Google Archives - Page 16 of 20

In News

Google ‘Freshness’ Algorithm May Still Cause Dips In Website Traffic

March 20, 2018 No Comments

Google challenges marketers all the time by changing its algorithm often. One change that occurred in early 2017 might still be affecting some marketers. iQuanti found the flaw after a large publishing site that averages more than 600,000 monthly visits lost 28% in organic traffic site visits from January to February 2017.

Companies experiencing unnatural dips in traffic might want to look more closely at Google’s Freshness Update, as put by Michael Bertini, an online marketing and search strategies at iQuanti. The algorithm is intended to address the increasing volume of data being made available by ensuring that the most recent data serves up in the response to a search query. And each time the update is made, Bertini says, marketers can experience a significant drop in traffic due to older content being hosted on their site.

“People are still being hit with the algorithm and don’t realize it,” he said, suggesting it could take years. “JCPenney didn’t get hit with their backlink building tactic for four years.”

iQuanti’s markets began to dig for a reason to explain why the site dropped in ranking, and began to break out the traffic for each page that lost significant amounts of traffic. The list came down to a set of 20 URLs. All were articles created prior to 2014.

After iQuanti’s marketers took down the old content and began repurposing it by adding new elements and republishing it, the site saw a lift in search ranking. The exact same content published with a more recent date ranked better for more keyword terms.

Then in May of 2017, the site got hit again with “Google’s freshness update” that caused a drop in traffic once again. This time it was for another set of articles that were published in 2014.

The test conducted on 20 URLs saw a 101% increase in traffic and an 80% increase in share when repurposed and republished.

The results also suggest that the maximum amount of traffic an article produces occurs during the first two months, and after this point it stabilizes. And the average traffic for the content created in 2017 drove 26% less traffic than in 2016.

So if there is a dip in search traffic to a website, marketers may want to dig into the site looking for Google’s Freshness Update.

By Laurie Sullivan

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

Google No Longer Supports the Meta News Keywords Tag

March 14, 2018 No Comments

By Matt Southern

Google has revealed it no longer supports the meta news keywords tag, and hasn’t supported it for several months.

It wasn’t until Joost de Valk of Yoast asked Google’s John Mueller about the meta news keywords tag that we got any kind of official word.

Considering the tag hasn’t been supported for months, and the change is just being noticed now, it should be an indication of how many site owners used the tag on their news articles.

Cover Your Entire Backlink Workflow
Analyze, clean, earn, and track backlinks from one tab. Manage your link profile easily with SEMrush!.

The low adoption rate could be the reason why support for the meta news keywords tag was dropped. However, Google did not specifically say why support was dropped, so we can’t confirm this.

It will not do any harm to keep the tag on news articles, Google will simply ignore it like it does the regular meta keywords tag.

So if you have the tag in place already, don’t worry about it, just don’t go out of your way to add it to any future articles.

By Matt Southern

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

In News

OpenX says Google’s Exchange Bidding has led to 48% revenue lift for publishers

March 6, 2018 No Comments

By Minda Smiley

A case study published by OpenX shows that publishers on its platforms using Exchange Bidding – Google‘s answer to header bidding – have seen an average yield increase of 48% in the 12 months since the two started working together.

In June, OpenX announced its status as a Google Exchange Bidding beta partner, but the adtech firm says it’s been partnering with Google since 2016 to “build a more transparent programmatic ecosystem.”

According to OpenX, more than 200 premium publishers are now receiving ads from the firm via Google’s Exchange Bidding, all of which it says have experienced higher revenue. OpenX says that the top 20 publishers experienced an average revenue lift of more than 130%.

“We built Exchange Bidding on a foundation of trust and transparency, allowing us to collaborate openly to create an efficient solution that increases publisher revenue and advertiser opportunity,” said Sam Cox, group product manager at Google’s DoubleClick, in a statement. “We understand that every exchange provides different value to publishers and advertisers and that’s why we’ve partnered with leading exchanges like OpenX, who are technically savvy, have a high bar for integrity, and are able to add value to the ecosystem, to help publishers get the most out of every impression.”

