Google has released the second part of the “spam update” today, June 28. The update comes after part one rolled out on June 23. “The second part of our spam update has begun today, and it will also conclude later today unless we share otherwise,” Google said. Impact. Both parts of this spam update were “global” updates that targeted both web results and image results, Danny Sullivan of Google told us. The announcement. Here is Google’s two part announcement: Lots of updates going on. In the past three months, SEOs have had multiple Search updates roll out:
Why we care. If you notice ranking changes today, it might be related to Google’s spam efforts and this update, so ensure your site is playing by Google’s rules and guidelines. This was a global release that impacted both the web and images results, so if you see ranking changes on the 23rd or 28th, it might be related to spam related concerns. The post Part two of Google Search spam update on June 28 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3dmRhoi
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Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, and how did you learn SEO or PPC? I did an informal Twitter poll a bit back and only 2% of respondents learned their craft formally in a classroom (IRL or virtual). The majority — 77% — learned search marketing through hands-on, in the weeds learning. Just 9% had a mentor help them learn. These numbers got us thinking about how critical it is to have a guide to take you through uncharted territory. So today we’re elated to announce the Search Engine Land inaugural Mentorship Program. SEO mainstay Eric Enge brought the idea to us a few months ago, and we’re thrilled to officially launch it today. Applications for both mentors and mentees are live now. We’re capping this first cohort at 5 mentorships and applications close at 5pm ET on Friday, July 2. Make sure to read the program and Code of Conduct before applying (to ensure you can commit the time to the program). Carolyn Lyden New warning tells Google searchers when results may not be reliableGoogle is testing a new search feature that tells the searchers when the results for their query are new and thus possibly unreliable. The notice reads: It looks like these results are changing quickly. If this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources. The warning indicates that the current index is missing what Google would consider reliable content on a search topic, and the results will be better when more information comes along. Why we care. The in-SERP warning indicates that Google knows when its may not show the best search results. Google publishes SEO guide to HTTP status codes, network and DNS errorsEver wonder how your various HTTP status codes or how your network or DNS responds to GoogleBot may impact how well your site performs on Google Search? Well, Google has published a new guide and help document detailing how HTTP status codes and network or DNS errors impact your Google Search performance. Why we care. Google has not previously documented these HTTP status codes, network issues, and DNS errors in such detail. We have heard bits and pieces from Google on each case but here is an official guide you can use from on how these impact your site’s performance in Google Search. So print it out and give it to your SEO team and your server team. GMB reporting data might be delayedIf you’re trying to pull your June Google My Business reports this week, you may not have all the numbers. “Google has posted a message at the top of the Google My Business Insights reporting screen that says ‘data may be delayed,’” said Barry on SERoundtable. If you have local SEO clients, make sure you let them know in advance that their monthly reports might be off (especially if you’re sending reports from an automated tool that gets them directly from GMB). The glitch doesn’t affect how local listings show up in search results or your profile’s ranking, just the info that you’ll get from it. On the hunt for something new in 2021? Here are the latest career opportunities in searchSEO Lead @ Stripe (remote)
Group Director, Media & Analytics @ Amsive Digital (remote USA)
SEO Strategist @ Victorious (remote USA)
Senior Paid Search Manager @ Media Assembly (Austin, TX)
Enter a job opening for an opportunity to be featured in this section. Changes to Ads ERFs, tips for GMB posts and soon you can post to Insta from desktopGoogle Ads announced the deprecation of Entity Read Files (ERFs). Users currently retrieving Display & Video 360 resource information from ERFs should begin migrating to using the Display & Video 360 (DV360) API or Structured Data Files (SDFs). 