Schedule Your Holiday Hours On Google My Business In Advance

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Google Christmas

Source: Current360

With Halloween in the rear-view mirror we have officially entered the holiday season, and Google is rolling out new features to help businesses prepare. Google My Business announced it is launching a new feature that allows businesses to set their holiday hours in advance, so shoppers will always know when you are open.

In the past, businesses had to manually update their hours manually if they changed their hours for the holiday season, and when the season is over you had to go back in and change the hours back.

Now, if you know ahead of time when you will start running your holiday hours, you can schedule your Google My Business page to automatically update your opening hours when the time comes. Google will also tell shoppers if what they are seeing are special holiday hours.

If your closing hours are flexible, there is also a new option to have a message displayed saying “hours may differ.”

The feature will stick around, so if you have regular special hours for other events or holidays you can also set those up ahead of time.

How to Schedule Special Hours on Google My Business

  • Log in to your Google My Business account and select the location the hours will apply to.
  • On the “Location details” page, scroll down until you see the “Special hours section” and click the link.
  • Select the date when the hours will begin and enter the opening and closing times for that day.
  • Click the box next to “Closed” if your business will be closed on a specific day. You can also set your hours to 12:00am-12:00pm if you are open 24 hours.
  • Click “Add another” to add more special hours for the location.

For more information on the features or setting up your special holiday hours ahead of time, check out Google’s help center article.

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Google Issues Webmasters a Warning About Deceptive Mobile-Only Redirects

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While it is increasingly important for your site to be mobile-friendly, there are some unique risks to running a mobile-friendly site webmasters should be aware of. Google has been encouraging sites to implement mobile-friendly strategies, but it is also cracking down on mobile-only redirects if they are used for fraudulent or deceptive purposes.

Most of the time, mobile-only redirects are used to send mobile users to content they requested in a mobile-friendly format, however some use the redirects deceptively to direct smartphone traffic to unwanted content. In some cases these deceptive redirects can send smartphone users to entirely different websites than the one they requested.

The majority of webmasters aim to use redirects properly, but it has recently been found that deceptive redirects can find their ways onto websites without the webmaster ever knowing. This can potentially happen one of two ways:

  • Advertising: A malicious script installed to display ads may redirect mobile users to a different site without the webmasters knowledge.
  • Hacking: Some hackers set up redirects to spammy or malicious domains for mobile users only.

While it has become known that these redirects can be created without a webmaster’s awareness, Google has recently made it clear they will continue penalizing sites with these deceptive redirects. Google’s webmaster guidelines explicitly forbid these types of redirects and the search engine says it will enact manual penalties when they are discovered.

Thankfully, there is an incredibly easy test you can do right now to make sure your site hasn’t come down with a case of deceptive redirects. Just search for it in Google on your phone and click on the results.

Google also encourages webmasters to monitor their sites for user complaints as well as regularly reviewing analytics data for unusual activity such as any sudden drops in mobile traffic.

If you do find any evidence of deceptive mobile-only redirects, Google recommends checking Search Console for any warnings about site hacks. If you don’t see any alerts, it is possible there may be an issue with third-party scripts on your site. To figure out which one is causing problems, you will have to go through and disable them one at a time until the problem is resolved.

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Bing Gets In The Halloween Spirit With Spooky New Features

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While most people are getting ready for Halloween by preparing their costumes and making sure they have plenty of candy for trick-or-treaters, Bing is getting prepped by launching Halloween-related Cortana searches and a special Bing map showing the locations for haunted houses in the US, UK, and Canada.

In fact, Bing is prepared to help you make a last minute costume decision if you’ve waited this long. Just ask Cortana, “What should I wear for Halloween?”

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Cortana’s holiday spirit doesn’t end there. The search system has a new “guess the horror movie game” that will help keep you bide the time until Saturday. To start the game, just use the phrase “guess the horror movie.”

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Big Maps has also been given a spooky makeover for Halloween, complete with a “frighteningly fun color palette and a new set of Halloween-themed icons.” The map has been updated to also highlight local haunted house locations for Bing users in the US, UK, and Canada.

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Bing is also making changes to how they show e-commerce results for costumes just in time for the holiday. The company says costume images from e-commerce sites will now include its shopping cart badge sowing how many sites have the specific costume for sale.

