Facebook Changes How They Rank Videos

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Over the past year or so you have probably noticed a pretty big shift happening on your Facebook News Feed. Video content has taken over, making up a huge portion of what you see on the platform.

To help sort through the influx of videos, Facebook is refining their News Feed algorithm with a new video ranking signal for videos: completion rates. Facebook has used several metrics in the past for ranking videos – including how long a person watched the video.

The problem is these metrics often benefitted shorter videos that don’t necessarily have as much value as longer video content

As the company explains in a recent update:

“One of the signals we look at is ‘percent completion’ — the percent of each video you watch — to help us understand which videos you enjoyed. If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling — and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one. As we continue to understand how our community consumes video, we’ve realized that we should therefore weight percent completion more heavily the longer a video is, to avoid penalizing longer videos.”

For the most part, the new metric shouldn’t affect most pages sharing video content. However, they say “some shorter videos may see a slight dip in News Feed distribution.”

The key takeaway is that if you want your videos to be seen on Facebook, they have to be engaging – no matter their length.

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You Can Now Sync Your Ad Campaigns Across Google and Bing Ads

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While Google largely pretends Bing Ads doesn’t exist, Bing has been working hard to make it easier for advertisers to manage campaigns for both services from one place.

This started by offering the ability to import Google AdWords campaigns directly to Bing Ads, but now the company is expanding this with the ability to automatically sync your campaigns across platforms.

With this new feature, advertisers no longer have to make manual updates to their Bing Ads campaigns if they decide to tweak things on AdWords. Instead, when anything like ad copy, campaign budgets, and ad extensions is updated in AdWords, the changes will automatically be applied to a synced Bing Ads campaign.

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To do this, go through the typical process to import your campaigns into Bing Ads. At the end, you’ll be asked if you would like to import data now, at a later date, or on a recurring basis. Campaigns set to import on a regular basis can be set to update on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

Once you’ve done this, you can also view your import schedule and history, to ensure your campaigns are being properly updated. From here you can also pause or edit scheduled imports.

It sounds like Bing is already at work to expand these features even more, as they say to expect enhanced compatibility with multi-language targeting in the not too distant future.

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Google Improves YouTube Ads With Better Tracking and Targeting

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YouTube Ads

YouTube may be one of Google’s largest platforms, but it gets treated a bit like the black sheep when it comes to Google’s ad services. Targeting has been limited compared to typical AdWords options, and ad options have been built around desktop functionality first.

This is all starting to change, as Google says it is rolling out several updates aimed to make advertising on YouTube better on both mobile and desktop. The announcement also mentioned that over 50% of YouTube videos are now happening on mobile, which likely motivated the change in how they think about ads on the platform.

Target Advertising

Google is now allowing YouTube ads to utilize information associated with users’ Google accounts like their search history, demographic information, and whether the viewer has engaged with an advertiser in the past to better target who sees your ad.

More Focus on Mobile

In response to the increasingly mobile viewership of YouTube, Google is shifting away from a desktop-first mindset. To do this, they are moving from using cookies and pixels because they were not designed for targeting users on YouTube’s mobile, TV, and set-top box apps. The hope is to make tracking and ad functionality more accurate across all devices.

Better Control of What Ads You See

Not all of the new changes are limited to advertisers. Google is also introducing the option for users to device what ads they see on both Google and YouTube from one location. For example, if a user mutes a specific advertiser in Search, the advertiser will also be muted for the user when they watch videos on YouTube.

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Google is Retiring Google+ On January 24th, Replacing It With Google+

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Google+ is dead. Long live Google+.

Google announced it is retiring the “classic” Google+ we all know and replacing it with an all-new updated version with several big updates. The company says it is aiming to please users with several of the most heavily requested updates from the Google+ community.

”With this latest round of updates, we believe the new Google+ is really your Google+— designed around your suggestions, requests and needs. It also means it’s time to say goodbye to classic Google+ on the web, which we’ll be turning down on January 24.”