7 quick tips for Google Posts. Pro tip from local SEO pro Joy Hawkins: Seasonal posts perform the worst in Google My Business posts. While COVID-related update information gets the most views. Instagram will soon let you post from desktop. Though it’s yet to roll out to everyone, here’s a sneak peek at how the mobile app will (FINALLY!) let users post from other devices. Social media marketers, rejoice. What We’re Reading: Mozilla’s Rally browser extension collects data for academic research on how people use the web“Historically, data-hoarding digital companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon have made it difficult for academic researchers to access that data to study how people behave on the internet,” said Max Willens for Digiday. Mozilla’s new Firefox browser extension Rally hopes to change that. Internet users can “donate their data” for research studies “that are designed to build new resources, tools, and potentially even policies that empower people just like you to build a better internet and fight back against exploitative tech,” according to the Rally website. With consumer privacy top of mind and both advertisers and consumers worried about the “black box” of Google’s FLoC, many internet users may be willing to use the data that others collect for research purposes. The goal is also to help understand how big players exploit user data for their own gain. Currently, Rally is used by hundreds of people, but the goal is to expand those numbers to collect even more data. The data collected from the extension varies based on the research you’re participating in, and Mozilla says it will not sell any data. It’s purely for academic research. To join you set up a profile, find a study to join, and then browse away. “Before you enroll, we’ll tell you exactly who we’re working with, which data is being collected, where it’s going, and how it’s being used,” says Mozilla. The post What’s the latest in search marketing? Monday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3A4iupj Only 2% of SEO or PPC professionals took traditional classes to learn search marketing, according to an informal Twitter poll I issued this week. The other 98% of us learned in trial by fire (hands-on), took DIY courses, or had a mentor to help us along the way. That last one is often key in helping many search marketers level up in the industry. Mentorship is not only beneficial to the mentees, but to everyone involved. In fact, 87% of mentors and mentees feel empowered by their mentoring relationships and have developed greater confidence, according to research from Moving Ahead. This is why we’re excited to launch the application for the Search Engine Land Mentorship Program in partnership with SEO mainstay Eric Enge (who will mentor one lucky applicant, too!). Inspired by other successful programs in the space (big shoutout to Women in Tech SEO), this Mentorship Program is open to applicants in both SEO and PPC. How will it work? Here are the details:
Along with the opportunity to be mentored by experts in SEO and PPC, mentees will receive tickets to attend SMX Next. And mentors will be able to join in a panel discussion at the event on how to be a coach/mentor in search marketing. If you’re ready to teach the next generation in search or learn from the best, we encourage you to apply! The post Announcing the Search Engine Land Mentorship Program for SEO and PPC appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2U9K7gk Ever wonder how your various HTTP status codes or how your network or DNS responds to GoogleBot may impact how well your site performs on Google Search? Well, Google has published a new guide and help document detailing how HTTP status codes and network or DNS errors impact your Google Search performance. The document. You can access this document within the Google Search Central documentation area. It is broken down into:
What stands out. To me, there are a few things that stand out to me, maybe as new or interesting: (1) Google will try 10 hops for your redirects and then consider the URL with a redirect error in Search Console. (2) 301 vs 302 redirects; Google has said a 301 redirect is a strong signal that the redirect target should be canonical whereas a 302 redirect is a weak signal that the redirect target should be canonical. (3) 200 status codes guarantee that the page goes to the indexing pipeline but does not guarantee the indexing system will index the page. Why we care. Google has previously not documented these HTTP status codes, network and DNS errors in such detail. We have heard bits and pieces from Google on each case but here is an official guide you can use from Google on how these impact your site’s performance in Google Search. Print it out and give it to your SEO and server teams. The post Google publishes SEO guide to HTTP status codes, network issues and DNS errors appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2SspStD Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, do you hate Google Analytics 4? Chatter on Twitter this week indicates that many marketers are not adjusting well to Google’s change in their reporting platform. One of the big differences is that GA4 is event-based measurement (whereas Universal Analytics had page hits, event hits, ecommerce hits, and social interaction hits). But for marketers, it seems the issue is making the leap (and hopefully getting more data after the beta is complete). “One client starting from scratch looked at GA4 reports rather than GA3 and immediately saw much more data without fiddling with GTM,” said Mark Alves. If you’re still lost, check out Colleen Harris’ SMX Advanced session: “Preparing your website data for Google Analytics 4.” Hopefully Google will hear search marketers’ feedback and make big improvements in UX and data reporting before the GA4 beta ends. Carolyn Lyden Third-party cookies won’t be deprecated in Chrome until late 2023Google has moved back its timeline to block third-party cookies in Chrome, according to an announcement yesterday morning. “While there’s considerable progress with this initiative, it’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right,” said Vinay Goel, Privacy Engineering Director with Chrome. The new timeline allows for more community input as well as room for Google to continue working with international regulators. First, Google will allow for testing, discussion, and preparation for adoption. If the solutions pass the commitments Google has made to the CMS, the rollout will begin:
