Amazon uses its data to undermine third party sellers, EU antitrust action says

The company could face penalties of up to 10% of its total revenue, which was more than $280B in 2019. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/2InoMKJ

Google Page Experience Update to launch May 2021 with new labels in search results

Google will highlight search results that have a great page experience. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/2JYptuB

A wave of change for Southeast Asia’s internet economy

Over the past five years, Southeast Asia’s internet economy has experienced tremendous growth and change. But what we’ve seen in 2020 marks the biggest shift yet, as the e-Conomy SEA 2020 report from Google, Temasek and Bain & Company shows. The report—At Full Velocity: Resilient and Racing Ahead—outlines how Southeast Asians navigating the coronavirus pandemic are using the internet in more ways and on a larger scale than ever before.  Since the beginning of the year, 40 million people in Southeast Asia have connected to the internet for the first time (compared to 10 million in 2019 and 100 million between 2015 and 2019). With technology providing vital access to online shopping, food, healthcare, education, finance and entertainment, more than one in every three digital service consumers started using a new type of online service due to COVID-19. And of those new digital consumers, nine out of 10 plan to keep using at least one digital service beyond the pandemic.10:25 Despite a global economic slowdown, and the severe impact on travel in particular, the gross merchandise value of the regional internet economy has held steady at an estimated $100 billion in 2020, and is expected to surpass $300 billion by 2025.  Technology’s vital role during the crisis Eight out of ten people across the region said technology helped them get through the virus—and they used the internet for a wide range of reasons. In most of the sectors we looked at, new users made up more than 30 percent of total, but education, groceries and loans saw the biggest jumps.  The pandemic also saw demand for (and access to) digital services continue to expand beyond Southeast Asia’s biggest cities. In Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, more than half the people new to digital services live in non-metropolitan areas. This is encouraging progress, given that the urban-rural digital divide is one of the main challenges the report has highlighted over recent years.  The changing shape of the regional internet economy Not surprisingly, e-commerce is growing faster than we could have imagined before the crisis: from $38 billion in value last year to $62 billion this year, and expected to reach $172 billion by 2025. Digital financial services are becoming more important, too: the average proportion of cash transactions declined from 48 percent of the total pre-COVID to 37 percent post-COVID. From here, the report finds that the annual value of total digital payment transactions across Southeast Asia will almost double to $1.2 trillion by 2025. At the same time, new sectors are emerging, especially in education and health technology.  At the peak of the pandemic, leading health apps were being used four times as much as they were before the pandemic and education technology app installations had increased three-fold. Greater focus for businesses, cautious optimism for investors Global uncertainty means Southeast Asia’s major technology companies are focusing on strengthening their business and becoming profitable, rather than on expanding into new areas. Funding for companies valued at more than $1 billion has dropped from $5.6 billion in 2019 to an estimated $3.5 billion in 2020.  Overall, investors are cautiously optimistic. The number of deals has kept growing and we’re starting to see investors look towards new areas of opportunity in financial services, education and healthcare. For startups with strong ideas and business plans, there’s an available pool of capital worth almost $12 billion. Building for the opportunity ahead COVID-19 has changed Southeast Asians’ daily lives in fundamental ways. The digital adoption that was projected to happen over several years has accelerated. And with its young, diverse and mobile-first population, and a host of talented start-ups, Southeast Asia can help shape the future of technology in Asia-Pacific and beyond.  Like everywhere else in the world, Southeast Asia faces significant challenges in rebuilding from the pandemic—but there is such immense opportunity if we can help the region realise its potential. Working with our partners across the region, all of us at Google are committed to playing our part— fostering startups, expanding digital skills, and making the internet more helpful and accessible in every way we can. We’re ready to help build a strong, diverse and inclusive internet economy for every Southeast Asian.
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Don’t miss out on up to $100 off Search Marketing Expo

These exclusive Early Bird rates end this Saturday, November 14! Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3neGO0F

How to show Lighthouse Scores in Google Sheets with a custom function

Learn how to use machine learning to streamline your reporting workflows right within Google Sheets. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/2IlxSrd

Google Play's Best of 2020 is back: Vote for your favorites

Google Play’s 2020 Best of awards are back—capping off a year unlike any other. Once again, we want to hear about your favorite content on Google Play.  Starting today until November 23, you can help pick our Users’ Choice winners by voting for your favorites from a shortlist of this year’s most loved and trending apps, games, movies, and books. To cast your vote, visit this page before submissions close on November 23. Don’t forget to come back when the Users’ Choice winners, along with the rest of the Best of 2020 picks from our Google Play editors, are announced on December 1.
https://j.mp/36j0QAa

Marketing that our collective future depends on

In today’s world, every other headline is a bombardment on the senses: social unrest, climate justice, global pandemic, cancel culture, fake news, and data privacy erosion — not to mention the myriad of opinions on how to navigate these issues. As a result, there’s an acceleration of transformation occurring across industries, businesses, and consumer behavior. There’s a mindset shift where people are increasingly looking to brands to solve societal problems,and buying from brands that stand for something larger than just their products but are aligned with customer values.As marketers, we’re left wondering: What’s our role in the intersection of principles, profit, and purpose, and can we contribute to our best collective future? The answer is yes. We call it Marketing with Purpose. Marketing with Purpose is about building a brand that’s welcomed into peoples’ lives by earning their trust and upholding their values. It starts with respecting their right to privacy, being transparent, and designing equitable experiences. Trust grows into love by demonstrating brand values throughout the customer experience and expressing them through marketing and advertising to give people opportunities to connect and find shared meaning in shared values. Brand love leads to loyalty when someone experiences authenticity and personalized inclusion, and as a result they feel “this brand is for someone like me.” That’s Marketing with Purpose, and it is outlined in our detailed playbook. The strategy is based on multiple research studies by Microsoft Advertising, and it’s supported by various third-party studies. The result is an actionable guide to building a trusted brand, which means being true to your brand’s values and inclusive of more people, for a responsible marketer. Here are the three core building blocks of Marketing with Purpose: 1. Responsibility. The role of responsibility in marketing covers — in part — privacy, transparency, and accessible marketing. It’s about being good stewards of the customer experience. Trust is not static but can be dynamically built by being a good steward of the customer experience. Companies need to constantly earn peoples’ trust by taking responsibility and being transparent in data collection; responsible marketing plays a critical role. Start by actively reviewing your practices on privacy and data collection, but also know the platform’s policies of where your ads will be placed. Being a responsible marketer also means ensuring brand safety and choosing wisely where you place your ads, as well as making sure you’re producing accessible marketing materials. Five quick actions to start on the path of more responsible marketing: * Get the “Top six ways to demonstrate responsibility.” * Review the top five ways people feel it’s worth sharing their personal data, as well as what concerns them most, to optimize your brand experience. * Review the “Advertising Platform Requirements Checklist.” * Review the “Privacy Compliance Checklist for Marketers.” * Review the entire section dedicated to Accessible Marketing.   2. Values. The role of values in marketing builds on brand values first, enabling people with shared values to find shared meaning in the brand experience. Values are inherently embedded in building trust, and brand trust leads to brand love and loyalty, which all help drive purchase consideration for a brand. These three elements are closely related: The correlation between trust and brand love is 76%, and the correlation between brand love and loyalty is 55%.People want to spend with brands that have shared values, and who stand for that in which they believe. Understand that your brand purpose and values create trust and authentic connections with people to unlock business opportunities. Five quick actions to drive value with values: * Learn about ethical advertising, as it’s 3x more important to company trust than competence.Review the Ethical Advertising Checklist. * Review top brand attributes linked to shared values building brand trust. * Review your mission as a company and authentically position your products, services, or experiences in alignment with your purpose and values. This is the key to authenticity. * Review the Diverse Audience Snapshots of values across ethnicities, sexual orientation, and generations. * Consider sustainability as a value and review how advertising platforms can provide Marketing with Purpose opportunities with their supply partners.   3. Inclusion. The role of inclusion in marketing is about the expression of an inclusive lens on the outputs of any business; it’s a modern marketing imperative. Inclusive Marketing means considering multiple dimensions of diversity to create culturally accurate representation in your advertising, not stereotyping. A brand who considers inclusion in advertising strives to provide authentic connection, demonstrates open mindedness, and conveys equity. It’s an opportunity to build more meaningful relationships with people and show in advertising that you value them. There are clear insights within Marketing with Purpose to help activate this core building block to trust. When people feel included, joy and trust follow, which leads to brand love, loyalty, and an increase in purchase intent.Furthermore, inclusive advertising increases purchase intent by 23 points. Five quick actions to create inclusive advertising: * Review the Inclusive Marketing activation model — the “What you market, Who you market to, How you market” approach to design campaigns relevant for your brand. * Review the Inclusive Product Marketing Checklist. * Learn how to develop an inclusive keyword strategy for search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, and more. * Learn how to apply the three metaphors for inclusion in ad imagery: connections, openness, balance. * Learn how to use Microsoft Bing to quickly scan your site’s image representation and contemplate if it represents the audiences to which you’re marketing.   A responsible, values-based, and inclusive approach to marketing isn’t just about targeting niche segments, providing product value, or policy compliance. It’s about building genuine relationships with people who celebrate diversity and a wide range of human experiences. Intentional inclusion with purpose woven throughout the brand experience conjures up feelings of acceptance, contentment, confidence, certainty, hope, and safety, which precipitates loyalty — a leading indicator of future business growth. Explore the Marketing with Purpose Playbook to help you authentically connect your marketing with purpose to build a more trusted brand. It’s the guide to building trust, love, and loyalty, while future-proofing a business in these transformational times. Marketing with Purpose marketers seek to find the intersection of purpose, profit, and principles to contribute to our best collective future. Keep in touch  To receive blog updates automatically, subscribe to the Microsoft Advertising Insider newsletter. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to keep up with the latest Microsoft Advertising news, insights and more.
https://j.mp/3kb0Bfu

