distance. Now picture that person stopping mid-stride and punching themselves in the face over and over again until they cascade into unconsciousness.

That runner, friends, is Google.

To sprinkle some context on the tale of self-pugilation: Google has discontinued its flagship tablet, the Pixel Slate. 9to5 Google noticed the tablet — which was launched in 2018 — was no longer listed on the company’s website. The Pixel Slate is dead.

Google discontinuing a product or service isn’t much of a surprise, I mean, there are websites solely dedicated to keeping track of all the things the company has prematurely shuttered.

But the Pixel Slate is a big loss, both to Google and the public at large.

Before we go on, a short disclaimer.

We’ve reached out to Google for a comment and more clarification, but we’re working under the assumption that the company has shifted completely out of selling tablets, rather than readying for a next model. Not only has it half-announced this, the decision is also backed by logic: why would Google remove all traces of the hardware from its site if it was planning to launch something else?

In other words, Google’s tablet aspirations are dead.

But why are you a sadboy about the Pixel Slate?

Simply put, it’s because Google had the potential to make a fantastic, competitive, and affordable machine.

Over the past year, I got bang into tablets again — something I attribute to my time with iPad Pro. Long story short, I now get what tablets are for. I understand their value. And, alongside that, I recognize the importance of competition.

The iPad has long been the dominant tablet across the world and there’s little that’s truly challenging it. Yes, the Samsung Galaxy Tab and Amazon Fire HD are popular and solid devices, but they can’t really match Apple when it comes to quality, usability, and interoperability

But I believe Google could.

Let’s take its Pixel phones as an example. I’ve written before that the company found its sweet spot with the budget-focused “a” series of handsets. These thrive by eschewing the idea of competing as a premium brand — instead making affordable devices that use the cleanest version of Android and perform seamlessly as part of the overall Google ecosystem. In fact, the company seems to have taken this onboard, as with the Pixel 5 it actually removed some features the previous model had, as well as dropping the price.

And you know what? It was one of the best phones of 2020.

This is the approach I would’ve loved Google to take with the Pixel Slate. The original tablet wasn’t perfect — far from it, in fact. Although it was a gorgeous machine, it was overpriced compared to its competitors and it wasn’t entirely clear who it was aimed at.

Source: Google punches itself in the face by discontinuing the Pixel Slate

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PPC 2021 in review: Privacy and automation force advertisers to adapt

In 2021, PPC professionals navigated changes in keyword match types and automated bidding, scratched their heads at the prospect of a future without third-party cookies, and navigated their role in an increasingly automated industry.

Prompted by the vision that platforms, like Google, have for their services as well as increased concern over user privacy, these changes underscored adaptability as one of the traits that define successful marketers. Below, we’ve summarized the most impactful changes, announcements, and developments that shaped PPC this past year and, in all likelihood, will continue to influence the years ahead as well.

Farewell, broad match modified keywords

In Q1 2021, Google announced a significant change to how it treats phrase match keywords by expanding it to include broad match modifier traffic (BMM).

“Broad match now looks at additional signals in your account to deliver more relevant searches,” Google also announced. These signals include landing pages and keywords in your ad group.

Bundled bid strategies replaced standalone options

Google updated its Smart Bidding in April 2021, bundling the Target CPA (tCPA) and Target ROAS (tROAS) strategies with the Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value bid strategies.

Three months later, the company removed standalone Maximize conversions and Maximize conversion value bid strategies for search campaigns. Shortly after that, Google removed the old tCPA and tROAS options from standard campaigns, effectively completing the bundling of these bid strategies.

FLoC was heavily debated, but not rolled out

With the deprecation of third-party cookies slated for 2022 (which Google later pushed back to the latter half of 2023), it wasn’t much of a surprise when Google first announced that it was testing an alternative targeting technology in October 2020. Known as Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), the proposal was opened for advertiser testing in Q2 2021.

Read more: PPC 2021 in review: Privacy and automation force advertisers to adapt

Messy SEO: Fixing site structure while a Google title change sinks clickthroughs

This installment of “Messy SEO” details my process of working with our marketing, content, and development teams to further clean up the search engine results pages for MarTech. In Part 4, we discussed the issues arising from Google’s title changes and the tactics taken to address them.

SERP title change fallout and improvements

Google’s SERP title changes from August did a number on our MarTech mission page, pulling in irrelevant alt text from our site header logo, making the title link read “Martech is Marketing Logo.”

We tried many tactics to combat this change: resubmitting the page via Google Search Console, adding contextual internal links, and updating the title tag every few days to see if anything changed. And, after months of edits and monitoring the SERPs, Google finally updated the MarTech title tag to reflect our chosen version (shown below).

Our original chosen page title tag read “What is MarTech? …This is MarTech.” We believed Google’s algorithm felt this tag wasn’t clear enough for searchers, so we tweaked it a bit to better highlight the main topic of the page. In a sense, we answered the question we posed in the same tag, inviting searchers to view the page to learn more.

We were thrilled to see Google update this important page’s title in the SERPs. But, after digging into the original change’s effects on MarTech search performance, we saw the true impact of Google’s SERP title alteration.

Google December 2021 product reviews update is finished rolling out

Read more: Messy SEO: Fixing site structure while a Google title change sinks clickthroughs

Google has confirmed that the December 2021 product reviews update is now finished rolling out. This update has officially completed rolling out a few days before Christmas.

The announcement. “The Google product review update is fully rolled out. Thank you!” Google’s Alan Kent wrote on Twitter.

December 2021 product reviews update. As a reminder, the December 2021 product reviews update started to roll out at about 12:30 pm ET on December 1, 2021. This update took 20 days to roll out after it was announced. So this update started on December 1, 2021, and lasted through December December 21, 2021.

When and what was felt. Based on early data, this update was not a small update. It was bigger than the April 2021 product reviews update but also seemed to continue to remain pretty volatile throughout the whole rollout. The community chatter and tracking tools were all at pretty high levels consistently for the past few weeks.

Read more: Google December 2021 product reviews update is finished rolling out

Microsoft Bing’s Shopify integration now live with buy now

The Microsoft Bing and Shopify integration that was previously announced in October is now live in the Bing Shopping and Bing Search results, the company announced.

Microsoft said “we’re excited to share that the experiences are live,” where you can more deeply integrate your Shopify site so Bing has showcased more “diverse products, great prices, and improved discovery of deals.” “With the integration of Shopify, you will now have access to millions of merchants to select from,” Microsoft said.

