Month: June 2016

SEO Market Updates: June 2016

Posted on by Joshua Carter

Google asserts TLD keywords do not influence search results

Last month, an article circulated claiming that a lawyer has changed the top level domain name for his website form .com to .attorney, and had seen a substantial increase in organic traffic. The article suggested that tailored, target TLD keywords could help boost traffic. However, Google has since stamped out any such rumours.

During a Google Hangout on the 14th of June, John Mueller explained that TLD’s crammed with keywords do not factor into Google rankings. Mueller went so far as to state that Google’s algorithm completely ignores top level domain names. Both John Mueller and Gary Illyes from Google urged webmasters not to listen to rumour, and to stick with their current top level domains, rather than change them following “vague promises” for increased traffic.

Google to remove custom date range search filter for mobile users

Google is set to remove a further search filter, and this time around it only affects mobile users. In a forum, Google explained that they are the removing the functionality that allows mobile browsers to search results filtered by a start and end date. Mobile users wishing to search using this filter can still do so via the desktop version of Google.

Instead of the ‘custom range’ time option, mobile Googlers can still search for articles based on pre-specified periods of time since they were posted, such as past hour, past 24 hours and so on.

Google commented:

“After much thought and consideration, Google has decided to retire the Search Custom Date Range Tool on mobile. Today we are starting to gradually unlaunch this feature for all users, as we believe we can create a better experience by focusing on more highly-utilized search features that work seamlessly across both mobile and desktop. Please note that this will still be available on desktop, and all other date restriction tools [e.g., ‘Past hour,’ ‘Past 24 hours,’ ‘Past week,’ ‘Past month,’ ‘Past year’] will remain on mobile.”

Apple brings Siri to Mac, new exposure for non-Google search engines

Apple has announced that it will be bringing its Siri technology to the Mac. While seemingly, innocuous, this development means that Mac users will have access to search from the macOS operating system, and the results presented to them will not be solely from Google.

Apple demonstrated the new technology during its Worldwide Developers Conference, showing eager viewers how Siri will work when it arrives on the latest macOS, “Sierra”, later this year. Users will be able to speak their requests to Siri and will receive a selection of results not only from Google, but from competitor search engines such as Bing and Yelp. This could lead to higher usage and increased exposure for these less commonly used search engines.

Google still stands as the default search engine when opening Apple’s Safari feature, however, as the result of a long standing deal between the two companies. When the deal expired last year, it was anticipated that Apple would consider dropping Google, however, despite the face that no formal announcement was ever made, it looks as though the two companies will continue working together.

Google now using ‘Rankbrain’ for every search query

The mysterious Google algorithm, ‘Rankbrain’, has apparently been a success. Since Google first made the announcement of the vaguely defined ranking method last year, it’s use in searches has gone from 15% to 100%, meaning that all two trillion searches per year are handled with input from Rankbrain. In short, Google is clearly incredibly confident in the ill-defined system, and is now using it to filter every query it receives.

Google has stated that Rankbrain is the third-most useful criteria when handling a query, and selecting the results to present. There are hundreds of factors (or ‘signals) Google considers when weighing up a query, such as geographical location and whether a website’s headline matches the wording of the query. The fact that Rankbrain is the third most important says something about the nature of the technology being developed.

It is generally assumed that Rankbrain works by internally rearranging the wording of a query to allow for the best quality results. A search along the lines of “best places to go for lunch in Headingley” might be rearranged to “best Leeds restaurants”. In this way, more popular search terms are used in order for Google to extract more in depth and extensive data for its search results.

Social Media Roundup: June 2016

Posted on by Jenny Connelly

In the biggest social media news of June, Microsoft announced it was to splurge £18.5 billion on purchasing LinkedIn. This equates to roughly £45 per user. This is a bold buy for Microsoft as it tries to move into the lucrative world of social media. The buyout can be seen as a recognition of potential in LinkedIn – the social network has shown weak growth over the year so far. However, the pairing of Microsoft and LinkedIn can be seen as particularly on-brand; each has a specific business focus that other competitors lack. How Microsoft will influence LinkedIn remains unclear, but with a big cash injection, the potential for change is ripe.

