Findera search engine helps recruiters find talent, sales find leads

Locating the right person for a job offer or a sales pitch often entails recruitment firms, lead generation services or other specialized vendors.

But a San Francisco startup named Findera is launching this week what it sees as a simpler and cheaper solution for finding leads: a free vertical search engine optimized for business professionals.

The company claims it is the first search engine designed for that purpose. Findera’s funders include Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang and Salesforce and Visa board member Maynard Webb.

How it works. The search engine is designed so that users can launch a single structured search with multiple attributes in addition to keywords, including name, location, position, department, time in a position, company name and size, revenue and other factors. The results can be saved to lists or exported to spreadsheets, and names can be bookmarked. Here’s the home screen:

This enables searches like “VP of marketing” among companies with greater than $50 million in annual revenue.

Data has been accrued by spidering websites, plus additional info if users agree to share their contacts, calendars and other data when they sign up. Registration is not needed for individual searches, but is required for such functions as maintaining lists.

COO and co-founder Christophe Daligault said that the search engine accesses about 130 million profiles in the English speaking world, which are mapped according to Findera’s own graph search technology that understands relationships between people and companies.

Findera vs. LinkedIn. Through machine learning for registered users, Findera will eventually be able to learn a given user’s preferences so it can optimize according to such factors as type of people, geography or industry.

By comparison, COO and co-founder Christophe Daligault said by email that LinkedIn can’t offer that kind of search in one pass, and for free.

“BTW, you can’t search for VPs of HR at companies with more than $50 in revenue in Linkedin today,” he said. “And if you pay for their premium subscription service, then you still would not be able to do that in one search. You would have to first search for companies with more than $50M in revenue and then search for VPs of HR within those companies. This is perfectly fine if you are in a sales role and willing to pay $79 a month.”

The big picture. The primary intended users for Findera are recruiters and salespeople, in either case for any size company.

The search engine — including data exports, lists and spreadsheets — is free, as will be job posts generated from search results. There will, however, be a charge for sending out a promotion of a job post through Findera.

Daligault suggested that this kind of multi-attribute search engine could replace other kinds of lead generation services, at least at a lower level. The engine will tune according to what the user indicates most interests her, he said, in contrast to the feedback loop in a lead scoring system that is based on an ideal customer profile.

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

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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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Marketing Day: Facebook security breach, the 4 forces of marketing operations & more

Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

From Marketing Land:

• 50 million Facebook user accounts hacked
  Sep 28, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues
  After discovering the security breach on September 25, Facebook says it doesn’t know if any information was accessed.
• For Scott Brinker, marketing is designed to balance the ‘4 Forces’
  Sep 28, 2018 by Barry Levine
  In a recent essay, the MarTech Conference chair pointed to the necessary give-and-take between automation and humanization, centralization and decentralization.
• Facebook targets ads with data users didn’t share with the platform
  Sep 28, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues
  Researchers reveal Facebook is using phone numbers identified via friends’ contact lists and numbers entered for two-factor authentication to target ads.
• 33Across launches ‘first open exchange with only viewable inventory’
  Sep 27, 2018 by Barry Levine
  The ad platform’s new AttentionX exchange scores ad space pre-exchange, making a viewability guarantee ‘superfluous.’
• Video platform Innovid launches first multi-platform OTT video-ad composing tool
  Sep 27, 2018 by Barry Levine
  The OTT Composer allows a user to create one interactive video ad that is then rendered for many different environments.

Recent Headlines From MarTech Today, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Marketing Technology:

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

• 3 Ways to Use AR in Your Marketing, Movable Ink Blog
• 9 Ways to Promote Your Marketing Content, Practical Ecommerce
• Attention Brands: Young Americans Are Breaking Up With Facebook, Contently
• Four Tips to Branding Your Business so It Stands Out, MarketingProfs
• GDPR: Leveling The Playing Field Or Flattening Publishers?, AdExchanger
• How to Sell With Facebook Lead Ads, Social Media Examiner
• How to write a stellar promotional email: 5 tips with examples, VerticalResponse
• Is Neural Machine Translation Ready for Marketing Content?, CMS Wire
• Study: Social media ranks No. 1 for holiday ad spending, Mobile Marketer
• Why and How to Define the Target Audience for an Online Business, Crazy Egg

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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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Programming Note: Offline For Simchat Torah

I will be offline completely for the holiday of Simchas Torah on October 1st and October 2nd, Monday and Tuesday. Any stories published here will be scheduled and written beforehand and not posted live. This is the last set of days I am completely offline for a while, so thanks for bearing with me.

