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November 30, 2020

Good morning, may all your brands and retailers have a wildly successful Cyber Monday.

We’ll be digging into the retail data throughout the week. We’d love to hear about your experiences: editors@searchengineland.com. 

Meanwhile in the SERPs, there is a funky test happening in Google Featured Snippets. Google confirmed to us, last week, that it is testing showing multiple links and content sources in web stories-style featured snippets. 

Google highlights jargon or technical terms in a snippet to give users more context. Users can get the info by hovering over the linked words and choose to click through to the reference sites. Clicking through on the snippet itself would take users to a Google page — at the time of this writing, these links were 404ing. 

It’s a small test and Google said it is going to be refining the experience, acknowledging the iteration, first spotted by Brodie Clark, has shortcomings. For publishers, these web stories are problematic for a couple of reasons, writes Barry Schwartz:

“First, Google is taking publisher’s featured snippets and adding links to sites that are not yours – links you did not add.

Second, Google is using their own AI to build these web stories and sourcing them as some featured snippets. Google’s AI builds this content based on numerous sources of content on the web, possibly partially from your own site. Are you getting credit?”

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
 
 
 
Social Short
 

Snapchat promotes it’s TikTok rival feed Spotlight on Twitter

Along with the announcement last week, Snapchat began promoting its new Spotlight feed on Twitter. Aimed squarely at TikTok, Snapchat’s Spotlight promoted posts highlight the curation of “the best of Snapchat” for users and the potential monetary reward for creators whose videos are chosen. TikTok also is no stranger to advertising on Twitter. 

Why we care. Snapchat is investing heavily in Spotlight to draw creator and user engagement in the face of TikTok’s rapid growth. The strategy is to pay creators whose Spotlight videos catch on. Any user can submit videos for Spotlight consideration, regardless of following, for a chance at a share of the $1 million daily lottery.    
 

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Search Shorts
 

Did Google release a Thanksgiving search update?

Thanksgiving Google search update. There are some signs of a possible Google search ranking update this week, the week of Thanksgiving.  The chatter is somewhat limited but the tools are mostly all showing big changes.  

Private domain registration. Google’s John Mueller said that using private domain name whois registration does not hurt your rankings in search.

URL prefix tool. Want to get some weird URLs out of Google Search? John Mueller from Google said “use URL or prefix-removal requests in Search Console to hide them.”
 

How to ensure customers know you care

Sponsored by Pegasystems

It may be a hard truth for us best-intentioned marketers to swallow, but two-thirds of customers believe that marketers do not care about their needs.

That’s according to a survey of 5,000 individuals by Pega. And when you look at what marketers face, it is easy to see how that kind of sentiment takes root.

“Think about the scale of your business,” said Andrew LeClair, senior product marketing manager at Pegasystems. “You’re trying to manage literally billions of interactions, with millions of customers, across hundreds and hundreds of programs, on dozens and dozens of channels — and that’s a lot of complexity. And unfortunately, that complexity leaves us exposed. There’s not a lot of chances for us to get it right, but there’s a ton of opportunities for things to go wrong, and it only takes one poor experience and the customer is out the door.”

Read More »
 

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What We're Reading
 

We've curated our picks from across the web so you can retire your feed reader.

4 Reasons Why Your Link-Building Campaign Isn’t Building Backlinks – Go Fish Digital

7 creative tips to improve your Web Stories – Google Blog

8 Core Themes to Focus Your SEO Content Strategy – State of Digital

Google Adds Messaging Button To Google Posts – Search Engine Roundtable

How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy – SEM Rush

New Google My Business Dashboard – Local University

SEO Optimization for Bing: Is it Really Worth Your Time? – Search Metrics

The 13-Step Web Content Audit to Boost Visibility in the Search Results – BruceClay

Why Doesn’t GMB Insights Data Match Search Console: A Case Study of 78 Listings & 1,560 Keywords – Sterling Sky Inc

Why You Want to Fix 404 Errors – SEO Theory
 
 

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