Webcology

Michelle Stinson Ross – Marketing Director at Mindful Abby, a mental health focused startup. Michelle is one of the go-to social media experts in the industry.


Google Goes Dark Mode
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-dark-mode-theme-controls-30907.html
Harder to see paid ads
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dark-mode-google-search-ads-30913.html

Google Phrase Match expands to cover Broad Match Modifiers
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ads-phrase-match-expands-to-broad-match-modifier-30880.html

Google still prefers to neutralize effect of SPAM rather than remove a URL from listings
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-neutralize-search-spam-30903.html

Guttenberg upgrade delivered site performance upgrades for WPRocket website redeisgn
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-rocket-gutenberg-redesign/395696/

Danny Goodwin had a daughter

SMX Create looking for Speakers
https://searchengineland.com/pitch-to-speak-at-smx-create-345968

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AI and Google Ads Auto-Applied Recommendations
https://searchengineland.com/tactical-advice-on-google-ads-auto-applied-recommendations-control-center-345740
About this Result
https://www.seroundtable.com/wikipedia-gatekeeping-about-this-result-google-30872.html
The Google Experience Trust Mark
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-experience-update-label-all-factors-complaint-30870.html
Core Web Vitals + Mobile friendly, Safe browsing, https, and no interstitials = good chance of a good experience mark

Google to start suspending sites that are less than honest about their pricing. “Google wrote "beginning April 6, in addition to reviewing and enforcing price accuracy between your Merchant Center product data and your landing pages, we will begin to review and enforce price accuracy at checkout." If the price is higher on the checkout page, Google said "you will receive a 28-day warning to resolve these mismatches, otherwise your account will be subject to suspension at the end of the warning period."
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-merchants-checkout-price-enforcement-30873.html
Dave differentiates between BERT and SMYTHE.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/smith-bert-smith-and-bert-in-search/394923/?ver=394923X3
Google Analytics no longer collecting data from YouTube Channel pages. Far more complete information in YouTube Studio
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-analytics-stops-collecting-data-from-youtube-channels/395001/

Situation with Austrailia and Google is serious and could have serious implications for other businesses
https://searchengineland.com/australias-showdown-with-google-has-profound-implications-for-domestic-businesses-and-other-digital-platforms-345818

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Webcology – January 28, 2021 – An It was the Worst of Times edition.
Hamlet
A sad story started spreading through the SEO community last night as word of Hamlet Batista’s passing emerged through Facebook and Twitter. A small number of people close to him knew he was sick for several weeks but Hamlet wanted to keep it quiet. He had somehow contracted COVID after doing everything he could to avoid it. He was hit hard but rallied a couple time and thought he’d make it through.
Hamlet came to the United States from the Dominican Republic on a US Genius Visa and he used his genius to build a beautiful life. He was a healthy and happy and kind sort of man. He had a wife, Odette, and two sons, Ethan and Josh. His SEO tool company, RankSense, was working towards its first stock offering. Hamlet was literally living the dream, making it happen for himself and others around him from hard work and because he was a truly good person.
That goodness was felt in the industry. Hamlet was a well known in the search marketing sector for sharing knowledge in industry journals and as a speaker and lecturer on the search marketing conference circuit. He was one of those people who took others under his wings to help them find their feet as they stepped forward in their careers. Most of his mentees are themselves notable and successful. Hamlet had a way of making people find the best in themselves.
The SEO community has gone into mourning a few times in our history and it’s always so hard. There is a love among our clique and when someone who so totally personified that spirit passes it is stunning and awful how deep the loss is felt. Goodbye Hamlet. You, my friend, were deeply loved. You changed people’s worlds and you will be sorely missed.