ALDI: Kevin the Carrot

Part of Collection Highlighted Holiday Ads 185 Ads in this collection.View Collection
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CooperVision: Mélanie Astles

If you live a busy, high performance lifestyle, you need to make sure nothing stands in your way. To highlight the importance of maintaining your eyesight when realising your dreams, independent creative agency Five by Five has partnered with CooperVision - world-leading manufacturer of contact lenses - for a new EMEA-wide brand campaign. Spearheaded by an epic advert starring six-time French aerobatics champion Mélanie Astles - representing a career in which having clear vision is crucial - the campaign shines a spotlight on CooperVision’s premium MyDay® daily disposable lenses and proves that when performance matters, you need a contact lens to match. The hero video follows the record-breaking pilot as she prepares to take flight over France. Footage of Mélanie inspecting her plane is also intercut with other activities she completes during the day, including training, giving presentations, and hanging out with friends. We then watch as she takes to the skies, her plane soaring over the French landscape as she executes all manner of daring stunts.
https://j.mp/32F6QlV

Pizza Hut / KFC: The tastiest team-up of the year

Pizza Hut is always pushing the boundaries of food innovation – today launching the ‘Pizza Hut x KFC Chicken Popcorn Pizza’. This limited-edition pizza combines Pizza Hut’s iconic crispy crust with the goodness of KFC’s Chicken Popcorn pieces, classic gravy, plus a generous serving of cheese, sweetcorn, and mushrooms. To celebrate their tasty partnership, Ogilvy Hong Kong and the two brands launched the ’Pizza Hut x KFC Kitchen’, a mobile game that connects two phones and challenges two players to craft a ‘Pizza Hut x KFC Chicken Popcorn Pizza’ against the clock together, playing as the Pizzatainer and Colonel Sanders. Teamwork is the name of the game as players have to knead the dough, fry the chicken popcorn, and bake the pizza too. Complete the tasks in the time given to win Pizza Hut and KFC coupons. game.png   1604571762-phxkfc7.jpg   1604571832-phxkfc6.jpg   1604571868-phxkfc1.jpg   1604571898-phxkfc0.jpg  
https://j.mp/38xSO9t

Using auction insights for better PPC competitor analysis

Here’s how Google and Microsoft auction insights can help you identify core competitors and track their bidding activities month by month. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/38hHLAV

Presidential pollsters got it wrong, what are the implications for consumer research?

If political polls were so off, might consumer research be equally flawed? Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/38ixDI4

The great reset of 2020: Do’s & don’ts of the current landscape

How can we live in a business world where technology, data, opinion and style products can reverse 10 years of a hard-working small- to medium-size enterprise? Welcome to the digital jungle of 2020. I personally first entered the business world before it became a modern-day jungle in 2004, selling nothing but cheese. In its day, that cheese was from one of hardest places in the world to source from. We faced the typical problems most businesses face: How to produce more product, how to ship more, how to optimize the packaging and where it should sit on the shelf. Today, it has grown to become one of the most used feta cheeses in the world! Those days are gone, but the principles I learned during that time remain quite similar. Those who know me, know that evolution is in my DNA, and a core principle of my inner soul. Today I am honored to chair one of the largest non-listed digital agencies in the South Pacific, AiiMS. AiiMS has assisted the growth of thousands of small, medium and large businesses over the last decade through customized results-focused web and digital marketing solutions. AiiMS has an intimate understanding of the trades and services industry. We understand that there is a lot more to building and growing a successful and sustainable business than just digital marketing, which is why our full circle and holistic approach has been so successful, offering a lot more than your standard web design or digital agency. Common misconceptions If you are assuming the world will go back to normal, you are mistaken. Change is inevitable. However, the fundamentals are still the same and will forever stay the same. What are the fundamentals? * Offer a product or service people want or need. * Market your product or service on advertising mediums that best fits your business. * Provide exemplary service to ensure client retention. * Market back to your existing clients. So, have business fundamentals changed? NO. What HAS changed? * The difficulty of sourcing a product or providing a service * Advertising mediums expanded to include digital * Speed of business * Inability to hide from your online reputation * Access to powerful data * Automation When you truly comprehend what has changed, you will have a clear path on your way forward. You will be able to re-apply business rules. The only difference is that you will be held more accountable by your customers very quickly. The secret to growth in a crisis or pandemic There is no secret, just common principles that have helped thousands of businesses grow in any era. Some of the leading brands in the world grew in a crisis. More famously, Gabriel “Coco” Chanel grew the iconic brand through the world’s toughest times ever recorded in Paris during World War 2. Through product enhancements, NOT creating new products, but by thinking harder about customers and what it was that customers needed from her brand in World War 2. You can’t judge a book by its cover! BUT WE ALL DO! The cover of your business’s “book” is your profile online. You may have ads running in multiple mediums spending thousands of dollars on finding new clients, so you need to make sure that those ads are impactful as possible. 10 ways to rebuild your business’ digital foundation * Set up or improve your business listings where reviews are found. * Have a healthy Google & Bing Business Listing. * Build a website that represents your business. * This will be the anchor point for most of your marketing. IT MUST DO ITS JOB. * Set up your tracking strategy. * You cannot manage what you cannot track. * Set up or improve your social profiles. * Businesses had customers, now they have viewers (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram etc.). * Only genuine photos, videos, posts will work. * Take digital marketing seriously. * Paid search is NOT negotiable and is more important than ever as people are using search to find products and services at increasing levels. * Use a specialist agency for their expertise. * Be where your clients are, e.g. Bing ads has just reached 9 million monthly users. * Improve your sales & service abilities. * Price match and negotiate. * Cross sell: most customers do not know you offer other services. * NEVER miss a phone call. * Take the time to quote! * Provide multiple payment options. * BE RESPONSIVE. * Dust the cobwebs off your existing clients and re-engage. * Simply reminding past clients you’re still here can re-engage your clients. A simple SMS or email blast can start the process. * Take control of your content, because the buyer says so… * 70% of buyers view 4 or more pieces of content when making a considered purchase. * Allocate time to educate your customers. * Create videos and talk about your services. * Publish on your YouTube & Social channels. * Be viewed as the authority in your space. * Build trust. * Engage your existing clients. * Create a business culture of gaining positive reviews. * Be proactive, NOT reactive.   Value the old saying: “The customer is always right.” All of the above were crucial to a business’s success even prior to Covid-19 but are often overlooked and deemed non-essential during a buoyant market. Now that the market has tightened up its important to treat these as essentials. Often when reading posts, you can be quite overwhelmed by where to start. It is important to remember that a start is a start. You need to release your inner business owner and demonstrate your leadership, listening and disciplinary skills. There is no time other than now to do so. Where to now? #make2021youryear Get ready for the end of 2020 by preparing for a successful 2021. Follow these crucial, yet basic points that will ensure your business is always placed in the best position to WIN, and YES, I said WIN! Keep in Touch To receive blog updates automatically, subscribe to the Microsoft Advertising Insider newsletter. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to keep up with the latest Microsoft Advertising news, insights and more.
https://j.mp/3euMYqh