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A similar badge will also be used on food images to direct users to recipes for frighteningly delicious Halloween treats.

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Say Hello To RankBrain, Google’s New AI Search Signal

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Move over Penguin and Panda, Google’s newest search signal doesn’t rely on engineers to keep it updated and refreshed. RankBrain, a new artificial intelligence system, is already processing a “very large fraction” of searches on Google every day.

RankBrain was announced in an exclusive report from Bloomberg and has already been implemented to help Google address and better understand the large number of ambiguous queries made on the search engine every day.

RankBrain isn’t a complete algorithm, but instead acts as one of the “hundreds” of signals Google uses to rank sites and content for users. Reports estimate Google uses over 10,000 signals and sub-signals, but RankBrain isn’t your average signal.

According to Greg Corrado, Google senior research scientist, RankBrain is now the third most important signal in matching results to a search query. He would not say what the other two more important signals were.

RankBrain basically extends Google’s ability to understand associations between words and use those associations to provide better results. For example, in the past a search for “Barack” would pull results from pages and content that contain that specific word. Now, the same search might also include results which include information related to “US President,” “Barack Obama,” or even possibly “Michelle Obama’s husband.”

As Bloomberg explains in the report:

RankBrain uses artificial intelligence to embed vast amounts of written language into mathematical entities — called vectors — that the computer can understand. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries.

It may not seem like a huge revelation for the search engine, but RankBrain plays an important role in filtering the results users see. It is still unclear just how far RankBrain extends and how it processes signals such as links or photos on pages, but chances are RankBrain has already had an impact on your results you are seeing when you perform a search.

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YouTube Announces Ad-Free Subscription Service ‘YouTube Red’

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YouTube has long been a favorite platform for online video advertisers, thanks to its full-featured and highly effective ad service. However, that might be changing in the near future.

YouTube has announced it will be launching an ad-free subscription service starting on October 28th, in order to meet the demands of users.

The new service, YouTube Red, claims to give users “exactly what they want” by providing ad-free and offline viewing capabilities.

If you absolutely can’t stand ads, you can get rid of them entirely by subscribing for the cost of $9.99 a month.

Thankfully, you aren’t just paying that much for removing ads from your cat videos. YouTube Red will also contain original content from some of YouTube’s biggest names such as PewDiePie and College Humor, launching in 2016.

Starting October 28th, anyone in the US can sign up for a free one-month trial of the service, which will be available for mobile and desktop. The company says it will be expanding to other companies before long.

It is unclear exactly how this will affect advertising earnings and YouTube has not said if there will be revenue sharing amongst publishers. However, if YouTube Red catches on it be the final push to make some video advertisers finally turn to Facebook’s video platform.

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Google Announces Over Half Of All Searches Are Coming From Mobile Devices

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Last week, during Recode’s Code/Mobile conference, Amit Singhal, senior vice president of Google Search, announced that over half of all searches conducted on Google each month are coming from mobile devices.

Mobile has quickly become a dominant force in search, but it has only overtaken desktop in both search and ad volume over the past year.

For this count, Google is not including mobile devices with screens over 6 inches in size, such as tablets. According to the company, Google is primarily counting mobile views as those coming from smartphones.

During his announcement, Singhal explained how the definition of search is changing as the way people interact with their devices and the internet evolves:

“Search as we think about it is fundamentally how you will interact with computing. Computing may live in a 4-to-6-inch device, it may live in a desktop, it may live on a 1-inch round device.”

The news was leaked by John Mueller on Google+ this week, while offering a warning to those who have yet to make their sites mobile-friendly:

“More than half of Google’s searches are now coming from mobile. If you haven’t made your site (or your client’s sites) mobile-friendly, you’re ignoring a lot of potential users. “

According to Search Engine Journal, Google also announced it has indexed over 100 billion links within apps, showing how Google is growing beyond the traditional idea of the web page.

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The Keys To A Successful Holiday Email Campaign [Infographic]

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Retailers across the country are preparing for the upcoming holiday season, but you never want to waste your efforts on marketing practices that won’t produce results.

According to a recent report from Campaigner, social integration, mobile optimization, list segmentation, and personalization are the keys to running a successful holiday email campaign this year. The report comes from a survey of 198 internet retailers conducted in August of this year.