The Rebellion called GameStop
Robinhood has banned lil’John, FrierDuck, tittes2020, and a huge host of other day traders from trading in certain stocks being pumped on Reddit and through social media.
Google Ranks pages but strongly considers websites
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-site-score-ranking-individual-pages-30829.html
(in response to Jeff Fergeson’s piece in SEJ: Google ranks webpages not websites https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-ranks-webpages-not-websites/393425/?ver=393425X3)

Google Search Console sends out erroneous verification emails
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-console-email-mistake-30834.html

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Old Disavow Tools is gone, replaced by the Disavow Links List. Apparently it does the same thing but speculation suggests it might rat out sketch sites. 

https://www.seroundtable.com/old-google-disavow-tool-shut-down-30759.html

Don’t pay bloggers to write for dofollow backlinks. Pay writers to write. Google!!! https://www.seroundtable.com/bloggers-dofollow-backlinks-google-guidelines-30771.html

Google Search Indexing Tiers – Some documents stored on more expensive servers than others. Items that will be pulled or surfaced more frequently, for instance.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-indexing-tiers-30784.html

Google continues to insert links to 3rd party websites in featured snippets clipped from other websites. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-continues-featured-snippets-supplemental-links-30788.html

DuckDuckGo flies above 100million searches per day

https://searchengineland.com/duckduckgos-focus-on-privacy-minded-users-pushes-it-past-100-million-searches-in-a-single-day-345462

New crawl stats shows more crawls – Just a reporting change

https://searchengineland.com/google-crawl-stats-report-now-showing-more-crawls-345452

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WordPress now offers Website Development
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/built-by-wordpress/392315/#close
Automattica is the business arm of WordPress, the one that runs WordPress.com, WooCommerce, JetPack, Gavatar, and Akismet. Will introduce web development business with site prices starting at $4900. Matt Mullenweg suggests the move targets Wix and Squarespace rather than traditional website designers.

Googlebot now crawling HTTP / 2 – also known as H2, btw...
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-notifications-http-2-googlebot-crawling/392439/
http 2 is a new hypertext transfer protocol that speeds communication and data transfer between browsers, servers, and various bots. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP/2)

Google Search Console adds report for News publishers
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-console-adds-report-for-news-publishers/392287/

Selling Domains based on SEO Value – Google says, “that’s silly”
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-on-selling-domains-based-on-seo-value-30756.html
I bid ... them good luck. Selling a domain based on the "SEO footprint" sounds a bit like selling a car based on the topped-up gas tank. John Mueller, Jan 9, 2020

Smith is not live
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-smith-algorithm-is-not-live-30747.html
Siamese Multi-depth Transformer-based Hierarchical (SMITH) Encoder. – it’s a research paper rather than a part of or filter to the algorithm

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Welcome to Webcology on WMR.FM, the post-revolution edition. I call it that because something remarkable has happened in a horrible but less than disastrous way. The revolution has ended and, after four years of division, lies, distortions and horrible economics, the revolution has clearly failed. The fascists lost and, though they took the country to the brink of collapse, the traditions, institutions, and better sense of the American people held. No one doubts that those foundations stand firmly today even after the very Halls of Congress were rocked by the violent sedition of the President’s supporters yesterday in a last ditch attempt to prevent the certification of President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris. Congress reconvened to complete its duty and certify the results of the election after the Trumpist terrorists had been arrested or routed from the building by the Capitol police, reinforced by the DC, Maryland, and Virginia National Guards. Mark that as the moment in time the Trumpian Revolution ended.
Donald J. Trump leaves office having destroyed the Republican Party and having squandered and lost GOP control of all houses of legislative government, the Oval Office, the House, and the Senate. Even his handpicked judicial appointments failed to break with American law when he asked them to do his bidding. After the results of a national election, 62 friviolous and failed lawsuits, the two run-off Senate races in Georgia, the failed attempt to take the very House of Government Washington DC, and the final confirmation of Biden and Harris, Donald J. Trump finally assured America that there would be a transfer of power on January 20, 2021. He conceded that it’s over and, even if he can’t concede that he lost, he’s lost and so is the movement he flounded. The fascist revolution is over and the Republic of the United States of America remains in place. A new decade begins now. Friends, welcome to 2021.