“We are thrilled with the progress we made in our partnership with Google in the past year towards bringing high-impact, high quality programmatic demand to publishers globally. Our partnership allows every demand source to compete fairly within the final DFP auction, representing the first truly unified auction capability the market has ever seen,” added Jason Fairchild, co-founder of OpenX.

By Minda Smiley

Sourced from THEDRUM

In News

High Impact Digital Marketing Tips to Sell More

February 27, 2018 No Comments

If you have a sales event coming up, like the end-of-season sales, then here are the tips you need to know.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

The actual benefits of designing commercial strategies around events like America’s Black Friday or China’s Singles Day improve market platforms and strengthen the domestic economic market because it’s a great opportunity to encourage consumption and sales.

On Black Friday, for example, thousands of companies from different industries tag along with the commercial event and offer large discounts on their goods and services. However, competition is rife. An offer can lose its meaning when another company offers a better one, and what’s more, businesses must not only participate in Black Friday, but really know how to stand out and attract consumers.

So how do you as a marketer get your business to stand out?

Here are some tips from Adext. They deploy and optimise online advertising campaigns on Google, Facebook, Instagram and thousands of websites to increase the sales of SMEs that have limited resources for the activities.

1) Plan a strategy: It’s not enough to offer irresistible discounts on events like Black Friday… You need a promotion strategy with a clear action plan and execution dates. You must be clear on what discounts and incentives you’ll promote, how you’re going to put them across, the digital platforms you’ll use, who you’ll target, when and why. The what, how, where, when and why questions are key to developing any action plan. Come up with answers to them while always keeping the goal you want to achieve in mind. In this case, it’s sales.

2) Research your competition and make sure to offer something really attractive: You could offer a 10% discount, but if your main competitor offers 25%… You can imagine the outcome. If you want to take the lead, look at what they’re doing and ask yourself how you can beat their discount and/or add more value (without affecting your profit margins). You could give your prospects something of value like a gift for their loyalty, or an extra incentive for them to buy more. Also, don’t forget to let your imagination roam and build your offer or promotion around a creative concept.

3) Build Anticipation: Teaser campaigns are wonderful for building your target audience’s curiosity. Don’t reveal your discounts, offers or incentives too soon… Let your prospects discover what they are as anticipation builds. They should be interested and intrigued to find out what you’ll offer them on your sales event day. There are several examples of clever, catchy strategies where they invite their prospects to go to Snapchat to discover what the 10 star products reduced to €10 are.

4) Send your prospects emails: You can send a few emails before the big sales day (to build anticipation), and other reminders before the day arrives.

Here are three tips to make your email marketing campaign a success:

Make sure to add an attention-grabbing title or subject line to your email. An email subject line you see all the time, like “Check out our discounts!” will go unnoticed. But if you can entice the reader with something like “I don’t want to freak you out, but you’ll regret it if you don’t take advantage of this” will definitely pique their curiosity and make your open rates go up.
Once they open your email, there must be something of interest for them to look at and read… The body of the email must be pleasant to look at, and easy to read and scan. Use short paragraphs, bold letters, headlines, subtitles, vignettes, images, and of course: good copywriting.
Add a CTA (Call-To-Action), where you specify what you want the reader to do once they’ve read your email. For example, you might write: “Our discounted products will be available in store until we’re out of stock. We’ll be ready to serve you when you arrive” or “Buy your Christmas gifts NOW and make sure you don’t get burned in January”. This action-oriented copy should stand out on the page. And if you have an online store, add a link to it.

5) Take advantage of the power of social networks: There is no doubt that you need to be where consumers spend most of their time. Where’s that? In this digital world, it’s on social media. Join the conversation and interact with your audience. Include the most relevant hashtags (e.g. #Black Friday or #SinglesDay or #Summersales) on your posts, so that prospects looking for discounts and deals can easily find you.

