Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Go to Blogger edit html and find these sentences.Now replace these sentences with your own descriptions.
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.
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Google balloon statues, a Fiat Polski car & massage chair
Disclaimer: All criticism of Google spokespeople contained herein is impersonal in nature. I know they are only representing the internal direction of the company and not acting independently. They do strive to be as helpful as they can.
When former head of web spam Matt Cutts was at Google, he spent a lot of time communicating with webmasters/site owners about updates. We knew what was coming, when it might be coming, and how severe it would possibly be.
If you woke up in the morning and your traffic had fallen off a proverbial cliff, you could go to Twitter and, based on what Cutts was posting, usually determine if Google had run an update. You could even tell how severe the rollout was, as Cutts would typically give you percentage of queries affected.
Although some believe Cutts was more about misinformation than information, when it came to updates, most would agree he was on point.
So if a site fell off that cliff, you could learn from Cutts what happened, what the update was named, and what it affected. This gave you starting points for what to review so that you could fix the site and bring it back into line with Google’s guidelines.
Cutts seemed to understand there was a need for the webmaster. After all, Google’s Search is not their product — the sites they return from that search are the product.
Without someone translating Google’s desires to site owners, those sites would likely not meet those guidelines very well. This would result in a poor experience for Google users. So, that transfer of knowledge between Google, SEOs and site owners was important. Without it, Google would be hard-pressed to find a plethora of sites that meet its needs.
Then, things changed. Matt Cutts left to go to the US Digital Service — and with his departure, that type of communication from Google ended, for the most part.
While Google will still let webmasters know about really big changes, like the mobile-first index, they’ve stopped communicating much detail about smaller updates. And the communication has not been in such an easily consumable format as Cutts tweeting update metrics.
In fact, very little is said today about smaller updates. It has gotten to the point where they stopped naming all but a very few of these changes.
Right now, the Google spokespeople who primarily communicate with SEOs/webmasters are Gary Illyes and John Mueller. This is not a critique of them, as they communicate in the way Google has asked them to communicate.
Indeed, they have been very helpful over the past few years. Mueller holds Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangouts to help answer questions in long form. Illyes answers similar questions in short form on Twitter and attends conferences, where he participates in various AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions with interviewers.
All this is helpful and appreciated… but unfortunately, it is not the same.
Highly specific information is difficult to find, and questioners are often are met with more vagueness than specifics, which can at times feel frustrating. Google has become obtuse in how they communicate with digital marketers, and that seems to be directed by internal company processes and policies.
This lack of algorithmic specificity and update confirmation is how we wound up with Phantom.
Google has many algorithms, as any SEO knows. Some, like Penguin and Panda, have been rolled into Google’s core algorithm and run in (quasi-) real time, while others, like the interstitial penalty, still run, well, when they run.
Big updates such as Penguin have always been set apart from the day-to-day changes of Google. There are potentially thousands of tweaks to core algorithms that run every year and often multiple times a day.
However, day-to-day changes affect sites much differently than massive algorithm updates like Panda, Penguin, Pigeon, Pirate, Layout, Mobilegeddon, Interstitial, and on and on. One is a quiet rain, the other a typhoon. One is rarely noticed, the other can be highly destructive.
Now, Google is correct in that webmasters don’t need to know about these day-to-day changes unless someone dials an algorithm up or down too much. You might not ever even notice them. However, there are other algorithms updates that cause enough disruption in rankings for webmasters to wonder, “Hey Google, what happened?”
This was true for an algorithm update that became known as Phantom.
There was a mysterious update in 2013 that SEO expert Glenn Gabe named “Phantom.” While it seemed to be focused on quality, it was not related to Panda or Penguin. This was new, and it affected a large number of sites.
When “Phantom” ran, it was not a minor tweak. Sites, and the sites that monitor sites, would show large-scale ranking changes that only seem to happen when there is a major algorithm update afoot.
Now, there was one occasion that Google acknowledged Phantom existed. However, aside from that, Google has not named it, acknowledged it, or even denied Phantom when SEOs believed it ran. Over time, this string of unknown quality updates all became known as Phantom.
The word “Phantom” came from the idea that we didn’t know what it was; we just knew that some update that was not Panda caused mass fluctuations and was related to quality.
The changes introduced by Phantom were not one set of changes like Panda or Penguin, which typically target the same items. However, the changes were not completely disparate and had the following in common:
We don’t use the word “Phantom” anymore, but from 2013 to 2016, large-scale changes that were quality related and not Panda were commonly called Phantom. (It was easier than “that update no one admits exists, but all indicators tell us is there.”)
You can’t have so many sites shift that dramatically and tell SEOs the update does not exist. We all talk to each other. We know something happened. Not naming it just means we have to “make up” (educated guess) what we think it might be.
