With so many updates in our industry every day, it can get hard to keep track of the most important news. So while Google+ was celebrating its fifth birthday, Bing was playing trivia and you were enjoying the 4th of July, Carousel30 spotted a few updates that you may have missed.
Within the last year, Google released features that give users convenient tools that help answer questions in the Moment such as their Rich Answers, which was released a few months ago. In the past few weeks, Google has begun testing a new tool powered by Measurement Labs that helps check internet speed directly within search results. The search engine now also offers real-time earthquake information, as well as information from tables on landing pages within organic search results. In regards to search ranking, it turns out that updating pages within your website can actually improve your page ranking. It also looks like having an HTTPS website can boost ranking as well, with 34% of Google Search Results showing HTTPS websites. If you’re wanting to increase your pagerank after all this talk, be sure to check out the top local search SEO ranking factors.
Apps & More
Continuing with more updates from Google, Android users who use Google Maps will now be able to receive multi-stop directions and additional features that will track user activities throughout the day by means of images and notes. Google is also now inserting Google Cast features directly into Chrome to easily stream content from one device to another. More so on the educational side of updates, Google has been busy with a new project, Project Bloks, which will help kids learn how to program at a young age through a three component program that gives children the ability to control robots and toys. Google’s My Business released a new “navigation experience” that displays new card styles at the top of the My Business page. If you haven’t checked it out, we suggest you do.
In other news, EA debuted NBA Live Mobile on iOS and Android to give users a first-hand experience at what it’s like to become a manager of their favorite team and compete in multiple types of games; Apple will no longer be releasing iPhones in 16GB due to the limitation of storage and will only be providing 32GB, 128GB, and 256GB moving forward; and Amazon is capitalizing on the value of Google’s Moments by giving shoppers the option to shop by TV remote on HGTV and Food Network’s New Amazon TV App.
Google AdWords
Google AdWords’ Keyword Planner has been having some troubles recently, and it could be the result of Google testing new additions and updates to the tool. The tool is now grouping together sets of keywords to show overall traffic, and it’s also been said that the keyword planner could appear within the Search Console but that it would be only available to those who have active AdWords campaigns. As a result, some are questioning whether or not the Keyword Planner tool will be as useful and effective as it once was. On the brighter side of things, Google will be making Dynamic Search Ads more relevant to user searches to improve performance and users can now integrate information from IBM Watson’s API into AdWord scripts to get keyword information from webpages. For a look into what to expect from AdWords for the rest of the year, be sure to catch up on Google’s Director of Product Management for Search Ads’ Keynote at SMX Advanced this past month.
Social Media Updates
Social media platforms have been busy releasing new features that revolve around sharing information more easily than ever. Pinterest will be introducing a new way to search for products with a smartphone camera. Facebook introduced Featured Events which focus on a variety of interests, and more notably, Facebook has updated their algorithm to favor friends and families more so than brands and publishers. Twitter is testing a new video feature that displays tweets alongside live video. Twitter has also released a new feature called, Stickers, which give users the opportunity to insert stickers into images that are uploaded onto Twitter, which in return are searchable. Snapchat introduced a new feature called Memories which gives a new way to save Snaps and share Stories. Other updates that may be of interest are Twitter’s new profile display, Facebook’s video downloads, Facebook Messenger’s account switch, and Instagram’s comment moderator.
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