6) Let digital advertising bring you the clients you need: Digital advertising no longer has to be complicated. And it can give you the results you’re hoping for. Adext is the first Artificial Intelligence platform in the digital advertising space that can automate the entire process of creating, managing and optimising your ad campaigns on Google, Facebook and Instagram.

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? It’s free! Everyone’s favourite price! Click here to do it now.

In News

Are you a Tourism Marketer? Here’s What Travellers are Hashtagging the Most

February 23, 2018 No Comments

If you are marketing anything in the tourism game, this is what you need to know.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

For those that are lucky enough to get away on holiday or go on an extended travel stint, we can predict what actvities you might be doing after a new study has been published by Hotels.com

The company have used a data-crunching bot to track what people are hashtagging the most on their sojourns. More than five million brags globally were analysed using a combination of Tweet data, Instagram posts and travel keywords and destinations mentioned on other social media. So here are the results.

Worldwide travellers are all about the culture: they enjoy musing around museums (300,000 brags), old-town charm (170,000 brags) and a spot of sunshine (130,000 brags), but they can also be found in floating restaurants, erotic museums and night markets.

TOP 10 GLOBAL THEMES

Museum
Rooftop bar
Old Town
Modern Art
Opera
Sunshine
Olympic Games
Cathedral
Gallery
Ballet

This travel bragging trend echoes the findings from the recent Hotels.com Mobile Travel Tracker report, which revealed that one in six travellers search social media before their trip to plan the photos they’ll take. And 56% of people surveyed admit to spending more than an hour a day on their smartphones while on holiday.

While travellers naturally brag about taking in the tourist hotspots and cultural offerings, more people than ever are sharing foodie ‘grams, shopping stories and luxe posts.

#Foodporn
You’re never more than an Insta-scroll away from #FoodPorn and the brag lists are brimming with culinary treats. Cakes in Stockholm and curry in Toronto spice up the brag lists, and New York steak and pizza both made the cut. Perhaps more surprisingly, enchiladas proved twice as popular as modern art in Mexico City, ice cream scooped 10% of all San Francisco brags and Jumbo Kingdom floating restaurant in Hong Kong took second place in the Hong Kong chart with more than 20,000 brags.

Shop ’til you drop
Shopping is a must-do for most travellers. Those visiting Paris brag more about the Rue Vieille du Temple, famous for its boutiques, than Le Louvre! Other top shop-spots included Bal Harbour in Miami, the Harbour City mall in Hong Kong, vintage shops in Melbourne and the stylish Cecile Copenhagen fashion brand made the Danish capital’s top 10.

Five-star luxury
When travellers check into a posh, luxury hotel they naturally want the world to know. The stunning 5-star Ritz Carlton in San Francisco topped the city’s brag list, the Four Seasons in Singapore proved brag-worthy and the Park Hyatt came in at number one in Seoul – most likely for its awe-inspiring rooftop pool.

Scott Ludwig at Hotels.com said, “Bragging about your travel experiences on social media has become the norm – if you didn’t get social kudos out of it, it didn’t happen!”

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? It’s free! Everyone’s favourite price! Click here to do it now.

In News

Advertising in Fashion Magazines is Dead to us Now

February 19, 2018 No Comments

Now? Fashion brands are meeting with social media influencers directly.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Hundreds of NY Fashion Week influencers were invited to a party specifically held to put them in front of brands that want some of the spotlight. The party was held by a company called Influence, which connects brands and influencers. Together, they create social campaigns that expand visibility and engage new audiences for brands. The influencer gets paid, and the brands get to reach audiences that they might not be able to access using other methods. Welcome to the “now” of fashion and brand marketing.

Influence is a sister company to the already-successful operation called Newswire. Newswire currently have an online portal that publishes thousands of press releases every day. Journalists and influencers can go straight to company news, by keyword or subject search. This means that they can get their news directly from the companies, rather than have the interaction brokered through a PR agency. This renders the traditional PR agency almost obsolete.