I will be completely offline, so any social media posts, tweets, anything coming from this site or my social channels are all scheduled beforehand.

I won’t be able to reply to comments, remove spam or break any stories on those days. I will catch up when I get back online.

For more on this holiday, check out Wikipedia.

For all those celebrating the holiday – have a good time and see ya after.

Image credit to @lawriecate

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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50 million Facebook user accounts hacked

Facebook announced on Friday it had discovered a security breach affecting almost 50 million user accounts. The company says attackers exploited a vulnerability within the “View As” feature — a setting that lets users see what their profile looks like to other users. Currently Facebook doesn’t know if the attackers have misused the hacked accounts or accessed any information.

The Security Breach. On September 25, Facebook’s engineering team discovered a security vulnerability in the app’s “View As” feature that resulted in 50 user million accounts being breached. According to Facebook’s announcement, the attackers were able to steal Facebook access tokens from code attached to the “View As” feature, and leverage the tokens to take over user accounts. (Access tokens are the digital keys that allow users to remain logged in without having to enter their password every time they access their account.)

From Facebook’s announcement:

This attack exploited the complex interaction of multiple issues in our code. It stemmed from a change we made to our video uploading feature in July 2017, which impacted “View As.” The attackers not only needed to find this vulnerability and use it to get an access token, they then had to pivot from that account to others to steal more tokens.

Facebook says it does not know how much damage has been done as it just started the investigation. It is unaware if the hacked accounts have been misused or if any information was accessed. The company also reports it doesn’t not know who was behind the attacks or where they were based.

Facebook’s response. Facebook says it has fixed the vulnerability and is temporarily turning off the “View As” feature while it conducts a security review. In addition to announcing the security breach, the company has informed law enforcement.

The access tokens for the 50 million accounts that were hacked have been reset, along with access tokens for an additional 40 million accounts that were subject to a “View As” look-up during the past year (as a precautionary step). The combined 90 million users who have had access tokens reset will have to log back into their accounts as they have been automatically logged out by Facebook.

The company says users who have been logged out will see a notification at the top of their News Feed explaining what happened when they log back in, but the three Marketing Land staff members who had to log back into their accounts did not see any such notification.

A continuing pattern. Facebook’s security issues are an ongoing dilemma. In addition to its own choice to play it fast and loose with user data — a business decision that resulted in the Cambridge Analytica crisis — the company has had to announce multiple security breaches this year. In June, the company apologized for a bug that accidentally set 14 million users privacy status to public without their knowledge. In September, it reported a glitch in the system that allowed users with both an app and Facebook Ads account to access Facebook Analytics data of other apps.

Today’s security breach is different as it was an outside force attacking millions of user accounts. This is more in line with the attacks Facebook, Twitter and Google reported in August. Although, even then, the 652 Pages Facebook removed were taken down for coordinated malicious behavior. Facebook’s latest security breach is separate from coordinated behavior by bad actors — this is bad actors finding a way into Facebook’s system to hack user accounts and, potentially, use stolen accounts for malicious behavior.

Why marketers should care. Facebook’s constant battle to safeguard its platform is taking a toll on users. The company suffered slow user growth during Q2, and according to a September Pew Research Center report, 42 percent of Facebook users have decreased their daily activity on the platform, with 26 percent deleting the app from their phone.

Facebook ad targeting capabilities are strong, but how effective will they be if the people being targeted continue to lose trust in the platform? There is also the added security concerns for brand and advertiser Pages. Facebook only mentioned “user accounts” being hacked, but the possibility of a brand’s — or political candidate’s — Page being attacked is a potential threat for any marketer or advertiser.

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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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For Scott Brinker, marketing is designed to balance the ‘4 Forces’

Like some physicist discovering the hidden nature of marketing, Scott Brinker recently unveiled his own theory of the relativity of opposing forces.

In preparation for our MarTech Conference next week in Boston, where HubSpot VP Brinker is conference chair, he posted last month a thought piece on “The 4 Forces of Marketing Operations & Technology.”

As marketers face rapid change, he said, there are two sets of opposing forces that must be balanced:

Don’t these two sets of competing forces, I recently asked Brinker, affect virtually every dynamic system, whether marketing, politics or the stock market?

Or is there something intrinsic to marketing that creates this perpetual balancing act?

Centralization to make decentralization possible. It may exist broadly across all kinds of systems, he replied, but it’s particularly endemic to the field of marketing. And it’s a push/pull, not an either/or.