Facebook

Facebook has rolled out new features throughout June that are perfect with the barrage of upcoming summer holiday snaps. Users with a smartphone with a panorama camera are now able to upload 360 degree photos to Facebook. The marketing potential for this feature is incredible; businesses would be wise to put decent thought and effort into creating beautiful original content with this feature. However it might be hard to beat NASA’s 360 photo from the International Space Station…

The tech giant has introduced visual changes to its Messenger app that indicate towards its long term goals. Messenger now no longer displays all chats in simple reverse chronological order; chats are ordered into groups, and then sorted by favourites, and broken up with birthdays and ‘active now’ friends. These changes align with Facebook’s longer term plan to urge users to spend more time within the app, therefore making Messenger a destination in itself, which is able to do much more than simply host private messaging.

Instagram

The Facebook-owned app has now rolled out to users its new algorithm-based newsfeed. This means posts will now be viewed out of real-time in an order of how Instagram believes users want to see content. Users have generally reacted negatively to this change, yet businesses believe it will mean strong content will now no longer go unnoticed. This roll-out, which had been announced in March, was merely a blip in an otherwise strong month. Instagram proudly announced, via an Instagram video of course, that the number of users had finally topped half a billion. Over 300 million of these users are said to use the app on a daily basis. This is a huge achievement for Instagram, as they have doubled the amount of users in the last two years.

To mark further this shift from picture-sharing to app to global giant, Instagram has now unveiled automatic translations for posts in another language. Similar to Facebook, a user will now see posts in other languages automatically translated to their own preferred language. This is in part a recognition that users no longer follow local friends and family, or even just users from their own country. This is great news for companies who post content to followers around the globe.

Continuing this transformation, Instagram announced in June new functions for Business accounts. Business profiles will be able to add ‘Contact’ buttons to their page, meaning customers will be able to direct queries in a more effective way. New ‘Insights’ tab will let users know more about their followers and their posts; from which posts are more popular, and more advanced demographic user data. In another positive move, organic Instagram posts will be able to be pushed with a ‘Promote’ function, in a very similar way to Facebook. This means that popular posts can become ads and will also stay on a business’ home page indefinitely. Instagram swings from strength to strength from both a user perspective and a business perspective.

Twitter

Following a large data leak at the beginning of the month, Twitter has been vocal in their crackdown on security practices. High profile data breaches and account hacks, including Canadian rapper, Drake, prompted Twitter to take action. Twitter has notified all users with the most recent security information. After a difficult few months for the company, this is yet more difficult press.

Twitter has introduced stickers in June – similar to emojis and Facebook reactions. These stickers will be used in conjunction with users’ own images; Twitter stickers can be placed over an image to further personalise content. Tapping on a sticker will take users to a collection of where else the sticker has been used. The stickers are creating new avenues of communication and sharing. This is an interesting way to allow users to explore new content in a visual way (which has not been Twitter’s strong suit). Further changes to Twitter images include the ability to apply filters, crop the size, add tags, and alter accessibility options. Twitter stickers will allow businesses, publishers, and bloggers instant access to user-generated content, opening a host of opportunities for outreach and brand awareness.

The very latest Facebook and Instagram updates

Posted on by Helen Hargreave

Facebook – topic-related newsfeeds

Facebook recently announced that they will be rolling out their new topic-related newsfeed algorithm, which enables users to tailor the content that appears on their newsfeed by choosing topics that are of interest to them. These topics include – sports, TV & movies, music, politics, health and fitness and much more. This change to Facebook’s topic related newsfeed does have similarities to that of Twitter’s “moments” section, which focuses more on providing its users with real-time news content.

The new topic-related newsfeed function will stand aside from the user’s Facebook newsfeed. This allows users to have a section for their newsfeed, alongside the categories of interest to them.
This new update enables the user to consume more content that is relevant to them, therefore improving the user’s overall experience on Facebook. However this does not seem to have any chronological order; therefore Facebook will have to make changes to the timescale of their topic related content to provide users with real time news.

