Scott Services: February 2019

Thursday 28 February 2019

4 vendors land as leaders in Forrester’s Real-Time Interaction Management report

Real-Time Interaction Management (RTIM) systems are designed to deliver users the best offer or next action, based on the current context and their particular needs.

In other words, RTIM solutions are meant to power the anticipated customer experiences that users increasingly expect.

But relatively few systems can smoothly integrate the massive data, broad functionality and quick intelligence needed to provide this split-second delivery of the right thing at the right time. To help marketers sort the players, Forrester Research is out with this quarter’s Forrester Wave report. (Available for free from Pegasystems, which is mentioned in the report, although registration is required.)

Now, four Leaders. Forrester has a lot of skin in this game, as two of its analysts reportedly originated the term Real-Time Interaction Management — first in 2012, in the context of computational decision engines, and then in a series of reports in 2015, including the first Wave on this topic, which featured this definition:

“Enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually relevant experiences, value, and utility at the appropriate moment in the customer life cycle via preferred customer touchpoints.”

In that initial report, only two of the profiled 11 vendors achieved the top Leader category — Pegasystems and Teradata. That’s not surprising, since this kind of platform — essentially a state machine that has to immediately deliver the right offer or action on the most appropriate channel and based on many datapoints — is a high bar to clear.

But in this new report, SAS and Salesforce join Teradata and Pegasystems as Leaders. FICO, Kitewheel, Pitney Bowes, Adobe and IBM are characterized in the second-highest category of Strong Performers, while Certona and Emarsys land in Contenders. Infor is the only vendor in the bottom group of Challengers.

Pegasystems, Teradata, Salesforce. The report notes that RTIM platforms cover five segments: next best experience, cross-channel marketing, personalization, loyalty marketing and cross-channel communications. Each of the five represents a variation on the scope and timing of communication with customers, but Forrester’s report is focused primarily on next-best-experience solutions that deliver across channels.

Among the Leaders, Pegasystems is praised for its integration of digital decisioning, process automation, case management, advanced analytics, AI and support for contact centers, chatbots, mobile devices and integrated voice response.

The report points to Teradata’s Customer Journey solution, which includes real-time decisioning, and its Customer Interaction Manager for cross-channel orchestration, all based on the company’s large-scale customer data management platform.

Salesforce gets a shout-out for now positioning its RTIM around its Interaction Studio, part of its Marketing Cloud and launched in the middle of last year, instead of its past practice of embedding RTIM in its email, mobile and web modules. Interaction Studio was developed with customer engagement platform Thunderhead, which Forrester considers a Leader in journey orchestration and visioning. But the research firm notes that Interaction Studio is still rules-based, instead of relying on Salesforce’s Einstein layer of advanced AI to make decisions.

SAS, Kitewheel, Pitney Bowes, Adobe. SAS is cited for its advanced analytics for decision arbitration, measurement and optimization. The report says the platform works well for enterprises looking to make analytics a core requirement, although it notes the need to enhance digital intelligence and channel integration.

Among the others, several stand out for specific emphases. Kitewheel, for instance, is mentioned for its integration with other systems, such as marketing automation tools, and cited as “a good choice for B2C marketers (and their agency partners) whose RTIM efforts center on customer experience design and optimization.”

Pitney Bowes leverages its customer services expertise, Forrester said, with a RTIM emphasis on contact centers, face-to-face channels and outbound marketing. And Adobe, with its huge portfolio of modules in Experience Cloud, has a strength in personalizing customer experience across channels, although it doesn’t offer the centralized decisioning of the other providers.

Why you should care. RTIM is, essentially, the delivered maximal vision of digital marketing, where a brand gives you what you really want, when you want it, on the best channel and in real time.

With such a large vision of customer experience, the category encompasses a wide range of platforms and integrations. Forrester’s emphasis on next-best-offer or action gives the report a focus so that it can only address a dozen vendors, but the range of solutions is potentially much larger.

