Tag Archive for: Google marketing

Google Is Testing Letting Brands Post Straight To The Front Page of SERPs

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Source: Robert Scoble / Flickr

Image Source: Robert Scoble / Flickr

Early this year, Google took advantage of the US Presidential election to test a new feature allowing candidates to publish messages straight to the front page of search results. Then, in March, the company expanded this test to include a tiny number of small businesses.

Now, Google is widening their tests yet again – increasing from “tens” of small business to “thousands”. Even more, the company is taking the feature international with tests in Brazil and India, as Google confirmed to Mike Blumenthal this week.

Google hasn’t announced the name of the new feature, but Blumenthal has already captured a few screenshots of these messages in search results – as you can see below:

Image Source: Mike Blumenthal

Image Source: Mike Blumenthal

The feature allows small businesses to create cards with short messages that appear on the front page of search results pages similarly to AMP articles or social media cards.

It appears that the cards show up specifically on searches for an exact business’s name. The cards can also include text, links, pictures, and even videos. Reports indicate businesses given access to the test can use a dedicated app to post content, but the public will have to wait to see.

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Image Source: Joy Hawkins

According to Blumenthal, you can expect to see more of these cards showing up in search results over the next 30 days as Google finishes rolling out the test to businesses.

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Google Finally Makes Google+ Optional For Users

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Google Authorship

Google+ has been a controversial and underwhelming social media platform mostly populated by profiles made out of obligation in order to use Google’s services, but this will change soon as Google announced Google+ will no longer be a requirement for services across Google’s network.

Since Google made their social platform a requirement for all other services across their site, including Gmail and YouTube, there has been a strong pushback from users. The negative reaction was especially prevalent for YouTube users, who were forced to create new Google+ pages if they wished to create a new video channel.

In the announcement, Google conceded making Google+ mandatory for all users may have been a mistake:

“When we launched Google+, we set out to help people discover, share and connect across Google like they do in real life. While we got certain things right, we made a few choices that, in hindsight, we’ve needed to rethink.”

Over the next few months, Google will be uncoupling Google+ from all services. This means all it will take to access any Google products or services is a simple Google account. Once this is complete, users will be able to use YouTube, Gmail, or Google Analytics using a traditional Google account.

For users who were already pushed into making Google+ accounts, you will soon be able to remove it, although Google didn’t provide any more details about how or when.

With this change, Google+ will now be completely optional. This may be good news for users, but it will be interesting to see how the platform handles the shift. Many have already proclaimed the social network is dead, but it is entirely possible setting it free from the rest of Google may finally give the platform a chance to grow with only members who want to be on the social network.

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