Appeals court rules in favor of Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter in anti-conservative bias suit

The same day Donald Trump took to Twitter to threaten to regulate or shut down social media sites, the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.C. dismissed a lawsuit accusing top tech companies of silencing conservative voices. Filed in 2018 by nonprofit Freedom Watch and right-wing gadfly Laura Loomer, the suit accused Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Google of stifling First Amendment rights.

The suit alleged that four of tech’s biggest names “have engaged in a conspiracy to intentionally and willfully suppress politically conservative content.” It specifically cited Loomer’s ban from Twitter and Facebook, following a tweet about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Also noted is her inability to grow an audience base and revenue on Google’s YouTube, suggesting that after Trump’s election “growth on these platforms has come to a complete halt, and its audience base and revenue generated has either plateaued or diminished.” Apple’s alleged role is less clear.

In the ruling, District Judge Trevor McFadden notes that Freedom Watch and Loomer failed to back up a claim that the companies were “state actors,” involved with the regulation of free speech.

“The Plaintiffs do not show how the Platforms’ alleged conduct may fairly be treated as actions taken by the government itself,” the judge writes. “Facebook and Twitter, for example, are private businesses that do not become ‘state actors’ based solely on the provision of their social media networks to the public.”

In other words, the companies cannot violate the first amendment, because banning users doesn’t constitute government abridgment of free speech. Per the decision, “Freedom Watch fails to point to additional facts indicating that these Platforms are engaged in state action and thus fails to state a viable First Amendment claim.”

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source https://www.adinfusion.com/appeals-court-rules-in-favor-of-google-apple-facebook-and-twitter-in-anti-conservative-bias-suit/

Google May 2020 Core Update – FAQs within SERPs NERFED

In a Twitter post earlier, the Google Search Liaison Twitter account announced that Google will be releasing a broad core algorithm update. Hours later, they announced that the update is now live and it will take a few weeks for it to roll out in all of their data centers.

Since the update will take a couple days to finish completely rolling out in Google’s data centers, it is tough determining the felt effects of it and it might take a week or more to gather some data related to the update. The past few days were pretty stable but we do expect to see some fluctuations in the next few days due to the update.

SEMrush Sensor

Volatility on SEMRush sensor has been pretty calm lately so you can’t infer much from that.

What has Google changed?

So the first thing I noticed this evening when I was checking some local SERPS was something I had grown kind of accustomed to seeing was missing: all the FAQ schema boxes attached to SERPS everyone’s been abusing are gone! Google nerfed FAQ schema!

OK but what is a nerf?

If you’re unaware – to “nerf” something means when developers reduce something’s ‘power’ or effectiveness within a video game. Often times this is to solve some problem in a video game (such as an ‘overpowered’ weapon/ability or super effective strategy), or to push the players in one direction or another (such as a new cosmetic/item/character).

Nerfs affect the ‘meta’ or prevailing strategy/characters/items used to win the game. In this way nerfs also give control to the developer of how the players play the game. i.e. nerfing a commonly used item to discourage the community from playing with it.

This originated wayback in the online gaming world of Ultima Online.

At one point in the game, the developers reduced the power of swords in melee combat.

This resulted in players complaining that it was like they were hitting each other with nerf bats, not swords.

From then on, if ever something gets made less worth while than it had been originally, it is considered ‘nerfed’

If you have been living under a rock these past few months, you might have missed everyone adding a list of FAQs and some FAQ schema markup to their pages which pretty consistently was rewarding you with a nice box of FAQs that showed up in the SERPS. This was a pretty dirty trick I shared a couple months ago that often times let you knock a competitor off the front page. For some niches it was getting pretty ridiculous,  seeing 2-3 different sites for the same query displaying all the FAQs was significantly lowering the amount of results shown.

It was pretty crazy how easy it was to knock someone off the front page – so I’m not surprised to see this get nerfed. From Google’s perspective, I’d guess they are dialing this back to improve the quality of search engine results pages.

