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Google’s Custom Searches Are the Best-Kept Secret for Searching Exactly As You Want

November 28, 2024 No Comments

Google’s programmable search engine is easy to set up and a great way to get the custom search results you want faster and without clutter. Google first introduced this feature in 2006, and it’s underused and underappreciated, but everyone should use this handy search tool.

What Is Google’s Programmable Search Engine?

Most of the time, a normal Google search provides some good sources. Unfortunately, ads, sponsored links, irrelevant results, clickbait sites, YouTube videos, social media posts, and other unhelpful content often clutter the results. Google’s Programmable Search Engine solves this problem. Best of all, you don’t need any real technical knowledge. If you can copy and paste links, you can make a custom search engine.

How to Create a Custom Programmable Search Engine

As said, creating a custom programmable search engine is really simple with Google’s free tool.

Create and Name Your Search Engine

First, head to Programmable Search Engine and ensure you are logged in with your Google Account. Select Get Started, click Add in the control panel, and name your search engine.

Enter the Websites You Want to Search

Now, fill out the What to search box. It will give you examples of how to enter the websites you’d like to include. For example, entering www.makeuseof.com/* will include the entire makeuseof.com website, and entering *.bbc.co.uk will search the entire BBC domain, including television, radio, news, etc. You can add as many sites as you like here and always add more or remove some later.

Screenshot of the third step in creating a Google Custom Search engine; Name and sources

Next, fill in your search settings. There are just two boxes here. Turn Image Search on if you want to include images in your search, and turn Safe Search on if you want it to block adult content from your searches.

Now, confirm that you are not a robot and click Create; your search engine is ready. There is a small code snippet on this page, but you only need it if you want to add it to your website.

custom programmable search engine options

Bookmark Your Custom Search Engine

Click Back to all engines in the top left of the page. Here, you will see a link to your search engine and any others you’ve created. Click the search engine’s name to edit, add or remove sites, or change settings.

custom programmable search engine share link

Click on the link symbol under Public URL to open your search engine in a new window. You can bookmark this page to use your new search engine whenever needed—press CTRL + D on Google Chrome to bookmark the current page.

Programmable search engines can be a great way to get higher quality Google search results faster and with less combing through ads and bad results. They narrow your news search to trusted sites, focus work searches on industry publications, restrict study searches to professor-approved sources, create one for job searching, one for shopping to search only retailers you know and trust, or help you make sure kids search only kid-friendly, educational sites.

Because custom programmable search engines are so fast and easy to create, you can even make one to speed you through a particular project faster and delete it when finished. Experiment and get your search the way you want, without all the clutter.

Feature Image Credit: Gavin Phillips/MakeUseOf

By Justin Beach

Sourced from MUO

In News

A Complete Timeline of Google’s Antitrust Trouble

October 29, 2024 No Comments

By Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

Google faces a second antitrust trial in less than a year.

Just one month after Google (GOOGL) lost an antitrust trial over its monopoly in the online search market, the tech giant is facing a second major competition case surrounding its search dominance. A trial starting this week (Sept. 9) will see Judge Leonie Brinkema, a federal judge in Virginia, determine whether the company is illegally monopolizing the digital advertising industry.

Google is no stranger to antitrust scrutiny—in August, another federal judge ruled it had built up an unfair position in the online search market. The company has previously faced a bevy of antitrust probes over issues like its app store operations and the Android mobile operating system.

This time, Google is being investigated for its outsized position in digital advertising. The ongoing trial stems from a federal antitrust suit last year that claimed the company unfairly controlled both the supply and demand of online advertising through its monopoly of the “ad tech stack” used by digital publishers and advertisers—in part as a result of its acquisitions of other ad tech companies.

Losing the case could see Google’s ad tech business broken up, which would lead to wide-ranging ramifications across the tech and ad market. Google has been a major player in online advertising for decades. Its advertising revenue reached over $200 billion last year, accounting for more than two-thirds of the company’s total revenue.

Here’s a look at the timeline of events leading up to Google’s ad tech case:

2008: Google acquires DoubleClick

Google’s purchase of DoubleClick, a publisher ad server, constitutes one of the most significant aspects of the ongoing antitrust trial. The $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick in 2008 “vaulted Google into a commanding position over the tools publishers use to sell advertising opportunities” and “set the stage for Google’s later exclusionary conduct across the ad tech industry,” according to the antitrust suit filed more than a decade later. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated Google’s acquisition at the time and ultimately allowed the tech company to proceed with its purchase.

2009-2011: Ad tech purchases proliferate

Google didn’t stop at DoubleClick. It built an ad tech empire over the following years, making a series of acquisitions to bolster its intermediary position between advertisers and publishers. In 2009, it purchased AdMob, a system allowing publishers of mobile apps to sell ads, for $750 million. The following year, it took over Invite Media, a bidding exchange for display advertising, for $81 million. And in 2011, Google bought the yield manager AdMeld for $400 million.

2016: Google begins combining user data

At the time of Google’s 2008 DoubleClick acquisition, its privacy policies prevented Google from combining user data from external websites with those from Google properties. This changed in 2016, according to the antitrust suit. Google allegedly amended its policy and began combining user data, a decision that helped it target advertising to users “in ways no one else in the industry could absent the acquisition of monopoly—or at least dominant—positions in adjacent markets such as Search,” according to the suit.