“You centralize the right things,” he said, “and then it makes greater decentralization possible.”

Take Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), he said. They are centralized systems that bring key customer profile data into one system, but, by doing so, they make that data available to anyone.

Even blockchain, whose purpose is providing a decentralized ledger, operates on a centrally agreed-upon protocol.

Automation for personalization, humans for personality. Automation, he noted, “makes a better experience [and] customers love self-service when it works for them.”

When it doesn’t, cue the humans.

But, even if automation a hundred years from now works perfectly 100 percent of the time, customers appreciate human interaction — or whatever effectively pretends to be human.

Like T-Mobile’s recent announcement that human agents are now available to all customers who so desire, brands are recognizing that the human touch — even when it comes with some friction — can add a distinctive personality.

At the same time, automation does more than replace customer service agents; it makes possible the marketers’ goal of personalization at scale.

“All data is not equal.” In short, marketing depends on these dualities, all of which orbit around the most important piece of data for a customer-facing business.

Identity.

“All data is not equal,” Brinker pointed out. A survey about marketing salaries, for instance, might need to remain localized inside the Human Resources department, and not centralized or distributed.

“But identity matters more than anything else,” he added. “Everyone who’s touching a customer [has to agree] that it’s the same customer.”

It needs to be centralized for consistency and decentralized for usability, and it needs automation to deliver personalized experiences that are tempered by human interaction when the automation fails to provide the unique experience.

In fact, it’s all about the Customer Experience, the sum of interactions between brand and customer/would-be customer that every modern brand realizes is the key in an age when a mouseclick can locate a competing product.

My experience with the brand needs to be consistently personalized across the board, and efficient through self-service except where human interaction is beneficial.

It may be that other dynamic systems can similarly claim the need to balance between the Four Forces identified by Brinker, but customer identity and experience have made these dualities part of the Standard Model for how modern marketing operates.

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

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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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How to make the most of internal linking for higher rankings and improved organic search visibility

An internal link is a hyperlink pointing to a page within the same domain. Internal linking is crucially important for both website rankings and usability:

• Internal links allow users to conveniently navigate around the website (i.e. in order to complete a purchase, learn more about a product or read about your business)
• Internal links allows crawlers discover more of your site pages, even those that have no external backlinks (especially important ones)
• Internal links are thought* to improve each given page authority (Google puts some emphasis on the signal: The more internal links a page has, the more internal authority it is supposed to have).

*This has never been officially confirmed by Google (unless I missed the announcement) but we’ve seen web pages doing considerably better once we add internal in-links pointing to it, so let’s say this one is an educated theories backed by multiple experiments.

Now, the question is however how to use internal links correctly. Let’s see…

1. Internal Linking Basics and Best Practices

I won’t repeat what Rand said in this Whiteboard Friday video because I agree with most (all?) points. But let me recap:

• Well-structured navigation is crucial both for user experience and crawling… however
• In-content internal links (links embedded within meaningful context) seem to carry more weight for rankings
• Google is believed to give the least importance to footer links
• Internal anchor text does matter. This has almost been confirmed by a Googler. That said, if you target specific queries for a specific page, use descriptive keyword-focused (but meaningful) keyword links when linking to that page (when that makes sense). However stay away from always using exact-match anchor text, as it may seem unnatural.
• If there are two internal links to the same page on one page, only top anchor text seems to matter to Google
• Google seems to like text links more than image links with an alt text
• Generally, the more in-links a page has, the better its rankings (this is easy to test: Just pick a page on your site and start linking to it consistently. You are likely to see it moving up in SERPs)

2. Analyzing and Evaluating the Internal Link Structure

Surprisingly, given the amount of weight SEOs put on internal linking, there are not many tools that allow you to see internal structure clearly. Yes, there a few powerful crawling solutions including this free one as well as one of my favorite ones Screaming Frog.

But there’s no easy way to analyze how each specific landing page is linked to throughout the site.

Jet Octopus solves that problem by introducing Linking Explorer feature. Crawl your site using Jet Octopus and open the Linking Explorer section (Behind “Explorer” link in the navigation). From there you can provide the URL of your (or your competitor’s) landing page to see how exactly it is linked to from other pages on the site.