The way the PR industry is changing is similar to the way that fashion magazines are going. Teen magazines and fashion publications are no longer the huge, powerful entities that brokered deals between brands/fashion houses and their audiences. Now, it is the online fashion influencers who have huge sway with their fans, and brands can contact them directly. This circumvents the hugely expensive fashion magazines, whose circulations are falling dramatically.

As an example, a top YouTube fashion influencer is Chriselle Lim. Her channel is growing at a breakneck pace. Her videos reveal how to transform basic pieces of clothing into stylish apparel. Chriselle has support from global brands such as Target and Estee Lauder.

The change in the way brands and fashion are marketed has been incredibly rapid. Fashion magazines? Pah. Now Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are the place to put brand marketing spend.

But back to the party. The event hosted hundreds of NY Fashion Week Influencers at Manhattan’s chic Sixty Soho Hotel. Influencers and brands from across the globe arrived to share in networking and developing opportunities for campaign partnerships that strengthen an Influencer’s channel and widen content reach for brands. The party was also used to promote Influence.com itself. And it worked, because here you are, reading about this new company.

Said Director of Influencer Marketing, Magnolia Sevenler, “Whether you are an influencer or marketer, the Influence by Newswire platform provides a community to build your campaigns.”

According to Sevenler, the platform has been well-received from both marketers and creators for its simplicity and reach. “It’s exciting to see all the positive feedback…as we enter a new era of marketing, where micro-influencers can be rewarded for their passions and brands can reach new untapped audiences.”

The company has plans to expand its network and add additional features to enhance users’ experience. And it is doing this all because the fashion magazine industry is destined for a papery grave. It’s time to move on, people, and bring your marketing spend with you.

Have you listed your company in our Media Directory? It’s free! Everyone’s favourite price! Click here to do it now.

In Uncategorized

Buyer Behaviour: Love Trumps Budget When Your Customer is Buying Sentimental Items

February 6, 2018 No Comments

People will always pay more when being led by the heart and not the head.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Brides and the bereaved beware: You, like many shoppers, may have a tendency to reject thriftiness when your purchase is a matter of the heart, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

People are reluctant to seek cost-saving options when buying what they consider sacred – such as engagement rings, cremation urns, or even desserts for a birthday party – for or to commemorate loved ones. The paper, published in Judgment and Decision Making, is the first to examine the implications of this phenomenon.

Even when they identify a less expensive alternative to be equally desirable, people choose the more expensive of two items. They also avoid searching for lower prices and negotiating better prices when the goods they’re buying are symbolic of love.

“People’s buying behaviour changes when they’re making purchases out of love because it feels wrong to engage in cost-saving measures,” said Peter McGraw, associate professor of marketing and psychology at CU. “People abandon cost-saving measures when it comes to sentimental buys because they want to avoid having to decide what is the right amount of money to spend on a loving relationship.”

The findings highlight how wedding, funeral and other industries can exploit consumers, said McGraw.

In one part of the study, which involved nearly 245 participants, the researchers asked attendees at a Boulder wedding show about their preference between two engagement rings. The attendees nearly always chose the more expensive ring when deciding between a more expensive ring with a bigger carat and a less expensive ring with a smaller carat.

“It’s important to be aware of this tendency not to seek cost savings because, over a lifetime, consumers make many purchases that are symbolic of love — whether for weddings, funerals, birthdays, and anniversaries,” said McGraw. “The loss of savings can really add up and put people in compromising financial situations.”

So how can we apply this to a marketing situation? If you are selling goods or services for sentimental events, play up the quality, not the price.

Have you listed your company on the MediaStreet directory? Click here to do it now! It’s free!

In News

The Media is Now the Least-Trusted Institution Globally

January 25, 2018 No Comments

So, which citizens trust their media the most? And the least?