2023: The Justice Department files an antitrust action

In January 2023, Google’s ad tech dominance finally came to a head. The U.S. Department of Justice and eight states filed an antitrust suit in a federal district court in Virginia, accusing Google of unfairly dominating the online advertising market. Through its “longstanding monopolies in digital advertising technologies,” the company, on average, pockets more than 30 percent of ad dollars from its various ad tech products, according to the suit.

2024: Google fights for a bench trial

The government initially intended for its antitrust lawsuit to be heard by a jury this fall, as the suit included a damages claim. In July, Google managed to avoid a jury trial by handing over a $2.3 million check covering requested damages and interest, therefore ensuring the case would be heard by a judge instead. The case, which started this week, is expected to run for several weeks.

Feature Image Credit: Pawel Czerwinski/Unsplash

By Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly

Sourced from OBSERVER

In News

Google Search Ranking Volatility Continue With Big Movement Again

October 14, 2024 No Comments

By Barry Schwartz

To be honest, the Google Search ranking volatility has not cooled at all since the pre-launch of the Google August 2024 core update. But something happened yesterday which caused a bit more of a swing of things in the rankings at Google Search. It is like we have had a constant Google Search ranking update for the past month or so – and no, this is not the longest volatility period from Google yet (although we may hit it).

As a reminder, the Google August 2024 core update started on August 15th and officially completed on September 3rd. But it was still super volatile the day after it completed and also weeks after it completed and it has not cooled.

We saw big signals on and around September 6th, September 10th or so and maybe around September 14th. And now I am September 18th.

Google Tracking Tools

Here are what the tools are showing – just look at how the volatility really has not calmed in most of these tools. Some of the tools are calmer but still show spikes around these dates. I wonder what is going on at Google, and I suspect Google wonders as well. 🙂

SERPmetrics:

Semrush:

Advanced Web Rankings:

SEO Chatter

I cannot just go by these tools because most of them have just been showing volatility for the past month or so. The chatter within the SEO industry is a good tool for me to see bigger swings on specific days. So I think we had another big swing yesterday, September 18th.

Here is what I am hearing from WebmasterWorld and here in the past 24-hours or so.

HUGE drop today…

Same here.. HUGE drop today! 🙁

I’m really sorry to write this because I wish it were the case for all of you. Google suddenly seems to have taken a liking to my news site. I already mentioned that I had a very good weekend, but it goes even further than that. Since then, I’ve had roughly the same high number of readers that Google sends me every day (357% more than during the week), mainly via Discover. Sistrix also shows me that the value of visibility continues to rise (quadrupling since Friday). I would like to understand where this is coming from all of a sudden, but since I haven’t changed anything on the site, I don’t see any reason.

Slight recovery past 2 days. Keyword counts per Ahrefs also reversed and appear to be going up again. Too early to tell if its a real trend.

Same for me, the period from after labour day until now has been extremely high traffic. But it is slowly tapering off. I am seeing loses in top 3 and top 10 terms again and also my USA traffic is reverting to the old lower level day by day. Customer inquiries are also slowing down again. Non-USA traffic is still sky high though

A drop seems like it might have started yesterday at around noon…my traffic dropped like a stone and stayed down rest of the day. Today USA traffic is -40% at 11am, which has broken the pattern of being up every day since Sept. 3rd or so.

Oh … 75% of my Googleday gone and already at 167% v the month so far !

I, too, have a nice increase in traffic today, but that is not reflected in my revenue…yet.

Yes, today’s data. Yesterday was less notable. However, after 4pm, everything went back to normal. It seemed like a filter was turned on, then off…

Does anyone notice drop in impressions today, any upcoming update?

By Barry Schwartz

Sourced from Search Engine Roundtable

In News

Apple & Yahoo Create Worrisome Trends for Email Marketers

August 22, 2024 No Comments

By Chad S. White

And, shockingly, one of the trends involves (over)using AI.

The Gist

Tab concerns. Apple and Yahoo’s tab additions may alter email visibility and engagement, impacting marketers’ strategies and consumer interaction.
AI previews. Automated summaries threaten email marketing efforts, undermining carefully crafted preview text and brand messaging.
Diluted branding. AI-generated summaries may push content below the fold, weakening brand voice and potentially introducing inaccuracies.

Marketers have reasons to be concerned by the upcoming inbox changes that were announced by Apple on June 10 and Yahoo on June 11. Those changes entail Apple adding tabs to Apple Mail, and both Apple and Yahoo adding AI-generated summaries to emails.

Let’s talk in more detail about each and what the concerns are.

The Addition of Tabs

Ten years after Google pioneered tabs, and many years after Microsoft and Yahoo adopted them, Apple has finally followed suit. Expect to see tabs in future versions of Apple Mail. All of the major inbox providers use slightly different tabs from one another. Apple Mail’s four tabs will be Primary, Transactions, Updates and Promotions.

You might be wondering why this is a concern. And regular readers of my CMSWire columns may recall I wrote an article marking the 10-year anniversary of Gmail Tabs, where I concluded by saying that the “Promotions tab isn’t worth fussing about.”

So, what’s changed?