I love the section of the report that shows in-linking anchor text. This gives you a great insight:

• If you are doing enough optimizing your internal anchor text (or if you are over-optimizing things to the point where it looks a bit ridiculous / unnatural)
• What keywords your competitors want to rank each specific rankings for

3. Using Structured Data for Internal Linking

Apart from anchor text, there’s a more beautiful way to signal Google of your internal structure by linking: Schema.org

Some of Schema.org properties have been confirmed by Google as impacting the way they interpret websites (at least the way the page look when listed in SERPs). Others are presumably helping, because, as confirmed by Google, structured data in general helps Google understand websites better and it may even be a ranking factor.

So when using internal linking which Schema.org properties can be implemented?

1. /BreadcrumbList

Google says marking up breadcrumbs using Schema.org is one of the enhancement tools that could positively influence your website’s organic visibility and engagement (i.e. click-through)

• The markup helps Google understand the website’s hierarchy better
• /BreadcrumbList markup helps Google generate breadcrumbs-like format of the URL structure which is more appealing and may increase click-through

[Indicate the position of each URL in the site’s hierarchy using BreadcrumbList]

There are a variety of WordPress plugins allowing you to easily implement the markup, including this one.

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2. Authorship

Even though Google’s authorship has been discontinued (meaning authors are no longer highlighted in search results), that experiment revealed two things:

That being said, making their life easier never hurts, so marking up internal bio links using Schema.org/author is a smart idea.

3. /ListItem

Another way to stand out is search is getting intro those search carousals. Officially, Google supports list format for the following content types: Recipe, Film, Course, Article. However, as they confirm, this list is ever growing, so marking up your product lists is not a bad idea.

[Here is an example of a list from a single website shown in a carousel]

4. Reviews!

Reviews get huge SERPs visibility. It’s one of the oldest rich snippets Google has been experimenting with and today Google supports a variety of types, including “including businesses, products, and different creative works such as books or movies. ” Here’s a solid collection of WordPress plugins for each supported type depending on what it is you are doing. All of the plugins in that list are Schema.org-based.

Google recommends using schema.org/URL whenever you want to point them to the page with the full review.

5. More!

Again, whether Google is currently supporting a certain Schema.org type or not, it’s always worth thinking “What else should I do to help them understand your site easier”

Besides, Google has stated it many times that they are working on supporting new and new schema properties including FAQ and HOW-to (just recently). So whenever you are working on creating or editing pages, consider Schema.org properties that make sense there. For example, you can:

• Point to your About page using schema.org/Organization
• You can link to your home page using schema.org/copyrightHolder whenever you are publishing a new content asset, etc.

What internal linking tactics are you using to maximize your website’s organic visibility? Please share in the comments!

Ann Smarty is Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas.com and a contributor to Search Engine Watch.

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A great link building strategy works wonders for the SEO performance of a website. If not monitored properly, the presence of bad quality links on the website can ruin the online reputation of the site as it can be identified as a black hat SEO move. In this post, we review some of the top SEO tools for monitoring backlinks.

Tips for moving beyond internal SEO to build links and reputation across external sites.

Crafting a good page title is a must-have skill for anyone aiming for high SERP conversions. They help search engines understand what your page is about and determine first impression of visitors. Here we cover best writing practices for page title optimization.

We look closer at the do’s and don’ts on how to create an SEO optimized career page for your website.

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Facebook targets ads with data users didn’t share with the platform

Facebook has confirmed it targets ads to users based on phone numbers they provide for two-factor authentication (the process used to protect a user account) and contact information taken from friends’ contact lists that can be matched to their accounts — even if they haven’t added that information to their accounts.

The test. Gizmodo reporter Kashmir Hill teamed up with a Northeastern University research team to determine if Facebook was collecting user phone numbers via indirect means to target ads. Hill reports she created an ad campaign to display an ad directed at researcher Alan Mislove based on a landline number Mislove had not directly shared with Facebook. Mislove saw the ad within hours.

From the Gizmodo report:

They [researchers at Northwestern] uploaded a list of hundreds of landline numbers from Northeastern University. These are numbers that people who work for Northeastern are unlikely to have added to their accounts, though it’s very likely that the numbers would be in the address books of people who know them and who might have uploaded them to Facebook in order to “find friends.” The researchers found that many of these numbers could be targeted with ads, and when they ran an ad campaign, the ad turned up in the Facebook news feed of Mislove, whose landline had been included in the file; I confirmed this with my own test targeting his landline number.

Not only could the researchers use Facebook’s Custom Audience tool to target ads based on contact information users did not directly give Facebook permission to use, they were able to target ads to phone numbers that had been entered for two-factor authentication, a method used to secure a user account with a phone number.