And from this mysterious Phantom, Fred was born.
In early March, 2017, the SEO world was rocked by a seemingly significant algorithm update that appeared to target link quality. Google, however, would not confirm this update, deflecting questions by responding that Google makes updates to its core algorithm nearly every day.
When Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz asked Gary Illyes if he cared to name the unconfirmed update, he responded jokingly:
Of course, Fred is not just a funny thing that happened on Twitter, nor is it just the default name for all Google’s future updates. In fact, it is not actually that funny when you break down what it really means. Fred is representative of something far deeper: Google’s historically unstated “black box.”
Now, Google does not use the term “black box,” but for all intents and purposes, that is exactly what “Fred” represents to webmasters and SEOs.
A black box is when a system’s inputs and outputs (and their general relationships) are known, but
To this end, Google has also communicated to SEOs through different channels that they are acting from a black box perspective — the way they used to before Matt Cutts took over Webmaster communications.
We have been told we don’t need to understand the algorithms. We have been told that this knowledge is not necessary to do the work. We have been told that all we need to do to be successful is be awesome. “Awesomeness” will get us where we need to be.
This all sounds good. It really does. Just be awesome. Just follow the Webmaster guidelines. Just read the Google Quality Rater’s Guide. You will be set.
Of course, the devil is in the details.
Follow the Webmaster Guidelines. Read the Quality Rater’s Guide. Follow these rules for “awesomeness.”
While that advice can help an SEO become awesome on a basic level, it can’t tell one what to do when there is a complex problem. Have a schema implementation issue? What about trying to figure out how to properly canonical pages when doing a site modification or move? Does being awesome tell me how to best populate ever-changing news sitemaps? What about if you get a manual action for that structured data markup because you did something wrong? What about load times?
There are a lot of questions about the million smaller details that fall under “being awesome” that, unfortunately, telling us to “be awesome” does not cover.
This is where the black box becomes potentially detrimental and damaging. Where do you get information about site changes once you have passed the basics of the Webmaster Guidelines and Quality Raters Guide? You saw a change in your site traffic last week; how do you know if it is just your site or an algorithm update if Google won’t tell you?
Google no longer wants SEOs to worry about algorithms. I get it. Google wants you to just be awesome. I get that, too. Google does not want people manipulating their algorithms. Webmaster Guidelines were first written to help stop spam. Google just wants you to make good sites.
The issue is that there still seems to be an unspoken assumption at Google that anyone who wants information about algorithm updates is just trying to find a way to manipulate results.
Of course, some do, but it should be noted most people who ask these questions of Google are just trying to make sure their clients and sites meet the guidelines. After all, there are multiple ways to create an “awesome” website, but some tactics can harm your SEO if done improperly.
Without any confirmations from Google, experienced SEOs can be pretty sure that their methods are fine — but “pretty sure” is not very comforting when you take your role as an SEO seriously.
So, while “being awesome” is a nice idea — and every site should strive to be awesome — it offers little practical help in the ever-changing world of SEO. And it offers no help when a site is having traffic or visibility issues.
The lack of transparency is important for several reasons. The first is that Google loses control over the part of product it has never controlled: the websites it delivers in search results. This is not a concern for site owners, but it seems the ability to actively direct sites toward their goals would be something Google would value and encourage.
They have added Developer Guides to make finding SEO/webmaster information easier, but these only help SEOs. Site owners do not have time to learn how to write a title tag or code structured data. These guides also are very high-level, for the most part — they communicate enough to answer basic questions, but not complex ones.
In the end, Google hurts itself by not communicating in greater detail with the people who help affect how the sites in their search results work.
If it is not communicated to me, I cannot communicate it to the client — and you can be assured they are not going to the Developers site to find out. I can also tell you it is much harder to get buy-in from those at the executive level when your reasoning for proposed changes and new initiatives is “because Google said to be awesome.”
If Google doesn’t tell us what it values, there’s little chance that site owners will make the sites Google wants.
SEOs are not spammers. SEOs are marketers. SEOs are trying to help clients do their best and at the same time achieve that best by staying within what they know to be Google’s guidelines.
We work hard to keep up with the ever-changing landscape that is SEO. It is crucial to know whether a site was likely hit by an algorithm update and not, say, an error from that last code push. It takes a lot more time to determine this when Google is silent.
Google used to tell us when they rolled these major algorithm updates out, so it gave you parameters to work within. Now, we have to make our best guess.
I think it would be eye-opening to Google to spend a week or so at different SEOs’ desks and see what we have to go through to diagnose an issue. Without any clear communication from Google that something happened on their end, it leaves literally anything that happens on a website in play. Anything! At least when Google told us about algorithmic fluctuations, we could home in on that.
Without that help, we’re flying blind.
