Today in Digital Marketing - 174: Is Google Revealing Too Much About Your Business?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Google appears to be scraping websites and Facebook pages to discover the real names of some business owners, and then putting those names right on that business's Google My Business profile, whether you want it or not. If that's something that concerns you, you're not alone, and you may be one of the many marketers who are checking their own profile today, Tuesday, June 16th. Happy Youth Day, South Africa. I'm Todd Maffin, and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing. The Google My Business profile, which is used in search, on maps, and in a handful of other places. As you know, it's got a bunch of fields for things like services offered, and address, and hours of operation.

Starting point is 00:00:42 But now, one person on Twitter noticed a new field. Owner. And in that spot, the name of the actual owner of that business. address and hours of operation. But now one person on Twitter noticed a new field, owner. And in that spot, the name of the actual owner of that business. Here's the weird thing though. Nowhere in your Google My Business profile can you add that. There's no owner field for you to fill out. So where is it getting that information from? Surprisingly, Facebook. And that's not a guess. They literally put from facebook.com immediately after the owner name. So do Facebook and Google have some kind of secret backdoor data sharing agreement? Of course not. What's even more peculiar here is there's not really an owner field for a business page on Facebook either. Sure, there are page admins, but they're often not the owner of the actual business,

Starting point is 00:01:26 and those names don't usually appear on the page anyway. What appears to be happening is that Google is scraping this data from public posts like news articles. In one example that someone tweeted, it was a Facebook post in which the text mentioned the name of the owner as part of a press release about winning a Citizen of the Year award. All that to say, things like this are just a reminder that checking in with your brand presences on all platforms on a regular basis is probably a good idea. Ad Age is reporting that some brands appear to be blocking their digital ads from appearing beside content related to the Black Lives Matter movement. As you may know, we digital marketers have access to a number of ways to prevent our brand from appearing beside objectionable content, whether that's content on a news site or an entire domain. We usually control these by adding phrases or domain names to a block list. Then, when the ad platform goes to

Starting point is 00:02:25 serve your ads, it first checks that block list and keeps your ads away from sites listed there. Which is all fine and good when you're trying to stay off the white supremacist sites or the porn sites. But when a controversial topic in the public interest shows up, brand managers then have to decide whether they want to align directly with a movement, operate as normal, or, apparently as in some cases now, keep themselves away from it. SearchEngineLand.com noted that a recent ad at the top of a New York Times article about the Black Lives Matter movement was from a brand called SepticSeas, a brand so small

Starting point is 00:03:03 that the top result for it in Google today is this very article from Search Engine Land talking about the fact that it has an ad on the top of the New York Times. What this implies is there are so few advertisers running ads on that content that it's going to, well, let's just say, not very big brands. Ad Age says it found some marketers are even blocking keywords like black people and George Floyd, and that CPMs on content related to the movement is off by 57%. This may not be entirely advertisers' fault directly. In Google Ads, you can block a broad category called sensitive content, which Google calls, quote, content intended to elicit a response about controversial issues, unquote. What's not clear is whether Google's search engine considers the Black Lives Matter movement to be part of that group.

Starting point is 00:03:58 Warning, profanity ahead. Not a day goes by when I don't get some kind of bullshit spam email from someone wanting to post a guest post on my website. All of these seem to be coming from those equally bullshit so-called outreach tools, which will put you on that dreaded funnel of, hey, I see you haven't replied yet. Then two days later, I know you're busy, but, and then two days after that, is there a reason you're not replying? And if you are one of those digital marketers who use these bullshit tools, knock it off. You're embarrassing yourself.

Starting point is 00:04:26 Most of these are used by people who, as I mentioned, want to publish a guest post on your site, thinking that that backlink will help them move higher in Google. And, once again, Google this week has confirmed that these posts do nothing for you. In fact, allowing them on your site might even hurt your site's ranking. Google search engineer John Mueller said they have years of data for training algorithms to catch these posts and devalue their score. And don't think you'll be able to sneak them past. Even links in the byline are considered. So stop accepting these on your site. Stop asking for them on other sites and stop using bullshit spam software.

Starting point is 00:05:06 Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Snapchat has launched a new training center for digital marketers called Focus. They offer six courses, Introduction to Snapchat, The Snapchat Generation, Advertising, Getting Started on Ads Manager, creative best practices, and measuring and optimizing campaigns. This is actually a certification program, and you will need a Snapchat Ads account to get in. Although, as Search Engine Journal notes, the certification itself probably means very little at the present time, so this would be more for your own knowledge than street cred by being certified. That said, Snapchat does keep posting strong user numbers. They say the app reaches 90% of the 13 to 24-year-old population in the U.S.,

Starting point is 00:05:51 with the average user spending more than 30 minutes a day on the app. There's some new tools coming to pick up some ad inventory on streaming video content, this from Google. They've opened up access to the Disney network, so that's ABC, ESPN, Hulu, and so on. Quoting WeRSM.com, Advertisers are able to filter results quickly to find the right inventory for them and even check out publisher profiles to explore more data around performance, audience, and inventory volume. People are spending more time than ever watching connected TV,

Starting point is 00:06:26 and Google says this has led to a 75% increase in available inventory in April 2020 compared to the previous year. This increase doesn't even take into account YouTube and YouTube TV, which more than 100 million people watch on their TV screens every month in the U.S. alone. This new interface will be rolling out over the next few weeks, and Google wants to expand it with national linear TV broadcast and cable networks as well as local TV stations soon.

Starting point is 00:06:57 In the annals of tech history, when someone writes the section for Amazon.com, certainly one big chapter will be its switch from just selling its own things to becoming an open marketplace where they operate more as a platform for other people to sell things. That worked great for Amazon, and now Walmart wants a piece of that action. And they have turned to Shopify to help them get there. This new integration will let approved Shopify sellers list their items on the Walmart.com website. Walmart says that they are starting to integrate new sellers now and expect to add 1,200 Shopify merchants by the end of this year. If your brand sells DTC and you are interested in joining their marketplace, download the Walmart app on the Shopify app store. Finally, a couple of short items. Some digital marketers today reporting that they are seeing double counting in Facebook's events manager now. Yesterday, I reported that Facebook admitted they double counted some metrics on ad campaigns for about a day last week.

Starting point is 00:08:04 But maybe this bug is not fully yet fixed. And I spotted an interesting tool up at AppSumo today. It's called VidU. If you've got a product catalog feed, this tool can automatically create short videos for each product instead of either you doing the videos manually one by one or just relying on Facebook's image ads for dynamic catalogs.

Starting point is 00:08:23 You get unlimited users and up to 500 video credits per month. Normally, that would cost you more than $2,000 a year. It's up on AppSumo right now for a one-time purchase of $49. There is a link in this episode's notes if you would like to take it for a test drive. Well, if you found this podcast through one of those recommended-for-you listings, that happened because people rated and reviewed this show. If you are getting value from this short daily news podcast, please pay it forward by doing the same. You'll find a link in this episode's description that makes that a simple one-click process. Our theme was composed by Mark Blevis, ad sales by Podcorn. I'm Todd Maffin.

Starting point is 00:09:00 Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - 174: Is Google Revealing Too Much About Your Business?

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