You can click the “Buy Now” link directly in the Bing search results and be taken directly to the shopping cart page on that Shopify website. Here is a screenshot of this:

Read more: Microsoft Bing’s Shopify integration now live with buy now

Google Search Console accessibility issues fully resolved five days later

Last Thursday, many SEOs noticed that Google Search Console was inaccessible. Google confirmed the issue saying “We’re aware of an issue with Search Console that prevents some users from using the service. We’re working on fixing it and we’ll post an update when the issue is resolved.” The issue was not impacting all users, but it did impact many users.

The issue is now officially resolved, five days after it was first confirmed. Google posted in an update “The issue is now resolved. Thanks for the patience.”

Resolved earlier. I believe this was mostly resolved earlier, like within 48-hours of the issue, but Google probably fully restored access five days later. It is not clear what the issue was exactly but it seemed to me it was around server capacity and resources for the Search Console tools. Again, that is not confirmed but the errors displayed conveyed a 429 Apache error which means “Too Many Requests response status code indicates the user has sent too many requests in a given amount of time (“rate limiting”).”

Read more: Google Search Console accessibility issues fully resolved five days later

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DuckDuckGo To Release Desktop Version Of Mobile App

DuckDuckGo is working on a desktop version of its mobile app, which offers a private browsing experience that’s said to be faster than Google Chrome.

It’s not a “privacy browser,” as DuckDuckGo makes sure to clarify in an announcement.

Rather, it’s being referred to as: “an everyday browsing app that respects your privacy.”

That could be PR lingo for what actually ends up behaving as a privacy browser, but we’ll have to wait and see when the product officially launches.

What’s the difference between a privacy browser and a private browsing app?

DuckDuckGo says the difference is defined by how its app is built:

“Instead of forking Chromium or anything else, we’re building our desktop app around the OS-provided rendering engines (like on mobile), allowing us to strip away a lot of the unnecessary cruft and clutter that’s accumulated over the years in major browsers.”

Not to be confused with DuckDuckGo’s extension for the Chrome desktop browser, its private browsing app will be a standalone product.

The desktop app will offer a number of advantages over using Chrome with the DuckDuckGo extension installed.

Source: DuckDuckGo To Release Desktop Version Of Mobile App

Google Ads issue affected a significant subset of users, now resolved

Google has confirmed an issue with Google Ads that is “affecting a significant subset of users,” the company posted on the Google Ads status dashboard. Google updated the dashboard to say the issue is now resolved.

The notice. Google posted at 3:22pm ET “we’re aware of a problem with Google Ads affecting a significant subset of users. We will provide an update by Dec 22, 2021, 1:00 AM UTC detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but may not have access to the most recent data.”

What is the issue. Google wrote that the Google Ads conversions that use non-First/Last Click attribution models, such as Data Driven Attribution, may be delayed up to 24 hours.

Simon Poulton complained about this on Twitter saying “seems like there might be some conversion pipeline latency / undercounting going on with Google Ads today.”

It seems like this is just a reporting issue and hopefully Google will be able to restore that data.

Fixed. Shortly after posting this story, Google updated the status to report the issue is resolved. Google wrote “the problem with Google Ads has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but may not have access to the most recent data.” “Conversions delayed by this incident, those making use of non-First/Last Click attribution models, are now present in Google Ads,” Google added.

Source: Google Ads issue affected a significant subset of users, now resolved

Google Loses Top Domain Spot To TikTok

Google is no longer the world’s most popular domain after being dethroned by TikTok, according to rankings from web security company Cloudflare.

The list of most popular domains is part of Cloudflare’s Year in Review report and represents domains that gained the most traffic from one year to another.

Google.com — which includes also includes Maps, Translate, and News among others — ended the previous year as the leader in Cloudflare’s rankings.

At that time, TikTok was ranking in the 7th position.

TikTok.com is now ending 2021 with a leap toward top spot ahead of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other world leading domains.

Here’s the full list of the top 10 most popular domains as of late 2021:

1. TikTok.com
2. Google.com
3. Facebook.com
4. Microsoft.com
5. Apple.com
6. Amazon.com
7. Netflix.com
8. YouTube.com
9. Twitter.com
10. WhatsApp.com

Cloudflare describes TikTok’s journey toward becoming the most popular domain throughout the year 2021:

“It was on February 17, 2021, that TikTok got the top spot for a day. Back in March, TikTok got a few more days and also in May, but it was after August 10, 2021, that TikTok took the lead on most days. There were some days when Google was #1, but October and November were mostly TikTok’s days, including on Thanksgiving (November 25) and Black Friday (November 26).”

Also included in Cloudflare’s report are lists of the most popular social media domains, most popular e-commerce platforms, and most popular video streaming sites.

To no surprise, Amazon ended the year as the most popular e-commerce domain, followed by Taobao, Ebay, and Walmart.

The list of most popular video streaming sites was dominated by giants such as Netflix, YouTube, and HBOMax. Interestingly, Twitch didn’t manage to crack the top 10.

Source: Google Loses Top Domain Spot To TikTok

Microsoft Advertising CVP Rik van der Kooi announces departure

After more than a decade leading Microsoft Advertising, Rik van der Kooi, the platform’s corporate vice president, announced his departure on Wednesday. Rob Wilk, vice president at Microsoft Advertising, will step up to lead the platform.

Why we care

van der Kooi’s departure signals the end of an era of leadership at Microsoft Advertising and the start of a new one. “[van der Kooi’s] leadership has been instrumental in Microsoft Advertising’s growth over the last 10+ years,” John Lee, head of evangelism at Microsoft Advertising, told Search Engine Land.

“The decision to promote Rob Wilk into the leadership role is significant for continuity and the ongoing success of the Microsoft Advertising business [and] platform,” Lee said, adding, “In short, Microsoft Advertising is in a very good place with growth and momentum for the future.”

Additionally, new leadership often brings change, which may affect many (if not all) advertisers on Microsoft’s platform. It’s not clear what changes Wilk will make, but it’s something marketers should expect in 2022.

More on the news

• Rob Wilk has led Microsoft Advertising’s global strategic sales team for the last six years and has more than 25 years of advertising and media experience. Prior to working at Microsoft, he was the vice president of sales at Foursquare.
• During his tenure, van der Kooi helped to launch the Microsoft Audience Network (which is now available in 25 markets worldwide) and played a role in the acquisition of e-commerce advertising vendor PromoteIQ, among other accomplishments.

Source: Microsoft Advertising CVP Rik van der Kooi announces departure

800,000 WordPress sites still vulnerable to simple takeover attacks

Despite two critical flaws in a popular WordPress plugin being patched weeks ago, hundreds of thousands of webmasters are yet to deploy the update, putting their sites at risk of takeover attacks.