Why we care. This delay means that there is an opportunity for search marketers’ concerns to be heard by the tech giant and that there is more time to prepare for the major changes. Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to implement, and avoid, for greater search visibilityThe competition for site traffic, users’ attention and trust is constantly intensifying, and now, people have more choice than ever about where they can go to find the information or products they’re looking for. That’s why improving your E-A-T is such an important element to both your brand’s credibility and organic visibility. At SMX Advanced, Lily Ray of Amsive Digital discussed the tactics that she and her team have identified as being harmful to your E-A-T, as well as ways to bolster it for search engines and users alike. In a nutshell, marketers should be avoiding thin content, doorway pages, creating content on a variety of topics (as opposed to focusing on their niche), unmoderated UGC and undisclosed affiliate links. For brands that are looking to take their E-A-T to the next level, Ray suggested:
Get more in-depth on how to improve your E-A-T. GMB 101, Facebook Ads ROAS and add tweets directly to Instagram StoriesNiki Mosier launches new GMB Management 101 course with BrightLocal. If you’re looking to successfully claim, optimize and maintain a Google My Business listing, local SEO expert Niki Mosier walks you through each step of the process in this free course. How to increase ROAS from Facebook Ads. Step 1. Improve your ad copy. Step 2. Improve creative. Step 3. Profit? Check out the full list of tips from Charlie Lawrence here. You can now add your tweets directly to Insta stories. This trend has always baffled me. Instagram influencers with huge followings have seen huge success just re-posting their tweets on the visual social platform. Now they don’t even have to screenshot. What We’re Reading: Teamwork makes the dream workThat’s the idea behind this Wired article, “How humans think when they think as part of a group” by Annie Murphy Paul. We often think of “groupthink” as a bad thing. We’re all getting caught up in, “well that’s what they’re doing.” “The group mind was believed to be powerful but also dangerous: primitive, irrational, incipiently violent. It was also assumed that the group was less intelligent than the individual,” said Paul. However, she also shares examples detailing how thinking as a team is actually beneficial. Not only do we expand our brain power beyond just one person, we can figure out problems faster, brainstorm better new ideas, and adjust to the changing developments of a fast-paced world more quickly. She later says that the keys to a positive group mentality are actually missing from schools and companies nowadays. “Our emphasis on individual achievement, and our neglect of interpersonal cohesion, means that we are failing to reap the rich benefits of the group mind.” So how do we cultivate it again?
The post Google adjusts the timeline for third-party cookie deprecation; Friday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3wVVdUD Google is testing a new search feature that tells the searchers when the results for their query are new and thus possibly unreliable. The notice reads “it looks like these results are changing quickly.” “If this topic is new, it can sometimes take time for results to be added by reliable sources.” Vox first reported this, where Danny Sullivan of Google told the publication “when anybody does a search on Google, we’re trying to show you the most relevant, reliable information we can, but we get a lot of things that are entirely new.” In situations like this, Google needs time to build reliable search results. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot from Vox: Similar. April 2020, Google launched a feature to communicate to searchers when the search results didn’t provide any great results. The overall goal of both features are the same, to say that Google Search may not have the best answers for that specific query and Google is aware of it and so should you. More. Danny Sullivan from Google told Vox “Someone had gotten this police report video released out in Wales, and it’s had a little bit bit of press coverage. But there’s still not a lot about it,” said Sullivan. “But people are probably searching for it, they may be going around on social media — so we can tell it’s starting to trend. And we can also tell that there’s not a lot of necessarily great stuff that’s out there. And we also think that maybe new stuff will come along.” Why we care. Google showing this information shows that