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Let’s start with the USA. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust in the U.S. has suffered the largest-ever-recorded drop in the survey’s history among the general population. Trust among the general population fell nine points to 43, placing it in the lower quarter of the 28-country Trust Index. It is now the lowest of the 28 countries surveyed, below Russia and South Africa.

The collapse of trust in the U.S. is driven by a staggering lack of faith in government, which fell 14 points to 33 percent among the general population, and 30 points to 33 percent among the informed public. The remaining institutions of business, media and NGOs also experienced declines of 10 to 20 points. These decreases have all but eliminated last year’s 21-point trust gap between the general population and informed public in the U.S.

“The United States is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. “This is the first time that a massive drop in trust has not been linked to a pressing economic issue or catastrophe like the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, it’s the ultimate irony that it’s happening at a time of prosperity, with the stock market and employment rates in the U.S. at record highs. The root cause of this fall is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse.”

Conversely, China finds itself atop the Trust Index for both the general population (74) and the informed public (83). Institutions within China saw significant increases in trust led by government, which jumped eight points to 84 percent among the general population, and three points to 89 percent within the informed public. Joining China at the top of the Trust Index are India, Indonesia, UAE and Singapore.

For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally. In 22 of the 28 countries surveyed it is now distrusted. The demise of confidence in the Fourth Estate is driven primarily by a significant drop in trust in platforms, notably search engines and social media. Sixty-three percent of respondents say they do not know how to tell good journalism from rumour or falsehoods or if a piece of news was produced by a respected media organisation. The lack of faith in media has also led to an inability to identify the truth (59 percent), trust government leaders (56 percent) and trust business (42 percent).

This year saw a revival of faith in experts and decline in peers. Technical (63 percent) and academic (61 percent) experts distanced themselves as the most credible spokesperson from “a person like yourself,” which dropped six points to an all-time low of 54 percent.

“In a world where facts are under siege, credentialed sources are proving more important than ever,” said Stephen Kehoe, Global chair, Reputation. “There are credibility problems for both platforms and sources. People’s trust in them is collapsing, leaving a vacuum and an opportunity for bona fide experts to fill.”

Business is now expected to be an agent of change. The employer is the new safe house in global governance, with 72 percent of respondents saying that they trust their own company. And 64 percent believe a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates.

This past year saw CEO credibility rise sharply by seven points to 44 percent after a number of high-profile business leaders voiced their positions on the issues of the day. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they want CEOs to take the lead on policy change instead of waiting for government, which now ranks significantly below business in trust in 20 markets. This show of faith comes with new expectations; building trust (69 percent) is now the No. 1 job for CEOs, surpassing producing high-quality products and services (68 percent).

“Silence is a tax on the truth,” said Edelman. “Trust is only going to be regained when the truth moves back to centre stage. Institutions must answer the public’s call for providing factually accurate, timely information and joining the public debate. Media cannot do it alone because of political and financial constraints. Every institution must contribute to the education of the populace.”

Other key findings from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer include:

Technology (75 percent) remains the most trusted industry sector followed by Education (70 percent), professional services (68 percent) and transportation (67 percent). Financial services (54 percent) was once again the least trusted sector along with consumer packaged goods (60 percent) and automotive (62 percent).
Companies headquartered in Canada (68 percent), Switzerland (66 percent), Sweden (65 percent) and Australia (63 percent) are most trusted. The least trusted country brands are Mexico (32 percent), India (32 percent), Brazil (34 percent) and China (36 percent). Trust in brand U.S. (50 percent) dropped five points, the biggest decline of the countries surveyed.
Nearly seven in 10 respondents worry about fake news and false information being used as a weapon.
Exactly half of those surveyed indicate that they interact with mainstream media less than once a week, while 25 percent said they read no media at all because it is too upsetting. And the majority of respondents believe that news organizations are overly focused on attracting large audiences (66 percent), breaking news (65 percent) and politics (59 percent).