‘Significant’ drop in Google-reported search terms seen across devices and ad formats [Report]

Tinuiti’s granular look at search term data offers a snapshot of how big Google’s search terms update is for advertisers. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3kZaYUN

Tide Bank: Rise Entrepreneur

Like any great expedition, deciding to start your journey as a business can be the most challenging, especially during times of economic volatility. With this commercial we wanted to inspire businesses by featuring actual Tide members, with the proposition that Tide's business account make this first step a lot easier by enabling startups to register both their business and bank account in one go.
https://j.mp/38hGoT0

Mixed campaigns, keyword planner: Key product updates for November

As the calendar flips to November and the holiday season is upon us, every advertiser is looking for the efficiencies that can help them save time managing campaigns and keywords, as well as getting actionable insights to hone their performance during this critical time. To help you get there, Microsoft Advertising has a whole slew of product updates this month, from a big update on dynamic search ads campaign management to a more powerful Keyword Planner. Check out all the exciting new updates for November below: This month’s top story: Mixed campaigns We’re delighted to announce the open beta of mixed campaigns in Microsoft Advertising, which are campaigns that can include both standard ad groups (with text ads, responsive search ads, and keywords) and dynamic ad groups (with dynamic search ads and auto targets). What does this mean for you? * Save time managing your campaigns. Now, instead of managing dynamic search ads (DSAs) in separate campaigns with similar settings as your search campaigns, you can manage them together in one campaign. This can drive efficiency in your campaign management and reporting cycles. * Import mixed campaigns from Google Ads. Instead of importing campaigns as search-only or DSA-only as before, you’ll now be able to import your mixed campaigns in full. * Take your campaign strategy to the next level. Finally, mixed campaigns allow you to structure your campaigns in new ways that can maximize the efficiency of Microsoft Advertising’s automation features and drive greater performance.   Mixed campaigns can now both include dynamic ad groups and standard ad groups.   Your existing DSA campaigns will continue to function as-is. If you want to import mixed campaigns from Google Ads, here’s what will happen: * If you’re importing mixed campaigns that haven’t been imported before, those campaigns will be fully imported as mixed campaigns containing both your dynamic and standard ad groups. * If you’re importing mixed campaigns that have previously been imported as search-only campaigns, dynamic ad groups will now also be imported into these campaigns along with standard ad groups. * If you’re importing mixed campaigns that have previously been imported as DSA-only campaigns, unfortunately, standard ad groups cannot yet be added to them. However, these campaigns can be fully imported as new mixed campaigns in a different account, or fully imported in the same account assuming the existing DSA campaign is removed. A more powerful Keyword Planner DSA campaigns are a great way to get incremental query coverage on keywords you haven’t yet built out. Of course, another great way to discover new keywords is with Keyword Planner, and we’ve just made it even more powerful and expanded it into new international markets. First, in getting more effective suggestions from Keyword Planner, we’ve added a section where you can now get keyword ideas from your landing pages, either your entire site or by specifying a certain page. Discover new keywords from landing pages by specifying the entire site or only a certain page.   And in terms of international markets, Keyword Planner has now expanded from just six markets and three languages to 34 markets and 12 languages. You can now also target multiple countries under the same language. Expanded performance reporting We’ve made some recent announcements about adding prominence metrics to make your performance reporting more reliable, as well as deprecating average position so you’re just focusing on what matters most. We now have two key updates here: * Prominence metrics, such as Top impression rate and Absolute top impression rate, are now available everywhere you’ve found average position, so you can get clear insights on each individual entity of your campaign. Note: for new gridseports where these columns were not previously available, data for these columns are available as of October 18, 2020. * Our updated timeline for removing average position from reporting is now March 31, 2021. A one-stop shop for all your recommendations Getting quick insights on which you can easily take action is of utmost importance during crunch times like the holidays. That’s why we’re excited to share the new Recommendations page that goes across all your accounts to help you maximize your campaign performance. These AI-powered recommendations help you improve keywords, bids, budgets, ads and extensions, fix critical issues in your accounts, as well as point you towards key automation features in Microsoft Advertising. Now, if you’re managing multiple accounts, you can get all these recommendations and optimizations in one single place in the Overview page. Each recommendation includes the action you should take, how it’s generated, why it’s recommended, and the estimated performance gain to your manager account.   We’re constantly improving our recommendation engines to help you better optimize your accounts, and hope that this one-stop shop for multi-account managers can help you accomplish even more this holiday season. Last but not least: Seasonal In-market Audiences Hopefully you’re already leveraging In-market Audiences like all Microsoft Advertising users should, as they help you reach people who are ready to buy. We’re excited to share that, just in time for the holidays, we now have seasonal in-market segments with lists of people ready to buy for a particular event, like Black Friday. This is now available across the search network and Microsoft Audience Network in the United States, Canada, Australia and United Kingdom. Seasonal segments use the same predictive intelligence as existing In-market Audience segments — and are infused with additional signals related to the seasonal event to deliver a relevant user segment of likely converters. The three segments available are: * /Seasonal Shopping/Black Friday Shopping * /Seasonal Shopping/Black Friday Shopping/In-Store Black Friday Shopping * /Seasonal Shopping/Black Friday Shopping/Online Black Friday Shopping We recommend associating the seasonal In-market Audiences to your existing top performing ad groups with “bid only” targeting and a bid-boost of 20% to begin and adjust as you evaluate performance. For a list of all In-market Audiences available, check out In-market Audiences: Reach people who are ready to buy. Help us improve Microsoft Advertising Your comments and feedback are integral to shape and improve our product. For any questions or feedback, please reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account manager, or send us an email at advertising-feedback@microsoft.com. You can also interact with us on Twitter or suggest a feature on Microsoft Advertising Feature Suggestions.  
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Keep Music Live: Unless We Act Now

In 2019, Washington’s music industry contributed $2.42 billion and 38,005 jobs to the state's economy. Now, as a result of COVID-19, 63% of its independent music venues are in danger of permanently shuttering by the end of the year. Tired of waiting for federal aid, a group of Washington music diehards (including Sir Mix-a-Lot) are taking matters into their own hands to keep independent music venues open across the state. Together, they formed and launched Keep Music Live, a grassroots fundraising effort aimed at raising $10 million that will buy local indie venues (of less than 1,000 guest capacity) two years of relief. The organization is backed by a strong Board, which in addition to Sir Mix-a-Lot, includes Holly Hinton, Director of Music and Artists Partnerships at Starbucks, indie venue owners and other community leaders. In order to turn heads and scare people into donating, World Famous, the Seattle-based agency leading creative for the movement, is using guerrilla displays disguised as new construction signage to trick residents into thinking their favorite music venues are being replaced by bland, new-build condos. kml_x_wf_3_resized.jpg   kml_x_wf_1_resized.jpg   kml_x_wf_2_resized.jpg  
https://j.mp/3oXQ1Mk

BIG W: Bring On Christmas!

