In late June, during a developer conference, Apple announced a new major update to their mobile operating system for their iPhone and iPod devices. It’s expected to be available to the general public later this year, with the beta 4 version currently only available to public testers.

Outside of the main new features, Apple announced an increased focus on privacy, labelling it a “fundamental human right”, being “at the core of everything we do”, also promising more control over data and full transparency of how it’s used. 

This includes a recording indicator for the microphone and camera, approximate location use (instead of precise), as well as changes to the inbuilt web browser Safari, which will now limit cross-site tracking and browser fingerprinting.

Apple have also highlighted privacy features included in their native Maps service, which has became (in the form of Mapkit JS) the mapping service used by DuckDuckGo, a privacy oriented search engine. 

Apple is taking a much stronger stance on user privacy than many similar brands, which has grown uncommon for a global blue chip company.

IDFA BLOCKING MECHANISM

One of the features which has attracted the most attention is the introduction of app tracking controls and transparency, which will require explicit user permission before they can be tracked. This means that the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), a random device ID that Apple assigns to each device,  can now only be used when a user opts-in, and has do do so on an app-by-app basis.

Instead of the user having to change this in the settings (opting-out), this will now become a popup seeking permission from the user, allowing or denying advertiser access to the IDFA.

Advertisers (and publishers) fear that very few people will opt in (some estimate figures between 10 and 20%). This means that apps will not be able to exchange information by default.

APPLE’S ALTERNATIVE TO IDFA

Apple is presenting a privacy-safe alternative in the form of mobile attribution using the SKAdNetwork, explaining how it will operate:

“When a user taps an ad, advertisers display an App Store product screen with signed parameters that identify the ad campaign. If a user installs and opens an app, the device sends an install validation postback to the ad network.

The Apple-signed notification includes the campaign ID but doesn’t include user- or device-specific data. The postback may include a conversion value and the source app’s ID if Apple determines that providing the values meets Apple’s privacy threshold.”

This will allow ad publishers to discover how users have interacted with their adverts without revealing the device’s or user’s identity. From what we know, it looks like advertisers are going to have to adapt to target iOS device users and become less dependant on their data.

WILL THIS AFFECT MY WEBSITE’S MOBILE TRAFFIC?

In short, no.

Based on the available information, IDFA restrictions will block ad networks, instead operating on a per application basis. It is unlikely that this will affect first-party tracking services which set cookies, such as web analytics (e.g. Google Analytics). Good news!

 

If you found this update useful, check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with the team today.

Join Fusion’s technical SEO team as we round up last month’s major industry updates.

Neeva clarifies their privacy policy

Last month we reported that a former Google’s advertising Executive was set to launch a new search engine with a focus on privacy, while remaining ad-free.

It’s privacy policy was examined by Ars Technica, leading to it being changed to fall in line with the company’s mission statements, whilst also providing more clarification on the 90-day data retention policy which now features some exceptions.

We have also received a message from Neeva suggesting that people located in the US will get access to the new search engine first. We’re excited to see a new player enter the market!

Schema 9 is released

Towards the end of June, the Google team working on Schema.org (but also used by Microsoft, Pinterest, and Yandex) announced that a new version has been released.

Amongst other features, it now has added ability to organise products into groups that vary by size (e.g. 2 metre HDMI cable, 3 metre HDMI cable). A distinction has also be made to clarify the difference between product collections, which have been defined as ‘products that are commonly bundled together’ (e.g. an offer).

Other changes include the addition of a LearningResource as CreativeWorks, which would be appropriate for materials with an ‘orientation towards learning, education, skill acquisition, and other educational purposes’.

Google offers paid My Business profiles upgrade

Some users in the US have received promotional emails offering an option to upgrade their profiles for a Google Guaranteed badge in the local results.

This upgrade will cost £40 p/m and now offers a consumer protection programme which has now only been offered to Google Ads customers. It’s presumed that the fee may cover any claims that are typically covered by advertising feeds via Google Ads.

The change marks a shift in how businesses can de facto pay for improved visibility in local results. On the other hand, the use of the service might improve conversions giving potential consumers confidence and peace of mind in a service backed up by Google. 

Chrome support for native iframe lazy-loading

Google previously announced that Chrome will support native lazy-loading for images, meaning the time has now come for iframes.

This will defer the loading of iframes which have not yet come into the viewport (are offscreen), until the visitor scrolls near them. This means that social media embedded content, YouTube videos, maps, and other resources will now only load when they might become useful for the visitor.

We’re expecting this to save the amount of data transferred, speed up the loading of other elements of a page, and reduce memory usage.

This can be enabled by using the loading attribute with a lazy value, which will signal to the browser to defer the loading of off-screen content.

Most modern desktop browsers support (or can support) this feature when enabled. On mobile, this is currently only available on the Android browser, Chrome for Android and Samsung Internet.