The “All in One” SEO WordPress plugin was vulnerable to two flaws – CVE-2021-25036, which is a critical Authenticated Privilege Escalation flaw, and CVE-2021-25037, a high-severity Authenticated SQL Injection bug. 

In total, three million sites were vulnerable to the flaw. In the past two weeks, since the patch was issued by the plugin’s developers, more than two million plugins were updated, leaving some 820,000 still vulnerable. 

Updating the plugins fast

Even though the flaws require the attacker to be authenticated with WordPress, they only need low-level permissions, such as Subscriber, to work. Usually, a Subscriber can only post comments and edit their own profile, but with CVE-2021-25036, they can elevate their privileges and remotely execute code on vulnerable sites. 

Automattic security researcher Marc Montpas, who first spotted the flaws, says abusing these flaws on vulnerable sites is easy, as all the attacker needs to do is change “a single character to uppercase” to circumvent all privilege checks.

Webmasters using the All in One SEO WordPress plugin should make sure they update it to version 4.1.5.3. 

Serious flaws that come with WordPress plugins are a relatively common occurrence.

The same month, the “Preview E-mails for WooCommerce” plugin was also found to hold a serious flaw, potentially allowing attackers complete site takeover. The plugin was used by more than 20,000 sites. 

Source: 800,000 WordPress sites still vulnerable to simple takeover attacks

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Non-stop updates: SEOs share the impact on their day-to-day, work-life balance, and career outlook

This year, Google rolled out an unusually high number of updates. As a matter of fact, the company released a local search update as we conducted interviews for this article. Google updates can be frustrating for brands and businesses because they might negatively impact their visibility, ceding rankings to competitors and impacting traffic and/or revenue. 

The heightened frequency of updates this year may intensify that experience, which means that SEOs might also be under more pressure to identify issues and implement solutions. But, there are many types of SEOs working across different verticals as well as at agencies and in-house, and their respective experiences vary.

To provide a comprehensive picture of what it’s like to work in this environment, five SEOs have shared how their workload changes after updates rollout, how their clients might respond, along how this year’s updates have changed their work-life balance and career outlook.

The goal of search engines is to provide users with the best possible experience, which is what brands should be focusing on as well. The overlap means that, regardless of what updates may come, SEOs always have a north star to guide them.

“I see the Google updates as a way to emphasize that the purpose of SEO is to serve users and move away from the idea that ‘ranking and traffic is everything,’” Anconitano said, noting that ROI and conversions are more significant business metrics. “The only way to generate conversions is to serve users well. Being first in Google helps, but being relevant matters more than anything else, both in Google’s and users’ eyes,” she said.

Read more: Non-stop updates: SEOs share the impact on their day-to-day, work-life balance, and career outlook

5 ways marketers can support entry-level SEO talent

Despite almost two years of massive societal and market transformation, the SEO industry has remained largely intact. In fact, it’s expanded far beyond its prior reach.

“Rewind to March 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic beginning — people couldn’t go in stores, so they went online to buy their products,” said Abby Reimer, SEO manager at marketing agency Uproer, during her session at SMX Next. “With that, you saw a lot of businesses prioritizing their website and their online search presence, naturally leading to an increase in the need for SEO.”

“The demand for SEO has increased; however, the supply has not,” she added.

Like many industries, entry-level SEOs are often undervalued, making it difficult to land a relevant job when starting their careers. But, with such a high demand for their expertise, marketers and brands would be wise to capitalize on their talent.

Reimer says focusing on entry-level talent and training them to become senior-level SEOs can:

• Bring in a much larger pool of candidates;
• Make it easier on your budget; and
• Increase diversity in your organization as well as within the SEO industry.

Read more: 5 ways marketers can support entry-level SEO talent

The ‘Vicinity Update’: Winners and losers from the November 2021 local update

Google announced last week that it rolled out an update to the local search and map pack results. It began on November 30 and finished on December 8.

We noticed really dramatic differences in ranking on December 6, 2021. My agency named the update “The Vicinity Update” because the most significant impact we saw was that Google made it so that smaller, less established businesses that are closer to the user are now ranking better than overpowered businesses further away. Google said that it “rebalanced” the factors that make up the algorithm and we have observed that proximity got a big boost while some relevance factors declined. 

Google has weighted keywords in the business name too heavily for as long as I can remember. This often leads to businesses adding them, regardless of the fact that it breaks Google’s guidelines, because it has such a significant impact on ranking It has also led to Google showing fake listings in the search results instead of real businesses. With this update, businesses that are newer and trying to follow Google’s guidelines should have a much greater shot of ranking. 

If you have questions about how the algorithm update impacted you, feel free to chime in over at the thread at the Local Search Forum.

Read more: The ‘Vicinity Update’: Winners and losers from the November 2021 local update

Google Confirms Links To 404 Pages Are Not Counted

If you have a lot of links to your site, but some of those links are pointing to pages that no longer exist and serve a 404 not found status code – those links technically are not helping or hurting your site in Google Search. John Mueller of Google said on Twitter if “the link goes nowhere, so we drop it.”

John explained this as if “you recommend something that doesn’t exist anymore, it’s really a useful recommendation, right?” The same thing with links, if Google finds links that lead to something that no longer exists, is that a useful recommendation? The answer is no and Google does not count them.

Read more: Google Confirms Links To 404 Pages Are Not Counted

Google SearGoogle Search Ranking Algorithm Tremors Continue & It’s Big

Are you dizzy yet? The Google search results are still super volatile and we are seeing high levels of chatter spike back up over the past 24 to 48 hours and the tracking tools are also running incredibly hot. There is just so much going on right now in Google Search for an SEO that taking off for Christmas might not be an option for many.

This story was originally published on December 17th at 7:50am ET but I wanted to add more data through Sunday, December 19th. In short, the chatter and fluctuations have continued and they actually spiked in a big way on December 18th. I have added a new section below for what is new with the volatility.

Just when you thought we had enough, we didn’t. As I mentioned just before, we had tons of updates this past year, both confirmed and unconfirmed Google search algorithm updates. It seems like this is ongoing volatility from earlier this week and it is hard to say if it is all directly related to the ongoing product reviews update or not.

Read more: Google Search Ranking Algorithm Tremors Continue & It’s BigQuizzes Test

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YouTube to automatically link to places mentioned in videos

Google Local Search Ranking Algorithm Update Last Week

SMS Marketing For Local Business: Trends You’ll Need In 2022

The Evolution Of Business Messaging

The way businesses communicate constantly changes and evolves.

It started with the telegram, morphed into the postal service, and has continued to evolve into the rise of email.

