Today in Digital Marketing - Are Bookmarks a Google Search Ranking Factor?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today,

Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, the $43,000 fines may be coming if you're doing influencer marketing wrong. One more brand ditches the mega ad platforms and builds its own. A helpful holiday guide to plan Q4. And why is LinkedIn leaving the world's biggest market? It's Friday, October 15th, 2021. Happy Teacher's Day, Brazil. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital,

Starting point is 00:00:50 and here's what you missed today in Digital Marketing, episode 484. Google has a lot of information on all of us, and on our websites. Put Google Analytics onto your site, boom, they've got some data on it. This is also why Chrome exists. Google wasn't being a benevolent leader in the web improvement space. They get massive amounts of data back about what sites people visit, their browsing behaviors, and more. One of the many signals that Chrome provides Google is bookmarks.

Starting point is 00:01:20 When you bookmark a page, that sends a signal back to the mothership. But what does Google do with that bookmark data? On today's episode of the Friday Quiz, does Google use bookmarks as a ranking factor? In other words, will your web page appear higher in Google's search results if a lot of people have bookmarked it on their own Chrome browser? The answer, later in today's episode. The American trade regulator has sent a rather threatening letter to more than 700 big businesses, including Facebook and Amazon, to warn them they'll get hefty fines if they don't crack down on fake reviews

Starting point is 00:02:05 and deceptive endorsements. But the move is a little weird. First, even though the letter said it wasn't singling any one company out, the FCC went out of its way to publish a full list of all 700 businesses that got that letter. Second, even though they say being on the list doesn't necessarily mean that company's done anything wrong The letter was titled Notice of Penalty Offenses Yikes How big are the potential fines?

Starting point is 00:02:35 Apparently up to exactly $43,792 per violation No, I have no idea why it's that weird, precise number either. Apparently, the letter is the first salvo American trade regulations require before the FCC can actually start levying fines. Specifically, here is what's on the naughty list. Falsely claiming an endorsement by a third party. Misrepresenting whether an endorser is an actual current or recent user. Using an endorsement to make deceptive performance claims, failing to disclose an expected material connection with an endorser, and misrepresenting that the experience of endorsers

Starting point is 00:03:14 represents consumers' typical or ordinary experience. Industry analysts seem to think this is aimed more at requiring brands to become more insistent with their influencers on disclosing that they've been compensated. To that end, that list of 700 or so companies could be quite valuable, as it seems to be a list of brands that use influencers. I spotted some surprising brands on that list, including AstraZeneca, 3M, Berkshire Hathaway, and Kia Motors. That last one got my attention because about six months ago,

Starting point is 00:03:49 I saw some guy do a TikTok about the new Kia Carnival, which had a layout my wife and I were looking for, and boom, a couple months later, we bought one. Was that an ad? Did I get played? We'll certainly watch to see if the FCC follows through on those fines. In the meantime, we have a link to the FCC's guidelines for endorsements in today's premium newsletter. And since today's a Friday, it's free to everyone. So make sure you're on the list.

Starting point is 00:04:11 Tap the link in today's episode notes or go to todayindigital.com slash newsletter. The home improvement brand Lowe's is the latest brand to go it alone and build its own ad network. It's called the One Roof Media Network and sells banner and search ads on the Lowe's app and website. It's also selling sponsored content on its website and, interestingly, on its social channels, too. Quoting Marketing Brew, Lowe's is also letting brands use its sweet, sweet first-party data to target users outside its own properties. But wait, isn't privacy such a big deal now? How are they just going to sell their shopper's own first-party data?

Starting point is 00:04:51 There are a few ways. They could build custom audience sets for a specific brand. A marketer might want to target frequent power tool buyers who spend a lot but seem to favor other brands, for instance. Or create standardized segments,

Starting point is 00:05:05 like commercial contractors and builders, or DIY enthusiasts, and make those available to buyers through a demand-side platform. Or run data through a clean room, which would anonymize or aggregate it, while still allowing for targeting, unquote. Lowe's joins other big brands, such as Kroger, Target, CVS, and Walmart,

Starting point is 00:05:23 all of which have launched their own ad marketplace. risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. The holiday buying season is edging ever closer, which means one thing, more white papers about holiday marketing planning. Most of these are pretty generic and locked behind a lead form, but a new one from Listrack is neither of those. Their report is called,

Starting point is 00:06:10 Is Your Marketing Ready to Meet the Demands of Holiday 2021 and Beyond? It's a PDF you can download without having to give up your information. It's got five strategies for optimizing your plans, including preparing for a cookie-less holiday, prioritizing acquisition identity and list growth, and fostering engagement to turn browsers into buyers. preparing for a cookie-less holiday, prioritizing acquisition identity and list growth, and fostering engagement to turn browsers into buyers.

