[00:03:48] Desktop Users Will Now Have Messaging for Google My Business

It was only a matter of time for desktop users to get GMB messaging, and it’s now rolling out, so keep an eye out for messages appearing in your GMB desktop dashboard.

[00:10:19] Free Top Product Results Gets Scroll-to-Text Feature on Google 

Click on a result that has scroll-to-text and Google takes you to the web page and the spot on the page with relevant text is highlighted. This will now be on free top product listings boxes.

[00:19:40] US English Search Results Now Have Google Passage Ranking

Passage ranking is now live. Google expects passage ranking to affect up to 7% of search queries when it’s fully rolled out globally for all languages. Have your rankings changed?

Jason Barnard, the Brand SERP Guy, joins the EDGE to share the concept of the Brand SERP and how it affects our digital visibility.  Learn about Jason’s backstory, how he came to be the leading authority with 500 knowledge panel experiments going at this moment.  Also find out how he has been in Erin’s head for the last 17 years, without even knowing it.  The digital business card is here and you need to learn how to bring it into “focus”. 

Be sure to listen to the second segment of the show as well where we cover the real estate of the Brand SERP and optimization techniques.

[00:09:58] How Jason Segued From A Billion Pages Per Month Site Into The SEO Industry.

[00:14:58] What’s The Current Real Estate On The Brand Serp?

[00:21:08] Jason’s Own Brand Serp Domination

[00:22:35] Experimenting On Himself

[00:27:23] Identifying The Trusted Data Sources.

Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications at SEMRush, digs into the SEMRush World Data Trends of 2020 they published and we discussed the ability to see world-wide social consciousness trends.  

Want to get a tour through the entire SEMRush platform?  We went through the platform with Fernando, and covered the three main layers of the tool.  We found out Fernando’s favorites and shared our favorites as well.  

Get a great take on what SEMRush has in store for the future of the tool as well, on this podcast.  Be sure to check out the first segment of the interview as well at EDGEofthewebradio.com

[00:01:47] SEMRush World Data Trends of 2020 Infographic[00:09:58] Most trending fashions in 2020? Sweatpants![00:18:29] The three layers of SEMRush functionality[00:28:35] SEMRush Projects[00:33:34] Future innovations of the SEMRush platform

[00:03:35] Are Google Local Services Ads Tanking Google Ads Accounts?

Google launched local services ads for lawyers in September and many lawyers are seeing steep increases in cost per conversion coupled with big drops in conversions. Those are seriously negative impacts.

[00:11:05]  How Will Australia React to Google’s Counter-Offer?

Google has added a banner to Australian news search results expressing its willingness to pay to support Aussie journalism, essentially making a counter-offer. Will Australia accept?

[00:18:02] New Privacy Standard Proposal: Global Privacy Control (GPC)

Privacy advocates are proposing this new standard, Global Privacy Control (GPC), that would strongly signal users don’t want their data shared with third-party data brokers.

Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications at SEMRush, shares his thoughts on the changes that the company had to go through over the course of the last year. We cover the management of 1,000 staff going to remote, the stresses of that change and the opportunities for innovation that it caused. We learn about how businesses reached out to SEMRush for their advice and counsel during the shut down.  Throngs of businesses didn’t know where to start in marketing and needed the help of SEMRush.  Listen in as we learn how they helped.

[00:03:37] Price Drops Featured in New Google Rich Results

Consumers love finding out about price drops, and Google is launching a new rich results feature to highlight product price drops. Online retailers just need to use the right structured data to get in on it.

By Roger Montti

[00:07:20] Do Contextual Links in Featured Snippets Threaten Click-Through Rates?

SEOs are concerned that more links in such a high-visibility search results feature will hurt brands by potentially reducing click-through rates. Is this a legit concern or just SEO panic?

By George Nguyen

[00:14:09] Google Turns up the Heat Down Under

Everyone knows Google doesn’t pay content publishers to link to their sites, right? Except Google just agreed to do that in France. So where does that leave Australia?

By Barry Schwartz

Sam Tomlinson joins us to discuss the issues revolving around the antitrust cases of Google & Facebook.  We unpack each company’s challenges and the concepts of fairness.  Isn’t this Big Tech’s platform that they invested in?  

[00:05:27]  The argument FOR business acquisition

[00:09:13]  The FTC reviews these acquisitions already

[00:13:36]  Facebook's weakest argument.

[00:14:47]  What are we upset about?

[00:16:13]  Google and Antitrust

[00:18:16]  Google: The Texas Lawsuit

[00:21:00]  No sympathy for the News: It’s Google’s Platform

[00:24:13]  Build a better platform

[00:29:41]  Please to Government

[00:03:24] New Community Feedback Feature on Yelp for “Health and Safety Measures”

Enough people want to know how safe they’ll be from the pandemic if they visit local businesses that Yelp has added a feedback feature for social masking and social distance compliance.

[00:10:52]Google Doesn’t Want to Pay Australian News Company

Australia wants an industry code requiring tech giants like Google to pay news publishers. Google’s “experiment” of disappearing Australian news from search is a chilling response.

[00:19:21]Dedicated Results Pages for Hashtag Searches on YouTube

Previous searches by hashtag inevitably included results not carrying the hashtag, but YouTube has an improved hashtag search now that limits results to videos actually carrying the hashtag.

Sam Tomlinson joins us to discuss the issues revolving around the antitrust cases of Big Tech (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon). We cover the history of antitrust and how the archaic laws from 1872 cannot apply to the complex technological realm we are in. Sam had great input into the perspective of US and EU comparisons. Dive into this very topical discussion.

[00:07:59] History of Antitrust Laws in America [00:11:00] The Differences In Big Tech As Opposed To Other Industries [00:17:52] The Competing Factors [00:18:44] What Are We Trying To Solve? Big Tech Being Mean To Big Tech? [00:22:36] The Network Effect And The Utility Concept