Like Customer Data Platforms, Real-Time Interaction Management is a developing solution that addresses the real-time, personalized delivery needs of modern marketing, but has emerged as its own category only in recent years.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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Daily Search Forum Recap: February 28, 2019

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

A Google Search Ranking Algorithm Update On February 27th?
I am seeing some new chatter and most of the tools are backing up the chatter around another Google search ranking algorithm update that started around yesterday, February 27th. The chatter is pretty limited and fresh but I suspect it will pick up soon in the ongoing WebmasterWorld forums.
John Mueller’s Greatest SEO Success Story Was…
A Reddit thread is asking folks to share their greatest SEO success story and there are some good ones. But Google’s John Mueller chimed in and said his was as simple as instructing someone to remove the noindex from their site. He said “sometimes good things come in small checkboxes.”
Multiple Google User Interface Tests Including People Also Ask Icons
Over the past several days I have been inundated with reports from SEOs about Google testing different interfaces. I’d say 80% of them are interfaces we’ve reported on before but here are some new ones I haven’t seen before including an icon for the people also ask section in Google Search.
Google My Business Launches New Spam Report Form
Google announced they have launched a new form to submit spam reports about Google local, maps and Google My Business related spam. Google calls it the Business Redressal Complaint Form and is for fraudulent activity.
Martin Splitt From Google To Host Video Series On JavaScript & SEO
Google’s Martin Splitt announced on Twitter that Google is starting a new video series around JavaScript and SEO. He said “they are coming out now, you definitely want to stay tuned.” You can watch them on the the Google Webmaster YouTube channel.
Google Dublin Expanding
Here are some photos of the skyline around the Google Dublin offices showing how Google is expanding over there. You can see the construction and buildings Google is erecting in the area.

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

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About The Author

Henry Powderly is vice president of content for Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than a decade in editorial leadership positions, he is responsible for content strategy and event programming for the organization.

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YouTube + child safety: Is the service doing enough?

youtube and child safety: is the service doing enough?

It has been a challenging month for YouTube.

As we recently reported, fresh concerns over child safety on the service came to light back on 17^th February.

In a video published to the site, vlogger Matt Watson details how the service is being exploited by paedophiles who were using comment sections under innocuous videos of children to leave sexually provocative messages, to communicate with each other, and to link out to child pornography.

[embedded content]

Of course, journalists and news sites were quick to level criticism at YouTube. Many pointed out that this wasn’t the first time child safety on the service has been called into question. Others were critical that its methods for safeguarding children were too ‘whack-a-mole’ in their approach.

And then came the actions of the advertisers – with Nestle, AT&T and Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) all pulling their ads from the service.

So how has YouTube responded? Is it doing enough?

Memo directly sent to advertisers

On 20^th February YouTube sent out a memo to brands advertising on the service.

It detailed the ‘immediate actions’ it was taking to ensure children are safe in light of the recent allegations from Watson. These included suspending comments and reporting accounts to the NCMEC.

YouTube memo with immediate actions they're taking to address issues

The memo reiterated that child safety is YouTube’s No. 1 priority, but also admitted there was more work to be done.

It laid out a roadmap of tweaks and improvements, including better improving the service’s ability to find predatory comments (set to be implemented this month) and potentially changing how ads are placed on channels.

YouTube memo: Looking ahead, what's on the roadmap?

Changes to Community Guidelines strikes system – are these related?

In a potentially related move, YouTube also announced via a recent blog post that it was going to make changes to its Community Guidelines.

The changes – which came into force on 25^th February – include a warning for users the first time their content crosses the line.

YouTube says: ‘Although the content will be removed, there will be no other penalty on the channel. There will be only one warning and unlike strikes, the warning will not reset after 90 days.’

The ‘three strike’ system still exists but is stricter and more straightforward. Now a first strike results in a one-week freeze on the ability to upload any new content to the service. Previously, first strikes just resulted in a freeze on live-streaming.

A second strike in any 90-day period will result in a two-week freeze on the ability to upload any new content. Ultimately, a third strike in any 90-day period will result in channel termination.

That YouTube has taken this opportunity to address its creator community directly is interesting.