Here are a few of the things you can expect when the “new” Google+ launches on January 24:

Hide Low-Quality Comments

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Google+ will begin to automatically bury low-quality comments that its algorithms deem non-conductive to conversation. It’s hard to know how exactly the function will work, but you can opt to leave the “low-quality comments” visible to everyone if you desire.

Putting Content First

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Google+ is aiming to trim the fat with its new update by reducing the amount of wasted space on the screen. Instead, it aims to put the focus on content with more images that you can even zoom in on.

Events Make Their Return

Events disappeared from Google+ some time ago, but the ability to create and join events is coming back. However, the company says it still needs to refine Events based on user experience, so expect it to be a work in progress when it launches.

“And Much More”

While Google is relaunching Google+ on the 24th, they say their work is far from over. “Our aim is to make Google+ the best place to connect around the things you care about,” the company says. Google is encouraging users to give their feedback and help shape the new Google+ as it takes shape in the future.

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Ads and Insights are Coming to Instagram Stories

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Instagram Stories

In just five months Instagram Stories has grown into a force to be reckoned with, as the company has launched numerous new features like links, live video, and hands-free video recording. Now, the platform is working to make Stories more attractive to businesses with ads and insights for Stories.

According to Instagram’s own numbers, over 150 million users interact with Stories every day, with one in five Stories also receiving direct messages from viewers. The company also says 70% of users follow a business on Instagram and a third of the most viewed Stories are created and shared by businesses.

Now, the company has announced that ads and insights for Instagram Stories are coming soon.

Ads for Instagram Stories

For now, ads are limited to just 30 brands like Maybelline, New York, Nike, and Netflix, who have been given the ability to test a new 15-second, full-screen ads during Instagram Stories.  If you want to see what the ads might look like, check out how Airbnb is using ads in Instagram Stories:

 

Insights for Instagram Stories

In addition to the testing of ads for Instagram Stories, Insights will also be available as part of Instagram  Business Tools. Anyone with a business account can now view impressions, reach, replies, and exits for all their stories within Business Tools. You can see a preview of Insights for Stories below:

 


These new features are expected to roll out globally in the new couple of weeks, so keep your eyes out.

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Google Confirms It Has Launched Its Mobile Interstitial Penalty

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Google has officially begun rolling out the intrusive mobile interstitial penalty yesterday after months of warnings the penalty would be launched on January 10, 2017.

The roll-out was confirmed by both John Mueller and Gary Illyes yesterday.

The penalty is specifically designed to target intrusive interstitials that pop-up immediately after landing on a page from a Google mobile search result. However, it does not affect pages with delayed interstitials triggered by a click or action on the website.

Google specifies this means “pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”

Google also detailed three specific types of interstitials it deems as problematic:

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  • showing a popup that covers the main content, either immediately after the user navigates to a page from the search results or while they are looking through the page.
  • displaying a standalone interstitial that the user has to dismiss before accessing the main content.
  • using a layout where the above-the-fold portion of the page appears similar to a standalone interstitial, but the original content has been inlined underneath the fold.

The company also detailed three types of interstitials that would not be affected by the penalty, so long as they are “used responsibly”:

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  • Interstitials that appear to be in response to a legal obligation, such as for cookie usage or for age verification.
  • Login dialogs on sites where content is not publicly indexable. For example, this would include private content such as email or unindexable content that is behind a paywall.
  • Banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space and are easily dismissible. The app install banners provided by Safari and Chrome are examples of banners that use a reasonable amount of screen space.
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Bing Reveals The Top Marketing Search Terms For 2016

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Bing has unveiled the top marketing keywords searched for throughout last year, based on their US search data. The new reveal sheds light on what people are thinking of and what the biggest upcoming trends are, with personal assistants beating out the competition.

”Personal assistants and artificial intelligence were a clear priority for marketers over the past year. Advances in chat bots and virtual assistants, such as Alexa, Cortana and Amazon Echo – as well as updates to several smartphone chat bots, were likely drivers for these search terms.”

