Google Celebrates 2015 With The Top YouTube Videos of The Year

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YouTube Logo

2015 is coming to a close, and Google has begun their end-of-the-year celebrations by highlighting the most popular videos of the year. The past year has been an especially big one for YouTube, which has been celebrating its 10th birthday all year long.

It has also been the first year that YouTube has seen true competition. Facebook’s video platform has given the service a run for its money, by giving videos a wider platform and more prominent place in news feeds.

Despite this challenge, YouTube continues to be one of the largest platforms in the world, and is still synonymous with internet video. The past year, the service has helped drive a dance craze that swept the nation, become the new home of Super Bowl ads, and helped promote equality with these videos:

Google’s Top Trending Videos of 2015

1. Silento- Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae) #WatchMeDanceOn by Tianne King

2. Clash of Clans: Revenge (Official Super Bowl TV Commercial) by Clash of Clans

3. Crazy Plastic Ball PRANK!! by RomanAtwood

4. Love Has No Labels | Diversity & Inclusion | Ad Council by Ad Council

5. Lip Sync Battle with Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart and Jimmy Fallon by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvRypx1lbR4

6. Justin Bieber Carpool Karaoke by The Late Late Show with James Corden

7. 6ft Man in 6ft Giant Water Balloon – 4K – The Slow Mo Guys by The Slow Mo Guys

8. Golden boy Calum Scott hits the right note | Audition Week 1 | Britain’s Got Talent 2015 by Britain’s Got Talent

9. Dover Police DashCam Confessional (Shake it Off) by Dover Police

10. Mean Tweets – President Obama Edition by Jimmy Kimmel Live

To help reminisce about 2015, YouTube also gathered over 150 YouTube creators for the latest installation of YouTube’s annual Rewind video, showcasing everything from dance prodigies, TV personalities, and even an insane plastic ball fight.

YouTube is certain to be a huge part of all of our lives for the years to come and these videos show the wide variety of videos you can find across the site. If you have a video you want seen in 2016, especially business related videos, YouTube is the place to look.

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AdWords Doubles Amount of Info In Stuctured Snippets

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AdWords In Store Visits

Since launching in spring, Google AdWords’ structured snippet extensions have shown themselves to be a powerful tool in the AdWords arsenal.

Structured snippets add an extra line of information with your text ads which specifically highlight important information for searchers. When implemented well, this can boost click-through rates for ads.

Now, Google has made these structured snippets even more visible in the search results by doubling the amount of information that can accompany text ads.

To do this, advertisers can select two predefined “Headers” which act as structured snippets. Then, those headers can be customized with two unique sets of values. Depending on the search results, these snippets have the potential to be displayed at the same time.

Google does say that each structured snippet extension is treated as its own ad auction, and like other ad extensions, may not always appear together.

You can boost the chances of having both extensions display at the same time by being thorough and providing as much information as you can. With more information, the ad auction is better able to select the highest quality combination of extensions. Not only does this improve your chances of having both snippets show at the same time, it also increases your overall ad performance.

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Google Lets Users Try Out Apps Without Downloading

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Apps

While apps have become the hottest trend for smartphones, the market for apps can be incredibly competitive and hard to break through. Mobile users have limited space on their phone for apps, so they can be hesitant to try out new apps, especially if they are new or relatively-unknown. Even when users do download apps, they often only use it once and forget about it.

Now, Google has launched a new service to let users try out any app they want without having to use up their precious hard drive space. The company has launched a new streaming mobile ad feature that allows users to access a short 60-second or less version of the app that responds just like the full app.

Sissie Hsiao, Google’s head of product for mobile ads, says the goals of this new feature is to help app developers connect with the right users. In a statement to TechCrunch, she explained:

“You can buy ads, you can get apps installed. But a lot of apps are used once or they’re never used, even after they’re installed. We found that 1 in 4 apps is never even used, and there’s often this ‘try once’ experience, and then [the app is] never used again.”

The new streaming mobile ads, called “Trial Runs” allow users to try the app without downloading, which will hopefully help limit the number of “one and done” app downloads. Instead, it will motivate developers to focus on targeting a more refined audience who will be more likely to gully engage with the app.

The new feature is currently available to a limited number of testers, with no word of when to expect a full rollout.

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Google Star Wars Easter Egg Recreates Iconic Opening Crawl

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As the premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens grows closer, Google is getting in on the excitement. The company recently announced its new #ChooseYourSide campaign, and indicated it was planning a number of Star Wars Easter eggs ahead of the film’s release on December 18.

Well, you don’t have to wait for the Easter eggs to start popping up. The first surprise for Star Wars fans who use Chrome has already been found.

Just Google the famous first line from the original 1977 Star Wars movie (“a long time ago in a galaxy far far away”), and you will be treated to a page in the style of the series iconic opening crawl. Instead of an summary of intergalactic politics and jedi-related events however, the scrawl shows search results over a Star Wars-themed background.

You can find out more about the #ChooseYourSide campaign over at Marketing Land. Fans will have to keep waiting for the film’s release, but keep your eyes peeled for more exciting Easter eggs in the meantime.

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Google Shares Search Quality Rating Guidelines For The First Time

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For the first time, Google has released the full version of their Search Quality Rating Guidelines, a document used by Google Search Quality Rates to help determine how to rate the search results they are testing.

The document has become public in the past, through several leaks. Just this week, the October version was leaked. The search engine also released an abridged version in 2013, but now the company has decided to officially release the entire 160-page version previously only available to Search Quality Raters.

Google’s Mimi Underwood said that “ratings from evaluators do not determine individual site rankings, but are used help us understand our experiments.” She added, “The evaluators base their ratings on guidelines we give them; the guidelines reflect what Google thinks search users want.”

As expected, Underwood also implied the document will be updated over time, “as search, and how people use it, changes.”

You can download the full Search Quality Rating Guidelines here.

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AdWords Announces Two New Features For The Holiday Shopping Season

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AdWords In Store Visits

With the holiday shopping season kicking into high gear, Google is rolling out new features to help retailers maximize their sales. Google announced two new AdWords features this week aimed at helping businesses keep in contact with customers during the holiday shopping season, even when they are offline.

Subscribe To Text Updates

The first feature is a brand new ad unit that grants retailers the ability to send marketing messages straight to customer’s phones. The new unit allows users interested in being kept up to date with the latest specials and deals opt-in to text message updates when searching from their phones.

Users just have to tap the “Subscribe” button and they will be set to receive text messages from businesses through Google. Once subscribed, they will receive relevant updates and announcements, like limited time sales or special unique promotions.

To unsubscribe, customers can reply “STOP” at any time.

To protect user privacy, Google will not provide customer phone numbers directly to advertisers, and retailers will not have the ability to contact anyone directly. Instead, Google will act as the messenger, delivering any updates from businesses to consumers.

Holiday Structured Snippets

AdWords also announced a new extension to existing ad units to highlight holiday specific deals, called ‘holiday structured snippets.’ The new feature is specifically designed to promote holiday shopping deals specifically for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

The new structured snippet acts the same as any other, and is accessible through a simple drop down menu which allows you to select either “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” as the header of an ad extension.

These snippets are unique for being able to promote a single offering for a specific holiday promotion, while standard structured snippets require at least three offers.

Google says Black Friday structured snippets will not begin appearing in search results until November, 20, running through November 27. Cyber Monday ads will be shown November 20, through November 30.

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

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google-rankbrain-algorithm

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

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mobile-closeup-campaign

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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