Google knows when its search results may not show the best search results. Thinking that Google can know these cases is pretty impressive. It just showcases how smart the search company can be, and when search fails, we often notice in a big way. The post Google Search notice warns searchers when results are new and possibly unreliable appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3zXVkkn The competition for site traffic, users’ attention and trust is constantly intensifying, and now, people have more choice than ever about where they can go to find the information or products they’re looking for. That’s why search engines like Google are emphasizing expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) as a measure of content relevance and quality. Demonstrating a high degree of E-A-T not only improves your chances of ranking higher on relevant queries, it also helps to insulate your site from taking a dip in visibility after a core update and shows users that your content, and by extension, your brand, is a reliable source of information. During her session at SMX Advanced entitled “Demystifying major algorithm updates in 2021: Where is search headed?”, Lily Ray, senior director, SEO & head of organic research at Amsive Digital, discussed the tactics that she and her team have identified as being harmful to your E- Practices that can hurt your E-A-T“Some overarching trends that I’ve seen in my research is the rise of importance of E-A-T, especially for Your Money or Your Life [YMYL] websites,” Ray said. “And on the flip side, we have basically the elimination of fake news, pseudoscience, clickbait [and] sites that contradict scientific and medical consensus, which Google makes very clear throughout many of its documents.” While you may not be publishing articles that contradict science, the characteristics of sites that host that kind content can be found in low E-A-T content across all sectors. Below are a few of the hallmarks of such content. Omitting attribution and evidence. Would you take financial or medical advice from someone who claims to be an expert, but refuses to substantiate their claims or reveal their name and credentials? The online equivalent of that would be to publish content without listing an author and including a byline with their credentials. Sites that choose to omit this information, especially in YMYL categories like finance, civics, news and health, are “just making a lot of bold claims without necessarily saying where they got that information from,” Ray said, adding, “There’s no proof or evidence of the claims that they’re making on the site. And in some cases, the content or the advice that they’re giving throughout the content is outright dangerous, which is something that Google’s definitely cracking down on.” Thin content, duplicate content and doorway pages. “Another thing that my team and I noticed when we do this type of research and work with our clients is that a lot of sites that have been impacted by core updates over the past few years tend to have a lot of thin, duplicate or doorway pages,” Ray said. These types of pages are likely to provide a subpar user experience. Businesses may turn to these tactics so that they can save time by reusing a page template, or as an attempt to manipulate ranking signals. Whatever the reason, these landing pages fail to deliver the content that users clicked through from the search results for and can erode your brand’s credibility with users and your visibility in search. Generalist content. While producing a variety of content on different topics may help you appeal to more audiences, it likely means that you’re not conveying a depth of expertise or authority in any of those topics. “Another big observation that I’ve seen is that these generalist sites that are kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none . . . there’s a slow and steady decline of a lot of these types of sites,” Ray said. In the data above, we can see a decrease in visibility for DIY sites, which are relatively low-stakes topics. For brands that want to improve their E-A-T, it’s best to publish content that pertains to your subject area, especially if you’re publishing YMYL content. Unmoderated UGC. User-generated content (UGC) can do a lot for your SEO, but if left unchecked, it can also damage your E-A-T as well as your rankings. “Something that we’ve noticed on a lot of sites that have been negatively impacted is they don’t have a good handle on their comments, or on user-generated content throughout the site,” Ray said. “In some examples that we’ve seen, people are providing a lot of really personal information [in their comments], maybe they’re providing really bad medical advice — all that content is being counted towards your content quality,” she added, “So, if you’re focusing on E-A-T, and you have people coming in there and leaving personal information or information that contradicts medical consensus or things like that, that can really work against you.” Undisclosed affiliate links. For some businesses, affiliate links help to generate revenue that supports their content, and they can continue to do so without necessarily harming their E-A-T by disclosing the nature of these links. Search engines, and users, may take offense