The Guardian has reported that the fallout from Watson’s video resulted in a number of prominent YouTube users criticizing him, rather than the service. Their reasoning was that it was overreactive and a deliberate attempt to drive advertisers away.

Additionally, a report at ABC News shed light on stories from creators who have been the victims of false claims and extortion attempts by bad actors who promise to remove strikes only after they’ve received payment via PayPal or BitCoin.

With this in mind, we can see that YouTube have been quite diplomatic in how they’ve rolled this Community Guideline change out. Imposing stricter penalties against a backdrop of better transparency and simpler rules is quite laudable.

Further questions over safety since

In the wake of Watson’s video, further news stories have emerged which relate directly and indirectly to child safety on YouTube.

On 24^th February, pediatrician Free Hess exposed that some children’s videos available on YouTube Kids had hidden footage detailing how to commit suicide spliced into them (as reported at The Washington Post).

Additionally, on 25^th February the BBC reported that the service was stopping adverts being shown on channels which showed anti-vaccination content.

And the past couple days, widespread internet concern has raged over “The Momo Challenge,” a supposed challenge encouraging minors to do dangerous / potentially self-harming acts.

However, this morning The Atlantic reported that this has been a digital hoax. And that it has followed similar cycles as the so-called Blue Whale challenge, teens eating toxic Tide Pods, and the cinnamon challenge — all of which were found to have no reported deaths/injuries associated.

And yesterday, YouTube tweeted this:

We want to clear something up regarding the Momo Challenge: We’ve seen no recent evidence of videos promoting the Momo Challenge on YouTube. Videos encouraging harmful and dangerous challenges are against our policies.

— YouTube (@YouTube) February 27, 2019

The company has also just updated their Creator Blog with a post titled, “More updates on our actions related to the safety of minors on YouTube.”

In it, they summarize “the main steps we’ve taken to improve child safety on YouTube since our update last Friday.”

These steps include:

Disabling comments on videos featuring minors
Launching a new comments classifier
Taking action on creators who cause egregious harm to the community

It does seem that they are moving quickly to remedy the problems. But I think anyone would agree — they’ve had quite the month.

So the challenge is certainly ongoing…

All this does highlight the difficulty YouTube has in keeping all its millions of viewers, creators, and advertisers safe and happy.

We know the service is constantly updating its algorithm across its search function and its recommendations in order to give users better – more trustworthy – content.

We can also be quite sure that there has been a fair amount of activity in protecting minors on the service since 2017 when unsuitable content featuring Disney and Marvel characters was being found to be available on YouTube Kids. This timeframe is in line with the aforementioned memo which assures that the service has been working hard to improve in this regard for the past 18 months.

I’m not sure it’s entirely fair, then, to call YouTube’s approach to safeguarding children a ‘whack-a-mole approach’ or one which only sees the site take action when the instances gain media attention.

The sheer amount of content and users on the service is so massive, it depends on the community to produce the content and – at times – to monitor how it is used. In this instance, a user flagged an issue up and YouTube worked very quickly indeed. The service is always improving. But changes, tweaks, and improvements are not always newsworthy. The same can be said for Google.

Yes, there is more to be done. As online video continues to boom and the creator community continues to grow, we can expect issues to arise.

But I think it is unlikely that YouTube wouldn’t be proactive here. After all, its very existence depends on having great videos, trustworthy content, a safe community of users who are having a positive experience on the site, and an ecosystem where advertisers want to be.

Amazon extends Sponsored Products to AmazonFresh for CPG brands

Amazon is expanding its Sponsored Products advertising format to AmazonFresh brands. The company began notifying partners Thursday.

What it means. That means brands can add their ASINs (Amazon’s version of a product identifier code) with AmazonFresh offers to any new or existing Sponsored Products campaign.

Sponsored Products show up in search results pages as well as related product detail pages, sold on a cost-per-click basis just like Shopping campaigns on Bing and Google.

What is AmazonFresh? This is the e-commerce giant’s grocery delivery program. Users in select markets can order fresh meat and produce as well as household, health and beauty products and have them delivered to their doors.