The Problem: Now, our inboxes have become overloaded with emails.

The Answer: SMS messaging.

Consumers say that texting is an easy and convenient method of responding to businesses.

With an extremely high open rate of 98%, text message marketing is equivalent to the open rates of email marketing back in its heyday.

Text message click-through rates are at 18% – 6.9 times higher than email – but only 12% of local businesses use text messaging as a marketing tool.

This means most local businesses aren’t tapping into texting yet, and they’re ignoring many opportunities to better engage with their customers.

The Power Of Conversational Text Messaging

Your consumers crave conversations that go beyond message blasts.

• 74% of consumers said they would text a local business as if they were an actual person.
• About half of consumers say they are more likely to respond to a business’s text message if the employee introduces herself/himself.

The Marketing Advantage of Texting

When asked if consumers would like the ability to communicate with a local business via text message, this is what they had to say:

• 24% – Yes, and I already do.
• 43% – Yes, and I haven’t yet.

With a big desire to interact with businesses via text, there’s also a big chance for companies to set themselves apart through this channel.

Make your brand stand out by being the first to market SMS messaging in your niche.

When done well, you can gain an advantage and stand out from your competition.

Consumer Text Messaging Trends

Texting has a 209% increase in response rate compared to phone calls, emails, or even Facebook Messenger.

While consumers don’t typically respond to voicemails and calls, they will usually reply to a text.

Why? It’s quick and easy.

Consumers are looking for convenience when communicating with a business.

SMS Marketing Tips For Local Businesses

Podium conducted a survey with 1,000 respondents; their answers will give you insight into how to create the perfect SMS messaging strategy.

Offer Incentives

Podium found that customers would like local businesses to send:

• Incentives (coupons, discounts, promo codes).
• Loyalty offers and benefits.
• “Back in stock” notifications.

Add Personalization

You can also make a stronger connection by adding personalization to your text messages.

Personalization, such as using the customer’s name, significantly impacts sales and customer service.

Sending Frequency

On average, Podium recommends sending text messages once per week or once a month.

However, the frequency of sending out promotional messages depends on the type of business.

Create A Frictionless Buying Experience 

Text messaging gives your business the ability to be proactive, nurture a client within minutes, and capture a sale.

Just being there to answer questions, provide immediate and valuable links, and show your lead that you care increases your potential to convert.

How To Avoid Unsubscribes

Consumers unsubscribe when businesses text them without permission or don’t recall signing up.

Make sure you have permission to text your customers by having them opt-in.

Other scenarios that lead to unsubscribes are:

• Receiving too many messages.
• Receiving messages that are irrelevant to them.
• More.

Source: SMS Marketing For Local Business: Trends You’ll Need In 2022

The ‘Vicinity Update’: Winners and losers from the November 2021 local update

Google announced last week that it rolled out an update to the local search and map pack results. It began on November 30 and finished on December 8.

We noticed really dramatic differences in ranking on December 6, 2021. My agency named the update “The Vicinity Update” because the most significant impact we saw was that Google made it so that smaller, less established businesses that are closer to the user are now ranking better than overpowered businesses further away. Google said that it “rebalanced” the factors that make up the algorithm and we have observed that proximity got a big boost while some relevance factors declined. 

What industries did it impact?

This update was dramatic, and in my findings, is the biggest update we have seen in local search since the Hawk update in 2017. Some industries are seeing the impact more than others. We are seeing huge differences for lawyers, home services, insurance, dentists, and many others. It’s important to note that you won’t likely see the impact of this update unless you are doing grid tracking that shows you how far away from your office you rank.

The winners

The winners in this update are:

• Businesses that don’t have keywords in their business name but have strong competitors that do.
• Secondary locations for prominent businesses

The losers

The losers from this update are:

• Businesses that ranked really far from their office.
• Businesses with keywords in the business name.

For example, below are screenshots from a business that meets both criteria. One of the keywords that describes their service is a part of their actual LLC name. They used to rank really far from where they are located and no longer do.

The pins indicate the location the user is searching from. Green pins indicate the business ranks in the top three results, yellow pins indicate the business ranks near the top three results and red pins mean the business does not rank near the top three results.

Source: The ‘Vicinity Update’: Winners and losers from the November 2021 local update

How To Do A Content Audit: The Ultimate Checklist

How long has it been since the last time you did a complete inventory and analysis of your content?

This is known as a content audit, and most content creators are so focused on creating new content that they forget to audit what they’ve already created.

If it’s been over twelve months, you may be basing your content strategy on out-of-date information.

Here are a few reasons why you need to audit your content on a regular basis:

• Goals: Is your content achieving its goals? What is your ROI from the content you’ve produced? You won’t know unless you measure your content’s performance and track it through regular audits.
• Staleness: Your content can become stale or even outdated over time. Don’t beat yourself up, though. Stale content isn’t always your fault. What was relevant two years ago may simply need updating now.
• Accuracy: As your content ages, facts and data that once were true can become inaccurate. Running an audit through your content regularly will ensure your post’s accuracy, helping to protect both your brand’s reputation and your search rankings.
• Know What’s Working: How will you ever know what type of content or which blog post is your most successful if you never go back to audit all of your content pieces? Perhaps pumping out three blog posts a week is really just tiring, and not actually producing any results. You’ll never know if you don’t go back and do a content audit to see which pieces perform best, and which were the worst.

Hopefully one, if not all, of those bullets spoke to you and you now understand why it’s so important to audit your content regularly.

Source: How To Do A Content Audit: The Ultimate Checklist

Google Ads rolling out new icons more widely

Google, over the past few months, has been rolling out new icons within the Google Ads console. Those who spend their days inside the ad console are taking notice of the new icons.

Screenshot. Here is a screenshot of the new Google Ads navigational icons from Brett Bodofsky on Twitter:

Some saw these earlier. Some have said they saw these icons begin to show up months ago, so we assume Google is now more widely rolling the new icons out now.

Reaction. The reaction to the change of icons is not all positive but you’d expect that when Google makes any sort of change to any of its interfaces. ere are some of the responses to the new icons:

Source: Google Ads rolling out new icons more widely

John Mueller explains self-hosted WordPress vs Wix

Google’s John Mueller proposed his viewpoint on shifting a site from Wix to self-hosted WordPress. He also talked about managing WordPress hosting. Also, he replied to an issue on Reddit about changing an SMB site to a self-hosted WordPress setting from Wix. He gave his statement on this particular scenario. This topic discussed the comparative merits and drawbacks of self-managed and managed WordPress for SMBs.

