Google’s exact “birthday” remains a mystery, but the official line is that September 27, 1998 was the day the startup launched. Today marks the 21st anniversary of the company that has grown into one of the world’s largest companies, now considered by most to be a tech titan.
— Read on searchengineland.com/on-googles-21st-birthday-a-look-back-in-time-322721
“Last week, outdoor clothing brand The North Face and its ad agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made, came under fire after the agency updated images on Wikipedia pages for popular travel destinations. The efforts were part of a campaign to get The North Face branding at the top of Google image search results when anyone searched for the corresponding travel locations.
The brand initially claimed it collaborated with Wikimedia for the SEO campaign, but later apologized for the campaign after the Wikimedia Foundation published a response saying The North Face had unethically manipulated Wikipedia and risked the trust in Wikipedia’s mission, “for a short-lived marketing stunt.”
Read the full Search Engine Land article here: searchengineland.com/the-north-face-gets-a-thumbs-down-from-seo-community-after-manipulating-google-image-search-results-317747
“Each year, we dive into our data and look for an answer to one persistent, ubiquitous question for PPC advertisers: what exactly does “average” performance look like? Understanding these benchmarks is key for advertisers to recognize their strengths and weaknesses—and more importantly, how they compare in their industry.
This year’s Google Ads report will reveal the average performance across the most crucial KPI’s for advertisers, including:
wordstream-files-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/documents/google_industry_benchmarks_2019.pdf
“…As Google, Yandex and Baidu have developed their search engines and added more automation, machine learning, AI and sophisticated systems, today’s guidance should be:
“Whatever you do, whatever robot you use, do not in any circumstances use any kind of system to translate your keywords – or you will be sent straight to jail without passing go.”
— Read on searchengineland.com/whats-wrong-with-translating-keywords-317281
Despite the rapid growth of voice and virtual assistant adoption, platforms like Google and Amazon have yet to provide businesses with the ability to segment voice interactions from typed interactions in performance reports. This makes it difficult to fully assess the role of voice search and virtual assistants at present, but there are some signals we can use to examine any changes in user behavior and the directional growth of voice interactions.
— Read on searchengineland.com/what-the-numbers-tell-us-about-the-current-voice-search-opportunity-314810
Fred Vallaeys explains why advertisers need to rethink bidding strategies and position metrics now that Google has announced it will sunset one of its oldest metrics later this year.
— Read on searchengineland.com/googles-next-chapter-for-metrics-to-focus-on-clarity-once-average-position-is-removed-312947
Google can now link to some content it is showing in their search results in a new way. Instead of just linking to the page, Google can anchor you to the exact spot of the answer you are looking for and highlight the block of text that is most relevant to your query.
— Read on searchengineland.com/google-featured-snippets-can-now-jump-to-section-of-content-it-is-sourcing-309873