Instagram – Increased video length, business profiles and CTA photo advertisements

Instagram has revealed a vast amount of changes recently, from the big reveal of their new logo, to changes to videos, newsfeeds and photo ads; it’s safe to say Instagram has had a busy couple of months!
Let’s firstly start with Instagram’s change to its video length; users are now able to upload videos with a length of up to 60 seconds, as opposed to just 15. This encourages users to upload more video content through Instagram, thus increasing the amount of engagement that users’ posts will receive.

In addition to the change of length in video content, users can now also see the total amount of views their video posts receive, rather than showing the total number of likes. Users are still able to see the total number of likes their video post has by just tapping on the video, which will then show the number of likes and those who have liked the post.

This update to Instagram videos enables users to monitor the reach, engagement and interaction of their videos more effectively.For example if a video post has a high number of views, but a low number of likes, this suggests that the video has had a high reach but the content is not something that audiences are engaging with, hence the low number of interactions.

Instagram also announced the introduction of their business profiles, which are to be launched in the UK in the near future. The Instagram business profile will enable businesses to control how they would like their customers to get in contact with them. Whether this is contacting them via email, or redirecting customers to their website, or providing customers with directions to their business. This new function will enable businesses to communicate with their customers more efficiently and effectively through Instagram, improving businesses customer service management.
Businesses will now also be able to use Instagram’s new Insights tool, which will allow them to gain more of an insight into the behaviour and actions of their followers, as well as monitoring which posts performed the highest with their followers. Businesses are then able to use the posts that are performing well and turn them into ads to promote their service/products and target a wider audience.

Another recent change to Instagram is that CTA (call to action) is now embedded within photo advertisements. Once a user has tapped on the photo ad, they will then be presented with the option to click through to a website or app, thus enabling businesses to direct their audiences to their website or app, increasing CTR and potentially conversion rates.

However, the double tap CTA, does not apply to video advertisements, therefore this may be something to consider for businesses when choosing to advertise on Instagram.

SEO Market Updates: May 2016

Posted on by Joshua Carter

Voice search reporting may be coming to Search Analytics report

Hints from Google seem to indicate that voice query reporting will feature in the Google Search Console’s Search analytic report, although the company has remained vague on when that might be.

John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, announced that Google is searching for ways to display voice queries to webmasters via the Google Search Console. Mueller explained that Google are looking for ways to divide up whether people search via voice or keyboard in the Search Analytics report. According to John, Google are seeking to “make it easier to pull out what people have used to search on voice and what people are using by typing. Similar to how we have desktop and mobile set up separately.”

John went on further, to explain that because voice searches are usually done with long sentences, Google Search Analytics may not detect the search volume for the topic and group it together it with less-common keywords. John explained they are still debating internally what the best way to circumvent this issue is.

Search Analytics report gets update

The way in which Google calculates impressions and clicks in the Search Analytics report within the Google Search Console has been updated. Google posted the following on their ‘data anomalies’ page:

We refined our standards for calculating clicks and impressions. As a result, you may see a change in the click, impression, and CTR values in the Search Analytics report. A significant part of this change will affect website properties with associated mobile app properties. Specifically, it involves accounting for clicks and impressions only to the associated application property rather than to the website.

In your Search Analytics report you will see a line saying ‘update’. This is in reference to the new metrics which will come into use as of the 26th of April. John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, explained: “Other changes include how we count links shown in the Knowledge Panel, in various Rich Snippets, and in the local results in Search (which are now all counted as URL impressions).”

While most users noticed no change in their Search Analytics report, Google suggested that mobile users might notice the largest difference.

Google’s mobile-friendly algorithm boost rolls out

Google has released their latest algorithm, which is designed to provide a ranking boost for mobile-optimised websites in the search results.

Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, took to Twitter to make the announcement of the second version of the mobile-favouring algorithm. Google had previously hinted they would boost the algorithm back in March.

Google’s stated intentions with the update are to “increase the effect of the [mobile-friendly] ranking signal.” Additionally, the company has said any sites which are already mobile-friendly needn’t worry, and won’t be affected by the update.

The mobile algorithm is a page-by-page signal, which is the reason the update has taken some time to roll out fully, as Google has to asses each page separately. This means the impact of the update can take time to materialise.

One concerned Tweeter asked John Mueller if this update meant “mobilegeddon”. “No, not really. :)” came the reply.

Google expands featured snippets

Google has begun to use extended feature snippets for certain queries. Featured snippets are the information displayed at the top of a search, before any site results. This information is displayed when Google is able to collect information that it is confident can answer your query immediately.

Now, Google has extended this feature, with ‘related topics’ appearing below lengthened snippets. The related topics contain a brief explanation and links to other Google queries.

Social Media Roundup: May 2016

Posted on by Jenny Connelly

Facebook has been in some hot water of late, with repercussions likely to be ongoing. The social media giant has been accused of censoring topics on its newsfeed, opening the company up to accusations of political bias. Accusations suggest that Facebook would not publish stories in its ‘trending’ feed despite high levels of sharing, and instead pushed stories they were more politically aligned with. What with the American presidential elections looming in 2016, it seems a critical time for Facebook to be accused of meddling, and puts Facebook on the defensive.

Facebook has developed an even more sophisticated ad targeting system that will strengthen relations with businesses. Rather than simply taking into account where users have visited websites, targeted ads will now take into consideration if the visitor is simply a ‘window shopper’, or have consistently looked at their website, for how long, and which items were looked at. This helps weed out real leads and helps businesses gain a higher conversion rate.

Finally in Facebook news; May saw a large extension of live videos across newsfeeds around the globe. Live video has now been enabled on desktop, and users are able to view live videos from across the globe. With high profile users engaging with live video, such as Jamie Oliver, Buzzfeed, and new star ‘Chewbacca Mom’ (who has already broken the live viewing record), it looks like Facebook’s newest feature will be a roaring success.

Twitter

Twitter has announced a series of changes over the last months that it hopes will help its ailing user numbers. Firstly, changes to analytical tools will give personal and business users a greater insight into its audiences. Following in the likes of Facebook, Twitter now allows users to breakdown their audience into incredibly useful subsets; age brackets, interests, net worth, and consumer history. These powerful tools, when harnessed correctly, could really make Twitter into a sharp advertising tool.

Attempting to appear more flexible, Twitter has announced that adding media, or a poll, or reaction gif, to a tweet will no longer eat into the valuable word count. In making this change, Twitter recognises the power of image and video to create dynamic and engaging content online. Similarly, adding a @handle to a tweet will also not eat into the count – these changes allow for a much more detailed tweet that can help users expand their networking capabilities with ease. Twitter has also removed the necessity of adding a .@ in order for the tweet to be broadcast to all followers, rather than users who follow both the tweet-er and the tweet-ee.

Lastly, the rollout of the new ‘Connect’ feature will help users find new content and other relevant users to follow. Based on previous likes, follows, retweets, and local popular accounts, the new Connect tab hopes to keep users’ feeds fresh and up-to-date by making suggestions (it hopes) that will build up a user’s following number. Twitter is actively creating a more dynamic and less rigid user experience – will the results be what Twitter hopes for?

Instagram

Described by the Head of Design as a “balance between recognition and versatility”, Instagram’s new logo is certainly a marker of change for the company. The photo-sharing app had not changed its logo in the five years since its inception – in which time the company has undergone seismic change. The new app is simpler, contemporary, and vibrant. The new logo is greeted with changes to the visuals within the app; the sidebars and areas surrounding images are now simply black and white. The new logo, and in-app changes, reflect the cooler image and rapid growth the company has seen. Instagram is going from strength to strength these days, and any minor changes will hardly deter users from the ever-expanding app.