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Ok, let’s dive into this week’s update…
Google outage causes disruption
If your organic traffic from Google spiked this week it may be due to a bizarre outage from the world’s most popular search engine.
The outage happened on Tuesday morning around 2am BST (Monday 9pm EDT) and lasted roughly an hour.
Initial reports linked the outage to an electrical fire at a Google data centre, however Google later confirmed and apologised for the outage which was caused by a software update issue.
Many users reported that the outage had caused several indexing and ranking issues with their sites.
We also noticed a lot of fluctuation earlier this week whilst running competitive SEO audits for a client.
Rest assured; Google Search should now be back running as normal.
However, check your data for any spikes.
Updates from Google to be aware of
Google has improved how users can find high-quality information by improving the quality of featured snippets.
The search engine is now capable of identifying when multiple high-quality sources agree on the same fact.
In a blog, Google states: “By using our latest AI model, Multitask Unified Model (MUM), our systems can now understand the notion of consensus, which is when multiple high-quality sources on the web all agree on the same fact”.
Next, Google has updated their guidance on Google posts from business profiles about what is considered spam. Companies should avoid duplicate photos, posts, videos, and logos.
Lastly, Google has updated its structured data documentation for Editorial Product Review webpages. The update allows product reviews sites to benefit from a new pros and cons search enhancement.
This update is not for merchants. It is specifically for product review websites and the markup should not be used on customer product reviews. Find out more here
Microsoft Bing adds three features to shopping results
Bing has announced three cool annotations to its shopping search results.
1. Available coupons
2. Ethical choice for fashion brands
The annotation is derived from Good On You ratings. Brands can be submitted here: https://goodonyou.eco/how-we-rate/
3. Price history
New LinkedIn tools for visual content
LinkedIn have announced three exciting tools for creators to enhance their visual content.
1. Users can now add a clickable link to images or videos (Very handy!)
2. Templates can be used to make text posts more visually engaging (Can’t wait to use this!)
3. New carousels will be coming soon with the ability to mix images and videos. (Great! No more using PDFs for carousel content)
Teens have abandoned Facebook
A recent study from Pew Research shows that teenagers in the US aged 13 to 17 have abandoned Facebook.
The study shows that only 32% of teens now use Facebook, compared to 71% in 2014.
In 2014 Facebook was ahead of Snapchat and Instagram. But in 2022, Facebook (32%) falls behind TikTok (67%), Instagram (62%) and Snapchat (59%) by a significant distance.
The results won’t come to a surprise for many of us. However, the high use of YouTube is very interesting with 95% of teens using the video platform.
Ads of the week
Melanoma UK and Leith have released a creative health campaign tp expose the risk of skin cancer.
This billboard from Adsum and TIMEX really hits home with me! I’ve never been a fan of smart watches, so great to see this ad.
Another awresome 3D billboard campaign. This tome from Pokémon Go in Japan
Adidas release cool ‘Ten Toes Down: Adidas x Hebru Brantley’ Ad
“Stand tall. So they never question what you stood for.”
Oher stories of interest this week
Wix integrates Google URL inspection API
Meta brings automation to small business advertising
Deliveroo pulls back on marketing spend as inflation softens demand
Disney+ reveals price of ad-supported tier
Domino’s pulls out of Italy having failed to win over customers
Ryanair warns of end to rock bottom promotional prices
Amazon inks $1.7bn takeover of home tech maker iRobot
Key content dates for your social media next week
17 August – National Non-profit Day
19 August – World Photography Day, World Humanitarian Day, National Potato Day
Thanks for reading!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter and found it useful.
Please follow me and subscribe to my Digital Discovery newsletter. I’ll be posting each week about the digital marketing stories that matter.
See you next week.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/09/google-outage-search-down
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/aftermath-of-august-8-google-outage/460960/
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/11/teens-abandoned-facebook-pew-study/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/microsoft-bing-adds-coupon-codes-to-shopping-searches/460959/
https://blogs.bing.com/search/2022-08/Shopping-Searches-are-Now-Smarter-on-Microsoft-Bing
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-avoid-duplicate-content-in-business-profile-posts/460863/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/product-review-structured-data-pros-cons/460496/
https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/11/google-featured-snippets-ai-update/
https://blog.google/products/search/information-literacy/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lean-visual-content-creation-linkedin-keren-baruch/