Applebot documentation updated with ranking factors

Applebot, Apple’s web crawlers used primarily for Siri and Spotlight recommendations, has seen an update to it’s documentation.

Interesting points include:

• When not referred to specifically, Applebot will now follow Googlebot’s robots.txt restrictions
• Site content might be rendered, which includes JS and CSS
• Meta robots directives will be followed

• 

Apple has also shared some general factors which might be used, including:

• user engagement with search results
• volume and quality of links
• page design characteristics and content relevancy
• approximate user location

If you found this update useful, check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with the team today.

Join Fusion’s technical SEO team as we round up last month’s major industry updates.

Former Google exec to launch private and ad-free search engine

Sridhar Ramaswamy, who was responsible for a significant chunk of Google’s advertising arm, announced that a new competitor will soon be entering the organic search market. Ramaswamy stated in a recent interview that he “came to realise that an ad-supported model had limitations”, subsequently announcing the launch of Neeva.

As an move to shake up the market, the prominence of advertising towards the top of search results (especially on smartphones) has been highlighted, questioning the incentive to provide the most relevant search results. Questionable advertising placement on YouTube videos has also been brought up.

The search engine would not only index the content on the web, but would also combine it with files hosted in other places such as email servers and possibly locally. It has also been suggested that web search will be powered by Bing, maps by Apple, and stock and weather information from other established providers. Linking other accounts, such as Google, Office or Dropbox will allow for personal data access, and personalisation over time.

What would also differentiate the competitor would be a ‘freemium’ model, as well as lack of advertising and data mining.

A pricing model hasn’t been officially announced yet, however access will be free for early adopters. Mr. Ramaswamy hinted, that a monthly subscription might be less than £8. Only time will tell if users will be willing to take up the offer.

Support for the WebP image format increases

Image format Webp, launched in 2010 and currently developed and promoted by Google, has been included in the developer notes for Apple’s Safari browser. This means that, in addition to Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, the addition of Safari will allow for more widespread adoption across the web.

Google has also extended it’s support for the format, allowing for the use of WebP images as a logo in Structured Data.

Although the format has been criticised by some experts for performing below expectation, it could mean a small step towards enabling webmasters to serve more data-efficient images to mainstream audiences.

Google working on integrating Analytics and Search Console data

In the past month it has been reported that Google was sending out messages relating to the deeper integration of Search Console and Analytics data.

It’s also been rumoured that a Beta version is live on some accounts, however no screenshots are available at the time of writing this. Insiders have suggested that, amongst other features, Google will prominently highlight the performance of new and most popular content, traffic acquisition paths, as well as top referring and newly acquired links.

Google’s Webspam Report Highlights

Google has published a summary of their webspam report, which refers to efforts they carry out in order to prevent spam from appearing in search results. It’s estimated that a user has less than a 1% chance of encountering webspam when selecting a result from the search pages.

In comparison to 2018, user-generated spam has been reduced by 80%, and Google is reporting that this type of spam “did not grow in 2019”. While link spam continues to be popular, Google states that 90% of it can be filtered out, arguing specifically that this makes paid links less effective. Unfortunately, these types of practices are still more common in the industry than we’d all like to see.

Hacked website spam has also been mentioned. It seems like the rate of growth of this type of abuse is decreasing, as Google continues working on solutions to notify webmasters and help them recover.

Google also shares some of their learnings when it comes to spam trends, pointing out auto-generated and scraped content is on the increase. We’ve also come across this when carrying out link audits, mostly in the form of image scraping.

The search engine mentions way they have helped webmasters by introducing Site Kit for WordPress, as well as other features. Wide adoption of the two new link attributes has been reported (“adopted around the world”), but sadly with no data to back it up.

New WordPress update focuses on Security and Maintenance

As mentioned above, hacked sites continue to be a way in which bad actors might gain links to their sites. Finding attack vectors in WordPress, which now powers around 35% of the web (including this site), can often be a lucrative way of gaining such an advantage, which means that it’s critical to update CMS platforms, especially when updates focused on security are released.

In 5.4.2., WordPress fixed issues relating primarily to cross-site scripting, protection against rogue plugins, and accessing password-protected content.

You can download WordPress 5.4.2 by visiting your Dashboard, going to ‘Updates‘ and clicking ‘Update Now‘. If you have a site that supports automatic background updates, they’ve already started the update process for you.

If you found this update useful, check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with the team today.

 

 

Join Fusion’s SEO technical team as we round up last month’s major industry updates.

Google rolls out May 2020 Core Algorithm Update

Google confirmed via a Twitter post that an update of the core algorithm has been implemented and was rolled out from May 4th.

It has also been announced that it will take from one to two weeks to affect search results, which means that by the time you are reading this post it should be fully rolled out.

This is the second update to the core algorythm announced just this year, which tells us Google is not planning to pause updates during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

No specific guidance relating to the update has been issued, in order to improve sites which might have been adversely affected. Google have pointed webmasters to their Content and Quality Questions list, which they suggest you should use when creating site content.

