Report: A Google employee has tested positive for the coronavirus

A report from Business Insider today says that a Google employee has tested positive for the coronavirus. Google is a large company with more than 100,000 employees across many countries, and BI says that the employee had been in the company’s Zurich office before displaying symptoms…

A Google employee has tested positive for the coronavirus https://t.co/AEp7Mm484v

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) February 28, 2020

The company provided a statement to Business Insider today, saying “We can confirm that one employee from our Zurich office has been diagnosed with the coronavirus. They were in the Zurich office for a limited time, before they had any symptoms. We have taken – and will continue to take – all necessary precautionary measures, following the advice of public health officials, as we prioritize everyone’s health and safety.”

BI says that it is preventing Google employees from traveling to Iran as well as two Italian regions where the coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, is seeing large amounts of spread. Starting in early March, the company is restricting travel to South Korea and Japan as well.

Further, Recode is reporting that Google has recently put up signs in some Bay Area offices reminding people to wash their hands and cover their mouths.

Recode has also learned that Google recently put up signs in at least two Bay Area offices outside bathrooms reminding people to wash their hands and cover their mouths, with a link to an internal site about the coronavirus at the bottom. The intranet site has infection prevention tips like asking employees who host events to make sure there is sufficient hand sanitizer and “appropriate hand-washing facilities,” according to a source who works at the company.

Google also announced that its upcoming Google News Initiative Global Summit is canceled due to the “coronavirus situation.”

News: Google just canceled its upcoming Google News Initiative Global Summit due to the “coronavirus situation.” It was a two-day event, held in Google’s Sunnyvale office, bringing together hundreds people across the media industry

— Kerry Flynn (@kerrymflynn) February 28, 2020

The news also comes as Google’s annual developer conference is scheduled for mid-May. Other companies such as Facebook have already cancelled their annual events out of an abundance of caution, but Google has yet to make a decision. The company says they are monitoring the situation.

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Google’s Advice on How to Hire an SEO Company [Video]

Google shared a three-step guide on hiring an SEO for businesses who may be doing so for the first time.

This advice was provided in the latest episode of Google’s Search for Beginners series on YouTube, which is an extended version of the advice provided in the previous episode.

See: GOOGLE RECOMMENDS HIRING SEOS IN NEW ‘SEARCH FOR BEGINNERS’ VIDEO

The benefit of hiring an SEO, Google explains, is the potential to improve a site while saving time compared to doing in on your own.

Google warns businesses, however, that hiring an SEO also comes with the risk of damaging a site as well as its reputation.

With that said, Google provides a three-step process to vetting an SEO before hiring them which consists of:

1. An interview
2. A reference check
3. A technical audit

Here’s more about each of those steps.

Step One: The Interview

When interviewing an SEO agency to work on your site, Google recommends listening to make sure they’re focused on the right things.

For example, they should be focused on helping a business overall by improving how they appear in search results. Being focused too much on rankings and where a site appears in search results is a red flag, Google says.

It’s a good sign if they ask you questions like:

• What makes your business and services unique?
• What does your ideal customer look like?
• How do customers currently find your website?
• How does your business make money (and how can search help with that)?
• What other marketing channels do you use?
• Do you use offline advertising or social media?
• Who are your competitors and what are they doing well?

Consider it a red flag if you’re interviewing an SEO and they’re not interested in your business from a holistic standpoint. If that’s the case, then Google recommends finding someone else for the job.

Another red flag is unrealistic guarantees of ranking first in Google, as no one can promise that.

Step Two: Check References

The second step of the hiring process, as recommended by Google, is a reference check of past clients.

When checking references, Google advises asking questions to gauge how useful the SEO’s guidance was. One of the major things Google points out is asking whether or not the SEO’s results were sustainable.

The mark of a good practitioner, Google says, is their ability to help make SEO an integral part of general business operations.

While speaking with past clients, make sure the SEO was focused on their long term plans and not just quick fixes.

Step Three: Technical Audit

After checking references and narrowing down your candidates, it’s time to request a technical audit. The SEO should come back with a prioritized list of what should be improved to make a site more search-friendly.