Why you should care. This gives CPG brands a way to try to stand out from the huge array of products offered in the Fresh program. For Amazon, it means yet another avenue for ad monetization.

“Brands who start advertising now will get the lowest CPCs in history,” expects Trevor George of Bluewheel Media, an Amazon agency partner. “First brands to advertise will benefit from it. Not to mention, there is greater potential for scale over brands who wait to pounce on this opportunity.”

This story first appeared on Search Engine Land. For more on search marketing and SEO, click here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

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A strong central stack of technology begins with the CMO

There has been an explosion in both consumer technology and marketing technology over the past decade. The simultaneity of those growth spurts is far from coincidental as consumers adopt new behaviors through new platforms and devices, brands require new technologies to keep pace.

For the chief marketing officer (CMO), that creates unprecedented opportunity, but it also creates a highly complex landscape. The importance of navigating this landscape successfully has never been higher, either. A Walker study predicts that “by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.”

Marketing technology now takes up 29 percent of the average CMO’s budget, according to Gartner. That places it top of the list, followed by labor, paid media and agency fees.

As the technology stack grows, so too do the stakes for the CMO as higher spending on technology increases the performance imperative, after all. Increased investment is important, but it does not necessarily address the challenge.

To navigate this Martech ecosystem and deliver on the potential of our data-rich age, CMOs must keep a clear view of their central stack of best-in-class, enterprise technologies.

The importance of the central tech stack

The constant addition of new vendors to a technology stack can cause CMOs to lose sight of the core purpose of their data strategy. As a result, it is vital to select one best-in-class enterprise-grade technology for each area of activity across the customer journey.

Typically, these categories will include:

Organic search
Content marketing;
Paid media management;
Social media advertising;
Decision automation;
Business/customer intelligence;
Optimization and personalization;
Customer data platforms;
Project management.

There are too many options within each area to trial and evaluate each through experience, so CMOs need an evaluation process that can narrow the field.

First of all, it is advisable to map these technologies to core business objectives and articulate how they contribute to meeting these goals. This brings with it some benefits, as the CMO can closely monitor the effectiveness of these technologies and prove their worth. The significance of accountability has never been higher, especially with the very sizeable marketing technology investments most brands make today.

Moreover, homing in on these objectives helps marketers to position the customer at the center of their strategy. The concept of experience planning should come to the fore here, by using customer insights to map out the structure required for an optimal central tech stack.

The addition of multiple tools to the marketing ecosystem – has meant CMO’s getting increasingly frustrated with that chaos caused by the data silos, inaccuracy and inoperability of point solutions.

CMO’s are now homing in on platforms that will play host to a number of functions and can form a base upon which other features can be added. Often, marketing technology platforms today will employ machine learning algorithms to derive new insights from customer data. These real-time insights can then be used to inform decisions throughout the customer journey. As a result, these platforms hold a business-critical role. Common examples of this category of the vendor would include the likes of Salesforce, Adobe, or Oracle and BrightEdge (my company).

You can download the full survey here.

With this in mind, CMOs next require a framework through which to assess the value of each component platform to their overarching marketing strategy.

Durability, utility and delight

There are simple architectural principles that can be applied to the foundations of a Martech stack. After all, the purpose is to build a framework that can adapt over time while maintaining its structural integrity, quality of data, security and compliance.

Vitruvius, the Roman architect who rose to prominence in the 1st century BC, wrote that good architecture depends on the following three factors:

Durability (Firmatis);
Utility (Utilitas);
Delight (Venustatis).

The CMO can readily adapt these principles to inform the creation of a Martech stack, by posing these questions.

Durability

Will this technology contribute to our long-term business objectives?
Can we imagine building a lasting relationship with this vendor as a business partner? (More tips on addressing these questions are contained in this post.)
Will this technology still be useful in two years based on upcoming consumer trends?
Does this technology platform have the agility and operativity and is unified to save time, costs and inefficiencies attributed to low-end point solution tools?
Does this technology integrate with a range of other vendor partners?

This concept of durability is particularly pivotal when creating the central tech stack. Of course, change is the one reliable constant when it comes to consumer behaviors, making it doubly important to have adaptable platforms at the heart of the Martech infrastructure.