Part of Collection Highlighted Holiday Ads 173 Ads in this collection.View Collection
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Most Reliable Hosting Company Sites in October 2020

Rank Performance Graph OS Outage hh:mm:ss Failed Req% DNS Connect First byte Total 1 Bigstep Linux 0:00:00 0.000 0.239 0.078 0.156 0.156 2 hostingplus.cl Linux 0:00:00 0.000 0.364 0.214 0.429 0.429 3 www.choopa.com Linux 0:00:00 0.005 0.274 0.005 0.025 0.025 4 Hyve Managed Hosting Linux 0:00:00 0.005 0.181 0.075 0.151 0.151 5 ServerStack Linux 0:00:00 0.005 0.253 0.083 0.165 0.165 6 www.flexential.com Linux 0:00:00 0.005 0.295 0.088 0.176 0.176 7 krystal.uk Linux 0:00:00 0.005 0.255 0.090 0.179 0.179 8 Pair Networks Linux 0:00:00 0.005 0.370 0.096 0.192 0.192 9 Rackspace Linux 0:00:00 0.010 0.513 0.013 0.025 0.025 10 EveryCity SmartOS 0:00:00 0.010 0.258 0.088 0.176 0.176 See full table Bigstep had the most reliable hosting company site in October 2020. Both Bigstep and Hosting Plus responded to all of Netcraft's requests in October, but a faster average connection time gives Bigstep the edge. Bigstep offers "bare metal" cloud hosting to provide the flexibility of cloud hosting without the associated overhead and performance reductions of virtualization, and has now appeared in the top 10 for four consecutive months.
https://j.mp/2I61wAg

COVID helped drive record ad revenue for big tech in Q3

Facebook, Google and Amazon all reported significant revenue growth during, and partly because of, the pandemic. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/34XLVMb

Athleta: Women Run

athleta_storefront_yard.jpg  
https://j.mp/3kYMOtp

Google launched DeepRank in October 2019: DeepRank is BERT

DeepRank goes back to 2017 at Google, it is the internal code name for the BERT launch. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3ern5aS

Microsoft Advertising promotion extensions available in time for the holidays

Promote deals and offers for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and other occasions in your text ads. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3mTMqx7

Social Shorts: TikTok teams with Shopify, Commerce ads dominate Facebook, LinkedIn users top 722 million

The social media marketing week in review: A round up of news and announcements you may have missed. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/2HYz43l

Make the most of the holiday eCommerce surge with paid search

With Cyber Week 2020 just around the corner, autumn is the ideal time to boost holiday readiness for your retail customers. In 2019, holiday sales topped $1 trillion in the U.S. alone, and online sales grew by 13.2%. This year, as the global health pandemic keeps more consumers at home, eCommerce is expected to surge even higher. The first stop for holiday shoppers? Online search. Which means having a paid search strategy is key to driving retail sales. Below, we’ve highlighted recent success stories to inspire winning campaigns that can help you maximize retail and brand advertising dollars. For additional guidance for capitalizing on holiday shopping trends, visit our Retail industry insights and resources. MediaCom amplifies festive sales volume for Bose In an increasingly competitive market, Bose needed to keep their products and brand top of mind while also driving conversions. To meet these objectives, MediaCom leveraged Microsoft Advertising to promote sales and offers, reinforce their brand message, and deliver enticing calls to action. MediaCom built more than 50 Remarketing audience lists to target previous website visitors with highly relevant offers and messaging. To expand their audience, they leveraged curated lists of in-market searchers through In-market Audiences, and used Similar Audiences to target shoppers who resembled current Bose customers. Their efforts paid off. Bose enjoyed a 69% click-through rate (CTR) increase from Black Friday to Cyber Monday year on year. Additionally, In-market Audiences delivered a 28% higher CTR than non-audience visitors, as well as a 21% higher conversion rate. In fact, 47% of all Bose’s site visits can be attributed to using the three audience targeting features. Read the full Bose story here. Merkle styles paid search success for fashion retailer A leading fashion retailer that emphasizes individual style needed to increase volume while driving conversions over the holidays — all while maintaining a steady return on ad spend (ROAS). To help, advertising partner Merkle worked with Microsoft Advertising to tailor-fit a paid search strategy using the Microsoft Audience Network and Product Audiences. As a result, they were able to increase conversion rates by 153% while increasing ROAS by 182% and decreasing cost per acquisition (CPA) by 75%. Read the full Merkle story here. i-Cherry helps Brazilian fashion retailer expand online audience With consumers choosing online shopping over in-person experiences, retailer Riachuelo needed to transform its website into its primary sales channel, so they looked to digital marketing agency i-Cherry. By partnering with Microsoft Advertising, i-Cherry identified and implemented comprehensive campaign optimizations to drive traffic, boost online sales, and lift revenue. The first month following the optimizations accounted for 65% of revenue captured in 2020, representing a 224% increase over the month prior, which was the second-best month. Additionally, they achieved strong ROAS of 4.08%, a substantial improvement over the first quarter of the year. Read the full Riachuelo story here Paid search is critical to omnichannel retail strategies, especially with the predicted spike in eCommerce this festive season. Advise advertisers to set up their paid search campaigns right now to make the most of the early holiday shopping, while increasing chances of capturing last-minute shoppers. For additional industry insights and resources, including festive shopping trends, get the Holiday 2020 Insights Guide and visit the Microsoft Advertising retail hub. Keep in Touch To receive blog updates automatically, subscribe to the Microsoft Advertising Insider newsletter. Make sure to follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter to keep up with the latest Microsoft Advertising news, insights and more.
https://j.mp/3jTOyDd

Attend SMX for just $199… rates increase next Saturday!

Register now to access 45+ expert-led sessions marketing sessions happening online, December 8-9. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3ejY4y8

Featured snippets: The 9 rules of optimization

Here’s a set of guidelines to follow when optimizing for the featured snippet – like using an “is” statement and defining the topic concisely. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/327g75H

Halodoc uses AI to improve how doctors receive feedback

Due to Indonesia’s vast size and population, timely and reliable access to healthcare can sometimes be a challenge. Halodoc aims to change that with a mobile first-telemedicine platform that connects Indonesians to doctors and helps them arrange appointments, medicine deliveries and tests.  What’s distinctive about the Halodoc platform is that it draws on human-centered artificial intelligence: a promising new area of research that uses continuous human feedback to improve how AI systems work, and provides a better experience for the people who rely on those systems.  With support from Google’s Late Stage Accelerator, a program that assists high-potential startups, we assembled a team of doctors, data scientists, engineers, product managers and researchers to determine how technology could support Indonesian doctors’ work. One particular approach the team identified was using AI to replicate the mentoring and feedback that junior doctors receive from more experienced colleagues in hospitals—a process that’s important to improving quality of care, but is hard to reproduce on a larger scale.   We set out to create an easy way to provide feedback in virtual health, and worked with Google’s machine learning experts in the Late-Stage Accelerator to determine the best approach. With Google’s guidance, Halodoc's engineers applied Natural Language Processing in Bahasa Indonesia to measure, rank, and provide insights that can inform doctors’ decisions across the country—using thousands of consultations to train their machine learning models.  When doctors open the Halodoc app, they see information on how they performed based on their response time and quality index metrics, along with suggested actions on how they can improve their consultation quality.  They also have the option of receiving further feedback and coaching from more senior doctors if needed.  Right now, more than five percent of Indonesians use Halodoc’s platform. As a result of applying AI principles to improve the quality of care that patients experience, our app ratings have increased from 4.5 to 4.8 stars in fewer than six months, while our overall doctor scores have improved by 64 percent. Halodoc’s telemedicine app enables doctors to deliver personalized feedback with assistance from ML-enabled insights that improve patient care. From here, with Google’s help, we hope to continue simplifying Indonesia’s healthcare infrastructure and advance the application of AI in healthcare globally.
https://j.mp/2TN2nII