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-new-robots-txt-tester-tool-30718.html
Google works on Robots.TXT tool improvements

Carolyn Lyden – content editor at Search Engine Land and SMX
https://www.seroundtable.com/carolyn-lyden-joins-search-engine-land-smx-30716.html
Miranda Miller – Search Engine Journal

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-smith-algorithm/391929/#close
SMITH better than BERT

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Chris Brogan is president of Chris Brogan Media, offering business storytelling and marketing advisory help for mid to larger-sized companies.  Chris is a sought after keynote speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of nine books and counting. He’s working on his tenth: title forthcoming.

Chris has spoken for or consulted with the biggest brands you know, including Disney, Coke, Google, GM, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker, Titleist, Scotts, Humana Health, Cisco, Sony USA, and many more. He’s appeared on the Dr. Phil Show, interviewed Richard Branson for a cover story for Success magazine, and once even presented to a Princess. People like Paulo Coelho, Harvey Mackay, and Steven Pressfield enjoy sharing their projects and best ideas with Chris because they know he’ll share them with you. Tony Robbins had Chris on his Internet Money Masters series. Forbes listed Chris as one of the Must Follow Marketing Minds of 2014, plus listed his website as one of the 100 best websites for entrepreneurs. Statsocial rated Chris the #3 power influencer online.

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Daniel Faggella is the founder of Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research and is best known for being an unbiased voice covering the applications and implications or artificial intelligence in industry and society.

Founder and Head of Research at Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research, Daniel Faggella is an internationally recognized speaker on the use-cases and ROI of artificial intelligence in business.

Emerj tracks and maps what’s possible and what’s working in artificial intelligence in order to help leaders develop winning AI strategies. Emerj’s AI Opportunity Landscapes are the industry benchmark of artificial intelligence ROI across sectors.

Daniel is regularly called upon by global enterprises in financial services and security and has spoken for many of the largest and most reputable organizations, including the World Bank, the United Nations, the OECD, INTERPOL, and more.

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Last episode of 2020 and throughout the show our spirits were flying through COVID’s dark glow. The stories were loaded, all devil may care in hopes something useful was there to be shared. With thoughts of old Chicago all snug in our heads we just want to put a craptastic year to bed. Because exhaustion and distraction get nothing good done and perpetual lockdowns are not very fun. And Google is giving like Krumpus again and taking the tools that help make it rain. And in all of our real worlds we see so much sadness such hardship and losses and self-driven madness. This Christmas, this Hanukkah, this holiday space is set of stressful options and there’s no way to make right choices your people will happily take yet the cost of that dinner may be far too great. Last episode of 2020 and throughout the show our spirits were flying through COVID’s dark glow.

Our first two stories this week are tragedies. Bill Slawski had a stroke last weekend. He is cognizant, able to read, write, and speak, but he’ll need to relearn a number of physical skills. Another of our family, EB has lost two children in as many months. We’re reminded of all the children and parents and loved ones who are, so suddenly, just gone. 2020 was a rough and terrible year. Take stock and make sure your loved ones know that you love them.

Barry Schwartz has set up a website so people can send messages to Bill at BillSlawski.com/. Listeners who know Bill, or who understand the significance of the impact he’s had on the industry are encouraged to share a story about Bill there.

The stories we covered this week:
Monday’s Google outage affected nearly every major Google service. The following services were affected.

· Google Ads
· Google AdSense
· Google Analytics
· Google Search Console
· Google My Business
· YouTube
· Google Play
· Firebase
· Gmail
· Google Apps/Workforce
· Admob

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Top-Trending 2020 YouTube Videos Demonstrate Longer Is Stronger | These 10 videos made it to the top this 2020. Get insights on video length and strategies to help you make better content. Google Transparency Core Updates
Greg Sterling leaving Third Door Media and Search Engine Land
Google December 2020 Core Update still rolling out
US Government moves to break up Facebook
Rural Broadband is available via SpaceX with a nearly $1Billion subsidy from the US Federal Communications Commission in a bid to push broadband access to all Americans in the next ten years.
Former Salesforce, Richard Socher, to start a new search engine to compete with Google at You.com/. Signups are being accepted but that puts you on a waitlist. Apparently, you can move up the list by filling in a survey and inviting other users to you.com/.
SMX is on!
Google to look into the dismissal of AI expert Timnit Gebru.

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