By answering these questions, CMOs can arrive at decisions that shape the next few years with a dependable core of platforms, complemented by the ever-changing array of tools that form the outer circles of the ecosystem.

Utility

Does this platform surface useful real-time insights automatically?
Which one purpose does this platform fulfill that we would be worse off without?
Will this platform be used by multiple stakeholders across and enterprise?
Does it integrate with the other platforms in the central stack?
Can a range of departments within the business access and use this technology?
What is the measurable impact of using this technology? Can we demonstrate its ROI?

Put simply, the technology must be excellent at what it does, easy to use, and accessible for a range of different teams within the company. These questions will help to define precisely why this platform has been chosen over the many alternatives out there. In a sentence, the CMO should be able to pinpoint its core purpose.

Delight

Will this platform contribute to a strategy that exceeds customer expectations?
Does this technology use machine learning to uncover new insights about our audience?
Does the platform automate time-consuming tasks and allow scale?
Can marketers spend extended periods on the platform?
Will the technology contribute meaningfully to the data architecture we are building?

The notion of delight may not come naturally to most Martech stack discussions, especially as we are dealing with the cold currency of data. However, all of these technologies are working towards better consumer understanding by delving into human behaviors. Broad ‘personas’ will no longer cut it when we want to deliver personalized content at scale.

The central platforms should do the heavy/smart lifting, enabling customer experiences that tie the audience to the brand in new ways. This emotional impact may not be as measurable as some other areas of marketing, but it is no less valuable for that.

Bringing it together

Undoubtedly, many entries to the Stackies could meet the “Delight” criterion based on their sheer aesthetic appeal, but this complexity should only arise in the pursuit of a more meaningful objective.

It is in the fusion of durability, usability and delight that a central stack can be defined as fit for purpose.

The image below shows the evolution of the Cisco tech stack from 2017 to 2018:

Here we see the increased prominence of the central data infrastructure, positioned under the customer in this visualization. This central stack can then inform the outer circles of the customer journey, from “I’m aware” through to “I renew.” By creating a durable suite of platforms to feed the strategy across the customer lifecycle, the CMO earns a clearer view of what is working and what is not. The complementary tools can be rotated while maintaining a consistent core of data-driven insights.

Another approach to this challenge is highlighted below, with the process of decision-making integrated into the stack:

Source: Jason Heller, McKinsey, MarTech conference

This is an effective way to add the dynamism of decision-making into the central tech stack, fed by the core platforms that are responsible for data management across a range of marketing activities.

Conclusion

As with any architecture, the foundations of this structure are essential for future success. The stack will not stand up to the test of time if the CMO does not follow a rigorous selection process to align platforms with business objectives. Equally, the business must know when to jettison technologies when they are up for re-evaluation. This ecosystem is in constant flux, so these assessments should be built into the annual technology roadmap. What works today will not necessarily work in six- or twelve months’ time.

As technology advances at breakneck speed, the importance of human decision-making only increases. CMOs with the technological nous and the strategic foresight to build a durable, effective stack that fulfills customer expectations will hold the keys to the future of this industry.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

https://martechtoday.com/a-strong-central-stack-of-technology-begins-with-the-cmo-231420

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of BrightEdge, the leading enterprise content performance and SEO Platform. He combines in-depth expertise in developing and marketing large on-demand software platforms with hands-on experience in advanced digital, content and SEO practices

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Amazon’s Project Zero launches to help brands fight counterfeiters

Amazon has introduced a new three-pronged approach to reduce the volume of counterfeit products on the site. Project Zero is an invite-only program for Amazon sellers that will enable automated protections, a self-service removal tool and a product serialization process to help brands fight back against fake products.

Automated Protections. Amazon’s new automated protections process is powered by machine learning technology that continuously scans product listings on the platform. Scanning more than five billion listings and product updates daily, Amazon report its automated service will proactively remove suspected counterfeit products.

“We’ve been testing these automated protections with a number of brands, and on average, our automated protections proactively stop 100 times more suspected counterfeit products as compared to what we reactively remove based on reports from brands,” writes Amazon’s VP of customer trust and partner support Dharmesh Mehta.