Those suggestions should be based on data collected during the audit, and be targeted toward providing a better experience for human visitors (not just search engines).

The SEO should be able to estimate the overall investment required by the business, and the positive impact that will be achieved as a result.

What to do After Hiring an SEO

Lastly, Google provides a few bits of advice on what to do after you’ve hired an SEO.

Before any work is started, it’s important to work with the SEO and agree upon goals, metrics, and how results will be tracked.

Google emphasizes that you should know what you’re going to get out of working together from the very beginning.

For more details, see the full video below:

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source https://www.adinfusion.com/googles-advice-on-how-to-hire-an-seo-company-video/

Google Recommends Hiring SEOs in New ‘Search for Beginners’ Video

Google’s latest episode of “Search for Beginners” covers the top 5 things people should consider for their websites. We think Google saved the best for last because the fifth item on the list involves hiring an SEO.

Videos in the “Search for Beginners” series have been full of DIY tips up to this point, so it’s nice to see Google emphasize the benefits of hiring a professional SEO.

In fact, future videos in the “Search for Beginners” series will dive deeper into the topic of hiring SEOs. Here’s exactly what is stated in Google’s most recent video:

“Are you looking for someone to work on [your website] on your behalf? Hiring a search engine optimizer, or “SEO,” might be an option. SEOs are professionals who can help improve the visibility and ranking of your website. We’ll talk more about hiring an SEO in future episodes.”

Other Website Considerations for Beginners

For those interested, here is the complete list of Google’s top 5 website considerations for people who are new to SEO.

1. Check if your site is indexed: Perform a search for “site:your-website.com” to see if it’s indexed in Google Search.
2. Provide high quality content: Follow the advice in Google’s official webmaster guidelines and best practices documents.
3. Ensure website is fast and accessible on all devices: Visit g.co/mobilefriendly to test mobile-friendliness.
4. Ensure website is safe for visitors: Secure your website with a HTTPS connection.
5. Hire an SEO: Covered above.

See the full video below:

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source https://www.adinfusion.com/google-recommends-hiring-seos-in-new-search-for-beginners-video/

Mozilla Rolls Out Encrypted Browsing by Default for U.S. Firefox Users

Marketers have relied on third-party tracking cookies for the last 25 years to track consumer behavior online. Nearly all ad tech and martech platforms use cookies for targeting, retargeting, display advertising and behavioral marketing in general. Now, that’s all changing.

Today, Mozilla is flipping on the switch to turn on encrypted DNS over HTTPS for U.S. users by default. If you’re unfamiliar with the tech, the pitch is this feature will help prevent internet service providers from tracking the sites you go to.

DNS over HTTPS (DoH) is meant to address the inherent privacy vulnerabilities in how you surf the web. The Domain Name Service (DNS) is, in Mozilla’s words, “one of the oldest parts of internet architecture” and one that hasn’t seen a lot of changes in the past 30 years. This plays into tracking because when you go to a URL, your browser needs to look up the site’s corresponding IP address. It does that via the DNS. But, even if the site you’re visiting is encrypted via HTTPS, the DNS lookup is done over plain text. That means ISPs—or other entities—can, if they so choose, easily figure out what websites you’ve gone to and build up a profile of your browsing habits. DoH is meant to circumvent that by ensuring the DNS lookup is also encrypted. It won’t necessarily stop tracking wholesale, but it will make it more difficult.

Ready or not, the cookie crackdown is in full effect. The cumulative effect of Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) on Safari, Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) on Firefox, and more granular third-party cookie blocking on Chrome are making measuring digital marketing activities increasingly difficult.

That’s not to say that it’s the end of measurement, but things are going to be different from now on. The reality is that marketers need to completely rethink how to use testing frameworks for measuring marketing value.

While it seems pretty scary right now, keep in mind that cookies are a 25-year-old technology and we’ll definitely find a way to move on. It’s going to be all about exploring new technologies, innovation, and striking a balance between profit and privacy choices to avoid another wave of consumer backlash. Taking advantage of first-party data that you get when people intentionally engage with your brand is the first step toward accomplishing this.

