Last night at around 6pm EST, I received dozens of emails from Google Search Console of site profiles I have access to, notifying me of the Chrome (version 62) will show a “NOT SECURE” warning. In short, in October 2017, Google Chrome will start labeling any site that asks for you to input anything into a form while on HTTP as not secure. This can be a login form, a email form, or really any type of form.Google warned webmasters about this in April and now is sending email notifications for webmasters who did not act yet. We actually upgraded most of our sites to HTTPS and for our synagogue platform ShulCloud, if the synagogue didn't switch on HTTPS for the full site, we made sure the login forms themselves always go over an HTTPS URL.Google announced then: Chrome will show the “Not secure” warning in two additional situations: when users enter data on an HTTP page, and on all HTTP pages visited in Incognito mode.Here is a copy of one of the emails that was … [Read more...]

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: Google Calls Algorithm Monitoring Tools "Blackhat Scrapers" Back in the good old days, I use to simply use the chatter in the SEO discussion forums to communicate with you all if I feel there was a major or minor Google Algorithm update... Google: We Care About URL & Last Modification Date Google's John Mueller said on Twitter this morning that Google doesn't really care much about the priority field in the XML Sitemap... Google: More Control With Markup vs The Data Highlighter Tool In 2012, Google launched the data highlighter tool to give less technical webmasters a way to communicate markup of a page or group of pages ... Google Maps Reviews Breaks For 4 Hours … [Read more...]

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. Pinterest now lets people zoom in on pins, has redesigned visual search iconAug 17, 2017 by Tim Peterson Users no longer have to be signed in to Pinterest to use its visual search Chrome extension. Site optimization or traffic optimization: Which delivers better results?Aug 17, 2017 by Jacob Baadsgaard Knowing where to invest in online marketing is crucial for search marketers with limited budgets and resources. Columnist Jacob Baadsgaard explores whether you’re better off investing in higher-quality traffic or conversion optimization. Dynamic Search Ads pilot in Bing Ads now open to all US advertisersAug 17, 2017 by Ginny Marvin Ads are automatically matched to queries based on advertisers’ website content. Google is testing a new lightweight search app for slow internet networksAug 17, 2017 by Barry Schwartz Check out the experimental version of a Google … [Read more...]

Believe it or not, it’s that time again for us to start gearing up for the holidays. Not every brand sufficiently prepares their paid media campaigns for this fast-paced season — and for e-commerce brands, this is especially crucial. Getting ahead of the competitive holiday season is a recurring obstacle. To start off on the right foot, you need to centralize your merchant feed, plan on making foundational optimizations, analyze your historical and competitor promotions, but most importantly, diversify your paid media shopping mix. By creating diversification within your paid media shopping campaigns, you will positively impact your holiday ROI and set up a framework for future e-commerce growth. Consider the following paid media tactics to be more effective and successful as an online retailer. Google Shopping or product listing ads (PLAs) are sizzling hot, especially while we prepare for the holiday season. Ever since PLAs gained popularity in 2011, they’ve evolved … [Read more...]

Google Chrome has taken a dominant position as the world’s favorite desktop browser, with almost 60% market share and rising. Its central role among Google’s vast suite of digital software and hardware has driven this growth, but users also love how customizable the browser is. It can be dauntingly customizable, in fact. With tens of thousands of extensions available, finding the few that will aid you on a daily basis is an all-consuming endeavor. In one store, you can find everything from Nicholas Page (an extension that turns any page Nicholas Cage-themed) to a variety of income tax calculators. Somewhere in between those two extremes, there are hundreds of SEO-themed extensions, some much more useful than others. There is a little bit of a learning curve to using some SEO Chrome extensions, but once they become habit, they will save plenty of time in the long run. Therefore, within this list we have distilled this down to the 15 extensions that … [Read more...]

You hear a lot about user experience (UX) testing these days. As an online marketer, you’re supposed to test your site, test your landing pages, test your app… basically, the mantra is, if you’re not testing, you’re wasting money on bad design! No argument here. But, while I’ve been a big fan of testing and conversion rate optimization (CRO) for almost a decade, I’m also a very practical sort of guy. CRO is a great idea, but sometimes you have to pick your priorities as an online marketer — especially if you’re in charge of marketing a smaller business with limited resources. For marketers in this sort of situation, choosing where to spend your time is just as important as choosing where to spend your marketing budget, which begs the question: Should you focus on improving your traffic quality, or on improving your site experience? Now, don’t get me wrong — in a perfect world, you’d optimize your site and your … [Read more...]

Bing Ads’ testing of Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) is expanding to and now available to US advertisers. From Thursday’s announcement: DSA is designed to help advertisers increase their impression volume, increase search term coverage and drive incremental clicks and conversions, while reducing the burdens of campaign set up and day-to-day management. Advertisers using DSA in Google AdWords will find the DSA structure in Bing Ads familiar. Ads are served by landing page content rather than keywords the advertiser enters. Bing Ads crawls the advertiser’s website to identify a landing page that’s related to the search query and dynamically generates ad titles that fit the query. The ads are then served with the generic ad copy the advertiser has entered.  To get started, select “Dynamic Search Ads” when setting up a new campaign in Bing Ads. Advertisers can target all pages on their site or limit the crawl to specific pages. DSA can be set up in the … [Read more...]

With the recent decision by the European Commission (EC) to levy a massive $2.7B fine on Google for unfair practices, a light was shined on the comparison shopping engines that have lost out over the past few years as searchers have increasingly used Google alone for product browsing. The EC determined that Google’s placement of Shopping Ads, also known as Product Listing Ads (PLAs), unfairly prevents competing comparison shopping options from getting click traffic, and that Google must make the search results fairer for those competitors. In discussing the ruling, much has been made of the potential harm to comparison shopping engines and searchers from Google’s current page layout. However, little attention has been paid to the advertisers who pay for Google Shopping listings, which now drive a significant share of all website orders for most brands. While Google will likely appeal the decision, here we’ll walk through what the impacts of the current decision might … [Read more...]

Android Police reports Google is testing a new lightweight version of their search app in Indonesia and maybe India, to see how they can speed up their search services in locations where internet speeds are on the slower side. The interface provides many of the same features as the main search app but somewhat dumbed down, probably for speed purposes. You can access features like search, news, images, top sites, weather, nearby, translate and switch to offline mode, personalize it and give Google feedback — whereas the main search app puts all of this directly in the main screen and loads it all for you right away. “Just like the regular Google Search app, Search Lite can perform voice and text searches, but the search bar is more easily accessible on the bottom of the display and shows suggested keyword additions just on top of it when you perform a search,” Android Police said. Here are some screen shots of the interface from Android Police: Android Police also … [Read more...]

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: Google: Three Reasons Your Rich Snippets Aren't Showing In Search An SEO asked Google's John Mueller why his rich cards (rich snippets) aren't showing up in search. John responded with three possible reasons over Twitter... Google: URL Structure Not So Important For SEO Google's John Mueller said on Twitter that URL structure is "not so much" important, rating it a 1 out of 7 - whatever that means. He said the bigger concern is changing URLs can take Google time to pick up on and pass signals from. So stick with your URLs for the long term... Google: Links From Added URL Parameters, Check The Canonical Sometimes I get to step back and explain a basic SEO topic... Google: Directing … [Read more...]