Highlight deals with Promotion Extensions

Adding special offers to your text ads is a powerful way to stand out on the search results page. Today, we’re announcing Promotion Extensions for all advertisers in the United States. Promotion Extensions allow you to highlight a special offer or a special deal in your text ad. Additionally, you can tie your deal to a holiday or special occasion. Promotion Extensions as they appear in a sample ad. Promotion Extensions are highly customizable: * Occasion (optional): You can select the holiday or special occasion that you wish to tie your promotion to. Example occasions include Black Friday, Chinese New Year, and Back to School. See the full list of available occasions. * Promotion type and promotion item: You can select the type of offer or discount and clarify which items are included in the promotion. Examples include “20% of select items” or “$5 off select services.” * Promotion details (optional): You can clarify offer requirements, for example “on order over $5” or “Code AMB123.” * Displayed start/end dates (optional): You can clarify offer deadline. Promotions will not deliver after the end date, but you can choose to run your promotion extensions prior to the start date. For example, you can provide customers a promotion code for an upcoming sale. Promotion Extensions are available to deliver only in the United States and are available on PC, tablet, and mobile ad experiences. Learn more about how to get started with adding Promotion Extensions. Curious about retail? Take advantage of other rich industry insights, consumer trends, and product updates by making your way to the Microsoft Advertising Retail hub, which has launched in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, France, and Spain. Or, listen to our Retail Unwrapped webcast on demand. Happy holiday planning! Let us know your thoughts We’re always ready to help you deliver your best results with Microsoft Advertising. For any questions or feedback, we encourage you to reach out to your Microsoft Advertising account manager, or send us an email directly at advertising-feedback@microsoft.com. You can also ping us on Twitter or suggest a feature on the Microsoft Advertising Feature Suggestions Forum.
https://j.mp/3emIVMr

World Vision Guatemala: Dark Silence

https://j.mp/384z7p9

Peruvian League Against Cancer: Boob Talk

Breast cancer is one of the deadliest diseases in Peru. Thousands of women die each year from this terrible disease, although this is one of the diseases that can be totally prevented. But most women don't take the preventive test because they are afraid to do it. For this reason, this campaign shows four very famous Peruvian actresses acting as if they were their own breasts, convincing each other to go for a mammogram.
https://j.mp/3mGWsRT

Sheba: #4AMStories

To kick-off National Cat Day, SHEBA launched their #4AMStories campaign in solidarity with cat owners everywhere who know what it’s like to get woken up in the early morning hours by their feline friends. All cat parents have to cope with that 4AM feline alarm clock at some point, but what they might not know is that cats are crepuscular creatures and are more active in the evening and nighttime hours. It’s their instinctual urge to wake their owners up by hunting, playing and feeding in the middle of the night. All they really need is some SHEBA to satisfy those nocturnal cravings. SHEBA wants to connect with cat owners in this moment of need and provide them with The SHEBA Presents the 4am Stories Podcast, which is hosted by Spotify, to help owners drift gently back to sleep thanks to a story performed by Doctor Dillon, AKA folk musician Steve Dan Mills. The brand is running ads at 4 a.m. on Instagram and Facebook that encourage cat owners to share their own #4AMStories for a chance to win free SHEBA. The campaign will be supported by featured content on SHEBA.com, organic and paid social content from the brand’s Instagram channel, custom content from cat influencers, a BuzzFeed homepage takeover and SHEBA-branded Instagram GIFs. Cat owners can share their #4AMStories on Instagram now through November 19. Winners will be announced in late November. https://www.sheba.com/lifestyle/details/how-to-convince-your-cat-to-le...
https://j.mp/2HJfhp2

Artgrid / Artlist: Get the most extraordinary shots in the Universe

"What if they had Artgrid stock footage in the moon landing," tells a fictional scenario in which Stanley Kubrick used stock footage to fake the moon landing.
https://j.mp/3mFYOAB

Stadia Savepoint: October updates

It’s time for another update to our Stadia Savepoint series, recapping the new games, features, and changes for Stadia in October. This month we celebrated some Good Stuff on Stadia, teaming up with YouTube Creators Lamarr Wilson and LaurenZside who revealed free and exclusive week-long demos for PAC-MAN™ Mega Tunnel Battle and Immortals Fenyx Rising, plus an OpenDev Beta for HUMANKIND. We can’t wait for these amazing games to launch on Stadia, starting with PAC-MAN Mega Tunnel Battle on November 17. Over three days we also revealed new games and content coming to Stadia including the Drastic Steps expansion for Orcs Must Die! 3 (Nov. 6), Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Nov. 24), ARK: Survival Evolved (early 2021), Hello Engineer (2021), Young Souls (2021), and Phoenix Point (2021). NEW Games on Stadia + Three FREE Demos | Official Recap Throughout October, players explored a Dungeons & Dragons adventure in Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access, fought against a surveillance state in Watch Dogs: Legion, and carved their path to vengeance in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. All of these games, plus many others that arrived this month, are now available for purchase on the Stadia store. For players that are subscribed to Stadia Pro, they received instant access to a library of 29 games in October, with even more available on November 1. Crowd Choice now available Crowd Choice, available in Baldur’s Gate 3 and Dead by Daylight, changes how games unfold when live streaming on YouTube. Viewers have the power to vote on decisions made by the player in each game. Play Stadia with mobile data Mobile data gameplay has graduated from Experiments and is now a fully supported feature on Stadia to play games using 4G and 5G. Data usage may use up to 2.7GB/hr. Gameplay is service-, network-, and connection-dependent, and this feature may not be available in all areas. Referral rewards for friends and family Refer someone for a free trial of Stadia Pro and they’ll get an extra free month of games. Plus, if they subscribe after their trial is up, you’ll get an extra free month of Stadia Pro as well. Terms apply. Push notifications on mobile Receive notifications in the Stadia app on Android and iOS devices about Stadia Pro games, incoming friend requests, and more. Stadia Pro updates * Claim six new games for free with Stadia Pro in November: Sniper Elite 4, Risk of Rain 2, The Gardens Between, Hello Neighbor: Hide & Seek, République, and Sundered: Eldritch Edition. * Twenty-nine existing games are still available to add to your Stadia Pro collection: Destiny 2: The Collection, PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, SteamWorld Dig, SteamWorld Dig 2, SteamWorld Heist, GYLT, Little Nightmares, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, SUPERHOT, Panzer Dragoon Remake, Crayta, West of Loathing, Orcs Must Die! 3, Strange Brigade, Just Shapes & Beats, Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break, Super Bomberman R Online, Gunsport, Hitman, Hello Neighbor, Metro: Last Light Redux, Embr Early Access, Dead by Daylight, Human Fall Flat, SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE, Lara Croft: Temple of Osiris, Celeste, and Jotun: Valhalla Edition. * Act quickly: It’s your last chance to add Just Shapes & Beats, Metro Last Light Redux, Strange Brigade, and West of Loathing to your Stadia Pro collection before November 1. * There are still ongoing discounts for both Stadia Pro subscribers and all players - check out the web or mobile Stadia store for the latest. October content launches on Stadia * Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access * Cake Bash * Crayta - Dark Circus * Dead by Daylight * HUMANKIND OpenDev Beta * Human: Fall Flat * Immortals Fenyx Rising Demo * PAC-MAN™ Mega Tunnel Battle Demo * PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS - Season 9 * Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice * Watch Dogs: Legion New games coming to Stadia announced this month * ARK: Survival Evolved * Assassin’s Creed Origins * Assassin’s Creed Syndicate * Assassin’s Creed Unity * Far Cry New Dawn * Far Cry 5 * HUMANKIND * Hello Engineer * Orcs Must Die! 3 - Drastic Steps * PAC-MAN™ Mega Tunnel Battle * Phoenix Point * Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon® Wildlands * Young Souls * Watch Dogs * Watch Dogs 2 That’s all for October—we’ll be back soon to share more updates. As always, stay tuned to the Stadia Community Blog, Facebook and Twitter for the latest news.
https://j.mp/35RS5fY