Well, in that same article, I talk about how Gmail has been automatically applying Email Annotations to some commercial emails in the Promotions Tab that don’t include that coding. Essentially, Gmail has been hijacking the code of marketers’ emails to achieve its own goals, which presumably includes making their in-line ads less distinguishable from the emails surrounding them.

Google calls it Automatic Extraction. This year, they’ve become much more aggressive in applying it. The higher frequency of use has also made it evident that Automatic Extraction routinely degrades the email experience crafted by brands, creating disconnects between their subject line and the preview content imposed by Gmail. In some cases, legal questions around misrepresentation and false advertising are being raised, with Gmail occasionally pulling discount amounts from disclaimers at the bottom of emails and promoting them in the preview content, falsely asserting that it’s the featured discount in the email.

I have zero concerns about inbox providers creating Promotions tabs. Neither do I mind them using the Promotions tab as a venue to display ads, even placing them in-line among emails. That’s a reasonable way to generate revenue for their inbox business.

However, putting marketers’ emails in a different tab where the preview content of their emails is changed without their consent in ways that they would never do to personal emails is a serious problem. I’m glad to see Apple follow Google’s lead on tabs, but I hope they won’t follow their lead on changing marketers’ email content.

AI-Generated Previews & Summaries

The other big change that’s coming is the addition of generative AI-powered previews and summaries for both Apple and Yahoo.

In the case of Apple, they’ll be replacing preview text of emails with a generative AI-written preview. All of the examples shown were personal, but presumably this will be applied to commercial emails, too. It’s unclear if this functionality will be on by default, or if it can be turned off by users.

Apple’s WWDC 2024 on June 10, 2024 ai — Apple’s WWDC 2024 on June 10, 2024

And once you’ve opened an email, Apple will give you the option to have generative AI summarize the email with the tap of the Summarize button.

Apple Mail AI-Generated Summarize — Apple’s WWDC 2024 on June 10, 2024

In what Yahoo Mail is calling “one of the most significant updates to its desktop experience in nearly a decade,” they’ve streamlined their user interface and added generative AI previews and summaries. Both appear to be on by default, and it’s unclear if they can be turned off.

The AI preview is similar to Apple’s, which again replaces the typical preview text that’s pulled from the email’s body content. However, unlike Apple’s AI summary, Yahoo’s appears to be done automatically.

The other difference is that Yahoo’s summary appears as a series of bulleted items, rather than a paragraph-style summary. It will also include proposed actions, tasks, or responses needed, according to Yahoo.

The concern with AI previews is that they undo marketers’ preview text optimization efforts. While it’s true that most personal emails aren’t written by communication experts and therefore have less helpful preview text, that’s not the case with marketing emails.

The concern with AI summaries is similar, especially if they’re applied automatically to marketing emails. While some marketing emails can be long, when that’s the case, it’s almost always because the email is composed of many content blocks about multiple subjects. AI summaries are unlikely to do that justice. Indeed, given how little actual text is in many marketing emails, the summary may largely reword the marketing text, potentially introducing inaccuracies in the process.

Regardless of how good the AI engine summary is, the summary will have two negative effects on marketers:

It will push more of the email’s content below the fold.
It will dilute the brand’s voice and filter its message.

Mediating Between Senders & Recipients

Email’s not perfect. There are plenty of things that could be better besides the long-standing problem of spam, against which inbox providers have been vigilant fighters. The new functionality they’ve rolled out over the years highlight some of the other things inbox providers think could be better about email.

The challenge is there’s little agreement among the major inbox providers on which issues to prioritize. The result is:

A lack of critical mass of support for AMP for email, CSS-based interactivity, Annotations and schema, and BIMI.
Inconsistent implementations of dark mode, plus other rendering inconsistencies.
A deliverability requirement that brands only send to engaged subscribers, while some inbox providers block senders’ visibility into opens, the most frequent sign of engagement.

Considering all of the helpful advancements that inbox providers could agree on, it’s unfortunate that what they seem to agree on is that preview text should be overwritten and body copy filtered and summarized by AI — particularly, it appears, if the message is commercial. Put another way, it seems the problem they’re trying to solve is that people are writing the emails.

By Chad S. White

Chad S. White is the author of four editions of Email Marketing Rules and Head of Research for Oracle Digital Experience Agency, a global full-service digital marketing agency inside of Oracle. Connect with Chad S. White: Twitter

Sourced from CMSWIRE

In Uncategorized

Google I/O 2024: Google Search’s AI Overviews Are Generally Available

June 19, 2024 No Comments

By Megan Crouse

Plus, Google reveals plans to unleash Gemini across Workspace to make interpreting long email threads or creating spreadsheets easier.

AI Overviews, the next evolution of Search Generative Experience, will roll out in the U.S. starting May 14 and in more countries soon, Google announced during the Google I/O developer conference at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, CA. Google showed several other changes coming to Google Cloud, Gemini, Workspace and more, including AI actions and summarization that can work across apps — opening up interesting options for small businesses.

Google’s Search will include AI Overviews

AI Overviews is the expansion of Google’s Search Generative Experience, the AI-generated answers that appear at the top of Google searches. You may have seen SGE in action already, as select U.S. users have been able to try it since last October. SGE can also generate images or text. AI Overviews adds AI-generated information to the top of any Google Search Engine results.