The meaning of SMB is small and medium businesses. What those sizes imply is not anything unchangeable; there are many meanings. Commonly, small industries are those with under 100 workers. Medium size industries have between 100 to 500 workers. Some explanations rank the medium as increased as 1,000 workers. Regulated WordPress hosting is a hosting setting where the web proprietor manages all the technological maintenance.

The host also manages similar details of hosting a WordPress website. The managed hosting company handles things like backups, updates, security, CDN, and caching.

Regulated WordPress hosting achieves pretty much similar things for industries, choosing WordPress stuff. However, it has some regulations. Wix probably also has a benefit over operated WordPress hosting.

A regulated WordPress proprietor optimizes its hosting settings for security and speed. It’s flawlessly convenient for industries that eventually wish to scale up. It is suitable for businesses that have full control over SEO and technology. John Mueller discovered one obvious problem. If Wix is operating for a small industry, then there is no point in shifting to a diverse platform.

Source: John Mueller explains self-hosted WordPress vs Wix

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Google Updates Search Results For News Stories On Desktop

Bing launches travel-oriented results pages and a trip-planning hub

For years, search engines have been expanding their travel offerings to the dismay of online travel agencies — Bing’s new travel features only continue that trend.

The new destination search results pages are visual-heavy, which may make them more compelling to users. Many of the search features, like hotel results or the “Explore destination” carousel, take users to other Bing properties. And, since they’re more visually compelling than a standard search listing, it may be even more difficult for OTAs to compete in the search results.

The new Travel Guide is quite similar to Google’s travel portal, but both Bing’s Travel Guide and its destination search results seem to be designed for discovery, which may help it serve customers that are in the initial stages of their planning. 

Revamped destination search results. Searching for a destination on Bing may trigger its new travel search experience (shown below for the query “Honolulu”).

This search results page format includes a large search feature containing a link to the Travel Guide (more on that below) for the destination, as well as carousels for local attractions and news. The best time of the year to visit and hotel listings are also prominent on the page, along with Tours and activities ads.

Read more: Bing launches travel-oriented results pages and a trip-planning hub

How to optimize your site for better findability

“You wouldn’t build a house without having a strong foundation,” Niki Mosier, head of SEO and content at AgentSync said, “And you shouldn’t build a website without having a strong foundation either, and without constantly making sure that foundation is strong and that there are no cracks in it.”

Optimizing the architecture of your site can help search engine crawlers find and index your content, which enables them to show those pages to users in the search results. It can also help send link authority around your site as well as make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for.

In her session at SMX Create, Niki Mosier shared the strategies she uses to ensure that the foundations of her site are solid and identify opportunities for greater search visibility.

Crawl budget analysis

Crawl budget refers to the number of URLs per site that Googlebot (or any other search engine crawler) can and wants to crawl.

“Every website gets a crawl budget, which can vary depending on the size of the site and the frequency that new content is being published on the site, so having an idea of what a website’s crawl budget is can be really beneficial in making informed decisions on what to optimize,” Mosier said.

Conducting a crawl budget analysis enables you to get a more comprehensive view of:

• How your website is being crawled. “If you identify that Googlebot is the client, you can use log file analysis to find out how Googlebot is handling the URLs on your site [and] if it is crawling any pages with parameters,” she said.
• How fast your site is. While there are many tools that can tell you how fast your server reacts, a log file analysis shows you how long it’s taking for a bot to download a resource from your server. 
• Indexing problems. “Getting into the log files can really show us whether bots are having trouble downloading a page fully,” Mosier said.
• How often a URL is being crawled. The crawl frequency can be used to figure out if there are URLs that a search engine crawler should be crawling but isn’t, or vice versa.
• Crawling problems. This tactic can also reveal when a crawler is encountering 404 errors or redirect chains, for example.

“When it comes to actually doing crawl budget analysis, there’s a couple of tools that are helpful,” Mosier said, recommending ScaremingFrog’s Log File Analyser, Microsoft Excel and Splunk.

Read more: How to optimize your site for better findability

How to gain SEO insights using data segmentation

Recognizing patterns is a major part of successful SEO strategies, yet it can seem daunting with the sheer amount of data available. Murat Yatağan, the consultant for growth and product management at Brainly, recommends marketers address these issues using data segmentation tactics.

“You need to focus on generating insights based on patterns that you can recognize,” said Yatağan in his presentation at SMX Next. “An important part of a successful issue strategy is relying on these patterns that you have recognized — these things are telling you a story.”

Yatağan suggests marketers use one of two data segmentation tactics — with a developer’s help if needed — to serve as the foundation for your SEO strategy: custom scraping using Regex/Xpath or segmentations post-crawl.

“I segment data by traffic,” he said. “It’s organic traffic along with the crawl information that I gathered because these two [metrics] enable me to triangulate the data about the website, so it shows me some patterns.”

Here are four common patterns Yatağan recommends marketers look for to gain insights from their data segments.

Read more: How to gain SEO insights using data segmentation

Google Maps adds dock to bottom

Google recently added a feature to Google Maps to dock local listings to the bottom of the map interface. When you search for a business, you can click the “dock to bottom” button. That will trigger Google Maps to move that local listing to the footer of the map interface so that searchers can reopen the place later.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of this feature, that I’ve been seeing for the past week for some of my local maps queries:

Use case. Searchers can use this to dock numerous places to the bottom of the page so they can organize a trip. It can also be used when you are searching for a local business and multiple options interest you, you can dock the ones you like and dig into which one you prefer to go to. If you are a foodie, you can dock a bunch of restaurants to check out later. There are many use cases.

Read more: Google Maps adds dock to the bottom

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Google Local Search Ranking Algorithm Update Last Week

Upgrade to the Google Ads API for even more features

All In One SEO Vulnerability Affects +3 Million Sites

Security researchers at Jetpack discovered two serious vulnerabilities in the All In One SEO Plugin. The vulnerabilities could allow a hacker to access usernames and passwords and also perform remote code execution exploits.

The vulnerabilities are dependent on each other in order to be successful. The first one is called a Privilege Escalation Attack, which allows a user with a low level of website access privilege (like a subscriber) to raise their privilege level to one with more access privileges (like a website administrator).

The security researchers at Jetpack describe the vulnerability as severe and warn of the following consequences:

“If exploited, the SQL Injection vulnerability could grant attackers access to privileged information from the affected site’s database (e.g., usernames and hashed passwords).”

Authenticated Privilege Escalation

One of the exploits is an Authenticated Privilege Escalation vulnerability that exploits the WordPress REST API, allowing an attacker to access usernames and passwords.