if your affiliate links seem like internal links to other content, which is often the assumption for YMYL content. “If you’re not making it very clear throughout the content that these are affiliate links and if you’re using informational, Your Money or Your Life pages to really push the user to buy products, these sites have gotten in a lot of trouble over the past couple of years,” Ray said, “And, with the product reviews update, and even with the core update of June of 2021, it appears to be the case that Google’s really ramping up the importance of good E-A-T and good usability on affiliate sites and product review sites.” Ways to convey more expertise, authority and trustworthinessIn addition to avoiding the practices listed above, there are numerous ways that you can show search engines and audiences that your content is well researched, accurate and that your brand can be trusted. Update, remove, redirect or consolidate your content. Marketers can often get caught up with creating new content and forget that content quantity may not be as advantageous as content quality. “We update, remove, redirect or consolidate underperforming content where applicable,” Ray said of the work her teams perform for their clients. Building these tasks into your workflow can help you reduce the risk of duplicate content, eliminate outdated information on your site and save time by breathing fresh life into existing evergreen content. Improve your site architecture. “The way a website is architected via its internal linking structure and breadcrumbs can actually help to convey E-A-T,” Ray told Search Engine Land. “Use a logical parent/child relationship within your categories, subcategories, and articles or products to make it easy for users and search engines to understand you have a depth of expertise on a given topic,” she recommended, noting that this strategy can also be helpful for isolating content that might not be SEO-friendly or could work against the overall quality of your site, such as UGC, adult content, or required website content that should be noindexed. Manage your brand’s reputation. Poor brand reputation may have an indirect effect on your E-A-T. Section 2.6 of Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines specifically addresses the reputation of websites and creators, instructing the evaluators that “Many websites are eager to tell users how great they are. Some webmasters have read these rating guidelines and write ‘reviews’ on various review websites. But for Page Quality rating, you must also look for outside, independent reputation information about the website. When the website says one thing about itself, but reputable external sources disagree with what the website says, trust the external sources.” Although Google’s search quality raters don’t directly affect the algorithms or rankings, their feedback does get factored into Google’s planning for future algorithm updates, and addressing your reputation will also improve the likelihood that users will trust your site and your content. Find ways to increase transparency and trust. As E-A-T becomes something of a prerequisite to rank well in certain verticals, more and more sites are finding ways to demonstrate their expertise. This increased competition means that “the more you can do to tell your users why you should be trusted, the more signals that you can add to the page, the better your site’s going to perform,” Ray said. In the example Ray used (shown above), Diet Doctor clearly indicates who the author is, who the piece of content was reviewed by and the date the article was last updated. The site also uses pop-up citations after each sentence containing a claim. Expertise isn’t built overnight and neither is E-A-TWhether you’re looking to recover from a core update or just futureproof your content, understand that it may take some time before you reap the benefits of your optimizations. “Anybody that’s looking for shortcuts to this process, I’m sorry to say that there aren’t any, because this is very, very hard work,” Ray said, “It can take search engines a long time to process these changes, so you might not see the results of your efforts until the next core update rolls out or maybe even the core update after that.” However, the benefits can be well worth the effort as you stand to increase your organic visibility and build more trust with audiences, both of which can work hand-in-hand to get you closer to your business goals. And, the processes you put in place to bolster your E-A-T can be used to increase your visibility in other important areas as well: “It’s not just Google search, there’s so many different areas of Google that they’re focusing on E-A-T,” Ray said, “So the same processes that you’re using to rank in organic search, think about that for YouTube, think about that for your images, think about that for your Google My Business profile or the Google Play Store, because it really is this ecosystem of E-A-T.” The post Demonstrating E-A-T: Tactics to implement, and avoid, for greater search visibility appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3jiFM4G Google has moved back its timeline to block third-party cookies in Chrome, according to an announcement this morning. “While there’s considerable