With AI Overviews, “Google does the work for you. Instead of piecing together all the information yourself, you can ask your questions” and “get an answer instantly,” said Liz Reid, Google’s vice president of Search, during I/O.

By the end of the year, AI Overviews will be available to over a billion people, Reid said. Google wants to be able to answer “ten questions in one,” linking tasks together so the AI can make accurate connections between information; this is possible through multi-step reasoning. For example, someone could ask not only for the best yoga studios in the area, but also for the distance between the studios and their home and the studios’ introductory offers. All of this information will be listed in convenient columns at the top of the Search results.

Soon, AI Overviews will be able to answer questions about videos provided to it, too.

Availability of AI Overview

AI Overviews is rolling out starting May 14 in the U.S., with availability for everyone in the country expected within the week. Availability in other countries is “coming soon.” Previously, AI Overviews had been available in Search Labs.

Is AI Overviews useful?

Does AI Overviews actually make Google Search more useful? AI Overviews may dilute Search’s usefulness if the AI answers prove incorrect, irrelevant or misleading. Google said it will carefully note which images are AI generated and which come from the web.

Gemini 1.5 Pro gets upgrades, including a 2 million context window for select users

Google is expanding Gemini 1.5 Pro’s context window to 2 million for select Google Cloud customers. To get the wider context window, join the waitlist in Google AI Studio or Vertex AI.

The ultimate goal for the teams working on expanding Google Gemini’s context window is “infinite context,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said.

Google’s large language model Gemini 1.5 Pro is getting quality improvements for the API and a new version, Gemini 1.5 Flash. New features for developers in the Gemini API include video frame extraction, parallel function calling and context caching. Native video frame extraction and parallel function calling are available now; context caching is expected to drop in June.

Available today globally, Gemini 1.5 Flash is a smaller model focused on responding quickly. Users of Gemini 1.5 Pro and Gemini 1.5 will be able to input information for the AI to analyse in a 1 million context window.

Gemma 2 comes in 27B parameter size

Google’s small language model, Gemma, will get a major overhaul in June. Gemma 2 will have a 27B parameter model in response to developers requesting a bigger Gemma model that is still small enough to fit inside compact projects. Gemma 2 can run efficiently on a single TPU host in Vertex AI, Google said.

Plus, Google rolled out PaliGemma, a language and vision model for tasks like image captioning and asking questions based on images. PaliGemma is available now in Vertex AI.

Gemini summarization and other features will be attached to Google Workspace

Google Workspace is getting several AI enhancements, which are enabled by Gemini 1.5’s long context window and multimodality. For example, users can ask Gemini to summarize long email threads or Google Meet calls.

Gemini will be available in the Workspace side panel next month on desktop for businesses and consumers who use the Gemini for Workspace add-ons and the Google One AI Premium plan. The Gemini side panel is now available in Workspace Labs and for Gemini for Workspace Alpha users.

Workspace and AI Advanced customers will be able to use some new Gemini features going forward, starting for Labs users this month and generally available in July:

Summarize email threads.
Run a Q&A on your email inbox.
Use longer suggested replies in Smart Reply to draw contextual information from email threads.

Gemini 1.5 can make connections between apps in Workspace, such as Gmail and Docs. Google Vice President and General Manager for Workspace Aparna Pappu demonstrated this by showing how small business owners could use Gemini 1.5 to organize and track their travel receipts in a spreadsheet based on an email. This feature, Data Q&A, is rolling out to Labs users in July.

Next, Google is adding a Virtual Teammate to Workspace. The Virtual Teammate will act like an AI co-worker with an identity, a Workspace account and an objective (but without the need for PTO). Employees can ask the assistant questions about work, and the assistant will hold the “collective memory” of the team it works with.

The virtual teammate has a Workspace account and a profile. Users can set specific objectives for the AI in the profile. Image: Google

Google hasn’t announced a release date for Virtual Teammate yet. The company plans to add third-party capabilities to it going forward. This is just speculative, but Virtual Teammate might be especially useful for business if it connects to CRM applications.

Voice and video capabilities are coming to the Gemini app

Speaking and video capabilities are coming to the Gemini app later this year. Gemini will be able to “see” through your camera and respond in real time.

Users will be able to create “Gems,” customized agents to do things like act as personal writing coaches. The idea is to make Gemini “a true assistant,” which can, for example, plan a trip. Gems are coming to Gemini Advanced this summer.

The addition of multimodality to Gemini comes at an interesting time compared to the demonstration of ChatGPT with GPT-4o earlier this week. Both Gemini and ChatGPT held very natural-sounding conversations. ChatGPT responded to interruption, but mis-read or mis-interpreted some situations.

Imagen 3 improves at generating text

Google announced Imagen 3, the next evolution of its image generation AI. Imagen 3 is intended to be better at rendering text, which has been a major weakness for AI image generators in the past. Select creators can try Imagen 3 in ImageFX at Google Labs today, and Imagine 3 is coming soon for developers in Vertex AI.

Google and DeepMind reveal other creative AI tools

Another creative AI product Google announced was Veo, their next-generation generative video model from DeepMind.Veo created an impressive video of a car driving through a tunnel and onto a city street. Veo is available for select creators starting May 14 in VideoFX, an experimental tool found at labs.google. Google plans to add Veo to YouTube Shorts and other products at an unspecified date.