In the All In One SEO plugin the problem was in the security checks that verify if a user accessing an API endpoint had the right privilege credentials.

According to Jetpack:

“The privilege checks applied by All In One SEO to secure REST API endpoints contained a very subtle bug that could’ve granted users with low-privileged accounts (like subscribers) access to every single endpoint the plugin registers.

…Since it didn’t account for the fact that WordPress treats REST API routes as case-insensitive strings, changing a single character to uppercase would completely bypass the privilege checks routine.”

Authenticated SQL Injection

The second exploit is an Authenticated SQL Injection. This relies on an attacker first having some user credentials, even one as low as a website subscriber.

Updating SEO Plugin Recommended

This vulnerability affects versions 4.0.0 through 4.1.5.2. The latest version at this time, 4.1.5.3 is the safest version to update to. The security researchers at Jetpack recommend updating to the latest version.

Source: All In One SEO Vulnerability Affects +3 Million Sites

3 do’s and don’ts for attracting new clients

As we approach the end of another year, businesses are formulating their goals for the year to come, which may also mean a re-evaluation of the partners they’ve enlisted to reach those goals.

Likewise, agencies, freelancers and consultants are also looking to fill their rosters for the year ahead. As the search marketing industry has matured, competition has grown more intense, increasing the stakes of your marketing efforts.

To that end, numerous search practitioners have shared the strategies that have won them clients as well as the methods they don’t recommend for attracting new business. 

Figure out your identity and lean in

Clearly defining what you are about (as an agency or a professional) enables you to be transparent about your limitations. This can also be a sales strength “because when you are able to be completely honest about what it is you do NOT do, then it (a) keeps expectations firmly where they should be from both parties and (b) attracts the clients looking for that,” Williams said, adding, “I recently had someone exclaim on a sales call, ‘It is so refreshing to hear someone just be honest with us! I’m so sick of being sold to!’”

Share your expertise

Demonstrating your knowledge by helping others can help establish you as a trusted source of knowledge, which can help promote your business. “We work to put out a helpful marketing blog post once a month and put together a weekly digital marketing news show/podcast,” said Greg Finn, partner at Cypress North and host of the Marketing O’Clock podcast, noting that he’s received new clients from both tactics.

Partner with non-search marketing agencies

Clients are often in need of marketing-adjacent services, which can be an opportunity for a referral. “We work with partners to sell other related services,” said digital marketing consultant Joe Youngblood, “For example, we might work with a design agency to sell website designs for a new, up and coming CMS. That design agency, in turn, promotes our SEO services,” he said, adding that, in some cases, a custom solution involving his services along with those of another, non-search marketing agency can be created for clients. “This leads to a percentage of the clients converting to long-term SEO clients,” he said.

Providing free work remains divisive

Giving potential clients a sample of your work can go a long way in proving its quality. However, this tactic is somewhat controversial due to the ethical implications of performing free work, and because there’s no guarantee that the initial investment on your end will yield returns.

Strategies to avoid

Answering a request for proposal (RFP) may seem like an easy way to get your services in front of a high-intent client, but the search marketers that spoke to Search Engine Land for this article do not advocate doing so. “Without the ability to have a full conversation, RFPs can really put a damper on fruitful conversations, especially when they are open to public bidding,” Finn said.

Signing a client is just the first step

Once the client is onboarded, the real work begins. The quality of your work can greatly influence client renewals as well as new client opportunities.

Source: 3 do’s and don’ts for attracting new clients

Adobe Announces Free Creative Cloud Express

Adobe announced a free creative suite that contains the core functionality of Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. Creative Cloud Express is aimed at non-experienced users, comes with 1 Million free stock images, thousands of templates and will soon feature social media tools.

Design Tools With No Learning Curve

Adobe designed the free editing suite so that anyone can use it, even people with no experience.

“Creative Cloud Express draws on our decades of experience working with the creative community. It makes the core technology in our industry-leading products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro available with just a few clicks — and with no learning curve.”

The free versions of Adobe’s tools are available as a suite called Creative Cloud Express. The suite is available on the web, in Microsoft stores and on apps for iOS and Android.

Screenshot of Adobe Creative Cloud Templates:

A thoughtful aspect of Creative Cloud Express is it’s connection with the premium Creative Cloud.

Creative Cloud Express can be connected with the professional version, Creative Cloud, which can allow professionals to share assets with clients who use Creative Cloud Express.

Example of an Adobe Creative Cloud Express Template:

There’s a premium version that provides access to millions more stock photos, Photoshop Express and Premiere Rush but for the average non-designer and casual user the free Creative Cloud Express should be more than adequate.

Examples of What’s Possible With Creative Cloud Express:

Generous Features

The Creative Cloud Express suite comes with a generous suite of features that allows users with no experience to apply Photoshop effects, filters, textures, easily remove backgrounds, resize elements, and add overlays with professional results.

Source: Adobe Announces Free Creative Cloud Express

Google Search launches enhanced autocomplete with second column

Google has officially launched a new enhanced autocomplete search suggestions that may include a second column of predictions, and provide easier access to content related to a search, a Google spokesperson confirmed with Search Engine Land. In addition, Google confirmed it is also testing a new edge to edge autocomplete interface and other full width elements in the desktop search interface.

Enhanced autocomplete. The new enhanced autocomplete interface may show additional search predictions including people also ask, people also search for and other content that is related to the query. Here is a screenshot of what this looks like:

Edge to edge autocomplete test. Google is also testing another variation of autocomplete that the search company is calling “edge to edge.” This is where the search box blends directly into the other elements of the search results page. Essentially, Google removes the border around the box where you enter the search query, making it go edge to edge with the rest of the search results.

Here is a screenshot I posted from @MusingPraveen on Twitter. Brodie Clark did a deeper dive on this edge to edge search interface as well.

More full width tests. As you know, Google confirmed launching a full width local and map results interface in search. Google is also testing other full width elements that the search company has not fully launched yet but continues to test. That includes a full width image pack, full width featured snippets and more.

Google overall told us that the search company is frequently testing out and launch changes to different visual elements on various features within Google Search.

Source: Google Search launches enhanced autocomplete with second column

Amazon Alexa SEO tool will disappear in 2022

Amazon’s influential suite of SEO and digital transaction tools will close in 2022. It is damaging to the search marketing community. Alexa.com declared that it would leave its marketing assistance after 25 years. Established in 1996, Amazon subsequently acquired Alexa in 1999. It was originally recognized for giving rankings depending on commerce measured through a toolbar.