progress with this initiative, it’s become clear that more time is needed across the ecosystem to get this right,” said Vinay Goel, Privacy Engineering Director with Chrome. The delay will allow the web community to convene and further discussions on the topic, allow regulators to understand and provide input, and for advertisers to adjust their services, said the blog. New timeline. The changed timeline will allow for technology to deploy by late 2022 for developers to begin adoption. “Subject to our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and in line with the commitments we have offered, Chrome could then phase out third-party cookies over a three-month period, starting in mid-2023 and ending in late 2023,” added Goel. Public development process. Google’s public development process before launch allows the public and regulators to have a say in the third-party cookie deprecation process:
From there, if the solutions pass the commitments Google has made to the CMS, the rollout will begin:
More details. Google plans to release a more detailed schedule on privacysandbox.com. Why we care. Many advertisers have rightfully been worried about what the rollout of Google’s privacy initiatives and the blocking of third-party cookies means for their metrics and their clients. This delay means that there is an opportunity for search marketers’ concerns to be heard by the tech giant and that there is more time to prepare for the major changes — including finding technology solutions that adjust when cookies are deprecated, figuring out a first-party data strategy, and pulling data from other sources. More on FLoC and Google’s privacy initiatives:
The post Google pushes back plan to block third-party cookies until 2023 appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2T1yAPU Search Engine Land’s daily brief features daily insights, news, tips, and essential bits of wisdom for today’s search marketer. If you would like to read this before the rest of the internet does, sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox daily. Good morning, Marketers, could the industry’s biggest players win over privacy enthusiasts? Brave, the privacy-centric browser, recently made its search engine available as an open beta. And last week, DuckDuckGo boasted about its 55% increase in search traffic over the last 12 months. Both companies are expanding their offerings to appeal to privacy-conscious users, and I would assume they’re doing so because they see a growing business opportunity. It’s easy to just say that the smaller search engines are trying to take a bite out of Google’s market share, because they are, but that’s something of an oversimplification. The tech giants, like Google and Apple, are also trying to show users that they care about privacy — or perhaps, that they care that their users care about privacy. You can see it in the language used in their blog posts and in the changes and features they’ve announced as of late, like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and Google’s Android counterpart to it. My opinion is that the companies that were founded with privacy as a cornerstone are likely to develop better products for privacy-conscious users because the strategic decisions they make and the investment capital they take will be dictated by that core philosophy. On the other hand, the entrenched players already have stakeholders to answer to and may have built their products long before privacy was top-of-mind for so many users, meaning that they may have to overhaul a lot of their offerings. However, they’re also more likely to have the resources to make it happen. Will Google, Bing, Facebook or any of the other tech giants be able to attract more privacy-minded users, or are their initiatives more about preventing users from leaving their ecosystems? Let me know what you think, email me at [email protected] (subject line: Hands off my cookie jar). George Nguyen, Google Search released a spam update on June 23For those who’ve (understandably) lost track, over the last two months we’ve experienced Google’s product reviews update, the June core update, the page experience update (which is still rolling out) and yesterday, the company announced that it rolled out a spam update totally separate from all those other ones. Yesterday’s spam update rolled out in a single day, unlike core updates do, and Google also revealed that a second spam update will come next week. If you noticed ranking changes yesterday, they might be related to Google’s spam-fighting efforts, so ensure your site is playing by Google’s rules and guidelines to preserve your organic visibility. Ask the expert: Your top FLoC questions answered“Let me get on my soapbox here for a minute and talk about the thing that’s really huge now. The thing that we can immediately do something about and that too many advertisers do wrong, is they don’t communicate to Google what a conversion is. Yeah, you do conversion tracking, but you don’t really tell Google what it is that you truly care about,” said Frederick Vallaeys about improving measurement in FLoC at the Q&A after his SMX Advanced session. Attendees from all over the world threw their toughest FLoC inquiries and scenarios at Vallaeys, cofounder and CEO at Optmyzr. Tl;dr?