Other creative types might want to use the Music AI Sandbox, which is a set of generative AI tools for making music. Neither public nor private release dates for Music AI Sandbox have been announced.

Sixth-generation Trillium GPUs boost the power of Google Cloud data centres

Pichai introduced Google’s 6th generation Google Cloud TPUs called Trillium; Google claimed the TPUs show a 4.7X improvement over the previous generation. Trillium TPUs are intended to add greater performance to Google Cloud data centres and compete with NVIDIA’s AI accelerators.

Time on Trillium will be available to Google Cloud customers in late 2024. Plus, NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs will be available in Google Cloud starting in 2025.

By Megan Crouse

Sourced from TechRepublic

In News

2 Things You Need to Convince Google You’re an Expert In Your Niche And Drive Traffic

April 30, 2024 No Comments

BY JEFF PEROUTKA

This two-pronged approach to SEO will increase your website’s relevance.

When others link to your website, Google wants to learn what value you can provide to users — the very reason someone gave you a backlink. That’s where digital public relations (digital PR) comes in.

Compared to manual link building, digital PR focuses on teaching a search engine about your expertise, which is reaffirmed by other publications linking to your content.

Let’s take a deeper look at how search engines like Google have evolved, how digital PR works and why using it together with manual link-building efforts is considered best to keep your website relevant.

Google has grown smart

Google is traditionally all about links — the more links inserted, the better. However, it has grown into a smart semantic search engine. Instead of simply looking at the links, it tries to understand the context, including the site’s information, what it offers and similar details.

Google’s focus is shifting to value sites that provide helpful content and strong Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) signals. In other words, link quality will matter more than quantity.

For example, websites with limited authority, despite their high traffic, are focusing on establishing topical relevance. They’re basically convincing Google that they are experts in a particular topic or niche. And this is one of the defining factors between digital PR and manual link building.

Understanding digital PR

Digital PR is very much like traditional public relations, except that it’s focused on the digital space. It’s the use of online channels to manage your brand’s reputation and build positive relationships with your target audience.

When it comes to search engine optimization (SEO), digital PR helps in:

Attracting visitors to your website.
Getting other websites to link back to yours, which improves your website’s authority and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

There’s no single way to perform digital PR outreach. However, a common but effective strategy involves content creation efforts. In other words, you need to create valuable assets, including reports, infographics, white papers, statistics, and other content that is good enough for other publications to link to your work organically.

Digital PR makes for quality backlinks but takes time

Organic backlinks — voluntary links to your content — are considered higher-quality links than those you manually build (either by guest posting or affiliate linking). Digital PR is a powerful tool for acquiring such high-quality backlinks. However, it’s a long shot that requires effort and patience to yield good results. Here’s why.

Building relationships

You must demonstrate your brand’s value and expertise consistently before your target audience members become willing to recommend or link to your content.

Creating valuable content

Researching topics, providing commentary or launching campaigns are not done in one sitting. You need to invest a significant amount of time and resources.

Earning organic coverage

Journalists get pitched constantly, so your content needs to be truly newsworthy and relevant to their audience to stand out and secure coverage. Sometimes, you must also have a strategic outreach plan to pitch your content to the right journalists and publications.

Manual link-building remains an effective SEO strategy

While digital PR is a great way to boost authority, manual link-building remains effective in maintaining your website’s visibility and relevance. The only difference is that you’re proactively getting the backlinks to your website rather than letting journalists voluntarily do the linking.

Still, given the change in the current landscape, you should focus your link-building efforts on earning juicy links rather than spamming them. Here are a few manual link-building strategies that might still provide good results:

Guest posting

Write high-quality articles for other relevant websites in your niche. Then, make sure that you include a link back to your own website within the content.

Broken link building

Find broken links on relevant websites and reach out to the website owners, suggesting your content as a replacement.

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) pitching

There are certain platforms where journalists post their queries on topics that might be too niche. Respond to their questions with great answers, you might potentially earn a backlink in the published article.

Networking and relationship-building

Connecting with influences and leaders in your niche always remains a good tactic. As you build relationships for your business, you may also find natural link opportunities.

Manual link-building risks penalties

Manual link building is seen as a method to replicate digital PR link earning (which can take a long time). While it can be faster, it also carries the risk of getting your website penalized when done incorrectly. Here are some cases where this might happen:

Unnatural link profile

Search engines like Google analyse link patterns to identify websites engaging in manipulative link building. An example of this is when your website has a sudden surge of links that seem unnatural, including those from low-quality websites, identical anchor texts, or links to private blog networks.

Manipulative link-building techniques

Engaging in specific practices can be directly flagged as manipulative and lead to penalties. Examples include link buying, excessive link exchanges and comment spam.

A two-pronged approach to link building is the best

Truthfully speaking, search engines tend to rely more on topic relevance than human-driven linking efforts today. In other words, digital PR is becoming the trend — and you should hop on to it, too.

However, combining both approaches can help your business build a more effective strategy for building high-quality links. In particular, digital PR will help you get natural and authoritative links from reputable sources. Meanwhile, manual link building allows you to target and control link quality.

Digital PR can be resource-intensive, as compared with manual link building. If your team is not yet ready to focus on high-quality content creation, manual link building remains a great avenue to take.