However, Alexa ultimately broadened to give a full suite of trade products. The items include backlink checking and site auditing. Alexa.com offers an entire suite of search commerce tools. Nonetheless, what it’s primarily recognized for is Alexa Rank. It is a measure that gives a ratio of site popularity. In the first 2000s, they collected the data via an Alexa toolbar that users surfed and downloaded.

Source: Amazon Alexa SEO tool will disappear in 2022

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YouTube to automatically link to places mentioned in videos

YouTube is launching a new link format within the video description box that provides “an easy and visual way for viewers to learn about locations mentioned” in the video, the company announced via its Creator Insider channel. Named “Places Mentioned,” this feature will be visible on the mobile app for iOS and Android for food and drinks videos where YouTube can detect places. The company has not released a timeline for the rollout or stated whether Places Mentioned will expand to more video categories.

Until now, the only way to add information about a location mentioned in a video was to manually add a text link. Automatic detection and link creation for places that are mentioned will decrease some of the legwork for content creators in the food and restaurant vertical.

By default, the video description box is minimized in the YouTube app — users must expand it to view the description, which may undermine some of the benefits of adding links to the description. YouTube said that Places Mentioned will give viewers an engaging way to learn more about places in the video, but the company has not released screenshots of what the feature will look like or how it will work given the current description box setup.

Read more: YouTube to automatically link to places mentioned in videos

Google Analytics vs. Google Analytics 360

Today, data is the currency of the digital economy. Marketers need data-driven insights to understand who their most valuable customers are, which experiences led them to act, and how to get more of them.

And when it comes to analytics platforms, Google Analytics dominates the space. Cardinal Path research shows that 77% of the Fortune 1000 rely on Google Analytics to drive their data analytics practice.

Google Analytics 360 is designed not only to help you collect data across your digital properties, but to turn raw data into insights, and then to take action on those insights across the broader Google Marketing Platform.

Read more: Google Analytics vs. Google Analytics 360

How marketers can prepare for what’s next in page experience

When Google’s Page Experience update finished rolling out in early September, it changed how the search engine evaluates websites — namely, a new emphasis on user experience signals. In his session at SMX Next, Patrick Stox, product advisor for technical SEO and brand ambassador at Ahrefs, noted some important alterations to this update that took place in the months following, which continue to leave many SEOs confused.

“Safe browsing is already out,” he said, “And cumulative layout shift has changed a bit. It’s the five seconds where the most shifting occurs. Google has also removed AMP from Top stories requirements and many news sites are looking at dropping it.”

One of the key pieces of the Page Experience update — Core Web Vitals — is also one of the most hotly debated. SEOs and agencies have questioned how big of a difference these metrics make in terms of rankings, leading many, such as Stox, to take a deeper look at the data.

“We looked at about 5.2 million individual pages, which I think is the largest data set that’s been studied now,” he said. His study found that only 11.4% of them met the recommended standards for Core Web Vitals.

This begs the question: Is Core Web Vitals optimization necessary?

“Maybe these are small ranking factors,” said Stox, “But I think if you argue this from an SEO standpoint, you’re going to fail. Many Google employees have now said these are small factors, that these are tiebreakers signals.”

Read more: How marketers can prepare for what’s next in page experience

Google Ads unaffected by Log4j vulnerability

Although Google Ads and Google Marketing Platform aren’t using vulnerable versions of Log4j, marketers that have built their own API integrations with any of the Google APIs should ensure that whatever they are using isn’t affected by the CVE-2021-44228 vulnerability.

Additionally, if you are using an Ads API Client Library and Apache Log4j versions 2.0 to 2.14.1, you should upgrade to the patched version 2.15.0, Google said on its developer blog.

More on the news

• “Our security teams are investigating any potential impact on Google products and services and are focused on protecting our users and customers,” Google said.
• The flaw, which was discovered on December 9, may allow hackers to attack unpatched Apache servers in order to take control of a system.
• “To be clear, this vulnerability poses a severe risk,” Jen Easterly,  director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in a statement, “We will only minimize potential impacts through collaborative efforts between government and the private sector. We urge all organizations to join us in this essential effort and take action.” 

Read more: Google Ads unaffected by Log4j vulnerability

4 elements that help create compelling SEO content

Creating content for SEO purposes is often associated with keyword-stuffed articles that lack quality and voice. But, as Google continues to push search marketers towards optimizing for humans instead of algorithms, that kind of content is rapidly losing visibility in the search results.

High-quality content, that’s designed to address the user’s needs as efficiently and effectively as possible, is now the standard. At SMX Create, Alli Berry, SEO director at The Motley Fool, provided an overview of the principles and tactics she uses to create content that not only ranks well and drives traffic but also speaks to searchers.

Structure for scanability

Even the most comprehensive content will fail audiences if it’s not presented in a digestible format. And, the narrow aspect ratio of mobile devices adds another factor to consider as it influences how much content a user can view at one time. This is why it is so important to organize your content so that users can find the exact information they’re looking for.

“Whenever I’m training new writers, the first thing I explain is the inverted pyramid of journalism,” Berry said, adding, “Nobody does this better than journalists . . . Their formula for writing content is really aligned with what search engines are looking for.”

The inverted pyramid is a way to organize content by leading with the most relevant, impactful information — in other words, the information the user is presumably seeking — at the very beginning.

Read more: 4 elements that help create compelling SEO content

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Catastrophic Log4j Security Fail Threatens Enterprise Systems & Web Apps Worldwide

A serious code execution vulnerability in Log4j has security experts warning of potentially catastrophic consequences for enterprise organizations and web apps.

The vulnerability, listed as CVE-2021-44228 in the Apache Log4j Security Vulnerabilities log, enables remote attackers to take control of an affected system.

What is Log4j?

Log4j is an open source Apache logging system framework used by developers for recordkeeping within an application.

Who Is Impacted By The Log4j Security Issue?

The issue is so severe that the United States Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency released a notice December 10 that states, in part:

“CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Apache Log4j 2.15.0 Announcement and upgrade to Log4j 2.15.0 or apply the recommended mitigations immediately.”

Security Expert Recommendations For Combating Log4j Vulnerabilities

Kevin Beaumont warns that even if you had upgraded to log4j-2.15.0-rc1, there was a bypass:

Marcus Hutchins from MalwareTech.com offers a workaround for those who can’t upgrade Log4j:

Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, announced Friday:

“We’ve made the determination that #Log4J is so bad we’re going to try and roll out at least some protection for all Cloudflare customers by default, even free customers who do not have our WAF. Working on how to do that safely now.”

Chris Wysopal, co-founder and CTO at Veracode, recommends upgrading to a minimum of Java 8:

He also warns, “There may be only 5% of apps still on Java 7 but that is the long tail that will be exploited over the next months. Don’t have one of these in your org.”

