Today in Digital Marketing - Your Business Hours Now Affect Your Google Ranking

Starting point is 00:00:00 It is Thursday, December 7th. Today, one more reason to keep your business hours updated on Google. It could change how high you're ranked. YouTube rolls out a tool for brands that come under attack. Amazon's change shows how terrified they are of Sheen. And hashtags are finally in threads. There's just one catch. There are no hashtags.

Starting point is 00:00:24 I'm Todd Maffin. That's ahead today in digital marketing. Google has reportedly added an interesting new factor to its local ranking algorithm, business hours. This means that businesses that are currently open are now more likely to rank higher in local search results than those that are closed. Local results are those used in maps and business boxes in regular search. Previously, Google didn't take business hours into account when ranking local results, so a closed business would rank just as well as an open one. But according to Joy Hawkins at the local SEO agency Sterling Sky, this was changed sometime last month.

Starting point is 00:01:04 Here are some examples. A lawyer ranked lower when they were closed at 6 a.m. than they did two hours later when they were open. And a psychiatrist's ranking dropped significantly on weekends when they were not open compared to weekdays when they were open. So obviously make sure your business hours are accurate and up to date in your Google business profile, as it's more important now than ever. This afternoon, YouTube announced it will now let brands and creators pause comments on their videos. This will prevent viewers from adding new comments without having to go the nuclear option of turning comments off entirely. This is something you'd probably only do

Starting point is 00:01:45 if your video had normal comments for a while, then suddenly you're getting hit by lots of drive-by comments, as sometimes happens on social media. Pausing incoming comments will give you time to delete or hide the troll comments. The flip switch is at the video level in the upper right-hand corner of the comments panel. If you turn it on, viewers will get a little note on that video's comments saying that you've paused them. This is something that they've been testing for a couple of months now. Amazon is lowering its seller fees for cheap clothing in a bid to compete with the fast fashion giant Shein.

Starting point is 00:02:23 The new rates starting in January will see fees for apparel under $15 drop from 17% to just 5%. This is, of course, a response to Shein's ultra low prices, with t-shirts costing around $5 and jeans about $15. With a network of roughly 6,000 manufacturers, Shein has become a formidable competitor even for Amazon. And Sheen is said to be preparing for an IPO with a valuation between $80 and $90 billion. Amazon isn't the only one worried about Sheen's rise. Retailers like Timu, The Gap, and even Etsy have all named Sheen as a major competitor. Sheen's aggressive tactics have disrupted the retail landscape.

Starting point is 00:03:12 Meta's Threads app is now rolling out its topic tag feature to all users worldwide. Think of them like hashtags, but with a twist. Unlike traditional hashtags, topic tags are limited to one per post. Meta says this will prevent spamming and the flooding of trending topics. And it allows for multi-word support, so posts will have a natural sentence flow without breaking it up with hashtag symbols. That said, if you really do want an actual hashtag, here is the workaround. You tap the new topic tag icon, which confusingly is a hashtag. Then type an actual hashtag before your topic word, and it will show up in the OG format. Posts become searchable based on their specific topic. These aren't in the API yet,

Starting point is 00:04:00 because there is no API yet. And even once platforms do get access to a publishing API, it might take them more time to implement these since they're a more complicated workflow involving searching for and selecting from a list of topics. We are on threads. If you are as well, you want to follow us. Our username is today in digital marketing, or you can follow my personal account, which is just my name, Todd Maffin. Links to all our social media in the show notes. If you've ever wanted your brand to play in the augmented reality space, but didn't have the energy or budget to commit fully, one company thinks it has a solution.

Starting point is 00:04:39 Blipper, an AR tech company, has unveiled its new AR units. These are web-based ad units that require no app download and can be accessed directly within web pages. The ad units use both front and rear-facing cameras and have some templates like 3D product previews, mini-games, and virtual try-ons. Blipper says early results have user dwell time at around 40 to 50 seconds. LinkedIn this week announced several new updates to its newsletter tools. First, duplicate draft templates. This lets you replicate the format of previous newsletter issues. There are better analytics for content performance, audience demographics, and they have some optimization suggestions. There is an improved article preview and simplified author switching.

Starting point is 00:05:31 This one's kind of nice. It will let you choose whether you want to publish that piece as a LinkedIn member or as a company page. I mentioned threads. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Mastodon, Blue Sky, Post.News, and Spoutable. Links are in the show notes. I'm Todd Maffin. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Starting point is 00:05:53 Snow is falling but we're warming up. Bells are ringing, ringing. It's a holiday party and the night is young. Dreams are flowing, flowing. Bye.

Today in Digital Marketing - Your Business Hours Now Affect Your Google Ranking

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