A self-service removal tool. With Amazon’s new self-service counterfeit removal tool, brands will no longer have to report fake products to Amazon and wait for an action to be taken. Instead Amazon sellers will be able to remove counterfeit product listings on their own, without having to report the fake product.

When a product is removed, Amazon feeds that information into its automated protections platform to inform future actions against potential counterfeit listings

Product serialization. Amazon is also rolling out a product serialization service where a brand is given unique codes that are placed on each unit it manufactures. When a product that includes a serialization code is ordered, Amazon can scan and verify the authenticity of the purchase.

“With this product serialization service, we can now detect and stop counterfeiting for every product unit before it reaches a customer,” writes Mehta.

Why you should care. Amazon is taking a more proactive stand against counterfeit products being sold on the site — creating automated systems that remove products without action on the a brand’s part and giving sellers more control to fight counterfeits with the self-service tool and product serialization process.

Ken Minn, CEO of Kenu, a manufacturer of hands-free phone-mounting devices participating in the program, said Amazon’s new product serialization process is a significant development and says the self-service removal tool acts as an insurance policy for his company.

Another Amazon seller reported fake reviews have drastically dropped. “Every unit we sell through Amazon has a unique, serialized barcode, and our counterfeit problem has nearly disappeared in the United States,” said Thunderworks CEO Phil Blizzard.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media’s General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy’s articles.

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Integrate lead generation solution now works with Facebook Lead Ads campaigns

Integrate, an automated lead generation platform, launched its latest social connector: a Facebook integration that automatically feeds leads from Facebook Lead Ad campaigns into a brand’s CRM system.

Why you should care

For Facebook advertisers running Lead Ad campaigns, Integrate’s platform will automatically scrub lead data and deliver “complete, valid and globally compliant” leads to the advertiser’s marketing automation and CRM systems. It also offers analytics to measure how the leads perform.

“This turnkey, automated process ensures non-marketable and duplicate leads never enter a database and provides sales and marketing teams with more high-quality leads,” writes Integrate.

Microsoft, an early user of Integrate’s Facebook native connector, says the solution gives its team a layer of automation and intelligence that results in more valuable Facebook leads, and it also provides them with the ability to measure their impact down-funnel.

“Social is a high-volume, high-velocity demand generator for our team,” said Microsoft’s director of digital acquisition Anika Kaulius. “It’s important for us to have a clear picture of how these marketing efforts contribute to revenue.”

More on the news

Tenable, another brand, also offered comments on Integrate’s social integrations, claiming the platform made their B2B marketing efforts easier and more efficient.
The integration with Facebook follows Integrate’s LinkedIn solution that was launched last November.
Integrate CEO Jeremy Bloom said the spike in spending across social channels by Integrate customers helped drive the decision to expand Integrate’s social footprint.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

About The Author

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: Amy Gesenhues

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How to dominate Google News search in 2019

A few weeks ago, Google published a blog post on its webmaster blog sharing some tips on how to get more success in Google News search in 2019.

2019 will be a hard fight against fake news as fake news outlets are increasing with time. Along with some social media platforms, Google is also responsible for the spreading of fake and misleading news. If you are running a clickbait rich site with a lot of crappy content, you may encounter Google’s punishment this year.

Generally, Google looks at these five factors when ranking news articles:

Freshness
Diversity
Rich textual content
Originality of content
User preferences for topics or publishers

To succeed in 2019 your news content should be original, authoritative, and should provide timely news information.

Six important tips for news content

Articles’ headlines should be clear. Keep it in the H1 tag. Headlines should be a minimum of 10 characters, between two and 22 words.
Use proper time and date. Show clear and visible time and date below the title and above the article. Use structured data.
Be transparent in your content. Fake news is a major problem on the internet, especially from the last American presidential election. Google will try to scan out fake news content in 2019. Best practice for this time is to create a very user-friendly site, not something crappy with lots of pop-ups and ads. Add detailed information, mention sources, make it authoritative.
Don’t be deceptive in your content. Don’t mislead. Misleading information in the content can ban you from Google.
Secure your website’s every page with HTTPS. A website that uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) confirms a secure connection between the browser and user. It protects users’ sensitive information. For a news site, it is a very good search signal.
Don’t participate in link spam to increase your ranking. Don’t buy links.

