[Ep90] - Google Launches ‘Shops’ Section In Mobile Search Results

#TWIMshow - This Week in Marketing

1. Starting 1/19, Facebook Will Be Removing Some Detailed Targeting Options - Starting January 19, 2022, Facebook will be removing some Detailed Targeting options because they relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive. Although the options mentioned below are going away on January 19, 2022, campaigns will continue to deliver for about eight weeks after that, until March 17, 2022, which should give advertisers some time to test out alternatives. The company provided the following examples of targeting options that will be removed:

• Health causes (e.g., "Lung cancer awareness," "World Diabetes Day," "Chemotherapy").
• Sexual orientation (e.g., "same-sex marriage" and "LGBT culture").
• Religious practices and groups (e.g., "Catholic Church" and "Jewish holidays").
• Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures.

The company will also remove targeting options that haven't been widely adopted, citing that they may be redundant with other options or be too granular, although it did not specify which options.

2. TikTok Partners Up With Atmosphere To Provide More Exposure To Creators - In yet another sign of TikTok’s ever-increasing presence and popularity, the platform has announced a new deal with video content provider Atmosphere which will see curated TikTok content appear on TVs in restaurants, bars, gyms, and more, providing new exposure potential for TikTok creators.

Atmosphere provides licensed and curated video content for commercial venues, with clients including Westin, Taco Bell, and Burger King. As per the above example clip, Atmosphere repurposes video content from a range of platforms, which also includes YouTube, then adds its own audio soundtrack, essentially creating a stream of music video content that points back to the originating platform. And now, TikTok clips will be part of that offering.

Given TikTok’s rising popularity, the partnership makes sense, and it’ll be interesting to see how many waiting rooms and venues take on this new TikTok channel as a means of keeping their customers entertained. Atmosphere reports that it doubled its business footprint over the last year, with its content now being shown in over 19,000 venues worldwide. Cumulatively, Atmosphere claims to reach more than 20 million unique visitors per month, which could provide another boost for TikTok, and prompt more users to log into the app and become regular users.

3. Twitter Adds Spaces Replay Stats for Recorded Broadcasts - In the details for recorded Spaces chats, hosts will now be able to see how many listeners tuned into the stream live, and how many replays the session has garnered. This will add more context to your Spaces analytics, and help you better plan your strategy, by giving you more info on how your audience is tuning in after the fact.

4. Clubhouse Adds New Way to Share Rooms, Additional Analytics and Access Options - Clubhouse has added a new way to improve Room discovery, with a new re-share option that will enable users to highlight interesting sessions that they’re into other users. The process is essentially Clubhouse’s version of re-tweeting, in order to help amplify great discussions. To be clear, Clubhouse has had the share via social network and share via messaging app options for some time, it’s only the new, internal sharing function that’s been added.

5. LinkedIn Launches Audio Rooms - First off LinkedIn’s launching an initial test of its own, Clubhouse-like audio events platform, which will enable users to tune into live discussions in the app, and participate by raising their virtual hand to join as a speaker, or posting likes in response to the chat. The format looks very much like Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, with separate panels for those ‘on stage’ and speaking, and those tuning in below.

6. Google: Keyword Density Still Not An SEO Search Ranking Factor - So it is now 2022 and some folks are asking if keyword density is an SEO Google search ranking factor. The answer is still no, according to John Mueller, a Search Advocate at Google.

Keyword density as an SEO topic is older than Google and it is one of those topics that will likely never die.

According to Wikipedia, "Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. In the context of search engine optimization, keyword density can be used to determine whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase."

7. IndexNow WordPress Plugin Released By Microsoft Bing - Microsoft Bing has published a new WordPress plugin that makes it easy to integrate your WordPress blog and site with the IndexNow protocol. The plugin was released over the holidays and is available over here in the WordPress plugin directory. Currently, both Microsoft Bing and Yandex have adopted the protocol, and Google is supposedly testing it out as well.

The WordPress IndexNow plugin enables automated submission of URLs from WordPress sites to multiple search engines without the need to register and verify your site with them. Once installed, the plugin will automatically generate and host the API key on your site. It detects page creation/update/ deletion in WordPress and automatically submits the URLs in the background. This ensures that search engines will always have the latest updates about your site.

What is IndexNow? IndexNow provides a method for websites owners to instantly inform search engines about the latest content changes on their website. IndexNow is a simple ping protocol so that search engines know that a URL and its content has been added, updated, or deleted, allowing search engines to quickly reflect this change in their search results.

Instant indexing is an SEO’s dream when it comes to giving search engines the most updated content on a site. The protocol is very simple and it requires very little developer effort to add this to your site, so it makes sense to implement this if you care about speedy indexing. Plus if you use Cloudflare, it can be turned on with the flip of a switch.

In Episode#47 of TWIMshow, we covered the release of “Bing URL submission API”. Index Now is somewhat duplicative to that, however, Bing’s URL Submission API only works with Bing’s index. So there is a benefit to switching to IndexNow.

8. Google Launches' Shops' Section In Mobile Search Results - Google has launched a “Shops” section in the mobile search results. The Shops section shows three retailers (but can be expanded to show up to ten) based on their organic search rankings and is available on mobile devices for select shopping-related queries in the U.S.

The Shops section is another area in the search results where retailers might potentially appear, which can increase awareness for their brands and drive traffic. However, since the Shops section is based on the organic search ranking, retailers who don’t already rank well may not be able to reap its benefits.