Google Maps might be testing a form of map pin ads that contain images or photos from the local business. I cannot replicate this, nor do I know if this is new or not, but this was shared with me on Twitter by Vishal Sharma who showed this in action.

Google six years ago launched a new Test My Site portal in the Think with Google portal. Well, that feature is going away soon, in the next few months Google will sunset the tool.

Like a marketing octopus, there are eight important appendages to a good content strategy. Let’s run through them in the order you should create them. The post 8 Elements Of A Successful Content Strategy appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Avoid abandoned carts and annoying pop-ups so you can delight your customers (instead of driving them away in frustration). The post 9 Things To Optimize On An Ecommerce Site To Drive Sales appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Next month the Google Ads Political Content Policy will be updated and advertisers will be required to further clarify the “Paid for by” disclosure directly in the ad.  New requirements. Google has outlined the requirements for both visual and audio ads as follows: In visual formats such as text and banner ads, Google requires the disclosure to be “visible at all times and be of sufficient size to be visible to an average viewer.  For audio, “the disclosure must be substantially similar in pitch, tone and speed to the rest of the ad.” Read the full policy. Advertisers can review the announcement here. Introducing YouTube Audio […]

Creating top-quality content requires top-notch content writers. Here’s how to find them, according to content experts Robert Rose and Rebecca Lieb. The post How To Find Talented Writers To Fuel Top Quality Content Creation appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

Mark Zuckerberg announced today that you can now buy products from small businesses and track those orders in Instagram chat.  How does it work. You simply send a message to a qualified business you’re interested in buying from. The business initiates a payment link, where you’ll be able to purchase, track the order, and ask follow-up questions. Meta Pay will also be enabled for an easier check-out experience.  Early tests. Jaw Surf tested the feature to sell their custom hand-made surfboards and fins. Owner Joshua Weisfeld said that customers would often contact him via Instagram chat before purchasing. But since […]

Restaurants around the U.S. are under attack from negative reviews. The New York Times covered the newest scam, where people are leaving 1-star reviews for restaurants and then emailing saying that they have to send them a gift card before they’ll remove the reviews. Google’s response: “We’ve recently become aware of a scam targeting businesses on Google with the threat of 1-star reviews unless they send money via gift cards. Our policies clearly state reviews must be based on real experiences, and our teams are working around the clock to thwart these attacks, remove fraudulent reviews, and put protections on business profiles […]

As many of you know, there was a pretty massive indexing issue impacting new content in Google Search most of Friday, July 15th, but that was pretty much isolated to that Friday. Now, I am seeing signals of a Google search ranking algorithm update on Saturday, July 16th.

Jaimie and Jon Clark came for a visit and we all spoke SEO and a lot more. Jaimie Clark is the VP of SEO at Centerfield, she was previously the Head of SEO at Wirecutter, a New York Times company…

Google Shopping results have shown top highlights for products some time but now it seems Google is testing showing the number of available product highlights in the carousel of product results in Google Search.

Microsoft Bing is testing a section under its featured snippet answers named “answered by Bing expert.” Bing will show an answer pulled from the source website, put the author’s name by the answer, and call them a “Bing Expert.”

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. Google had a large indexing issue on Friday…

So while Google Search is currently having massive indexing issues, the Google Ads advertiser console is having issues loading ad spend and other data. Google confirmed the issue saying “affected users are able to access Google Ads, but may not have access to the most recent data.”

Microsoft is testing in Bing Search a link named “see your ad here.” I guess this is promoting Microsoft Advertising’s search ad platform to encourage advertisers to bid on those keywords for that query.