Core Web Vitals to become a ranking signal

Google announced that, towards the end of May, a range of new metrics will become signals taken into account when rankings sites in the search results.

These metrics are to become parts of a larger group of Page Experience signals, which will include Core Web Viral, as well as:

• Mobile-friendliness
• Safe browsing
• Client-server connection security
• Compliance with interstitial guidelines

We recently published a more detailed blog post around this, specifically focused on Core Web Virals.

WordPress to include better XML Sitemap geration and submission

WordPress, which now powers around 35% of the web (including this site), is likely to include native sitemap support in version 5.5.

The update comes as an engineer working for WordPress and Google commented on the progress of the development of a core plugin.

On the other hand, the proposal only focuses on the XML Sitemap minimum requirements which would cover most WordPress content types, and are not planned to include extended features such as:

• Image, Video, and News sitemaps
• UI-controls which would allow for post exclusion from the sitemap
• Sitemap caching mechanisms

Google My Business listings can link to Gift Cards and Donation pages

The local business listings offered by Google can now be, in many cases, enhanced by the addition of new features, which now allows people to offer support in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. These links became available in the search results towards the end of May.

It has been announced that a “subset of businesses” in English-speaking countries will be eligible for these new features, possibly in an attempt to roll this out gradually and prevent congestion. These businesses must have been verified prior to March 1st, 2020 and also have a physical storefront.

Third party gift card offerings are also to be made available via a number partners including Square, Toast, Clover, and Vagaro; and donation pages can be hosted by PayPal or GoFundMe.

Google has also shared some tips on how to take advantage of these features in the best way, including crafting a personal message, which is brief, possitive, and specific.

Google Podcast Manager launches to aid podcasters a better way to understand metrics

Google has a long and somewhat complicated history with podcasting. Over 7 years ago, Google Listen was launched as an Android application that let you search, subscribe, download, and stream podcasts and web audio. It was about 3 years old before it was retired.

Similarly, Google Reader, a RSS/Atom feed aggregator, which could be used for podcast feed, was retired at a similar time.

The retired application and service was then later replaced by Google Podcasts in 2018.

With the growth of the podcasting market and an appetite for this type of media consumption, Google has launched a tool that is useful for podcast publishers to help them gain insight into their audience and even grow it. This is most likely to be linked to metrics gathered via Google Podcasts, similarly to YouTube Insights.

Some of the presented features included audience retention metrics and device breakdown.

Check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with us today.

 

Join Fusion’s SEO team as we round up last month’s major industry updates and more.

Google prioritises NHS content for health queries

People searching for health related queries in the UK, have started seeing NHS hosted content in the Knowledge Panels in an attempt to provide high quality, localised, easy to understand and trusted health information.

Bing provides similar functionality using Focus Medica for medical conditions, as well as First Databank for medications. We have also seen results from the MayoClinic and the National Library of Medicine appear in the search results for this search engine.

NHS content is also promoted on YouTube with an info box returned above the typical search results.

Google: Mobile first indexing for all in September 2020

The smartphone Googlebot has been used for a few years, now Google have announced a shift to mobile-first indexing for all sites starting later this year. The search engine will also crawl sites using the desktop crawler, but to a lesser extent.

It has been pointed out that it will become even more important that sites comply with mobile-first indexing best practices to ensure they are represented well for both existing, as well as new sites. Google has also recommended against using separate mobile URLs for sites (such as m.domian.tld), and for implementing responsive design.

Google also recommended to set any other monitoring or tools used for site analysis to a mobile user-agent to reflect what the search engine crawlers see.

WordPress 5.5 to include auto-updates for plugins

WordPress, which powers 35% of the web (including this site), will include a feature allowing auto-updating capabilities for plugins and themes.

This move should improve the roll-out of updates; plugins are often a WordPress attack vectors as quality control can vary depending on the authors. This should in theory allow for a “set and forget” approach to the installation of plugins, as long as they are patched by the developers.

WordPress 5.4 was released on March 31, so I you haven’t updated the CMS yet, we recommend doing so now. It comes with a new features for both users and developers, including block editor enhancement and more.

Google responds to COVID-19

• As a response to events being cancelled or moved online, a new optional eventStatus property can help prevent the event being dropped from the search experience. Some elements of this are still under development, but can be used already.

• New structured data for critical announcements (SpecialAnnouncement) is in Beta, designed primarily for health and government organisations. This can also be done using Search Console.

• Google My Business allows brick-and-mortar stores to be marked as temporarily closed to avoid confusion. Google has also made a point that temporarily closes will not impact local search engine rankings.

• Google News has added a COVID-19 section organising news from selected sources seen as authoritative
• On YouTube curated playlists have been created containing information from trusted sources
• Community Mobility Reports have been published providing insights on how people move after restrictions have been imposed by local governments, charting trends by geography as well as category of location in comparison to a baseline

Check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with us today.