It’s a brave new world, and we as marketers must realise that placing any marketing cash with distrusted media outlets could mean a very big waste of our advertising spending power.

In News

Amazon and Google are about to step up their war for the future of technology

January 23, 2018 No Comments

By Matt Weinberger

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are battling for supremacy in voice search.
At the CES trade show, which begins in Las Vegas this week, gadget manufacturers will show off their latest products using Alexa and Assistant.
Amazon has aggressively pushed Alexa everywhere, gaining dominance. Now, it’s slowly but slyly turning Alexa into a big driver towards its core retail business.
Google has aggressively chased after Amazon, pushing the Google Assistant into new places. But it’s less clear how Assistant will help Google’s core search advertising business.

At next week’s Consumer Electronics Show, we’re going to see the battle between Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant kick in to high gear.

Last year, Alexa was the clear winner of CES, with companies like Ford, Huawei, and LG agreeing to integrate their products with Amazon’s virtual assistant. Since then, Alexa has only gotten bigger — Amazon says that it sold “tens of millions” of Alexa-enabled products, led by its own Amazon Echo Dot, over the holiday season.

This year, Google is striking back. While the search giant’s Google Home speakers still lag the Amazon Echo in terms of market share, it’s picking up momentum: Google claims that it sold over 6.7 million Home and Home Mini speakers over the holiday shopping season.

You can expect both companies to make announcements about new partners, new products, and new ways to use their respective voice agents. LG has already announced that it will be showing off new TVs with Google Assistant built in; a company called Vuzix will be debuting a pair of Alexa-powered smart glasses.

amazon echo installed base BI Intelligence

Make no mistake, though. All of this, and all of these announcements, are a proxy war between Amazon and Google. The battleground, this time, is the growing market for smart speakers. But what’s at stake is each of these tech titans’ relative positions as we enter a new wave of computing.

Here’s the current scorecard between Amazon and Google — and what to watch for this week as each company makes its moves and counter-moves.

Amazon is still dominating

Amazon got in on the smart speaker market early, and has moved quickly to ensure its stays out in front. Now, by most measures, the Amazon Echo is dominating the smart speaker market.

The company has built on the lead with an avalanche of new hardware released in the last year: The tablet-like Echo Show, which has a screen; the Echo Look fashion camera; the Echo Plus home hub; the Echo Spot alarm clock; the redesigned Echo.

Plus, partners like Sonos and Ecobee have released their own products with Alexa built in, so you can talk to (and shop from) Amazon from an ever-increasing number of places. And with 30,000 skills, or apps, now available for Alexa, customers can do a lot more with those devices — giving them fewer reasons to switch.

This is all a part of Amazon’s ongoing playbook to get Alexa everywhere. Now, with its market share established and its position looking to be firmly entrenched, Amazon is entering a new phase in its master plan.

amazon echo alexa lineup The complete lineup of Amazon Echo gadgetry.Matt Weinberger/Business Insider

Amazon has begun experimenting with ads in Alexa, CNBC recently reported, bolstering its fast-growing online advertising business. As a nice bonus, these ads would use a shopper’s data to suggest products, which could help turn Echo users into Amazon shoppers, too.

Beyond just that, Amazon has started to play around with premium skills. With Alexa games like “Jeopardy,” you can pay $1.99 a month for extra questions, or else get them for free if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber. If you pay up, Amazon takes a cut, or else it’s just another reason to subscribe to Amazon Prime. Either way, Amazon wins.

So keep an eye out for two things from Amazon: New ways to get you using Alexa, but also new ways for Amazon to slowly but surely turn Alexa into something that makes a material impact on the company’s bottom line.

Google is gaining ground fast, but there’s a problem

Google was relatively late to the smart speaker game, but it’s gaining ground quickly.

The Google Home speaker has been available since 2016. But in the last few months of 2017, Google launched the smaller $49 Google Home Mini and the $399 super-premium Google Home Max. And, like Amazon, Google has been signing deals with vendors like Sonos to get Assistant into their devices.