Now, some of us are really experienced in figuring this out. But if you are not a diagnostician — if you do not have years of website development understanding, and if you are not an expert in algorithms and how their changes appear in the tools we use — then you could find yourself barking up a very wrong tree while a crippled site loses money.
Every experienced SEO has had a conversation with a desperate potential client who had no idea they were in violation of Google’s guidelines — and now has no money to get the help that they need because they lost enough search visibility to severely hamper their business.
And that leads me to the last but most important reason that this black box practice can be so damaging.
People’s livelihoods depend on our doing our job well. People’s businesses rely on our being able to properly diagnose and fix issues. People’s homes, mortgages and children’s tuition rely on our not messing this up.
We are not spammers. We are often the one bridge between a business making it and employees winding up on unemployment. It may sound hyperbolic, but it’s not. I often joke that 50 percent of my job is preventing site owners from hurting their sites (and themselves) unknowingly. During earlier versions of Penguin, the stories from those site owners who were affected were often heartbreaking.
Additionally, without input from Google, I have to convince site owners without documentation or confirmation backup that a certain direction is the correct one. Can I do it? Sure. Would I like it if Google did not make my job of convincing others to make sites according to their rules that much harder? Yes.
Unlikely, but we can hope. Google has lost sight of the very real consequences of not communicating clearly with SEOs. Without this communication, no one wins.
Some site owners will be lucky and can afford the best of the best of us who don’t need the confirmations to figure out what needs to be done. But many site owners? They will not be able to afford the SEO services they need. When they cannot afford to get the audit to confirm to them that yes, Google algorithms hurt your site, they will not survive.
Meanwhile, we as SEOs will have difficulties moving the needle internally when we cannot get buy-in from key players based on the idea of “being awesome.” Google will lose the ability to move those sites toward their aims. If we are not communicating Google’s needs to site owners, they will likely never hear about them. (There is a reason so many sites are still not mobile-ready!)
Is that black box worth it to Google? Perhaps. But is being obtuse and lacking in transparency truly beneficial to anyone in the long run?
It seems there are better ways to handle this than to simply direct everyone to make “awesome” sites and to read the Webmaster Guidelines. We are professionals trying to help Google as much as we are asking them to help us. It is a partnership, not an adversarial relationship.
No one is asking for trade secrets — just confirmation that Google made a change (or not) and generally what they changed.
It is like feeling really sick, going to the doctor, and he tells you, “Well you have a Fred.”
You ask the doctor, “What can I do for a case of ‘Fred?'”
He looks at you and says, “Easy! Just be awesome!” And then he walks out the door.
Well, you think, at least I have WebMD.
In the meantime, here are some ideas of how you can work with Fred and Google’s black box.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Origin soruce :
The trouble with ‘Fred’
Search engines have a peculiar business model: They exist to quickly direct you somewhere else. This is in direct contrast to your typical web business or social platform, where they do everything they can to keep you engaged and on that platform.
This can’t have escaped the notice of the good folks at Google. And now, many questions are answered directly on the search engine. This keeps you on the page a little longer and (I would imagine) ups the likelihood of your conducting another search or — shock, horror! — even clicking on a search ad.
You have probably seen this a million times, but the following searches should all provide some form of answer directly in the search results.
For these kinds of queries, there is no longer a need to actually visit a third-party website — even when they are directly referencing a business, as in the telephone query example.
We get answers directly in the search results now, which is often super-helpful for us users.
One particular SERP feature that we are seeing more commonly is known as a featured snippet (or answer box).
A featured snippet is a summarized answer to the user’s search query that typically appears at the top of the search results. The snippet will include a brief answer to the question, a linked page title and the URL of the page.
Here is a featured snippet for the question, “What is a featured snippet?”
We have been tinkering with some of the posts over on the Bowler Hat blog and have managed to generate featured snippets for a number of them. This is great positioning and is often referred to as “position zero,” as it sits above the standard results with a supersized listing.
As an example, we have a post that provides a set of small business SEO tips, which tends to hover around third or fourth for a variety of search terms. With a featured snippet, we now have visibility above the organic results and within the results themselves. Win-win.
This is great additional exposure. Even though I am not super-keen on the text they are using in this example, from an organic search perspective, what’s not to like?
There are a couple of different forms that featured snippets can take, from the most popular paragraph form to tables to bulleted lists. We have seen bulleted lists taken from content in a <ol> tag as well as from header tags — which just reinforces the need for well-structured HTML.
Featured snippet placement can be hugely powerful from an SEO and marketing standpoint:
* It’s of note that, in our experience, the featured snippets don’t tend to get a huge amount of click-throughs, and they reduce the click-through on the organic listings slightly. So, while it may not set the world on fire, clicks on your snippet and organic listing combined should increase compared to a listing alone, and the exposure itself is going to be highly valuable. And, of course, not all featured snippets are created equal — for the “small business SEO tips” example above, the snippet does not answer the question, so you have to click through to get the goodies.
