Tamar Weinberg says, “Google is playing the social card–again. The company was just issued a patent yesterday that hints at a system that will keep it relevant within the social game, this time, in assessing trends that will help users, companies, and brands tailor their social media posts according to copy that often resonates to drive engagement across social media shares. The proposed system is built on email communication, and the idea is quite simple: a link is shared from one user to another. When the link is clicked, Google will utilize a pop-up system that will suggest how to share... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Google’s unabridged Page Quality rating guidelines were released in November 2015. Whilst some outlets covered this at the time, I thought I’d do so in purely practical terms. So, here’s a very simple checklist, based on Google’s approximation of highest and lowest quality content. It by no means covers everything in the guidelines, but references those bits that caught my eye. 1. Improve your 404 (page not found) message The Google guidelines give many examples of low, medium and high quality pages. One of the examples of a medium quality page was... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Ad disapproval notices are typically uninteresting bland affairs, free of controversy. Last week, however, a disapproval notice from Google raised eyebrows. WordStream received a disapproval notice for a Gmail ad — the ads looks similar to email messages and appear in the Promotions tab — in a campaign that used “curvy” and “plus size” keywords in the targeting. The disapproval reason given in the AdWords UI simply stated, “Gmail Ads- Body type and personality targeting”. It was the full policy explanation that the team received that caused... [...]

Jodi Harris says, “How do you measure up when it comes to measuring the impact and value of the content you are publishing? Chances are you are using Google Analytics to analyze your content marketing performance – and that is a great start. But Google Analytics is a robust, yet complex tool that offers plenty of insights beyond the basic site-visitor metrics that most marketers are tracking. Consider this: CMI’s latest B2B Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report found that only 30% of B2B marketers feel their organization is effective or very effective in its use of content marketing.... [...]

Varun Sharma says, “A new year brings along new opportunities and new challenges. The SEO world, too, is preparing to combat unexpected threats, especially from various Google penalties. What are those possible threats? Imagine, you wake up one fine morning and get a call from the office reporting, “We have lost all traffic,” and your heart stops. It’d be no less than a nightmare… your worst nightmare, in fact. But did you know this could really happen, at any time? Whether you like it or not, websites in variety of niches depend on Google for a high percentage of their traffic.... [...]

Laura Collins says, “Since its launch in 2013, Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) has become such an integral tool for PPC marketers that it’s hard to remember what our campaigns looked like without them. Did we just… use the same bid for everyone? Madness. Things got even more exciting in June 2015, when Google announced they were allowing Google Analytics remarketing lists to be used in search campaigns (where they’d previously been restricted to use in display). As you may know, there are many more options at your disposal when building remarketing lists in Google Analytics... [...]

Lei Sun says, “Google has spoken — and an important part of the mobile web will never be the same. At least that’s the theory, and certainly the search giant’s intention. Google sees app install interstitials — those big ads that pop up suddenly on the mobile web and monopolize all of your mobile device screen to prompt you to download an app, rather than let you keep surfing — as too annoying to users. On November 2, the company therefore put in place a new policy to discourage the ads. According to this policy, Google has since penalized mobile websites that use such interstitials... [...]

Jonha Richman says, “Google’s latest change in the way it looks for URLs on the Web may give small business owners one more reason to switch to HTTPS. In an effort to secure users from man-in-the-middle attacks or data modification while browsing the Web, Google has recently announced its adjusting its indexing system to look for more HTTPs pages. In a recent announcement, Google’s Webmaster Trends Analyst, Zineb Ait Bahajji said that the company is now going to index HTTPS pages first before the equivalent HTTP page. This means that even if you have an HTTP URL, Google will make... [...]

Noah Kulwin says, “A few weeks ago, our editors told us to pick a significant event in 2015 and extrapolate how it would play out this year. Over the past week, we’ve run a number of those pieces, spanning Microsoft, Airbnb, Google and other big tech players. Here’s what Re/code is expecting this year: “Microsoft Unified Windows in 2015. Now, It Needs People to Use It,” Ina Fried: Microsoft has had trouble making software platforms that are widely used beyond desktop PCs; the world is trending toward mobile, where Apple and Google dominate. In 2015, Microsoft made Windows a... [...]

Ryan Stewart says, “Earlier this year, Google rolled out the Related Questions feature (AKA “People Also Ask”). If you haven’t seen them yet, related questions appear in an expandable box, mixed in with organic results. Once expanded, a typical answer contains a machine-generated snippet, a link to the source website, and a link to the Google search for the question. How common are related questions? We started tracking Related Questions in late July on the MozCast 10K, where they originally appeared on roughly 1.3% of queries. Keep in mind that the MozCast set tends toward... [...]