BY JEFF PEROUTKA

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK® CONTRIBUTOR

CEO of Pror Marketing. With five years of SEO experience, Jeff has led teams, taught Fortune 1000 companies, and worked with 120+ clients. As the founder of Pror.io, a seven-figure marketing agency, he’s dedicated to boosting businesses with top-notch SEO strategies. Upwork Expert-Vetted Freelancer.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

New email rules from Google and Yahoo will change your inbox (and your communication strategy)

April 29, 2024 No Comments

New policies signal a major change for brands that have relied on ‘spray-and-pray’ techniques to drive sales.

We all know the pain of misguided sales spam—and lots of it—cluttering our inboxes. Whether it’s emails to our personal addresses that assume our buying habits of a decade ago are the same today, or sales pitches to our work addresses that are completely irrelevant to our roles and responsibilities, we’ve become overwhelmed with poorly targeted emails. Statista found that spam accounted for 45% of the 333 billion emails sent daily in 2022, while research from Gong shows that only 4% of emails are ever even opened.

Why are business leaders still accepting this antiquated and ineffective way of doing things?

This month marks the beginning of new policies from Google and Yahoo to limit the bulk email sends that result in billions of irrelevant and poorly crafted sales pitches emailed daily. This signals a major change for brands that have relied on “spray-and-pray” techniques to drive sales. And for B2B brands, this too should be a wake-up call.

How will these new policies reshape how sales teams think about attracting customers?
Will mass emails become generally unacceptable in our professional inboxes, in addition to our personal ones?
And how will the disruption of a commonly used sales tactic impact bottom lines?

THE HISTORY OF SPAM

The first bulk emails were sent by Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for a computer company, to promote the company’s products to some 400 people. Thuerk said in a 2007 interview that “complaints started coming in almost immediately” after sending the emails, but more importantly, the company “sold $13 million or $14 million worth of DEC machines through that email campaign.” With that, cold emailing as a sales tactic was born.

In the decades that followed, the practice grew, and email marketing tools enabled sales teams to contact an ever-growing list of potential customers, forsaking personalized outreach for a broader pool of recipients.

While more data-driven approaches to sales emails have been introduced over the years, the overwhelming volume of irrelevant sales pitches has led to widespread fatigue. In fact, Gong’s research found that 87% of buyers say that the emails they receive are not relevant to them.

This practice can convert to sales. Even if only 4% of bulk emails are opened, that translates to 40,000 people opening those emails for every million sent by a salesperson. But companies need to ask themselves if irritating and alienating the other 960,000 people is an acceptable sacrifice. And, even more importantly, are they missing out on valuable opportunities by not sending thoughtful, personalized messages to the appropriate buyers out there?

RETHINKING SALES SPAM WITH AI

The technology industry is at a pivotal moment. AI is transforming the ways we work, live, and interact with each other. Now bulk emails can be drafted by generative artificial intelligence far more quickly than by a marketing and sales pro.

The potential impact for teams sending out large email campaigns is significant. Will the rise of gen AI mean that inboxes are flooded even more? Can AI make a difference in how these companies communicate with prospects?

AI can also bring new knowledge and perspective. Using AI to draft emails based on a few lines of context isn’t new, innovative, or effective. But done right, it can actually help companies cut down on the volume, and instead target the right customers with the right message.

We’re seeing new applications of AI that capture and analyse customer interactions to create content and thoughtfully personalize outreach based on a holistic view of the relationship. These applications might be the new approach that could reshape how sales teams develop and assess their outreach programs, from the initial outreach to a prospective customer . . . and over the entire relationship.

The era of relying on volume over strategic precision is over.

AI as a blanket solution won’t solve this problem for businesses. Not all of these tools are created equally, and those without the proper knowledge will only exacerbate the problem. However, there is potential for well-designed AI tools to help teams change their approach.

HOW TO CREATE CHANGE

Google’s and Yahoo’s rules are a positive first step to end spray-and-pray practices, but sales teams will need to do more. The good news is that there’s a path forward that not only doesn’t harm the bottom line but also can improve it.

Business leaders need to stop accepting this practice as the status quo and rebuild these programs from the ground up. Teams have often been measured and evaluated on “activity metrics”—how many emails have been sent, how many phone calls have been made. They should instead be measured by meetings booked and qualified opportunities, giving sales teams the motivation, time, and resources to focus on targeted, relevant outreach.

Similarly, leaders should make sure that their teams haven’t become over reliant on email. Research from McKinsey shows that the number of channels that B2B companies use to interact with other businesses has doubled in the past five years, and includes email, phone, web conference, chat, and social. Leaders should ensure that their teams can meet those potential customers where they want to be met.

The onus is on business leaders to evolve their strategies. While a spray-and-pray approach may have worked in the past, the tides are changing, and to stay competitive, businesses need to take a step back and reimagine how their sales teams operate. And they need to do it soon, before their last emails go unanswered.

Feature Image Credit: 84 Video/Unsplash

BY AMIT BENDOV

Amit Bendov is the CEO and cofounder of Gong.io. More

Sourced from FastCompany

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Google’s new bulk sender guidelines spell trouble for B2B

April 22, 2024 No Comments

By Larry Kim

Spam complaint rate rises across the B2B space

Back in October, Google and Yahoo unveiled a pivotal update to their bulk sender guidelines.