Yet, there is another side to this coin: There is only one featured snippet, and only one company can have it. So, what impact does a featured snippet have if you are not the chosen one?
There are a few studies out there that would indicate that a featured snippet does reduce the number of clicks on a first-page listing. It would seem that a typical #1 listing does around 25 percent of clicks, where a #1 listing with a featured snippet above does about 20 percent of clicks.
That’s a notable impact for sure, but we have seen far worse implications in the wild with clients we currently work with at my agency. One client site saw traffic impacted by over 50 percent where a featured snippet has appeared above their #1 ranking. So, these averages are not always useful, and you have to monitor the impact of SERP features like featured snippets for terms you are targeting. For this specific client, that snippet has now disappeared — so a calm head is also needed as these new SERP features mature.
In this case, if a featured snippet appears, your rank tracker may tell you that you are still in position #1, yet traffic has dropped. So ensuring you understand the SERP features is key here.
(We like the BrightLocal rank tracker for this, as it keeps screen shots of each rank report. This is a great help when doing historical analysis of rankings and traffic so we can see what the actual page layout looked like at any given point in time.)
Another feature that tends to crop up along with featured snippets is “People also ask” boxes. These are sets of questions that relate to the original search query.
“People also ask” boxes are an interesting SERP feature in that they are dynamic. When you click on any one of the questions, specific details are revealed and further questions are added to the bottom of the list.
The following image shows both a featured snippet and a “People also ask” box.
So, if we include the ad links (five with the sitelinks), the featured snippet and the “People also ask” links, our traditional #1 organic listing is the 11th link on the page (jeez). Throw a few more ads into the picture, and that is a lot of links for a user to wade through before they get to a traditional organic result — often with the answer already on the page.
As mentioned above, when a user clicks on a “People also ask” question, we see the question itself expand to take up more screen space, and we get an additional two or three questions added to the bottom of the list.
This process repeats itself for each question clicked on. There is seemingly no limit to this, and each click pushes the traditional organic results further down the page.
Here, we see the initial four questions expanded to six questions, with the answer to the first question also revealed.
And it just keeps on going and going and going! It really can spiral, and it is almost like conducting new search queries in relation to the questions you answer right there amidst another set of search results. Wild!
After 10 clicks, we have 10 expanded questions, each about the size of two standard organic listings, and 14 further questions below. This occupies about four total screen sizes of scrolling on a typical desktop before you get to an organic result. This is not intended to be a realistic example of search engine usage, yet it is still a little scary if you rely on organic clicks and don’t have featured snippets.
In the majority of cases, Googling the questions from the “People also ask” results will return a featured snippet. So, if we Google the expanded question above, “Is the Uber app free?” we get the same piece of content as a featured snippet.
So it is almost as if the “People also ask” results are related to featured snippets.
Another interesting fact here, taken from the recent Ahrefs study on featured snippets, is that content can rank for many featured snippets. In fact, the top-performing page in the Ahrefs database had 4,658 featured snippets… for a single page.
Taking a look at this page and the site itself, which also has a huge number of featured snippets, the writing style is certainly interesting: Short, practical sentences. Paragraphs are, in fact, often just one sentence. It makes for easy reading and (it would seem) for easy digestion by search engine algorithms.
If you are using content marketing as a part of your SEO (and you really should be), then you should also be looking to target these new SERP features to improve your visibility and traffic from organic search.
Fortunately for us lucky campers, there have been a few studies done to identify the patterns here and provide guidance on optimizing your content for featured snippets.
The major takeaways here to optimize your content for featured snippets are as follows:
Fortunately, this is not terribly technical. There are no guarantees, and it requires an analysis of what the featured snippets that you are targeting look like, but with some small tweaks, you can generate big results.
Remember that to get featured snippets, you must already rank well. So, whether you are a small business that needs to do the SEO basics, you’re focusing on SEO and content marketing, or you need to build links and authority — until you rank in the top half of the page, getting featured snippets is the least of your worries. Also, it’s worth noting that if you primarily target local terms, featured snippets don’t show along with a local pack — so this is something you don’t currently need to worry about.
That’s a wrap…
What is your experience with featured snippets? Are you getting that highly desirable position zero? Or are you struggling to get your content to feature? I would love to connect on Twitter and LinkedIn and hear how you are getting on targeting some of these new and exciting SERP features.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Reference source :
Targeting featured snippet and ‘People also ask’ SERP features
I have to be honest. When approaching this article, my initial reaction was something along the lines of, ‘Ha! Bing doesn’t do anything better than Google!’.
