Today in Digital Marketing - Is Today's Google Bug Actually a Leaked Feature?

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Starting point is 00:00:18 starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Today, a strange bug on Google could be changing how you're listed. One of the biggest e-commerce platforms plagued by a huge security hole. Proof that everything is going to a subscription model and the magnetic stripe is dead. It's Tuesday, August 17th, 2021. Happy National Flag Day, Bolivia. I'm Todd Maffin from EngageQ Digital, and here's what you missed today in digital marketing. Seems to be a strange bug in the Google search engine this morning. At least, we think it's a bug.

Starting point is 00:00:55 Lots of people are on Twitter reporting that Google appears to be ignoring the title tag for some listings. That's the code on webpages that tells Google what the headlines should be in their search engine. Instead, it's substituting the first H1 tag it finds on the page, and while some title and H1 tags are the same, oftentimes they're not. With the name of your company, but your first H1 reads, welcome to the new economy, or some other positioning statement. seroundtable.com is reporting that it seems Google is also, in some cases, showing H2 tags instead of the title.

Starting point is 00:01:30 And while it's true that Google never promises to use your title tag, in a few cases it'll put something else there it thinks would be a better clickable headline. For instance, if the title tag on your homepage is literally the word home, as it is for a surprising number of sites, Google will probably replace that. So maybe this isn't a bug, but rather a more broad rollout of this. It seems unlikely, as it appears to be more widespread than that. But so far, no word from Google on if this is a bug. Might be worth doing a check of your own listing in Google

Starting point is 00:02:02 to see what it's doing with your site. I'm sure you know about Google Trends, the site which offers high-level but sometimes interesting information about trending searches. Today, Snapchat launched its own version called Snapchat Trends. You can research specific keywords based on mentioned volume and see how the volume of discussion changes. Quoting socialmediatoday.com, Snapchat Trends incorporates a few elements. First, there's the main keyword search option, which auto-populates with search terms based on your entered text in the main field. You can then select several items to view their comparative mentioned volume over time, with the graph displaying a year's worth of data. You can also further hone your search down to specific regions. Beneath the main graph display, Snapchat also provides a set of example snaps relative to your search terms for context,

Starting point is 00:02:54 which can further assist in your research process." So sort of helpful, but it's not a particularly deep database. For one, it only knows about searches in Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. I did a search in the Canadian side for the name Trudeau. That's our prime minister. Considering a federal election was called this week, you'd think there'd be something there, right? Nope. Though, maybe, given the demographics of the app, there just isn't a lot of discussion about federal politics. Anyway, you can try it out yourself at trends.snapchat.com.

Starting point is 00:03:32 Some news for those of you who accept credit cards. I mean, in person, not online. MasterCard today announced it will be removing the magnetic stripe from the back of its cards. I think we all knew this was coming sooner or later. Most of the world only uses the chip now anyway. Oddly, it's the U.S. that staggers behind on this. So MasterCard says it'll give American merchants a bit more time. New credit cards and debit cards will not be required

Starting point is 00:03:56 to have a stripe starting in 2024 in Europe and 2027 in the U.S. They say no MasterCard cards will have magnetic stripes by 2033. It's true, the world is going subscription-based. Soon, everything you touch will be $5 a month, including our daily premium newsletter. Tap the link in the show notes. And some of these switches to subscription-based pricing is a little questionable. I'm looking at you, Adobe, and 1Password. Come on, dudes, you don't make a service.

Starting point is 00:04:28 You make software. Well, if the trend of subscription pricing bugs you too, you're not going to like this. One company says you can only buy its earbuds, yes, those little in-ear headphones, with a $5 a month subscription. So I guess you're really renting them. The company is called Nura.

Starting point is 00:04:47 You pay $5 a month, plus, of course, a one-time $19 fee, and they will send you a new pair every two years. Apparently, the subscription also comes with discounts, benefits, and giveaways, but come on. Even weirder, it's not like these are the top-of-the-line products from the company. No, it's kind of a dumbed-down version of their premium earbuds. That said, is this really that bad a deal? This would cost you $139 over two years.

Starting point is 00:05:14 Apple's AirPods Pro are nearly twice that price, but then again, once you own those, you own them. Forever. Do you have business insurance? You own them. Forever. If you use Magento as your e-commerce platform, there are some critical bugs to fix. Adobe, which owns the platform, says the bugs could allow attackers to take over administrator sessions. And with that power, they get access to all your customer information. This affects both the open source and commercial versions. In all, there are 16 vulnerabilities fixed in the patch that's now available.

Starting point is 00:06:19 And of those 16, apparently 10 don't even require any admin credentials to get their way in. So yeah, go update that fast. Magento's had a weird history. First, they sold almost half to eBay. Then four months later, eBay bought the whole thing. The Magento CEO said he'd remain on as leader of the group. Not even a year later, he was gone, saying the vision for the platform had changed. Then there was a boardroom raid.

Starting point is 00:06:39 They spun off PayPal. Then they spun Magento back out too. It got picked up by a private equity fund in 2015. Three years later, Adobe bought it for about $1.7 billion. And finally, the social media platform Buffer today launched its integration with the design app Canva. Now you can access your Canva account and tools from within Buffer. By the way, fun fact about Buffer, they've really been right out in front

Starting point is 00:07:05 on the whole transparency thing. You can even see the salaries of each and every employee there. From Joel, the CEO, who makes $290,000 a year, to Cheryl, the level one customer advocate in Ghana, who makes $54,000. If you're curious,

Starting point is 00:07:22 it's at Buffer.com slash salaries. All right, Mac nerds, I need your help here. So I have switched from Spotify over to Apple Music. I don't even want to talk about it. It was a package deal. Anyway, this is not the point. The point is that Spotify, there was this really cool third-party Mac app called Equilibrium that gave me shortcut keys so that I could, I think it was control shift right arrow to move to the next song, control shift left arrow to move back, control shift period to stop.

Starting point is 00:07:56 It was a third-party program, Equilibrium. It worked on Spotify, but that program doesn't work on Apple Music. Here's my question. Does anybody know of a program that will do this for Apple Music? So what I'm looking for, and yes, I know that I can switch to the Apple Music app and I can manually click it. But what I'm looking for is a keyboard shortcut that'll work no matter where I am. Does this exist? Does anyone know? Apple nerds, help me, please. You can tweet me. Link is in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:00:00 All right. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today in Digital Marketing - Is Today's Google Bug Actually a Leaked Feature?

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