Starting point is 00:06:31 Listrack is an enterprise-level digital marketing platform, and a link to their guide is in today's premium newsletter. Some bad news for B2B marketers trying to reach Chinese markets. LinkedIn this week announced it would be pulling out of the country as the government there makes it increasingly difficult for social platforms to abide by regulations. Instead, it will open up a small regional job board app. LinkedIn first launched a Chinese version of the site in 2014. It was a kind of custom-built site which tried to keep in line with local laws. LinkedIn had to invest millions in moderating the comments to make sure the government watchers were happy.

Starting point is 00:07:07 But now, quoting the company, we're facing a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China. Given this, we've made the decision to sunset the current localized version of LinkedIn, which is how people in China access LinkedIn's global social media platform later this year, unquote. Earlier this year, the government sanctioned the platform for failing to control political content on its platform.

Starting point is 00:07:34 There are currently 54 million users of the service there. The New York Times says LinkedIn had been the sole major American social network allowed to operate in, let's say, China. All right, back to the Friday quiz. Does Google increase a page's search results ranking if that page is bookmarked a lot in Chrome? Google did get a patent for this in 2006 called Search Customization Based on User user profiles and personalization. However, that patent now listed as abandoned. And although Google hasn't officially said one way or the other, the general industry consensus is it does not use that data for ranking. Quoting searchenginejournal.com,

Starting point is 00:08:19 Google has access to much better data. What you're searching for, queries. Where you're searching for, device, where you're searching for, device and location, which sites you visited before, and what you did on those sites you visited all tell Google way more about any given searcher. Bookmarking data from Chrome has nothing on these far more useful insights. So many other forms of user feedback provide more helpful context than bookmarks possibly can. What useful information could Google even glean from your bookmarking of, say, dogtime.com?

Starting point is 00:08:56 Are you thinking of getting a dog? Doing a school project about dogs? Bored or sad and looking for a furry pick-me-up with dog pics? Or simply intending to return to a site later that doesn't give any useful clues about why you want to do that. And without the context of intent, a bookmark is just a nonsensical factoid Google can't use in any way to personalize or improve the searcher experience, unquote. Not to mention, bookmarking a site to boost your rank would be pretty easy to game. So no, your site does not get any algorithmic boost in the rankings from bookmarks. And finally, I need your help. Does anyone know of a site which aggregates all of the license-free photo sites? Like I'm talking Pexels, Reshot, Unsplash, Pixabay, you know, those sites, and lets you search all of them at the same time, I am dying to use one of

Starting point is 00:09:46 these if they exist. So if you know of one, please tweet me or hit reply if you're on the newsletter. It's at Todd Maffin is my Twitter account. It's also in the episode notes. And if it doesn't exist, would one of you please build it? Wouldn't it be great if we all had one kind of meta site that we could search? I know Google Images exists, but I mean, that's, you know, unless you're doing a really specific, specific query with the filters on it, you're not getting license free images. That's for sure. So anyway, if it exists and you know about it, please let me know. Well, we say goodbye sort of today to our production coordinator, Sarah Gill, who was seconded to the podcast from our agency. She's not really going anywhere.

Starting point is 00:10:28 She returns to the client files on Monday. And that is when our new podcast associate producer joins us to help gear up for what we hope will be a big year of service to you ahead. You will meet her next week. Today in Digital Marketing is produced by EngageQ Digital on the traditional territories of the Sunemu First Nation on beautiful Vancouver Island. Production support and fact-checking was by Sarah Guild.

Starting point is 00:10:51 Theme composer Mark Blevis knows the difference between Hamilton and Kingston. Podcast music licensing by Source Audio. I'm Todd Maffin. Have a restful weekend, friends, and I will talk to you on Monday. Goodbye, goodbyes I never wanna leave you anymore restful weekend friends and i will talk to you on monday

Today in Digital Marketing - Are Bookmarks a Google Search Ranking Factor?

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