But on brushing aside my Google superiority complex and after a bit more considered thought and research, I came to the realization that Bing does do some aspects of search better. Quite a few things actually.
Let’s first take a look at the market share between the two rivals. In the US, Bing occupies a third of the market. A third! That’s pretty high given that ‘Google it’ is now a heavily used phrase by the masses, whereas have you ever heard anyone say ‘Bing it’? Probably not. In the UK, Bing isn’t far behind with a 26% share of the market. It is, however, worth noting that worldwide Bing only has 5% of the desktop search engine market share, whereas Google has 87%. That’s a big discrepancy.
Bing is undeniably still a key player in the search engine rivalry contest and it has many enviable features. So back to the question in point. What does Bing do better than Google?
Probably one of the most well-known advantages of Bing is the image search, offering sharper and higher quality images in the results page. Bing was also the first to introduce the ‘infinite scroll’ to evade the need to painfully click through the various pages of image results. Google has since caught onto this ingenious function so Bing no longer has the advantage here.
However, Bing does still maintain the advantage when it comes to filters. Unlike in Google, you can search for different image layouts – tall, wide or square. Aside from this functionality, Google generally has most of the same filter options that Bing has, although you have to dig a little deeper to find them.
One noticeable example is the licensing information of images – most people probably don’t even know that Google offers this data because the filter is pretty hidden. On Bing it is wonderfully obvious; nobody likes digging, accessibility please.
The only downside of Bing image search is that it does not yet offer GIF images in the results pages. You’ll have to resort to Google for those. A minor point though and one that I hardly think will be a deal breaker for most people, so Bing still wins on image search overall.
I know what you’re thinking. Google owns YouTube, so how could Bing’s video search possibly be superior? It’s all in the display, and Bing have really nailed it with their video search results. Presented as a grid of thumbnails, users can watch videos without even leaving the SERPs.
Hover your mouse over the thumbnail for a handy preview and view a higher number of videos without the need for scrolling. Let’s be honest, we are inherently lazy when it comes to internet usage, so we’ll take any time reductions on internet browsing.
You heard, Bing gives you free stuff for using Bing. Akin to a loyalty card in your local cafe, Bing offers a similar reward scheme using a points system. Sure it’s not a technical reason to use Bing, but there’s nothing like a bit of bribery to win people over!
Called Microsoft Rewards, it works by awarding you points every time you search. These points can be redeemed for a whole variety of outlets, from Starbucks to Amazon and everything in between. Okay, you don’t get a huge amount of points for a single search, but it all adds up. And let’s face it, you are essentially earning money from something you’d already be doing.
In short, Google doesn’t pay you, Bing does. Tempting!
When it comes to social media integration with the SERPs, Bing is the clear winner. It would have been remiss of Bing not to take advantage of the deals between parent company Microsoft and Facebook and Twitter. With more access to social data, Bing results feature trending news from social media in the news search results.
Google originally only had Google+ to rely on in terms of social networks (need I say more?). However, following Google’s firehose API with Twitter that now ensures tweets are displayed in the SERPs, Google is no longer as far behind Bing on the social media integration front.
There is a general consensus among search engine users that Bing simply looks better. Although the main search results look very similar, other types of searches such as news tend to fare considerably better in the Bing results.
Partially due to the social integration mentioned above, Bing’s results look less cluttered and enticingly cleaner. It may be a minor difference and a relatively small point in the grander scheme of search technicalities but user experience is important and looks inevitably play a big part in this.
Admittedly, it’s a tougher call than we thought between the two search engines. For us, Google is still our preferred search engine, but Bing certainly has its merits, and ultimately it’s about personal preferences. If you’re big on image and video search then you may want to consider a switch to Bing (also if you like free stuff).
As for the quality of the search results, there is no longer much discrepancy between the two. If you’ve got yourself way too invested in the Google vs Bing conundrum and you need a further helping hand in pushing you to a decision, then there’s a tool for helping you compare. Aptly called ‘Bing It On’, it will directly compare the results for any given search query from both search engines side by side.
Now you can compare and contrast until your heart’s content.
If you enjoyed this article, check out our analysis of how Bing’s voice search compares with its biggest rivals: How does Bing’s voice search compare to Google’s?
Or if you want to know which search engine is best for PPC, check out: Bing Ads vs Google AdWords case study: Which offers the better value?
On the cusp of the latest iPhone release, how can advertisers benefit from the launch of a new device? Columnist Purna Virji from Bing offers insights to help advertisers cash in on the hype surrounding new device launches.
The phrase "Web 3.0" was first coined back in 2006. Viewed by some industry insiders back then as an "unobtainable dream", the idea of Web 3.0 has remained elusive. However, as technology evolves, the dream seems much more obtainable than ever before. In fact, many argue it is already a reality.