Helping Australian teens hone media literacy skills

On April 28, 1996 at the historical Port Arthur site in Tasmania, 35 people were tragically killed. Alannah and Madeline Mikac, aged six and three, along with their mother, died that day. Because of this terrible act of violence, Alannah and Madeline's father, Walter Mikac AM, and a small group of volunteers, created the Alannah & Madeline Foundation with the belief that all children should have a safe and happy childhood. For more than 20 years, the Alannah & Madeline Foundation has worked to safeguard every child’s basic right to live free from violence and serves as a beacon of hope for a better, safer world.  As the dangers children face today become increasingly complex, the Foundation is adapting and responding to modern challenges. To help young people become less susceptible to online harms like disinformation and hate speech, the organization is focusing on helping teens better understand their relationships with media. In Australia, as in the rest of the world, it’s more crucial than ever to help young people distinguish fact from fiction online. Research by Queensland University of Technology and Western Sydney University shows that many teenagers regularly consume news media, but their trust in the stories provided by news organizations has fallen significantly since 2017. More than half of young Australians pay little or no attention to the source of news stories found online, and only one third agree that they can tell “fake news” from real news. Teachers believe it's important to teach media literacy, but many feel constrained by barriers like a strict curriculum and a lack of confidence about the topic.  With support from Google.org, the Foundation set its sights on tackling this issue and worked with an advisory group of academics, industry experts and educators to develop Media Literacy Lab, a first-of-its-kind education resource for teachers and students aged 12-16. This e-learning platform helps Australia’s youth become media-savvy digital citizens, questioning what they see, practicing smart and safe online behaviors and seeking help when needed. A video from the foundation announcing their media literacy lab. The Lab aims to both increase the media literacy of young Australians and support teachers to build their confidence in teaching the subject. Media Literacy Lab has two portals: one for teachers to administer the Lab and engage in professional learning, and one for students to experience narrative-based learning. In the Teacher Portal, educators can easily facilitate lessons, access resources and view real-time student reports. Media Literacy Lab’s gamified learning modules, including new and carefully curated content from our partners, sit in the Student Portal. Media Literacy Lab empowers students to strengthen their ethical understanding and critical thinking skills, crucial to navigate and thrive in today’s digital ecosystem.   In its first month, we saw almost 200 Australian schools register, with nearly 270 educators facilitating the Lab and more than 100 users from other non-school settings like libraries and universities—a huge achievement amid a global pandemic.  As we shifted to remote work in March as a result of COVID-19, we increasingly used Google for Nonprofits tools for organization and collaboration. Google Drive ensures our documents are protected, creating an easy way to invite the right people to contribute during product development. We simultaneously used Google Docs and Sheets for project management and content design documentation. The ability to collaboratively work with Google products was useful to keep project momentum.  The Foundation recently extended the period to register and use Media Literacy Lab free-of-charge until the end of 2021. Next year, we will deliver a national series of professional learning events for teachers with expert guests and hold student workshops in critical media production. We will continue to support national media literacy research, partnerships, advocacy campaigns and policy development. With additional funding, we also plan to build new modules for upper primary students. Media Literacy Lab forms part of the Foundation’s crucial work in transforming how society thinks about–and responds to–the barriers to every child’s basic right to safety. We believe explicitly teaching young people media literacy can lead to strengthened digital civic engagement and contribute to safer civil discourse, benefiting children across Australia. 
https://j.mp/3jGExZZ

CallRail’s Lead Center is a virtual phone system and contact center for SMBs

It’s designed for small companies with between 3 and 20 employees. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3e5xt7W

More online protection with the new VPN by Google One

We’ve all done it. You’re sitting in a cafe browsing your favorite online store and you enter your credit card number while connected to an unsecured Wi-Fi network. While convenient, a public Wi-Fi network may be less secure than your personal one. This can put your personal information at risk of theft from hackers. To give you peace of mind that your data is safe, we’re announcing the new VPN by Google One on our 2 TB and higher plans to provide an extra layer of online protection for your Android phone.  We already build advanced security into all our products, and the VPN extends that security to encrypt all of your phone’s online traffic, no matter what app or browser you’re using. The VPN is built into the Google One app, so with just one tap, you can rest assured knowing your connection is safe from hackers. We’re also now rolling out Pro Sessions by Google One with VPN support. With Pro Sessions, you can schedule one-on-one online sessions with a Google expert to learn more about VPNs and how to stay safer online. You’ll get access to the VPN and Pro Sessions in addition to the 2 TB of storage and other member benefits you already get with the plan, like 10 percent back in store credit on all Google Store device purchases. Plus, if you’ve shared your 2 TB Google One plan with family members (up to five additional people), they can also enable the VPN on their own devices at no extra cost. These are just a few more ways that a Google One membership helps you get the most out of Google with more peace of mind and helpful experiences. Google Store rewards give you Store credit on hardware purchases from the Google Store. This is only available in U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany and United Kingdom. One thing to note on Pro Sessions: there are limited appointments available on a first come, first served basis. The VPN by Google One will roll out in the United States in the coming weeks through the Google One app (Android only) and will expand to more countries and to iOS, Windows and Mac in the coming months. Pro Sessions will also be available in the coming weeks to all 2 TB members in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. If you’re not already a member, you can sign up for a 2 TB Google One plan here.
https://j.mp/2JbEkRK

Google Ads Report Editor gets a new look

The Custom report builder will feel a bit more like Data Studio. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3e6xZSY

Could Google passage indexing be leveraging BERT?

How Google leverages BERT depends on the use of the term ‘Passage Indexing’ (although it’s identified as a ranking update). Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/2TxOE8L

Does the Google antitrust case make an Apple search engine more likely?