It’s especially worth noting how aggressive Google has gotten about extending its market share. Over the holiday shopping season, Google lowered the price of the Home Mini speaker to $29. Better yet, if you bought it at Walmart, it came with a $25 credit towards Walmart orders on the Google Shopping Express service.

Otherwise, Google’s playbook looks a lot like Amazon’s. The imperative is for Google to get Assistant on more devices. Google does have one edge, too, in the form of Android, which makes Google Assistant the default voice agent in the most recent version of the OS.

The Google Home Mini is a palm-sized voice computer.Matt Weinberger/Business Insider

The problem for Google is that it still doesn’t have a great answer for how Assistant will play into its core search business.

Google has signed deals with vendors like Walmart and Target to bolster its Shopping Express service, which lets you shop with your voice. Unlike Amazon, though, Google isn’t a shopping company at heart. And a partnership with Disney to promote “Beauty and the Beast” with sponsored content for Google Home ended in a user backlash.

There have been more successful forays into sponsored content on Google Home since, notably interactive Mickey Mouse and “Star Wars” games that you can play with your voice. That answers at least some of the questions around how Google will monetize the Home speaker and the Assistant.

Still, the challenge remains for how Google Home really figures into the search advertising business that’s propelled Google to its current heights. And as Alexa continues its aggressive growth, and a rising threat from Apple and its HomePod on the horizon, this war is all but won.

Feature Image Credit: Jeffrey Dastin/Reuters

By Matt Weinberger

Sourced from Business Insider UK

In News

Google Researchers Knew About Chip Security Flaw Since June 2017

January 19, 2018 No Comments

By Laurie Sullivan

Imagine how much revenue ad networks, publishers, retailers and search engines would have lost if Google released the information about the chip flaw prior to the 2017 holidays. This week Intel, Google, Microsoft, Apple and others revealed that potentially every type of device with a central processing unit (CPU) — which means personal computers, Macs, laptops, smartphones, tablets and cloud servers — is impacted.

In June 2017, Google Project Zero researcher Jann Horn led the discovery of a serious security flaw in CPUs that would enable malicious users to read a system’s memory that is supposed to be inaccessible. For example, an unauthorized person may read passwords, encryption keys, or sensitive information that is open in applications.

In January 2018 we learned about the flaw and tests that also proved an attack running on one virtual machine was able to access the physical memory of the host machine. These vulnerabilities affect CPUs from AMD, ARM, and Intel, as well as the devices and operating systems running on them.

Is the idea to fix the flaw and then disclose it to the public?

The security issues are known by two names: Meltdown and Spectre. Microsoft, Apple and others have already developed and begun to push out patches to affected systems and software.

It almost seems like another day, another security flaw or hack. That’s until I realized that Google researchers discovered the flaw in June 2017. And then I began to think about the forfeited revenue that would have resulted if Google had revealed the problem prior to the holidays. How many people would have refrained from buying products online?

Research published late Thursday by RBC Capital Markets notes that comScore estimates total U.S. online retail grew 18% to 20% year-on-year (YoY) over the 2017 Holiday Season, compared with more than 17% in 2016 and 13% in 2015. Sales reached between $95 billion and $96 billion, consistent with comScore’s earlier forecast.

Several factors drove the YoY acceleration, such as one extra shopping day vs. 2016; positive macro trends such as low unemployment and the highest consumer sentiment in years; a strong selection of hot products, such as smartphones, smart speakers, IoT devices, and gaming systems; and the ongoing ease of online shopping and fulfillment.

“We’re struck by the fact that U.S. Online Retail Holiday Spend will have now accelerated for the third or fourth year in a row,” according to the RBC report. “We believe rising smartphone adoption has been a key factor here, but so has the real break-through into the mainstream of online retail shopping, with rising brand awareness, rising online shopping confidence, and speedier delivery times all being key factors.”