Consumer interest already exceeds 2019 levels in some statesAmericans are eager to return to their pre-pandemic lifestyles, according to data from Yelp’s June 2021 Economic Recovery Report. Consumer interest (shown above), measured by actions taken by users to connect with businesses on Yelp, has already exceeded 2019 levels in states such as Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, South Dakota, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Smaller metro areas seem to be recovering more rapidly than larger metros, which may have implemented more aggressive safety measures to counteract the spread of COVID. Recovery is also well underway across numerous business sectors: restaurants have recovered to 86% of their 2019 consumer interest levels while food businesses have bounced back to 92%. Shopping and retail is also making a return, having recovered to 92% of March-May 2019 levels, driven by what many are referring to as “revenge shopping.” Home and local services, fueled by heightened demand, have recovered to 99% of 2019 levels and automotive services have exceeded the benchmarks from two years ago, with Yelp measuring 106% recovery in this sector. Mordy Oberstein joins Semrush as head of communications#SEOchat organizer and host Mordy Oberstein has joined SEO toolset provider Semrush as its new head of communications. In addition to facilitating SEOchat, Oberstein is an active member of the SEO community, co-hosting EDGE of the Web’s news podcast as well as his own SEO Rant podcast and having presented at multiple SMX events. Prior to joining Semrush, Oberstein served as liaison to the SEO community for Wix, and he will continue to be a member of Wix’s advisory board. Before that, he worked for another SEO toolset provider, Rank Ranger, as its chief marketing officer. “[I want] to help the people on my team be as effective and as happy as possible — that’s #1 by far,” Oberstein told Search Engine Land when asked what he hopes to achieve in his new role. “And, to share deep and really helpful information and data that can help SEOs better understand the environment that they are in so as to make better decisions, as well as help the community understand what Semrush is all about, from the product itself to the role the brand plays in helping SEOs be better SEOs,” he added. Rumors of new GMB reports, Bing’s Pride Month theme and clauses you might want to add to your contractsGMB “rush hour” and “about your company” reports. Two new reports may be coming to Google My Business Insights. Lluc B. Penycate shared some screenshots of the “rush hour” report, which also tells you about visit length, and the “about your business” report, that can tell you what customers think about your business, likely based on reviews and ratings. Show your pride with Bing search. It’s not exactly the beginning of Pride Month anymore, but that doesn’t really matter. Bing just added a Pride theme to its web search interface — it’s vibrant and I’ll be using it for the foreseeable future. What are you highlighting in your contracts? The answers to question #2 of Tuesday’s #PPCchat provided practitioners with some ways that they can advocate for, and protect, themselves. Standard response times and procedures for non-responsive clients are two things PPCchat host Julie Bacchini includes in her contracts, while Ameet Khabra includes liability — “I had to file a suit against a client once so this one is super duper important,” she tweeted. The post Can the industry’s biggest players win over privacy enthusiasts?; Thursday’s daily brief appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/2TXeqqj We have reached a crossroads in web development. The proverbial fork in the road is between functionality for online businesses versus experience for website visitors. On the one hand, businesses pressed for time and money want to pack as much marketing functionality into their websites as possible. On the other, visitors want a page to load fast, and to interact with the page without shifting elements or waiting for plugins to load in the background. However, these two goals rarely align. Enter Core Web Vitals. Core Web Vitals are part of Google’s Page Experience signals that aim to measure whether a page will provide a good user experience or not. Searchmetrics recently conducted a major study of over 2 million URLs to find out how websites are performing. We found that only 4% or less of pages are achieving a good score in all three Core Web Vitals metrics. But why is this number so low? One key reason is that software, plugins and apps that are really useful to marketers like automatic email segmentation or analytics tracking tend to have the major drawback of slowing web page loading times significantly. They add to the external resources that need to be fetched, usually before a page can render. But this plugin economy has become the norm for businesses, from major ecommerce platforms to fledgling MVP startups, business functionality is currently beating user experience. A recent interview with Google’s Martin Splitt was asked the following question: “Is the Core Web Vitals update going to give people a break if they are using a third-party app which is leading to their site having lower scores….” Martin stated that the rules are the same for everyone – anything that worsens user experience could be punished by Google. So even if the functionality helps users, if it slows down the page, you could get punished. But with most businesses and publishers not having access to CMS and plugin programmers, the million-dollar question is this: how can businesses speed up their website and pass Core Web Vitals, while still maintaining the functionality they need? This post describes the current state of play for Core Web Vitals, offers industry-specific data insights, and offers guidance on how to speed up your website. Let’s dive in! First a look at the key reasons websites are currently failing Core Web Vitals tests. 