The DOJ may cause Apple to accelerate plans for its own engine. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/37Pyccf

Exploring AI for radiotherapy planning with Mayo Clinic

More than 18 million new cancer cases are diagnosed globally each year, and radiotherapy is one of the most common cancer treatments—used to treat over halfof cancers in the United States. But planning for a course of radiotherapy treatment is often a time-consuming and manual process for clinicians. The most labor-intensive step in planning is a technique called “contouring” which involves segmenting both the areas of cancer and nearby healthy tissues that are susceptible to radiation damage during treatment. Clinicians have to painstakingly draw lines around sensitive organs on scans—a time-intensive process that can take up to seven hours for a single patient. Technology has the potential to augment the work of doctors and other care providers, like the specialists who plan radiotherapy treatment. We’re collaborating with Mayo Clinic on research to develop an AI system that can support physicians, help reduce treatment planning time and improve the efficiency of radiotherapy. In this research partnership, Mayo Clinic and Google Health will work to develop an algorithm to assist clinicians in contouring healthy tissue and organs from tumors, and conduct research to better understand how this technology could be deployed effectively in clinical practice.  Mayo Clinic is an international center of excellence for cancer treatment with world-renowned radiation oncologists. Google researchers have studied how AI can potentially be used to augment other areas of healthcare—from mammographies to the early deployment of an AI system that detects diabetic retinopathy using eye scans.  In a previous collaboration with University College London Hospitals, Google researchers demonstrated how an AI system could analyze and segment medical scans of patients with head and neck cancer— similar to how expert clinicians would. Our research with Mayo Clinic will also focus on head and neck cancers, which are particularly challenging areas to contour, given the many delicate structures that sit close together.  In this first phase of research with Mayo Clinic, we hope to develop and validate a model as well as study how an AI system could be deployed in practice. The technology will not be used in a clinical setting and algorithms will be developed using only de-identified data. While cancer rates continue to rise, the shortage of radiotherapy experts continues to grow as well. Waiting for a radiotherapy treatment plan can be an agonizing experience for cancer patients, and we hope this research will eventually support a faster planning process and potentially help patients to access treatment sooner.
https://j.mp/35HbQXR

Online holiday sales could reach $200 billion according to Adobe

Smartphones will drive the majority of online retail traffic and 42% of sales. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/3owLgJD

Microsoft Clarity, the company’s tool for visualizing user experience, is out of beta

The tool provides site owners with visual heatmaps, session playbacks, filters and metrics to help them improve their user experience. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/35EO5zD

Investing in the next generation of NY tech talent

New York City is my home. I’m a proud graduate and parent of three children in the New York City public school system, and I chose to stay and build my career here. Twelve years ago, after a career on Wall Street, I joined Google and currently serve as Chief Information Officer (CIO) and co-site lead for Google’s growing New York campus. Like me, Google has been fortunate to call New York home and is committed to connecting students, teachers and job seekers to the local tech economy.  Today, as part of Google’s commitment to the continued growth of our city’s current and future tech workforce, Google.org is announcing $3.5 million in grants to three local organizations: Pursuit, ExpandEd Schools and CS4All.  Supporting organizations like these is especially important as the COVID-19 pandemic has unearthed unsettling truths about equity and access to resources, especially in underserved communities of color. As we navigate the short and long term effects of the pandemic, we must come together to create equitable solutions that meet the needs of the moment and provide a strong foundation for the future. This starts by making sure every New Yorker has access to a quality education and the training and resources needed for in-demand jobs—these grantees are working to make this possible.  Pursuit: Connecting New Yorkers to careers in tech  Pursuit creates economic opportunity for adults from low-income communities by training them to code and build careers in technology. Their fellows come from groups that are historically underrepresented in tech and are made up of majority Black or Latino people, women, immigrants and those without Bachelor’s degrees. Upon completing the fellowship, they go on to work at top tech companies, increasing their salaries from $18,000 to $85,000 on average. With $2 million in funding from Google.org, Pursuit will build on its work to remove systemic barriers preventing low-income communities from accessing careers in technology and connect 10,000 New Yorkers with jobs in the tech industry.    ExpandEd Schools: Supporting after-school educators   ExpandEdsupports a strong after-school system that enables students to thrive and educators to grow. Google.org's $1 million investment in ExpandED Pathways Fellowship Computer Science (CS) track will empower aspiring teachers of color from underserved communities to fulfill their professional goals through a 10-month after-school teaching practicum. Ultimately, this will help increase the number of diverse CS educators in New York City and nationwide. CS4All: Sustaining Computer Science education in public schools Computer Science for All (CS4All) began in 2015 as an innovative public-private partnership with the NYC Department of Education to train 5,000 teachers and bring equitable CS education to all 1.1 million public school students in NYC by 2025. As the program hits its halfway point, Google.org is providing $500,000 to fund their CS Leads program facilitated by the Fund for Public Schools. This will help provide more than 200 teachers with a comprehensive leadership training program focused on equity in CS education, peer coaching and in-school leadership. The creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of New Yorkers is one of the reasons Google calls this city home. And I’m proud that the work we do helps nurture that spirit. Whether it’s standing alongside 26 CEOs from the largest employers in New York to launch the New York Jobs CEO Council with the goal of hiring 100,000 traditionally underserved New Yorkers by 2030, committing to additional hiring efforts focused on Black+ talent in NY or developing alternative pathways into the workforce, we believe tech should be for everyone and we’re committed to making that a reality. 
https://j.mp/35NrjFU

How we’re crushing malware on Android Enterprise devices

October is the time when ghosts do their best haunting. Yet there are other unwelcome guests who cause havoc year-round, trying to sneak into your company phone and make real-world mischief. Malware and other threats are always on the mind of mobile security professionals, which is why the issue gets special attention every October for Cybersecurity Awareness Month. While malware is something to guard against for all smartphone users, enterprises must be especially mindful of protecting sensitive corporate data. It’s why Android ships with strong protections enabled through Google security services, with anti-phishing features coming from Google Safe Browsing and anti-malware features like Google Play Protect continuously monitoring for malware and removing any if discovered. With so much work taking place on mobile devices, built-in security features are essential. We are committed to providing transparency into our efforts to reduce Potentially Harmful Application (PHA) rates on devices and in Google Play. Recently, we specifically analyzed Android Enterprise devices to gauge how our enterprise devices fare when they use Google Security Services and Android Enterprise as their sole anti-malware solution. We were pleased to find only .003 percent of devices with any active PHAs. That’s less likely than being hit by a comet or asteroid in the United States! How our security services deliver for enterprises We’ve been able to keep the PHA rate on enterprise devices very low by combining built-in malware defense with management APIs so admins have the controls they need to minimize threats to their device fleets.  Google Play Protect scans over 100 billion apps billion apps and every, finding PHAs in real-time, notifying users of potential threats and removing them if necessary. Google Play Protect also works even if the device is offline and users can always perform a manual scan. With machine learning and human analysis, we work to prevent the spread and impact of malicious apps. Android Enterprise admins further tighten controls with managed Google Play. By using blocklist and allowlist they can control exactly which apps are allowed on devices, closing another potential opening for malware.  Admins can take other proactive steps such as forcing devices to install operating system updates and disabling the ability to install applications from unknown sources. EMM partners can leverage our APIs to implement security compliance into their mobility offerings. The SafetyNet Verify Apps API, for example, taps into our malware intelligence to help detect if any malware resides on the device. The integration of our security services and Android Enterprise management tools give our partners and customers the security they need for today’s threats. We’re pleased to see such positive results from these efforts and tangible evidence of how Android Enterprise management paired with our security services help provide comprehensive device protection.  Learn more about Android Enterprise security and how to take advantage of these essential security services.
https://j.mp/34yLasL

What passage indexing and natural language processing mean for the future of SEO

Google’s recent updates provide SEOs with more freedom to focus on users instead of bots. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
https://j.mp/34v0NS1