The five ‘w’s

To write your news content, you can use this popular news writing formula. Ask yourself the five ‘w’ questions and answer them all in your first paragraph of news content. The main aim is to provide a lot of information in the first paragraph.

Internet readers have a small attention span and most people scan the content, instead of line by line reading. This is especially true for news.

Write your first paragraph answering these questions.

Who?
What?
Where?
When?
Why?

Use proper nouns in the headline

Generic nouns will not get as much attention as proper nouns in Google search. Use proper names of brands, organizations or of people related to your news in the headlines. If you can creatively use proper names where other news outlets are not, you will get a huge advantage in the Google News search.

Graphics, images and video content

Use graphics, images, and videos on your news content to explain your news or to provide more information. Google loves this. With engaging videos and graphics, you can attract more readers, and make your content more shareable.

But before sharing your multimedia follow the guidelines of Google.

Beware the sensational, exceptional, negative, and current (SENC)

SENC is sensational, exceptional, negative, and current events, which is a general definition of current news. But, if you follow this definition to produce your news, they will not be authentic or convey real helpful information.

Shocking, scandalous things can be viral, but these types of sensational news should not be your priority.

If you prioritize only exceptional things, your content will become misleading.

Current news is full of recency bias. The present most recent things, without much in-depth and background information. But every recent event has a root in something old and slow systematic change. In your news content, you should present the actual root cause as much as possible to make the content more authoritative. It will earn you good links and build your brand.

Your news should be foundational not sensational.

On publishing breaking news, you should not be in a hurry to publish it faster than your competitors. Instead, before publishing the content, ask yourself what new information your article will provide that is not found elsewhere.

Pay less attention to CTR, dwell time, and other UX signals on the landing page

Image on click-through rate

According to recent AMA of Gary Illyes, Google webmaster trends analyst:

“RankBrain is a PR-sexy machine learning ranking component that uses historical search data to predict what would a user most likely click on for a previously unseen query. It is a really cool piece of engineering that saved our butts countless times whenever traditional algos were like, e.g. “Oh look a ‘not’ in the query string! Let’s ignore the hell out of it!”, but it’s generally just relying on (sometimes) months’ old data about what happened on the results page itself, not on the landing page. Dwell time, CTR, whatever Fishkin’s new theory is, those are generally made up crap. Search is much more simple than people think.”

This thread from a couple weeks ago caused quite a stir. Perhaps we distract ourselves too much from the “simplicity” of what is actually search?

Ps — what are your thoughts on RankBrain and UX? Leave a comment below!

Muradul Islam is a Business Analyst at WeDevs. He can be found on Twitter .

Excel & Google Sheets Chart Resources That Will Make Your Life Easier

A lot of the time when someone is asking me charts questions it’s simply a matter of not being able to find the setting option or not knowing if the option exists.

I am going to share a few tips and tricks that I have in my toolbox that may help you better display your data using charts or even just save you time. I will cover how each differs between Excel and Google Sheets and where to find the settings you need.

Changing Data Label Categories

Customizing your data labels can make your chart look cleaner as well as present the pertinent information in a more digestible way. In the pie chart below, the values are listed on the chart while the labels are in a legend below. Visually this does not make much sense as you’ll have to bounce back and forth to match up the labels with values.

excel_pie_chart_bottom_legend

There is a better way. In Google Sheets instead of selecting where to place your legend, you can choose to have the legend show as labels. This will show the categories with percentages and your data labels as values so you have everything you need.

google_sheets_pie_chart_data_labels

Unfortunately, this is not as easy in Excel as this option does not exist. In Excel, you do have the option to change your data labels but it’s not quite as clean. For example, you can place a combination of your category name, values, and percentages on the chart, but it smooshes it all together. I would recommend sticking with the category name and either the value or percentage, but not both.

excel_pie_chart_data_labels Categories & Values Categories & Percentages Categories, Values, & Percentages

Second Axis

Dual Y-axis charts are useful to show the trends of two variables with very different scales and/or with different numerical units, such as currency and number value. This is easily accomplished in either Excel or Google Sheets. Below are a before and after shot of a line chart showing the difference a second Y-axis makes.

excel_chart_no_second_axis No Second Y-Axis excel_chart_with_second_axis Has Left & Right Y-Axis

Per the usual, you’ll find navigating to the setting options slightly different between Excel and Google.