How does this change affect us?

In our case, as SEO’s – how does this effect the meta? Well the silver lining is that I think this will actually lead to an improvement in CTR – sometimes implementing this schema would mean people would just get information from the FAQ dropdown and never even visit the site, i.e.  zero click searches. For those of us who do SEO for businesses that was hardly ever a good thing because we want to drive traffic to our site.

Personally I’m going to leave most of the FAQs on the pages where I put them because its a great way to beef up the amount of content on a page, and it’s also useful information for the visitors. #itwasgoodwhileitlasted

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source https://www.adinfusion.com/google-may-2020-core-update-faq-schema-nerfed/

Google Confirms May 2020 Core Algorithm Update Rolling Out Today – May 4th

Google’s Danny Sullivan has confirmed that a core algorithm update is rolling out today – May 4, 2020.

The update will officially be known as the “May 2020 Core Update.”

The May 2020 Core Update is now rolling out live. As is typical with these updates, it will typically take about one to two weeks to fully roll out.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) May 4, 2020

He followed up a few hours later to announce it was going live, and that it will take some time to roll out.

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source https://www.adinfusion.com/google-confirms-may-2020-core-algorithm-update-rolling-out-today-may-4th/

How To Edit Your Google My Business Listing With COVID-19 Updates

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve on a daily basis, we’re continuing to monitor the ongoing developments while remaining cognizant of the potential business impact for many of our partners and clients.

There is no doubt that many local business owners have made short term changes regarding their operations, at a minimum.

Because of this, we made this quick guide to help companies easily and quickly edit their GMB information and profile details reflecting how current operations are running under these abnormal times.

Download the Covid 19 GMB Guide

If you need anymore help with changing your Google My Business profiles, you can contact our team at AdInfusion and we’ll be in touch.

Stay healthy, stay safe, and may your business stay strong!

The post How To Edit Your Google My Business Listing With COVID-19 Updates appeared first on AdInfusion.

source https://www.adinfusion.com/how-to-edit-your-google-my-business-listing-with-covid-19-updates/

Facebook says coronavirus is pushing usage through the roof, but its business is hurting

Facebook is seeing an extreme spike in usage across the globe due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the company outlined in a blog post on Tuesday. But most usage is concentrated among private messaging and video calling, products the company does not monetize. As a result, the social media giant says it’s business is suffering while it struggles to keep its communication tools online and stable.

The blog post, penned by analytics chief Alex Schultz and engineering chief Jay Parikh, says total messaging across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp in harder hit areas of the globe, like Italy, has increased by more than 50 percent. Video calling on Messenger and WhatsApp in those same areas has more than doubled, the post says.

“WE’RE JUST TRYING TO KEEP THE LIGHTS ON OVER HERE.”

“The usage growth from COVID-19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day,” the duo writes. “Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home.”

Schultz and Parikh note that the spike in usage is not translating to a boon to its bottom line. Messaging services are not monetized like the Facebook News Feed or the standard Instagram feed, at the same time that digital ad spending is decreasing across the board in countries currently in lockdown to stem the spread of COVID-19. So Facebook is being “adversely affected” like many other businesses.

“Much of the increased traffic is happening on our messaging services, but we’ve also seen more people using our feed and stories products to get updates from their family and friends,” the post explains. “At the same time, our business is being adversely affected like so many others around the world. We don’t monetize many of the services where we’re seeing increased engagement, and we’ve seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19.”

“We’re just trying to keep the lights on over here,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told The New York Times in an interview published today, noting that part of the company’s struggles right now are because it’s keeping a vast majority of its 45,000-person workforce at home. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

The post Facebook says coronavirus is pushing usage through the roof, but its business is hurting appeared first on AdInfusion.

source https://www.adinfusion.com/facebook-says-coronavirus-is-pushing-usage-through-the-roof-but-its-business-is-hurting/

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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source https://www.adinfusion.com/report-a-google-employee-has-tested-positive-for-the-coronavirus/

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/