Facebook’s response. A Facebook spokesperson sent the following statement in response to the findings (bolding added):

People own their address books. We understand that in some cases this may mean that another person may not be able to control the contact information someone else uploads about them. Of note, when people visit the “Uploading and Managing Your Contacts” screen we let them know that, “Facebook matches name and contact information you upload with name and contact information others have uploaded to provide a better service and make recommendations to you and others.”

With regard to 2-fac specifically, we’re clear with people that we use the information people provide to offer a more personalized experience, including showing more relevant ads. So when someone adds a phone number to their account for example, at sign up, on their profile, or during the two-factor authentication signup – we use this information for the same purposes.

Marketing Land has asked Facebook where on its app users are notified that the number they enter for 2-factor authentication will be used to show more relevant ads; we will update here when we get a response.

A continuing pattern. Hill said Facebook had told her it was not possible to target ads with so-called shadow data. Facebook’s current notification to users who upload their contact does not explicitly mention their friend’s data will be used to target ads to them. The presumption of using 2-factor data for ad targeting is also surprising in light of the data protection lens Facebook has been under for more than a year.

The report was released on Wednesday, with limited responses from users or advertisers. But after the efforts Facebook has taken this year to demonstrate how seriously it takes user security and privacy, the fact that it is using less than upfront methods to target ads belies those efforts.

Earlier this year, Facebook refined the amount of data available to app developers  — no longer letting apps have access to users’ friends lists. This was a direct consequence of Cambridge Analytica harvesting and exploiting user information. While Facebook has removed the ability for apps to scrape users’ contact lists, it is using similar methods to target ads on its own platform.

This latest report reveals the company is still putting advertisers needs ahead of user privacy. Users whose numbers get uploaded from other users’ contact lists have no way of knowing if, much less who, shared their numbers — and no means of removing that data.

Facebook reported slowed user growth during its Q2 earnings call. Earlier this month, Pew Research Center reported 42 percent of Facebook users have stepped back from daily activity, and that 26 percent deleted the app from their phone.

Why you should care. Facebook has spent the past months devoting much of its time and effort extolling the measures it has taken to safeguard user data. The CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have stated repeated that it doesn’t sell user data to advertisers — only ads, and that users can see how they’re being targeted within their ad preference settings and have access to privacy controls.

But if a user is being targeted because a number they didn’t give to Facebook has been identified and then matched to their account via another user’s contact list, then Facebook is not giving users full control of their data.

Facebook’s advertisers will stick with the platform as long as they continue to see results; targeting precision has been Facebook’s recipe for attracting advertisers. The risk for Facebook is that growing user mistrust and declining engagement with the platform — and regulatory pressure to further limit the data it makes available — will erode advertisers’ returns. Marketers may reap the benefits of such tactics in the short term, but advertiser reputations could be negatively impacted if their ads are being served up to users based on contact information identified via another user’s account.

As the overall health of social media platforms takes center stage — and brand safety continues to be a challenge for both ad platforms and advertisers — ad targeting practices will likely be more closely watched by users being targeted.

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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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Search Buzz Video Recap: Google Algorithm Update, 20th Birthday, Image Search Updates & More

This week, we covered a new Google algorithm update that touched down Thursday. Google celebrated their 20th birthday on September 27th. Google Image Search’s algorithm was updated to factor in page authority, placement of image and the freshness of the content. Google Image Search also rolled out a new design to better match the mobile version. Google added support for new copyright based metadata for images. Google expanded the knowledge panel with topic layers to better do dynamic categorization in the search results. Google launched related activities and collections in search. Google Search Console now supports event markup debugging and reporting. Google Search Console performance reports may have a bug with the page filter. Google may have expanded their title tag length in the search results. Did you ever see a double URL in a single Google snippet? Google’s internal search quality meetings have not changed much over the years. Google My Business has added a “family led” attribute to local results. Google My Business does have a video verification process for some. Google Posts expanded the character limit to 1,500 characters. We finished the how has Matt Cutts helped you site with over 150 stories. That was this past week in search at the Search Engine Roundtable.

Make sure to subscribe to our video feed or subscribe directly on iTunes to be notified of these updates and download the video in the background. Here is the YouTube version of the feed:

For the original iTunes version, click here.

Search Topics of Discussion:

Please do subscribe via iTunes or on your favorite RSS reader. Don’t forget to comment below with the right answer and good luck!

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Google Search Algorithm Update On September 27th

I am hearing some chatter around a possible Google search algorithm update that took place yesterday, September 27th. To be honest, not all of my indicators, i.e. the community chatter and the tracking tools, are 100% convincing that there was a big update. I do believe that a nice number of sites were impacted yesterday but the impact was not as large as a bigger update.