A new report by Pi Datametrics has analyzed the entire US flights market to discover the most organically valuable search themes and players with the greatest share of voice across the market. What can marketers learn from it about the state of the flights market in search?
The SEO community has been fighting with low-quality, outdated and simply incorrect content for ages. How to educate yourself as well as your team in this abyss of misinformation? Here are four tools that can help solve these problems.
Source link :
5 things that Bing does better than Google
Google generally doesn’t do as well when it builds “follower” products — think Google Plus or Allo. But there are other examples where Google has excelled with later entries (e.g., AdWords, Maps). Right now, Google Home is a follower product seeking to break out of Amazon Echo’s shadow.
On paper, Google should win in this market. It has a larger developer ecosystem. And it has a better assistant. But Amazon is being very aggressive by innovating quickly and offering a dizzying array of devices at different price points. Amazon also has a more powerful sales channel. Overall, Amazon is out-innovating the rest of the “smart speaker” market at the moment.
Amazon now has two devices with screens: Echo Show and the new Echo Spot. According to TechCrunch, Google is also working on a Home device with a touchscreen:
Two sources confirm to TechCrunch that the Google device has been internally codenamed “Manhattan” and will have a similar screen size to the 7-inch Echo Show. One source received info directly from a Google employee. Both sources say the device will offer YouTube, Google Assistant, Google Photos and video calling. It will also act as a smart hub that can control Nest and other smart home devices.
A Home with a touchscreen could run Android apps and offer a stronger screen experience than the sub-optimal Echo Show. It would also enable video calling and be compatible with entertainment services such as Netflix.
Echo Show, right now, doesn’t fully utilize the screen and creates consumer expectations it doesn’t fulfill. An Echo Show 2.0 will likely be an improvement. (I haven’t been hands-on with the new Echo Spot.)
Apple is also well-positioned to offer a smart speaker with a screen — like an iPad Mini embedded in a speaker. It’s not clear whether the company will develop one. Both Amazon and Google are trying to preempt Apple’s HomePod by bringing out smart speakers with better sound that cost less than the $349 price tag Apple wants to charge.
YouTube will be something of a differentiator for Google’s new device. It has withdrawn from Echo Show, allegedly for violating Google’s terms of service.
It remains to be seen how popular touchscreen-enabled virtual assistants are, although preliminary survey data suggests there’s meaningful consumer interest. Regardless, there will likely be in excess of 30 million virtual assistant devices in US households when the smoke clears after holiday shopping is over. You can bet that Amazon will be aggressively promoting its own devices with discounts on its site and mobile apps.
Consumer data also suggests that virtual assistant devices are driving related smart home accessory purchases. The company that wins the smart speaker market will likely also control the smart home ecosystem.
Read more source :
Home device with a screen to compete with Echo Show
Visual search engines will be at the center of the next phase of evolution for the search industry, with Pinterest, Google, and Bing all announcing major developments recently.
How do they stack up today, and who looks best placed to offer the best visual search experience?
Historically, the input-output relationship in search has been dominated by text. Even as the outputs have become more varied (video and image results, for example), the inputs have been text-based. This has restricted and shaped the potential of search engines, as they try to extract more contextual meaning from a relatively static data set of keywords.
Visual search engines are redefining the limits of our language, opening up a new avenue of communication between people and computers. If we view language as a fluid system of signs and symbols, rather than fixed set of spoken or written words, we arrive at a much more compelling and profound picture of the future of search.
Our culture is visual, a fact that visual search engines are all too eager to capitalize on.
Already, specific ecommerce visual search technologies abound: Amazon, Walmart, and ASOS are all in on the act. These companies’ apps turn a user’s smartphone camera into a visual discovery tool, searching for similar items based on whatever is in frame. This is just one use case, however, and the potential for visual search is much greater than just direct ecommerce transactions.
After a lot of trial and error, this technology is coming of age. We are on the cusp of accurate, real-time visual search, which will open a raft of new opportunities for marketers.
Below, we review the progress made by three key players in visual search: Pinterest, Google, and Bing.
Pinterest’s visual search technology is aimed at carving out a position as the go-to place for discovery searches. Their stated aim echoes the opening quote from this article: “To help you find things when you don’t have the words to describe them.”
Rather than tackle Google directly, Pinterest has decided to offer up something subtly different to users – and advertisers. People go to Pinterest to discover new ideas, to create mood boards, to be inspired. Pinterest therefore urges its 200 million users to “search outside the box”, in what could be deciphered as a gentle jibe at Google’s ever-present search bar.
All of this is driven by Pinterest Lens, a sophisticated visual search tool that uses a smartphone camera to scan the physical world, identify objects, and return related results. It is available via the smartphone app, but Pinterest’s visual search functionality can be used on desktop through the Google Chrome extension too.