Of course, Microsoft owns both Cortana and Bing, so it is possible that played a role in the high rank of personal assistants on the list. Still, the popularity of other services such as Siri and Alexa shows that virtual assistants are quickly becoming a major part of the tech and marketing landscape.

In addition to personal assistants, Bing says augmented reality and virtual reality are also poised to play a big role in marketing.

”Virtual and augmented reality came second to intelligence, with the popularity of searches representing the growth of this technology throughout 2016 – and it’s likely continual development into next year.”

Check out the rest of the top marketing search terms for 2016 below:

  1. Personal Assistants/ Intelligent Agents
  2. Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality
  3. Search Marketing
  4. Artificial Intelligence
  5. Email Marketing
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Sites Without HTTPS May Be Marked as Non-Secure in Chrome Soon

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Google HTTPS Warning

Google is making some changes to protect users’ sensitive information online, and it could lead to your site being marked as non-secure by Google’s web browser at the end of this month.

Google released a warning that as of the end of January 2017, Chrome will mark sites without HTTPS as non-secure if they collect private information like passwords or credit cards.

Google #NoHacked HTTPS

“Enabling HTTPS on your whole site is important, but if your site collects passwords, payment info, or any other personal information, it’s critical to use HTTPS.”

The company has encouraged implementing HTTPS in the past by making it a (very minor) search ranking signal. Now, from the sound of the alert, the company says an entire site will need to be HTTPS if any pages collect payment or sensitive information.

Switching over to HTTPS is an easy process, but you should begin preparing to make the switch now if your site fits the criteria. Otherwise, you are likely to be flagged as non-secure in February and lose a large amount of your web traffic.

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Protect Your Google Listings From The Latest Negative SEO Tactic

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Negative SEO alert

There’s a new malicious SEO tactic making the rounds and your Google My Business listings could easily be the victim, according to web security company Sucuri. The company says individuals are sneaking inappropriate or damaging photos into GMB listings with the intent of damaging a business’s reputation and image.

What makes this type of exploit unique, however, is that it doesn’t take any hacking skills to do. Unlike other negative SEO tactics, this specific technique does not include hosting images on a client server, malicious code, or even breaking into an account.

Ultimately, the attack is taking advantage of Google’s lax rules for uploading photos to a business’s location in Google Maps. Anyone can upload images to a business’s listing, and any of these images can be used for Knowledge Graph data about the business.

While Sucuri doesn’t have evidence of this, it is possible for a person to spam a business’s listing with lewd images and then send fake hits to them to increase their perceived popularity – all with the end goal of making sure they come up when people see your business online.

How to Protect Your Listings

Unfortunately, the nature of this type of attack makes it difficult to guard against. There is no way to limit who can upload photos to your listings or determine which image gets used in Knowledge Graphs. The best you can really do is to actively keep an eye on your listings and which photos are appearing next to your listings.

You can also watch to make sure no one is uploading inappropriate pictures to your Google My Business photos. While you can’t stop people from uploading lewd images, you can easily remove any associated with your location.

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New Google Tool Helps You Make The Best First Impression

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When it comes to marketing your business, it’s all about image. How people perceive your business will decide whether they decide to come in the door or walk away. This is especially true online.

One of the first images people will see when they find your business is almost always your photos in your local listings on search engines. Thankfully, Google has given you more control and more data on how your images are performing.

With the new insights for photos on business listings, you can see how people are responding to your listing and images and compare them against your competition.

You can easily see the new insights in your Google My Business listing by clicking the Insights tab on the top navigation bar. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find a graph comparing your business to “businesses like you”.

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You can refine the time-period you want to look at by the past 90 days, past 30 days, and past 7 days.

Unfortunately, you can’t select exactly what businesses you are comparing your site against, nor do you even get to know who the “businesses like you” are. But, the new tool can still be an effective way to make sure you are making a great first impression with your listings on Google.

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