I had a nice number of people ask me if there was an update yesterday, but again, the overall chatter is not massive. There is chatter and I’ll share that chatter below. Some are thinking that maybe there was a reversal to one of the previous and recent Google algorithm updates. So it is hard to say at this point. When you look at the chatter, many are suggesting it may be a reversal or adjustment of some sorts to the Google Medic Update – but time will tell.

Here is some of the chatter at WebmasterWorld:

OMG my rankings have just all comeback and my traffic is almost like pre-august. I think I’m going to cry!

@whoa182 same here, my traffic is back to normal, was down for just two days tho.

Someone sure flipped a switch today! Some of our most important serps are back to normal. Let’s see if it stays this way. Quite bizar though.

Something definitely changed, Im happy for those that recovered. My keywords are ranked higher so obviously traffic has increased. The still-not-so-good news for me that my main keywords pre-August have yet to recover.

I got a nice boost with the early September update but things are leveling off now. Just waiting for the next update to see what happens, hopefully another spike, fingers crossed.

strong growth from Monday 17 September to Wednesday 26 September.

yesterday Thursday September 27 sharp decline now visitors are the same as on Thursday 13 September.

Here is some of the chatter in the Black Hat World thread:

An update again? Or it’s just me

I am seeing some notable improvements in my former top keywords. Something is surely happening for me

I noticed a bump yesterday. I was also affected by the August update. site dropped from 15k to 4k since update. Yesterday it went up to 5.7k , a particular post went up 1.3k

Yep, some keywords doing a bit of dancing. Nothing drastic though.

Here are some of the folks on Twitter about this:

Seeing pretty big drops in organic traffic and rankings for one of our properties. News and blog posts are ranking in place of static pages. Anyone else seeing fluctuations, @Marie_Haynes, @rustybrick, @JohnMu?

— Lynette Zilio (@lzilio) September 27, 2018

I’m hearing several rumors of a significant update happening. And of course I’m traveling. Anyone seeing changes? https://t.co/EF329A1yYc

— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) September 27, 2018

Yes, I’m seeing movements!

— Olivier Duffez (@webrankinfo) September 27, 2018

It’s a big change indeed. Seeing big improvements in one of our sites that were heavily affected by the medical update back in august. A correction perhaps? pic.twitter.com/vgbftwoB8d

— Nacho Boza (@nachoboza) September 28, 2018

Yep. Significant changes. The changes happened about 12 hours ago. Or at least that’s when i start noticing them. I’m sure most people will notice them in the next day along with SERP tools.

— Stuart McHenry (@smindsrt) September 27, 2018

Huge update. Looks to be a turning up of the large brand dial to me again.

— Kurt Leitinger (@KurtLeitinger) September 27, 2018

It’s a big change indeed. Seeing big improvements in one of our sites that were heavily affected by the medical update back in august. A correction perhaps? pic.twitter.com/vgbftwoB8d

— Nacho Boza (@nachoboza) September 28, 2018

Our organic traffic numbers are actually up! You should come work for @TooFab.

— Bernie Zilio (@berniezilio) September 28, 2018

Google Algo Update (1 of 2): I said the other day that we were due for a major update. Little did I know that would arrive so quickly. I’ve been checking my list of sites that were impacted by prev. major updates and seeing a number either surge or drop. Here are some examples: pic.twitter.com/QF3ziyADbC

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 28, 2018

Google Algo Update (2 of 2): And this is my absolute favorite. There’s a LONG story behind this one, but they finally surged on 9/26. FINALLY. Here are screenshots from both GA and SEMrush. I really hope this sticks for them. They deserve it. pic.twitter.com/1w155q9UlO

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) September 28, 2018

Here are some of the automated tracking tools, as you can see, not all of them are showing big changes:

Mozcast:

SERP Metrics:

Algoroo:

Advanced Web Rankings:

Accuranker:

RankRanger:

SEMRush:

Check your rankings and let us know in the comments what you think? Was there a big update? If so, what do you think it was related to?

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Black Hat World.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Here Is Google My Business Video Verification Feature

A couple years ago we reported Google was testing a way for you to verify your local business in Google My Business over a video call. Well, here is a screen shot of a business seeing that option when they are trying to verify their business in Google My Business.

The screen shot below is from Ben Fisher on Twitter:

You can see it allows this business to select the “verify now through live video chat with our operators” followed by a “Connect” button.