Pinterest’s vast data set of over 100 billion Pins provides the perfect training material for machine learning applications. As a result, new connections are forged between the physical and digital worlds, using graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate the process.
In practice, Pinterest Lens works very well and is getting noticeably better with time. The image detection is impressively accurate and the suggestions for related Pins are relevant.
Below, the same object has been selected for a search using Pinterest and also Samsung visual search:
The differences in the results are telling.
On the left, Pinterest recognizes the object’s shape, its material, its purpose, but also the defining features of the design. This allows for results that go deeper than a direct search for another black mug. Pinterest knows that the less tangible, stylistic details are what really interest its users. As such, we see results for mugs in different colors, but that are of a similar style.
On the right, Samsung’s Bixby assistant recognizes the object, its color, and its purpose. Samsung’s results are powered by Amazon, and they are a lot less inspiring than the options served up by Pinterest. The image is turned into a keyword search for [black coffee mugs], which renders the visual search element a little redundant.
Visual search engines work best when they express something for us that we would struggle to say in words. Pinterest understands and delivers on this promise better than most.
Google made early waves in visual search with the launch of Google Goggles. This Android app was launched in 2010 and allowed users to search using their smartphone camera. It works well on famous landmarks, for example, but it has not been updated significantly in quite some time.
It seemed unlikely that Google would remain silent on visual search for long, and this year’s I/O development revealed what the search giant has been working on in the background.
Google Lens, which will be available via the Photos app and Google Assistant, will be a significant overhaul of the earlier Google Goggles initiative.
Any nomenclative similarities to Pinterest’s product may be more than coincidental. Google has stealthily upgraded its image and visual search engines of late, ushering in results that resemble Pinterest’s format:
Google’s ‘similar items’ product was another move to cash in on the discovery phase of search, showcasing related results that might further pique a consumer’s curiosity.
Google Lens will provide the object detection technology to link all of this together in a powerful visual search engine. In its BETA format, Lens offers the following categories for visual searches:
Some developers have been given the chance to try an early version of Lens, with many reporting mixed results:
Looks like Google doesn’t recognize its own Home smart hub… (Source: XDA Developers)
These are very early days for Google Lens, so we can expect this technology to improve significantly as it learns from its mistakes and successes.
When it does, Google is uniquely placed to make visual search a powerful tool for users and advertisers alike. The opportunities for online retailers via paid search are self-evident, but there is also huge potential for brick-and-mortar retailers to capitalize on hyper-local searches.
For all its impressive advances, Pinterest does not possess the ecosystem to permeate all aspects of a user’s life in the way Google can. With a new Pixel smartphone in the works, Google can use visual search alongside voice search to unite its software and hardware. For advertisers using DoubleClick to manage their search and display ads, that presents a very appealing prospect.
We should also anticipate that Google will take this visual search technology further in the near future.
Google is set to open its ARCore product up to all developers, which will bring with it endless possibilities for augmented reality. ARCore is a direct rival to Apple’s ARKit and it could provide the key to unlock the full potential of visual search. We should also not rule out another move into the wearables market, potentially through a new version of Google Glass.
Microsoft had been very quiet on this front since sunsetting its Bing visual search product in 2012. It never really took off and perhaps the appetite wasn’t quite there yet among a mass public for a visual search engine.
Recently, Bing made an interesting re-entry to the fray with the announcement of a completely revamped visual search engine:
This change of tack has been directed by advances in artificial intelligence that can automatically scan images and isolate items.
The early versions of this search functionality required input from users to draw boxes around certain areas of an image for further inspection. Bing announced recently that this will no longer be needed, as the technology has developed to automate this process.
The layout of visual search results on Bing is eerily similar to Pinterest. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Pinterest should be overwhelmed with flattery by now.
The visual search technology can hone in on objects within most images, and then suggests further items that may be of interest to the user. This is only available on Desktop for the moment, but Mobile support will be added soon.
The results are patchy in places, but when an object is detected relevant suggestions are made. In the example below, a search made using an image of a suit leads to topical, shoppable links:
It does not, however, take into account the shirt or tie – the only searchable aspect is the suit.
Things get patchier still for searches made using crowded images. A search for living room decor ideas made using an image will bring up some relevant results, but will not always hone in on specific items.
As with all machine learning technologies, this product will continue to improve and for now, Bing is a step ahead of Google in this aspect. Nonetheless, Microsoft lacks the user base and the mobile hardware to launch a real assault on the visual search market in the long run.
Visual search thrives on data; in this regard, both Google and Pinterest have stolen a march on Bing.
For now, Pinterest. With billions of data points and some seasoned image search professionals driving the technology, it provides the smoothest and most accurate experience. It also does something unique by grasping the stylistic features of objects, rather than just their shape or color. As such, it alters the language at our disposal and extends the limits of what is possible in search marketing.