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Google used AI and human moderation to purge over 75 million Google Maps reviews

Hundreds of millions of people contribute over 20 million reviews, ratings, and other pieces of content to Google Maps’ over 200 million points of interest daily — it’s how the platform continues to grow so rapidly. But user contributions are intrinsically fraught. That’s why increasingly, Google is using AI and machine learning to spot malicious contributions at submission time, ensuring they don’t reach the over 1 billion users who regularly use Maps.

In a blog post, Google said that it uses automated detection systems, including machine learning models, to scan millions of contributions to detect and remove policy-violating content. In the case of reviews, its systems audit every review before they’re published to Maps, looking for signs of fake or misleading content. And its machine learning models watch for specific words and phrases and examine patterns in the types of content an account has contributed in the past, while taking into account suspicious review patterns

Of course, AI isn’t perfect, which is why Google employs teams of trained operators and analysts who audit reviews, photos, business profiles, and other types of content, both individually and in bulk. In 2019 alone, with the aid of machine learning systems that improved in their ability to block policy-violating content and detect anomalies for manual review, human moderators removed more than 75 million policy-violating reviews and 4 million fake business profiles. They also took down more than 580,000 reviews and 258,000 business profiles that were reported directly to Google, and they reviewed and removed more than 10 million photos and 3 million videos that violated Maps’ policies and disabled more than 475,000 user accounts.

“The vast majority of contributions made to Maps are authentic, with policy-violating content seen less than one percent of the time. And we’ll continue to develop new tools and techniques to fight against bad actors,” said Maps director of product Kevin Reece. “Contributed content is an indispensable part of how we’re making Maps richer and more helpful for everyone.”

The metrics update comes after a Wall Street Journal report concluded that there are millions of fake listings on Maps, which have since been removed by Maps’ moderation team. In response to this and other controversies relating to user-submitted content, including an incident involving a drawing of an Android logo urinating on an Apple logo, Google has at various points shuttered public map editing tools and introduced new Maps moderation features.

This purge highlights an important point to anyone thinking of trying to manipulate their reviews to look better to new customers. If your ordinary business practices are such that you are regularly generating negative reviews, then any attempt at growing your business will in turn just generate negative reviews. That’s why it’s better to address the underlying problem than try and cover it up with fake reviews. Besides, it would sure suck to put a lot of work into securing a bunch of fake reviews only to wake up one morning to see them all wiped out by Google’s AI.

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Google ordered to reveal the author of Australian dentist’s bad review

An Australian court has ordered Google to identify the person behind an anonymous bad review of a dentist.

Dr Matthew Kabbabe, a teeth-whitening specialist in Melbourne, sought the order so he could sue for defamation.

He claimed user CBsm 23 had damaged his business by telling others to “STAY AWAY” from a procedure criticized as “extremely awkward and uncomfortable”.

The ruling forces the hand of the tech giant, which has previously defended allowing negative reviews on its site.

Under the order, Google will be required to pass to Dr Kabbabe any personal details such as any names, phone numbers, location metadata and IP addresses linked to the account.

International law allows for people to seek documents from overseas parties that they need for their case.

‘Groundbreaking’ case

Google had previously rejected the dentist’s requests for the review to be removed or to share information about its author.

According to his affidavit, Google had told Dr Kabbabe: “[W]e do not have any means to investigate where and when the ID was created.”

However, Justice Bernard Murphy ruled that Dr Kabbabe had grounds to pursue a defamation case and that Google was “likely to have or have had control of a document or thing that would help ascertain that description of the prospective respondent”.

Mr Kabbabe’s lawyer described the ruling as a “groundbreaking” win for small businesses and argued Google had a duty of care in providing a platform for potentially defamatory postings.

“If you’re out there trying to hide by anonymity, even via VPN, I think the court system’s catching up now and there are ways and means of obtaining that information,” Mark Stanarevic told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Google is yet to reply to queries about the ruling. The firm has previously been reluctant to remove bad reviews but has done so in several instances following court orders.

Last year, it told Australian law reform experts that defamation cases over online reviews could lead to the suppression of consumer rights and free speech.

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source https://www.adinfusion.com/google-ordered-to-reveal-the-author-of-australian-dentists-bad-review/