Figuring out which applications in your organization use Log4j should be mission critical.

Source: Catastrophic Log4j Security Fail Threatens Enterprise Systems & Web Apps Worldwide

Exclusive: The most popular Yelp search filters

Yelp has provided Search Engine Land with the most popular search filters among users. “Open Now” was the most used filter across all categories, which speaks to the intent of customers browsing local reviews platforms like Yelp. “Request a Quote” was the second-most used filter for services businesses and the “Open to All” filter was also among the most popular filters for businesses in the Healthy & Beauty, Active Life and Shopping categories.

Yelp’s most popular search filters. The most used filters on Yelp, by category, are as follows:

Services businesses (Auto, Home, Local, and Professional Services)

1. Open Now
2. Request a Quote
3. Accepts Credit Cards
4. Fast-responding
5. Offering a Deal

Restaurants, Food and Nightlife businesses

1. Open Now
2. Reservations
3. Offers Takeout
4. Outdoor Seating
5. Offers Delivery
6. Good for Dinner

Health & Beauty businesses

1. Open Now
2. Accepts Credit Cards
3. Offering a Deal
4. By Appointment Only
5. Good for Kids
6. Open to All

Active Life businesses

1. Open Now
2. Good for Kids
3. Dogs Allowed
4. Open to All

Shopping

1. Open Now
2. Open to All
3. Accepts Credit Cards

Don’t overlook “Open Now.” As mentioned above, local reviews platforms are used by high-intent consumers that are likely to need a local business sooner rather than later. What’s open, at the time of their search, can determine which businesses they’ll eventually visit or contact.

While this may seem like a basic point, it underscores the importance of maintaining up-to-date business hours, which, for some businesses, may change frequently due to safety measures or staffing challenges related to the COVID pandemic or holiday schedules. Both Yelp and Google offer the ability to indicate special hours so that you can keep customers informed that you may not be operating as usual.

Filters reveal consumer priorities in different verticals. In the Restaurants, Food and Nightlife categories, “Offers Takeout,” “Outdoor Seating,” and “Offers Delivery” accounted for three of the top-five filters. This may be due to the pandemic’s effect on consumer preferences and speaks to the pivot in services that many food and nightlife businesses had to undergo to support these new expectations.

“Offering a Deal” was another popular filter for services businesses (auto, home, local and professional services) as well as health and beauty businesses. This may indicate that competitive pricing or other incentives are a priority for consumers looking for businesses in these categories.

“Open to All,” a filter and attribute indicating that a business is a “safe and welcoming place for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, immigration status, religion or disability,” was also among the top filters for Health & Beauty, Active Life and Shopping businesses.

Over the last few years, ethics and personal values have taken on more important roles in determining which businesses consumers are willing to support. To that end, Yelp has introduced numerous diversity attributes, including the Asian-owned, Black-owned, Latinx-owned, Women-owned and LGBTQ-owned attributes. Similarly, Google Business Profile owners can self-identify as Black-owned, Veteran-led, Women-led and LGBTQ-friendly.

Source: Exclusive: The most popular Yelp search filters

Meta Introduces Professional Mode For Facebook Profiles

Facebook Profile Updates – New Professional Mode

A new professional mode for Facebook profiles in the US includes revenue earning opportunities and insights on content performance.

New Ways To Earn Money

The first monetization option available with Facebook’s professional mode is the Reels Play bonus program.

This allows eligible creators to earn revenue based on the views of qualifying Reels.

The program is currently invite-only, but interested users can fill out a signup form to be notified when its more widely available.

Features From Pages Come To Profiles

Professional mode makes Facebook profiles more like Pages.

Withthis mode activated, anyone can follow and see your public content in their feed without sending you a friend request.

However, you’ll still have control over who can see the content in individual posts.

With each post you publish you can choose if it goes out to the public or if its visible to friends only.

This is being tested with a limited number of profiles starting today in the US, with plans to expand to more users soon.

Professional mode will be available to more countries in the coming months, and more tools will be added including more monetization options.

New Features For Facebook Pages

In a limited test, some admins will see a new unit at the top of their Page’s feed that provides a snapshot of post engagement and follower count.

The new unit may also show tips on how to create high performing content.

Lastly, Facebook is testing an updated post composer for Pages that offers a variety of creator-focused features.

The initial test will include the ability to schedule posts, which was previously only available through Facebook Business Suite.

With this update it’s now possible for admins to schedule posts regardless of their existing workflow and which tool or app they’re using.

Source: Meta Introduces Professional Mode For Facebook Profiles

Google Ads refreshes custom columns UI and adds new metrics

Google Ads is rolling out a new user interface for custom columns as well as new metrics, a Google spokesperson has confirmed to Search Engine Land. “The update will be rolling out to all advertisers in the next few weeks,” a Google spokesperson said.

Tip of the hat to PPCGreg on Twitter for first bringing this to our attention.

The new metrics coming to custom columns. With this update, the following metrics will be available for custom columns:

• Spreadsheet functions.
• Calculate/compare metrics across date ranges (example).
• Non-metric columns (like Campaign name or Budget).
• Reference other custom columns.
• Search, Click and Display impression share.
• Three phone call metrics, and others.

Source: Google Ads refreshes custom columns UI and adds new metrics

10up Releases the Publisher Media Kit WordPress Plugin

Earlier today, version 1.0 of 10up’s Publisher Media Kit went live in the WordPress plugin directory. It is a preconfigured set of blocks and patterns for jump-starting a media kit page for small and medium-sized publications.

Given that WP Tavern just launched its new design yesterday, this might be an opportunity for us to lead the way. The plugin does give me a few ideas on what we could do with a similar page here on the site.

Publisher Media Kit has been tested with Twenty Twenty-One, Newspack, and several Newspack child themes. I did run it through most of those to check for compatibility, and the plugin worked admirably. However, I primarily tested it with Twenty Twenty-Two, the upcoming default WordPress theme. Aside from a few layout alignment quirks, it worked well.

The plugin automatically creates a new “Media Kit” draft page on the website once it is activated. The content is a set of pre-defined sections built from eight patterns and an accompanying Tabs block.

This allows users to quickly fill in their own content and make customizations. Once done, it is just a matter of hitting the publish button.

However, end-users can take things into their own hands by using the various patterns on any post or page of their site. The cover, stats, and questions/contact patterns work well as general-use patterns.

Source: 10up Releases the Publisher Media Kit WordPress Plugin

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Google drops its mobile-first indexing deadline, leaves it open-ended