In Excel, go to add chart element –> axes –> more options and then click on the line within the graph that you want to place on a second axis. Select secondary axis and you’re set.

excel_second_axis_setting

In Google, select the chart–> customize (on the right-hand pane) –> series –> select one of the series –> change axis drop down to right axis. google_second_axis_setting Reverse Y-Axis

When working with metrics that are represented inversely of other typical metrics, the reverse Y-axis comes in handy. For example, clicks is a typical metric where more is better. On the other hand, impression share lost is a metric where more is not better.

Take a look at the chart below where impressions share lost is in the default chart layout. Glancing over this chart our beautiful human brain initially thinks, “the trend is going down and that’s not good.” This chart is visually difficult for our brains to interpret quickly, which defeats the purpose of charts.

excel_chart

Switch the Y-axis order and you get this:

excel_chart_reverse_y_axis

Much better!

In Excel, select the Y-axis, and check the “values in reverse order” box AND choose the “maximum axis value” option. If you don’t select this latter option it will put your X-axis on the top of your chart.

excel_reverse_y_axis_setting

In Google Sheets, reversing the Y-axis is not an option. Lame, I know. I prefer Google Sheets for most things and this kills me. In this scenario, I pull up my trusty Excel.

Connecting Charts to Presentations

I saved the best tip for last, in my opinion. When creating charts for presentations you can link your presentation charts with your actual spreadsheet charts so that if any changes are made they are updated in your presentation. It sounds like an insignificant tip. But I can’t tell you how much time I have saved by using this feature versus taking screenshots and pasting them only to realize I missed some formatting on the chart and have to do that all over again. Multiply that by 50 charts for a large presentation and it is cumbersome.

You’ll have to pick a favorite and stick with it for your spreadsheet and presentation though. Excel connects only to Powerpoint and Google Sheets connects only to Google Slides.

For Microsoft fans, copy your chart in the Excel spreadsheet and paste it into your Powerpoint using the paste special options and select link to data.

powerpoint_insert_chart

For Google die-hards, in Slides select insert –> chart –> from sheets. It will ask you to select the sheet you want to pull the chart from which you can find searching by file name.

google_slides_insert_chart_setting

Bonus Tip

While very common and preferred by a lot of people and clients, using a second Y-axis is not the data nerd way of displaying two series. If you want to get serious, read Why not to use two axes, and what to use instead.

Final Goodbye

That’s it for this article but don’t that stop you. Once you master these initial chart tricks keep on finding other ways to create bewitching charts that tell your data story.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: Briana Ogle

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source https://news.scott.services/excel-google-sheets-chart-resources-that-will-make-your-life-easier/

Thursday 28 February 2019

About The Author

Search Engine Roundtable Stories:

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

What’s in it?

About The Author

Memo directly sent to advertisers

Changes to Community Guidelines strikes system – are these related?

Share this article

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Further questions over safety since

So the challenge is certainly ongoing…

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Related reading

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

About The Author

The importance of the central tech stack

Bringing it together

Conclusion

About The Author

About The Author

Why you should care

More on the news

About The Author

Six important tips for news content

The five ‘w’s

Use proper nouns in the headline

Share this article

Related articles

Graphics, images and video content

Beware the sensational, exceptional, negative, and current (SENC)

Pay less attention to CTR, dwell time, and other UX signals on the landing page

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Related reading

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Changing Data Label Categories

Second Axis

Connecting Charts to Presentations

Bonus Tip

Final Goodbye