I do not think this option for all businesses, as it is still not listed as a default option in their help documents but it does come up from time to time.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Google Imags Search Adds Creator & Credit Metadata For Image Credits

Google announced yesterday they have added support for Creator and Credit metadata and will be adding Copyright Notice metadata. This meta data will be used by Google to display Image Credits information on the image within Google Image Search.

Here is how those credit information items will appear in Google Image search on mobile after you click on an image:

Google added, “Also in partnership with CEPIC and IPTC, we hope to create better usage guidance for photographers, photo agencies and publishers to include copyright and attribution information in image metadata. For more on how to best implement IPTC metadata, refer to the IPTC Guidelines.”

Forum discussion at Twitter.

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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Surprising SEO A/B Test Results – Whiteboard Friday

33Across launches ‘first open exchange with only viewable inventory’

Graphic from 33Across

Only in an industry like digital advertising would the ability to show most of the ad for at least one second be considered a feature.

Ad platform 33Across has decided that viewability should instead be a standard, so it has launched AttentionX, which it describes as the first open ad exchange containing only viewable ad inventory.

“Human [viewers] and viewable [inventory] must be the foundation for programmatic buying,” CEO Eric Wheeler said in a statement.

Viewable versus non-viewable. The inventory on most open exchanges, according to his company, can be 50 to 70 percent non-viewable. Higher levels of viewability can exist on a private marketplace, Wheeler told me, but that requires custom arrangements and viewability guarantees.

In 2015, 33Across announced a 100 percent viewability guarantee, where non-viewable ads would be refunded to the advertiser. But Wheeler pointed out that his company was then supplying other exchanges with its inventory and its guarantee, before launching its own exchange about a year ago.

Now, that exchange has morphed into AttentionX, where every piece of inventory has been pre-scored for viewability before it enters for bidding, making a 100 percent guarantee no longer needed.

“DSPs plug in and it’s all viewable,” he told me, “so a guarantee is superfluous.”

Besides, Wheeler said, a viewability guarantee is a hassle, requiring advertisers and exchanges to settle up later.

The viewability standard. The viewability is scored pre-exchange via JavaScript on the page of the participating publisher that allows 33Across to see the viewport window, a description of what is visible to the user. 33Across says its network includes over 1,500 global publishers.

Other exchanges, Wheeler said, filter inventory after it’s come in and then score the viewability while the ad is being delivered, using historical data. No one else has “scanned the impression quality for viewability before it gets to the exchange,” he said.

33Across uses the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) viewability standard: at least 50 percent of the ad in view for at least one second. AttentionX’s ads are static imagery, animation or rich media.

In addition to meeting that minimum standard, AttentionX also offers time-in-view ads, which are at least 50 percent visible but in increments up to 25 seconds. This works better than some attempts at cost-per-second pricing, the company says, because advertisers can still use their accustomed CPM pricing.

Why you should care. It’s difficult to imagine that digital advertising can gain the full credibility it needs when large swaths of inventory are still sold even though ads delivered to them may not be — you know — seen. It’s like airlines selling you tickets to flights that may or may not ever take off, but we’ll settle up later.

33Across’s approach of pre-scoring inventory requires its JavaScript on page to predetermine the viewport, but that may be the price of restoring credibility. Its new viewable-only exchange may represent the next step beyond guarantees and could raise the bar beyond the “half an ad for one second” minimal IAB standard.

This approach builds on the movement in the last several years to address the viewability dilemma, including Google’s Active View standard for delivered ads, GroupM’s raising the bar to 100 percent of the ad or the recent inclusion of time-in-view metrics in an Integral Ad Science report. 33Across’ new pre-exchange scoring of ad space may offer a new metric for this evolution.

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

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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.

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

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Marketing Day: Mobile FM radio ads, Snapchat e-commerce ads & an IAS media quality report

Here’s our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

From Marketing Land:

• Mobile FM radio ads shown to drive incremental store traffic
  Sep 27, 2018 by Robin Kurzer
  Dial Report’s new data shows a demonstrable lift for businesses on days that their radio spots run.
• Mobile-first indexing: Will it change your rankings on desktop?
  Sep 27, 2018 by Janet Driscoll Miller
  Getting conflicting information about whether the mobile-first indexing change will impact your rankings? Brush up on the different processes behind search results.
• Your AI does not need tickets to the big game
  Sep 27, 2018 by Rex Briggs
  Only when we address all of the ways that fraud and inefficiency have plagued media buying will we end their threat to a healthy, thriving marketplace.
• Connect with the best and brightest marketers at SMX East
  Sep 27, 2018 by Marketing Land
  You are part of an exclusive community — a community of passionate, creative, driven search marketers eager to learn the latest tactics to boost conversions, drive sales, and increase awareness. SMX® East is your chance to connect with others like you.
• Snapchat launches multiple e-commerce ad options in time for holiday shopping
  Sep 27, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues
  Shoppable Snap ads are rolling out, and advertisers can now import catalogs to automatically create product ads.
• IAS media quality report paints a slightly more optimistic picture for programmatic ad buyers
  Sep 27, 2018 by Robin Kurzer
  While publisher-direct display ads still have the lowest level of brand safety risk, programmatic is steadily catching up.
• Parse.ly, Notablist make internal data public to help marketers see beyond walled gardens
  Sep 26, 2018 by Barry Levine
  Separately, the two marketing intelligence companies are choosing to make available valuable information from their platforms.
• How to integrate online and offline for the best overall result
  Sep 26, 2018 by Grace Kaye
  Remember the days when the “dinosaurs” of traditional media had to learn digital ways? Now digital natives must get educated about billboards, print and TV.
• Twitter looks to crowdsource content policies
  Sep 26, 2018 by Amy Gesenhues
  The app launched a user survey to gather feedback on dehumanizing language, but will it help deliver a safer platform for marketers?

Recent Headlines From MarTech Today, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Marketing Technology:

Online Marketing News From Around The Web:

• 4 More Digital Marketing Strategies You Need to Know for 2019, Marketo
• A Marketer’s Guide to Website Accessibility: The Importance of Inclusive Design, Vertical Measures
• Alexa Skills Marketing: Is It Right For Your Brand?, Ignite Visibility
• Holiday Marketing Calendar 2018: Global Events for Ecommerce, Social & Sales, Shopify
• Instagram IGTV: Launching Your Channel to Best Practices from Top Brands, Socialbakers
• Study Finds 77% of Millennials Have Recommended a Product or Service in the Past Month, Convince and Convert
• Study: Consumers favor ‘mobile-first’ experience from businesses, Mobile Marketer
• The E-Commerce Benchmark KPI Study: The Most Valuable Online Consumer Trend of 2018 Revealed, Moz
• What Is Earned Media Value? What It Is & How To Measure It, MediaKix
• What is the best time for email marketing?, My Emma

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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.

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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Daily Search Forum Recap: September 27, 2018

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:

• Is The Google Search Console Page Filter Throwing Off Accuracy?
  There are some savvy SEOs and webmasters that are noticing a possible bug with the Search Analytics reports in Google Search Console. This is specifically when you use the page filter option, the numbers significantly drop both in the Google Search Console interface and within the Search Console API.
• Google Search Console Adds Event Markup Report & Sends Notices
  Google has recently added to the Google Search Console an event markup report and also recently started sending out notices to those with issues with their event markup to check out the report. Aaron Bradley, the guru on schema, said the report was new and I am seeing people say they are getting notifications via Search Console about event markup issues for the first time.
• Google Posts Now Allows 1,500 Character Posts
  Previously, Google Posts had a 100 to 300 word limit in your Google Posts. Now Google has a 1,500 character limit for Google Posts. It is a more precise number and lets those writing Google Posts know exactly when Google will cut them off.
• Report: Google Extends Titles In Snippets From 55 to 67.5 Characters
  According to RankRanger, Google has extended the number of characters they show for the title in the search results snippets from an average of 55 characters to 67.5 characters. That is a 20% increase in the length of the average number of characters in the title of the search results snippets.
• Google Image Search For Hot Only Returns Images Of Sensual Women
  For some reason, when you go to Google Image Search and search for the term [hot] – the only images that come up are pictures of women in underwear, lingerie, swimsuits and other sexual situations. There are no photos of hot coffee, desserts, fire places, ice cream melting or other photos that are more appropriate for young children.
• Google Birthday Cookie & Ice Cream Cone
  Today is Google’s birthday and Google was already serving ice cream and cookies yesterday to celebrate in the office. Here is a photo from Instagram of a 20th birthday cookie and ice cream cone from t

Other Great Search Forum Threads:

Search Engine Land Stories:

Other Great Search Stories:

Analytics

Industry & Business

Local & Maps

Mobile & Voice

SEO

PPC

Search Features

Other Search

This marketing news is not the copyright of Scott.Services – please click here to see the original source of this article. Author: barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz)

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