Launching February 1, these new regulations, which impact both bulk emailers (those sending over 5,000 emails daily to Gmail accounts) and general Gmail users alike, introduced authentication requirements and defined thresholds for spam complaints. Specifically, they defined a spam complaint threshold of 0.3%.

Our preliminary analysis of the announcement was that this 0.3% threshold wouldn’t be a major problem for most email marketers. In fact, for large companies with established customer bases and large inbound lists, this update would probably help those companies. They likely have low existing complaint rates and can more easily and safely expand their outbound efforts.

However, the smaller, less established companies, specifically, those in the B2B space that may be using more aggressive outbound email marketing strategies or have been leaning on ABM to establish their brand, would likely be in trouble.

And it turned out that we were right.

Spam complaint rates across the B2B space

To better understand how these new sender guidelines would impact outbound marketing and sales, particularly in the B2B space, we studied spam complaint rates across various industries.

Our findings showed that complaint rates were well beyond the 0.3% threshold laid out by Google and Yahoo. In fact, it wasn’t even close! The average spam complaint rate across the B2B space was 2.01%, with a range between 1.1% and 3.1%.

Even worse, for the top 9 spammiest verticals, we couldn’t find a single sender that was able to score below the 0.3% threshold. When you break it down by industry, it becomes ever more clear who the top offenders are:

B2B Software: Spam complaint rates peak at 3.2%, with a range of 1.3% to 4.3%.
Political Issue & Electioneering Communications: Rates hover around 2.9%, ranging from 1.5% to 3.4%.
Sales and Marketing Services: Experience a 2.8% rate, with a broad spectrum from 2.0% to 5.3%.
Recruiting: Faces a 2.1% rate, ranging between 1.7% and 3.1%.
Retail and E-Commerce: Encounter a 2.3% rate, with variations from 0.5% to 2.9%.
Real Estate: Deals with a 1.9% rate, spanning 1.5% to 3.4%.
Education and Training Providers: Show a 1.7% rate, within a range of 0.4% to 2.1%.
Financial Services: Encounter a lower rate of 1.1%, ranging from 0.7% to 1.9%.
Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals: Have the lowest rate at 0.9%, with a range of 0.7% to 1.4%.

This data isn’t entirely surprising when you think about it. B2B software companies and sales and marketing companies tend to do a lot of outbound. Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals on the other hand are beholden to pretty strict laws and regulations around communication.

B2B sales & marketing teams must adjust quickly

This data signals a critical issue for B2B outbound marketing. For businesses that rely heavily on outbound emails for lead generation and sales, this is a significant hurdle. Meeting the new sub-0.3% threshold appears daunting, if not impossible. The good news is there are strategies to mitigate these hurdles:

Boost transactional email volume: If we want to reduce the spam complaint rate %, we may want to increase total emails sent and optimize email volume. Increase the volume of non-spammy, transactional emails such as order confirmations, tracking updates, or purchase follow-ups. These are less likely to be flagged as spam and can balance out your overall email metrics.

Prioritize warm leads: Focus your emails on high-intent users (think those who visited your pricing page or added something to their cart). Tools for website visitor identification can be invaluable here.

Provide clear & numerous unsubscribe options: The unsubscribe option should be easily accessible and in multiple places. Hidden or hard-to-find unsubscribe links increase the likelihood of being marked as spam.

Utilize intent-based email lists: In some instances, there is no getting around cold emails. What you can do however is use intent-based email lists that can help you create more appropriate messaging that will resonate with prospects. The more you know about what your audience is interested in, the more personalized messaging you can create.

For B2B companies, adapting to these new guidelines is crucial. While outbound isn’t gone, it is more challenging. The good news for users is that this new complaint rate threshold should improve the email marketing and outbound space as a whole.

These new guidelines will force B2B marketers to evolve their outbound strategies and build better campaigns. For users this means less spam and more relevant emails. For marketing and sales teams, this should mean better targeting, more personalization, and less laziness.

The result? Improved sales to lead time. At the end of the day, large email providers like Google and Yahoo are focused on creating a better user experience and this means less spam. For B2B teams, the answer is simple…don’t be a spammer.

We’ve listed the best sales management software.

Feature Image credit: Shutterstock/Billion Photos

By Larry Kim

Larry Kim is the CEO of Customers.AI.

Sourced from techradar pro

This article was produced as part of TechRadarPro’s Expert Insights channel where we feature the best and brightest minds in the technology industry today. The views expressed here are those of the author and are not necessarily those of TechRadarPro or Future plc. If you are interested in contributing find out more here: https://www.techradar.com/news/submit-your-story-to-techradar-pro

In News

Unpacking Google’s Meridian Announcement

April 19, 2024 No Comments

By Tina Moffett

Google unveiled Meridian, an open-source marketing mix modelling (MMM) tool aimed at tackling crucial measurement challenges. MMM tools gauge the impact of marketing and media investments on vital performance indicators, such as sales or revenue, while also forecasting the revenue potential of marketing endeavours. According to Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2023, about 30% of B2C marketers use MMM tools to better understand how marketing drives value for the business.