1) Sites are using way more resources than they needHow do we know this? We analyzed over 2 million URLs in a recent study on Core Web Vitals and only around 4% achieved a good score in all 3. Most sites have a lot of render blocking resources and are heavy in terms of total page size. Read the full study here. 2) The resources (even if needed) are not optimizedTo optimize performance, it is better to only render what is immediately needed by the user, i.e what is visible. This includes images, videos but also external resources like CSS and JavaScript. More on this later. 3) Many businesses and publishers don’t have the capabilities to modify CMS web templates or codeModifying code is not the norm. Website Templates and plugins are still seen as blackbox solutions, once they are live, that’s it. While CMS platforms and plugin developers have not exactly made it plain sailing for users to modify code, it is an essential part of SEO optimization and often where the largest performance gains may lie. Data insights: Are all industries created equal?Searchmetrics conducted the largest study of its kind, analyzing over two million URLs in terms of Core Web Vitals performance. We dug a little deeper to see if these issues are industry specific. Largest Contentful PaintLCP measures the time it takes to load the largest element on a page. Sites should aim for a LCP of 2.5 to achieve a good score according to Google. Looking at the data, there are two outliers: travel and dictionary-type sites. The former is closer to 3.5 and the latter 2.8 seconds, respectively. Why is this: Travel sites tend to overuse large images whereas sites like Wikipedia keep images small. Backing up this claim we can also see below that the travel sector’s images are the worst optimized and dictionary-type sites the best: Total Blocking TimeTotal Blocking Time is a metric we used as a reliable proxy for First Input Delay (explained in detail in the study), effectively how long it is before a user can interact with a web page. A good TBT is around 0.3 seconds. While the average TBT across all sites we analyzed was 0.7 seconds, sites in the B2B niche performed the best with a TBT of 0.5 seconds. Why is this: It seems large SEO-savvy B2B sites have made the largest inroads into optimizing their pages. Looking at the average size of web pages (the total size of all assets the page loads), this finding is backed up by the fact that B2B sites are on average the smallest at just 2.36MB versus 4.12MB for news sites: Cumulative Layout ShiftCumulative Layout Shift measures the amount a webpage shifts or jumps around during loading. Typical causes for layout shifts are pop-up banners, cookie banners, consent forms, email signup forms and ads. It’s not these elements that cause the shift, it’s the fact that they are not accounted for in the layout of a page and then load over the top. We found the average CLS to be around 0.38 for US websites. This is well above the benchmark for a good score of 0.1 and is where most websites lose out in terms of Core Web Vitals, with around 95% not achieving a good score. News & media sites and travel were the worst performing industries with a CLS of 0.42. This is perhaps no surprise as these segments tend to be both ad heavy. Dictionary-type sites performed the best with an average CLS of 0.32, significantly lower but still way off the benchmark. Why is this: sites like Wikipedia tend to use a very basic and uniform layout, minimal imagery and fewer ads than travel and news sites. 3 Core Web Vitals fixesNow, we’ve had a look at the data let’s move onto some potential fixes: 1) Ask yourself whether you really need that app, plugin or block of codeThe easiest way to speed up your site is to make it leaner. This means removing plugins that you don’t need. In order to weigh this up, run a Lighthouse Audit and see how much time those plugins are costing you. Looking at bbc.com, we can see that the news site homepage could save 1.28 seconds just by waiting till the page has rendered to load the JavaScript and CSS files (see below on how to do this). In addition, under the unused JavaScript tab, the site could save 1.25 seconds by removing JavaScript code that is not even used. This is backed up by our findings, that on average news sites would be able to save over a second by removing unused JavaScript: 2) Identify page critical elements and optimize what you really needNote for some of these solutions you may need to work with a developer.
3) Communicate issues with plugin/app developersThe plugin and app space is a highly competitive market. As such you have clout as a user. Open a dialogue with the specific issues you have. If possible, get your web developers to have a closer look at the plugins that are being used on your website. This can be done by running a Lighthouse Audit. Pay attention to how long it takes your page to load and the amount of time you could save by removing render-blocking resources. Core Web Vitals outlookClearly, there is a big divide between site performance and user experience. However, there has never been more to gain by optimizing your site now. As the Core Web Vitals update rolls out, the spotlight will continue to shine on user experience. Take action now and you could realize massive gains in terms of site performance. Read the full Core Web Vitals study here. The post Core Web Vitals: Google is not backing down in the fight against the slow web appeared first on Search Engine Land. via Search Engine Land https://ift.tt/3h309Ae |
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