Social integrations were the breakout star of the survey, with almost three-quarters (71%) of the respondents identifying these as the most important add-ons for your holiday email campaigns. Similarly, 70% predicted mobile sales would continue to rise this year.

Over half (57%) of the participants said they would be prioritizing email list segmentation this holiday season, with 40% planning to prioritize personalization.

The infographic below shares these insights and more from the Campaigner survey.

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Instagram Launches Official Account Dedicated To Helping Businesses

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Social media marketing is a great way to connect with your audience and raise awareness for your business, but getting started can be difficult. Every social network has its quirks and kinks to manage and you can’t use the same recipe for success across all platforms.

That’s why Instagram is launching a new official account, dedicated solely to sharing business tips and case studies to help inspire your marketing and advertising on the popular social photo platform.

The aptly titled @instagramforbusiness launched yesterday, starting with a showcase of Ben & Jerry’s, a company that has been marketing itself on Instagram since the platforms very early days in 2011.

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Instagram says business has always been an essential part of Instagram from its very start, and it expects even more to follow suit following the launch of Instagram ads.

In the future, the company will be sharing content through the account designed to inspire and motivate marketing and advertising efforts on Instagram. Here’s what you can expect to see shared on the new account:

“Each week, we’ll run exclusive, behind-the-scenes stories that inspire, inform and showcase the work done by three important groups in our business community from all around the world—brands, small businesses and creative agencies.”

In the coming week, the account will be sharing stories from a local Chicago florist called Flowers for Dreams and New York creative agency BBDO.

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Facebook Is Challenging YouTube With New Video Features

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Before long, Facebook’s video service is going to look a lot like YouTube. Facebook announced several new features to their mobile app that will seem very familiar to YouTube users and will make videos an even larger part of the Facebook platform than before.

Among the features is the new ability to collapse videos into a floating window, so you can browsing your Facebook seamlessly while you watch a video. The change will make watching videos on the platform less of an interruption and more a part of the experience.

Facebook is also testing implementing a new list of recommended videos to watch next after users finish watching a video. If you don’t see something that piques your interest, you can also look in the all new dedicated Facebook video feed, where you’ll find nothing but user shared videos.

The dedicated video feed acts much like your normal News Feed, but exclusively for video and can be found by tapping the “Videos” icon along the bottom navigation menu of the Facebook app.

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If you see something you think you might want to watch, but can’t at the immediate moment for some reason, you can now save it for later, allowing you to easily return when you are someplace more suitable for watching video. All your saved videos can be easily found in the “Saved” bookmark in the menu.

Facebook is still working out the kinks on most of these new features, so don’t expect them to be rolled out too soon. Instead, it appears the new features will see a slow testing and rollout phase, with no telling when we will see a full launch.

 

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Sales Forecast Predicts Booming Online Sales This Holiday Season

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Source: Nordstrom

Source: Nordstrom

Halloween isn’t even here yet, but many retailers are already prepping for the holiday sales surge. According to the National Retail Federation, those retailers can also plan on seeing an even more sales than last year. The NRF predicts sales will jump 3.7 percent to $630.5 billion in November and December 2015.

While the total amount of sales is still expected to rise this year, the increase isn’t as large as the boost in 2014. Last year’s sales grew 4.3 percent compared to 2013.

Online sales are expected to see a large amount of this increase, outpacing the overall growth by rising between 6 and 8 percent this year to $105 billion.

According to the NRF’s report, holiday sales could account for around 19 percent of the retail industry’s total annual sales, projected to reach $3.2 trillion. Those predictions exclude auto, gas, and restaurant sales.

“With several months of solid retail sales behind us, we’re heading into the all-important holiday season fully expecting to see healthy growth,” said NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay. “We expect families to spend prudently and deliberately, though still less constrained than what we saw even two years ago.”

“Price, value and even timing will all play a role in how, when, where and why people shop over the holiday season,” said Shay. “Retailers will be competitive not only on price, but on digital initiatives, store hours, product offerings and much more.”

The NRF holiday sales forecast takes into account many factors including consumer credit levels, disposable personal income, and previous monthly retail sales releases. The numbers do include a non-store category which considers direct-to-consumer, kiosks, and online sales.

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