Bing has made massive strides in this arena of late, but it lacks the killer application that would make it stand out enough to draw searchers from Google. Bing visual search is accurate and functional, but does not create connections to related items in the way that Pinterest can.
The launch of Google Lens will surely shake up this market altogether, too. If Google can nail down automated object recognition (which it undoubtedly will), Google Lens could be the product that links traditional search to augmented reality. The resources and the product suite at Google’s disposal make it the likely winner in the long run.
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Pinterest, Google or Bing: Who has the best visual search engine?
Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on social media at @rustybrick, +BarrySchwartz and Facebook. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio and disclosures, click over here.
Reference source :
Bing Ads tracking, Google Home screen & Google Fred
It seems like a small selection of tools just keeps traveling from article to article these days.
Opening a freshly-published article on a popular blog, I feel like I’ve already read it, because I know all the listed tools.
To celebrate “undercover” tools in the marketing industry, I picked six tools I use which I seldom or never see mentioned in other people’s articles. I think they totally deserve to be in the spotlight because they are as good as (or in most cases even better than) more discussed alternatives.
I hate to think that anyone reading this isn’t using cloud storage for work. It makes your life so much easier, allowing you to access your work from anywhere in the world as well as giving you tools to easily share your content with other team members, like editors and designers.
There’s no denying that Google is the Internet master for a reason, and their Drive service is hard for anyone to beat. But plenty of people choose not to entrust Google with their private docs for privacy reasons. Even if that’s not you, it’s never smart to put all your eggs in one basket. If your business 100% relies on Google, it’s time to change your business model.
Cloudup is a great alternative to both Dropbox and Google Drive giving you 200 GB (or up to 1000 items) of free storage which makes the service one of the largest free file sharing and storage options.
You can upload and share files, create docs and spreadsheets, use a huge number of tools and extensions, communicate with your team, and more. And it is all free up to 200 GB. You can find more alternatives here.
It is no secret that I am not a big fan of MailChimp. I find their system overly bulky and difficult to use, while their policies are so unclear you can violate them by accident.
Drip is a nice alternative to better-known email marketing systems, giving you a lot of nice features for a comparatively low price.
It has a powerful content automation feature that lets you reach your reader at exactly the time they are likely to take an action.
Cyfe is one of those tools you can use for anything under the sun. It’s like a Swiss knife that has a widget for anything, including:
Additionally you can create and add custom widgets or embed anything using iFrame (for example, I embed my spreadsheets).
Their recent update has added social media publishing into the mix allowing you to schedule your social media updates right from your business monitoring dashboard. I was really excited by the move because now I don’t to have to pay for an extra social media management solution!
Do you have an up to date content inventory? Probably not, because creating one is a time consuming and exhausting process and tools out on the market are expensive, clunky and rarely give you an accurate inventory to work from.
Topvisor was made to solve that problem. It is a fully customizable and extensive search engine optimization solution. They have monthly plans starting at just $29. I love their page change tracking tools that allow me to monitor my competitors and what they do to rank their content higher in search engines:
It’s incredibly affordable compared to similar tools and it will keep you or your team accountable for on-page SEO of every content asset that gets published on behalf of your brand.
It also integrates with Google Analytics to give you a more flexible content analytics dashboard.
If you are using (or plan on using) any sales management platform to organize your leads, give Salesmate a try. It’s very affordable and incredibly reach in features. Easily integrating into any imaginable content marketing tool, Salesmate offers all kinds of features aimed at improving your sales process.
Set up sales pipelines and watch your leads go from step to step to easily analyze where the process can be improved or which sales magnets your site needs.
EpicBeat isn’t just a trend monitoring tool. It is a dashboard that empowers your marketing with those trends. It takes what is hot and gives you a blueprint for incorporating it into your campaigns and promotional efforts.
It also had hot topics that you can go through, which is one of my favorite ways to find content ideas when I am running dry. Simple, effective and easy to use, it is one of my favorites on this list.
There are a few very popular content marketing resources out there everyone tends to recommend. However I think Scoop.it content marketing center is the best out there, yet you won’t see it mentioned too often.
Scoop.it has built a major hub for resources related to content, providing a ton of tools for you to enjoy for free. In the analytics category they have two ebooks and three extensive posts explaining various facets of improving your SEO strategy when it directly coincides with your content publications.
That includes maximizing your ROI, finding leads, looking at the “right” KPI’s and more. On top of these resources you can also sign up for their dashboard, which is also about generating and converting more through content marketing. They have one for individuals, marketers and enterprises, with the first level being free.
To celebrate people offering to spotlight less discussed alternatives, here are a few more roundups which inspired this article:
Do you have some tools you think deserve to be on this list? Let us know in the comments.
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