An update on our efforts to help Americans navigate COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges and emphasized how important it is for each of us to do our part to help find solutions. I’m sharing an update here on how Google is contributing to keep people safe and helping to get American businesses back up and running. Contributing to economic recovery efforts As I’ve written earlier, to help small businesses gain easier access to badly-needed capital, we founded the $170 million Grow with Google Small Business Fund alongside $10 million in Google.org grants, with an aim to help the most underserved small businesses, particularly those owned by women and minorities. In collaboration with Opportunity Finance Network, more than $53 million dollars of loans and Google.org grants have been allocated to community partners who are focused on serving rural, women, Black, Latino and Native borrowers, which helps American communities start to get back on their feet. Tires by Papi and Bailiwick Clothing Company are two such examples. Of course, our greatest contribution continues to be developing products to help people stay informed, adapt and get through this pandemic.  According to the Connected Commerce Council, nearly one in three small business owners report that without digital tools they would close all or parts of their business. To help small businesses, we rolled out many new, free product features earlier this year, so that they can inform their customers about things like takeout, delivery, no-contact delivery, or curbside pickup. Today, people can now find this information on Search and Maps for more than 2 million restaurants and retailers in the U.S. We’ve used Google’s Duplex technology to make calls to businesses and confirm things like temporary closures. This has enabled us to make 3 million updates to business information globally, which have been seen by people over 20 billion times in Search and Maps.  To help people searching for jobs, we have stepped up to help in many ways. We added new relevant features in the U.S. like showing jobs that can be done remotely. Google Cloud has partnered with different states to help jobseekers: we assisted Rhode Island’s Virtual Career Center, a new platform that  connects thousands of jobseekers with jobs and employment services; worked with the State of Illinois to develop a 24/7 Virtual Intelligent Agent on the IDES website; developed a chatbot, in partnership with the New Jersey Office of Innovation to provide real-time answers to the 20 most popular unemployment questions. These are just some of the examples.  We also transformed our free Grow with Google training to virtual formats and have already trained more than 1 million Americans on digital skills this year. The Google IT Support Professional Certificate—which takes beginner learners to entry-level jobs ready in under six months—has become the most popular certificate on Coursera during COVID-19. Providing trusted information Questions related to the pandemic are more searched than sports or music (and even elections) in every state.  Top coronavirus related searches in the U.S. this month: * Coronavirus symptoms * Coronavirus update * Coronavirus vaccine Across the U.S. people are searching on Google to stay informed and adapt. In 47 states, the top coronavirus-related question during the last six months has been “How many cases of coronavirus in [my state].” Search interest for “online courses” reached an all-time high in April this year, as did searches for “unemployment,”compared to search trends over the last 15 years.  During this time, we’ve also seen people seek out information to help them navigate their daily lives. For example, since the pandemic began, searches for “curbside pickup” have increased 13-fold compared to this time last year, while searches for “contact tracing” spiked 1,000 percent  in April and then reached an all-time high in May.  In March, we launched Search Knowledge Panels so when people search for information related to COVID-19, they immediately see local guidance, information about symptoms, prevention and treatments. We’ve committed $250 million in Ad Grants to help government agencies provide critical information related to COVID-19. As of today we’ve served more than 100 million PSAs from local public health agencies, which have been seen by tens of millions of people across the U.S. We also launched the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund to provide emergency funding for small and medium sized news organizations covering the pandemic. To date, we’ve distributed $9 million to U.S. newsrooms across all 50 states.  Helping people make safe choices  To help people make informed decisions about where to go, the COVID layer in Google Maps shows critical information about new cases in an area and how they’re trending. As of this month, our COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, which are used by public health agencies and researchers around the globe, have been downloaded more than 16 million times.  In May, we partnered with Apple to launch the Exposure Notifications System (ENS) and made it available to public health authorities around the world in their fight against COVID-19. Designed specifically and carefully to protect users’ privacy while helping public health authorities and governments manage countries’ re-opening, today 13 states and U.S. territories have built apps based on this ENS technology. In a short time, COVID-19 has changed how people live their lives. We’ll continue to update our products and roll out initiatives to help people and American businesses find trusted information, adapt and manage economic uncertainty.  
https://j.mp/3oyTvVx

Shepard Fairey / Obey Giant: Voting Rights are Human Rights

Shepard Fairey is an artist renowned for his famous “Hope” image of Barack Obama as well as the artwork on the current cover of Time magazine. Mr. Fairey has been equally active in Milwaukee, WI, where this month, along with local artists and the support of Wallpapered City, he painted a large voting rights mural on the Colby Abbot Building, located on Milwaukee St. The mural reads, “Voting Rights are Human Rights” and spans 7,400 square feet of wall space. Hanson Dodge, a Milwaukee-based independent advertising agency with deep ties to the community, documented the making of this mural. The project promotes unity, equity and creativity in Milwaukee. Fairey and his Obey Giant team worked with four Wisconsin artists -- Tyanna Buie, Niki Johnson, Tom Jones and Claudio Martinez -- along with Dyani White Hawk of Minnesota. In addition to Wallpapered City, local support was provided by Patti Keating-Kahn, Black Box Fund MKE, The Pfister and the Milwaukee Bucks. The mural is believed to be such a powerful expression that VISIT Milwaukee, which markets the Greater Milwaukee area, has added the "Voting Rights" mural to its list of many reasons to “Visit Milwaukee.”
https://j.mp/35Gz53Y

Logical Position helps clients succeed during the holiday season

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed eCommerce traffic to record levels. As more consumers elect to forgo crowded stores and do most of their shopping online, according to at least one survey, experts predict unprecedented eCommerce growth this holiday season. Logical Position is a digital marketing agency headquartered in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and we are proud to be recognized as Microsoft Advertising 2019 Global Channel Partner of the Year. As we head into the 2020 holiday shopping season, Logical Position is working to help our clients create successful shopping campaigns by integrating Microsoft Advertising Shopping Campaigns into their digital marketing strategies. Effective results in three quick steps Many companies already use shopping ads to drive high-quality traffic to their product pages on their website. Microsoft Advertising Shopping Campaigns work the same way by targeting high quality traffic on the Microsoft Search Network. With one out of every three desktop searches happening on the Microsoft network, companies that don’t take advantage of these powerful tools leave money on the table. The Logical Position in-house paid search teams get our clients started on the network with three quick steps. Step 1: Set up Universal Event Tracking (UET) These tags allow users to monitor website conversions. It’s critical to install these tags and verify that they are working correctly well in advance of the holiday season. Read our UET guide here. Step 2: Create the Microsoft Merchant Center and import product feed The Microsoft Merchant Center is the hub for Microsoft Shopping Campaigns. Within the Merchant Center, sellers create a data feed containing the relevant information for all the products they feature online. If a seller already uses Google Shopping, they can import their existing data feed directly into the Microsoft Merchant Center. Step 3: Duplicate existing campaigns with the Google Import tool Sellers don’t have to reinvent the wheel on Microsoft Advertising Shopping Campaigns. Logical Position uses the Google Import tool to import existing campaigns and ad groups directly into their client’s Microsoft Advertising account. After completing this step, sellers are ready to market their products to buyers on the Microsoft Search Network. Whenever possible, Logical Position account managers utilize the Promotions feature to convey sales to potential customers. This tag calls attention to a price drop, bundle, or special offer like free shipping which helps products stand out against competitors. Use every tool available With so much uncertainty in the market, many sellers are counting on this year’s holiday season to carry them into the new year. At Logical Position, we’ve found that businesses who utilize Microsoft Advertising Shopping Campaigns are able to take advantage of a host of tools designed to optimize campaigns, bring in desired profit, and see an immediate boost of relevant traffic to product pages. That’s why we always recommend Shopping Campaigns to help our clients thrive in a challenging environment and give them the competitive edge they’ll need to succeed. About the author: Cameron Marsella is an enterprise search team lead at Logical Position, an Inc. 500 company headquartered in Oregon with offices nationwide. The agency offers full-service PPC management, paid social management, SEO, and website design solutions for businesses large and small, and was ranked as the third best place to work in America by Inc. Magazine.
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Holiday 2020 is do or die for many SMBs

Small businesses need to focus their marketing on key consumer sites, especially Google, for survival into 2021. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Video: Mike Blumenthal on review attribution in local search

Reviews can be used for a way to speak to your customers and as a competitive intelligence tool. Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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Nike: You can't stop our voice

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