Today in Digital Marketing - 144: Why You Should Stop Saying ‘Unprecedented’ in Your Marketing

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Monday, May the 4th, 2020. Happy International Firefighters Day. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital. Today, it's here, the latest core update in Google. Did your website drop? Yelp moves to promote virtual services. How to get your brand's answers into Google's question boxes. And stop saying this pandemic is unprecedented.

Starting point is 00:00:24 It's not. You are alienating a big community by saying that in your marketing copy. Here's what you missed today in digital marketing. But before we get started, it's quiz time. How many bad ads do you think Google has blocked on average every hour last year. How many bad ads? Is it 3,000 an hour, 30,000 an hour, or 300,000 an hour? I'll have the answer at the end of the episode. In most cases, when you notice your brand's website has slipped a little in Google, it's because Google has updated its algorithm.

Starting point is 00:01:03 They do this two ways. First, tiny little tweaks, once or twice a day. Then, every few months, they do a big update, something they call the core update. The latest core update is rolling out on Google today. This is a tiny bit later than the usual schedule. The last big core update was in January. Before that, September.

Starting point is 00:01:24 Quoting Barry Schwartz at searchengineland.com, quote, that September update felt weaker to many SEOs and webmasters, as many said it didn't have as big of an impact as previous core updates. Google also released an update in November, but that was specific to local rankings. Google has given advice on what to consider if you are negatively impacted by a core update in the past, unquote. So, wait a day or two and check your ranking. So many businesses are having to reinvent themselves. Restaurants now deliver, home improvement stores do curbside pickup, and counselors do virtual appointments.

Starting point is 00:02:02 And Yelp is undergoing a bit of a reinvention themselves to showcase these adaptations. They're adding a new category for digital marketers called virtual service offerings. It's a place to advertise anything brands are doing online now. The idea being that it will be a filterable search so that people can look for, say, only counselors that are offering video conference appointments. Also part of this, new call to action buttons and a top screen banner to post important

Starting point is 00:02:30 profile updates. And coming soon, of course, the ability for restaurants to indicate they offer curbside pickup. A Yelp executive was quoted saying, you know, pretty much exactly the same thing every other corporate executive has said during this pandemic. No, really, like, have a listen. It's practically a template now. Here's the Yelp executive, quote, We are dedicated to listening to our community of local businesses and users as they continue to adapt

Starting point is 00:02:56 and will continue to create new ways to help them stay connected and safe during this unprecedented time, unquote. Also, side note, marketing friends, especially those who care about connecting with the LGBT community, this is not unprecedented. Stop saying that. We've had a deadly global pandemic before. I'm not talking about the Spanish flu. I mean, in recent times, the HIV AIDS crisis. 14 million people have died with AIDS since that pandemic began. More than 3 million of those were under 15 years old. So, yeah, COVID-19 is tragic, but not unprecedented. Stop saying that.

Starting point is 00:03:40 You know when you Google a question, or, I don't know, Bing a question? Does anyone use Bing as a verb? Anyway, like for instance, the question that I asked Bing just this past weekend, where do I find copper in Fallout 76? And the engine returns a list of questions. Then you click on those questions and you get the answer. You know the question boxes I'm talking about? Sometimes they're called cards.

Starting point is 00:04:01 And these cards are being used more and more by users, mostly because of the prominence the engines are giving them. And if you've ever wondered if you could submit an answer yourself for your brand so that your brand's answer shows up there, you're starting to see how that might look. A couple of years ago, Google released the Question Hub, a place for you to do just that. But it was only released in India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Screenshots posted on Twitter this weekend, though, show a pretty well-defined back end. The way it will work is you first search for a question like a user would, for instance, Vancouver grocery. The hub will then list questions it's getting for that topic, like

Starting point is 00:04:42 which Vancouver grocery stores are delivering during COVID-19, and where are the cheapest groceries in Vancouver? And beside each question is a button that says answer. Except, no, sadly, you don't get to just type whatever answer you want in there. What you do instead is paste the URL of a web page on your brand's website that you think could answer the question. Then Google will do its usual Googling, and if it thinks your page answers the question, you might show up there. So, not perfect, but still, nice to see it's getting solid enough that they might start rolling it out to the rest of us. Oh, and for the quiz, Google says in 2019 they blocked more than 5,000 bad ads every minute. So if you answered 300,000 per hour, here's a food biscuit for you. Yes, 2.7 billion bad ads were blocked last year and almost 1 million advertiser accounts were shut down.

Starting point is 00:05:40 The company says it's seen, quote, nearly a 50% decrease of bad ads from the previous year. In total, we blocked more than 35 million phishing ads and 19 million trick-to-click ads in 2019. Trick-to-click ads are ads designed to trick people into interacting with them using prominent links, like, for example, click here, often designed to look like computer or mobile phone system warnings, unquote. Doing the Lord's system warnings, unquote. Doing the Lord's work there, Google. Hey, special thanks to the random dude that I ran into at my camp in Fallout 76 over the weekend who gave me a free nuclear power generator. And then when I asked if he could give me a musical instrument so that I could get my AP buff, he gave me not one, but four of them.

Starting point is 00:06:22 A moment caught on tape because I was streaming at the time. Oh my god, dude! Thank you! I only needed one, but this is awesome. I'll create like a little band area here. So, neighbors doing neighborly things during this pandemic, even in video games. A link to my Mixer livestream is in this episode's description if you care to watch me play video games. A link to my mixer live stream is in this episode's description. If you care to watch me play video games, if you've got a marketing position that you're trying to fill,

Starting point is 00:06:49 or maybe you're looking for the next great gig, consider a classified ad right here. It's just 20 bucks and you can book it online link in this episode's description. I'm Todd Maffin. I'll talk to you tomorrow. All right. I'll give it a try.

Starting point is 00:07:11 No, try not. Do or do not. There is no try.

Today in Digital Marketing - 144: Why You Should Stop Saying ‘Unprecedented’ in Your Marketing

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