In it’s latest terms of service update, YouTube creators agree to allow the service to monetize their content with ads (or by charging users for access) but are not necessarily entitled to revenue sharing. To be eligible for YouTube’s revenue sharing Partner Program (YPP), channels need to have more than 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months and have more than 1,000 subscribers among other requirements. 

“This is part of our ongoing investments in new solutions, like Home Feed ads, that help advertisers responsibly tap into the full scale of YouTube to connect with their audiences and grow their businesses,” said YouTube.

Why we care. For advertisers, the change means there’s more advertising inventory on YouTube, which as the company noted, it has been focusing on. That begs the brand safety question. Do you want your ads on these channels? 

YouTube says its brand suitability controls have gotten better since many advertisers boycotted the platform over ads running alongside objectionable content in 2017. “Over the past three years, we improved our ability to identify appropriate placements for advertisers, in part by working closely with our advertising partners and industry organizations,” the company said. 

For creators, of course, it means YouTube can start earning revenue from your content before you become eligible for YPP. 

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More on Google passage indexing. Martin Splitt from Google was interviewed about passage indexing and he reiterated that (1) you do not optimize for them, if your site is well optimized, you are fine, this is just about Google being able to surface content within poorly optimized pages and (2) he described more about the difference between featured snippets and passages.

Google does test. Before Google launches new changes in search, it does test a lot.  Even if you do not like the results, that does not mean Google did not test them, said John Mueller of Google.

Thanksgiving Google easter egg. If you launch Google translate within Google Search, Google will let you translate words into Turkey talk – gobble gobble.

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A more helpful Google for families this holiday season – Google Blog

Google Adds Google Guaranteed Badges to Google Maps – Local University

Introducing Google News Initiative Conversations – Google Blog

Live Webinar: Intro to Reporting & the Google Ads Query Language – Google Ads Developer Blog

Google My Business Review Owner Replies Not Working For Some – Search Engine Roundtable

SEO for Landing Pages: Best Practices to Rank – SEM Rush

YouTube will run ads on some creator videos, but it won’t give them any of the revenue – The Verge