Unpacking Google Meridian’s Core Pillars

Google’s foray into providing an open-source MMM tool reflects an understanding that restricted access to crucial data points within closed ecosystems impedes advertisers’ ability to effectively measure digital ads. Meridian aims to “[empower] teams to build best-in-class [MMM models] and drive better business outcomes.” The tech giant emphasizes Meridian’s “privacy-durable” approach grounded in innovation, transparency, actionability, and education. But B2C marketers must review Meridian’s claims with a critical eye:

“Privacy-durable” is redundant. MMM inherently maintains privacy durability, since it operates without individual customer behavior data. Inputs focus on aggregated media cost and revenue data, steering clear of clicks, views, or individual sales conversions.
“Innovation” claims are overstated. Most marketing analytics vendors already use the same methods as Meridian. Meridian’s MMM approach leans on solid but common techniques, such as a geo-level Bayesian hierarchical model incorporating seasonality, frequency, and reach data. The inclusion of nonmarketing indicators also remains ambiguous.
“Open source” does not equal complete transparency. While open source allows users to view and modify the MMM algorithm, complete transparency remains elusive, particularly for nontechnical stakeholders such as, for example, a VP of marketing. For many buyers, understanding ML approaches presents a significant challenge, necessitating considerable support and hand-holding.
“Actionability” may be limited to marketing use cases. Meridian’s scenario planning aligns with MMM providers’ offerings, aiding marketers in forecasting future marketing impacts. It’s unclear, however, whether Meridian offers scenario planning encompassing nonfinancial KPIs, constraint functionalities, frequent optimizations, or multiple optimization objectives.
“Education” skews technical, not practical. While Meridian’s technical specifications may satisfy ML engineers and data scientists, marketing executives require more comprehensive education and support. Marketing executives seek guidance on ML-driven models, while data scientists using Meridian need best practices for stakeholder engagement and model adoption.

Unlock Marketing Success Beyond MMM And Build A Comprehensive Measurement Strategy

Google’s announcement underscores the significance of ML-driven marketing analytics for measuring incremental marketing effectiveness and guiding budget allocations. Here are some key considerations before you build an MMM model:

Adopt a layered measurement approach. MMM alone will not provide ad tactic or spot level performance. It offers CMOs a guide on overall marketing mix performance and budget allocation. Incorporate marketing mix modelling as part of an overarching layered measurement strategy, utilizing various techniques to gauge marketing efficacy.
Choose vendors with diverse analytics capabilities. Evaluate vendors based on their industry experience, data normalization processes, measurement methodologies, and supporting services.
Manage expectations with MMM analysis. Expect to see MMM analyses such as channel halo effects, ad decay, optimal frequency of channels, and large-scale programs. But MMM may not offer granular insights into ad tactic performance — the models don’t process clicks and conversion level data as part of their analysis.
Implement incrementality testing. If you need help with an ad spot, or a particular display ad performance, testing approaches can help measure marketing uplift. Your data science teams, data-driven agencies, or independent vendors can help set up a rigorous marketing or media test to analyse the incremental impact of different marketing tactics.
Educate your organization on marketing analytics. Forrester believes that AI suffers from a trust problem, and explainable AI — the techniques and software capabilities for ensuring that people understand how AI systems arrive at their outputs — is a critical transparency mechanism. Prioritize transparency in MMM, and consider tools with explainable AI capabilities to enhance understanding and trust in AI-driven insights.

By Tina Moffett

This post was written by Principal Analyst Tina Moffett and it originally appeared here.

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Through Forrester’s proprietary research, consulting, and events, leaders from around the globe are empowered to be bold at work — to navigate change and put their customers at the center of their leadership, strategy, and operations.

Our unique insights are grounded in annual surveys of more than 700,000 consumers, business leaders, and technology leaders worldwide; rigorous and objective research methodologies, including Forrester Wave™ evaluations; 70 million real-time feedback votes; and the shared wisdom of our clients.

Sourced from Forbes

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Google Faces Court Order in Probe by Competition Bureau

April 12, 2024 No Comments

By John Quintet

The Competition Bureau of Canada has secured a Federal Court order to collect further information for its ongoing probe into Google’s online advertising operations.

Started in 2020, the investigation wants to know whether Google’s actions in the online display advertising sector may be stifling competition within the country.

Originally, the Bureau’s inquiry was based on accusations of Google exploiting its dominant position in video advertising to influence the advertiser buying tools market. But the scope has since expanded to investigate potential issues such as Google leveraging its market power to fend off competitors in display advertising technology, while using alleged predatory pricing strategies.

The investigation wants to find out if Google’s advertising practices are designed to undermine competition, affect competitors’ success, or lead to higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation in the online display advertising services market.

Traditional media has seen their advertising profits decline because they do not have some of the smartest engineers in the world like Google, deploying a digital ad business. Google recently made a deal with the federal government over the Online News Act.

The Bureau is especially focused on figuring out if these practices contravene the Competition Act’s provisions against restrictive trade practices, including abuse of dominance.

Google is mandated by the court order to submit relevant records and written information. While the probe is still underway, there are no findings of misconduct at this stage.

This is not the Bureau’s first investigation into Google’s business practices. In 2021, it obtained an initial court order related to Google’s online advertising business, following a 2016 investigation into alleged anti-competitive practices related to online search and advertising.

Canada is likely following the lead of the U.S., which saw its Justice Department file a lawsuit against Google last year, alleging the latter abused its role brokering digital ads across the internet, points out the WSJ.

By John Quintet

Sourced from iPhone in Canada