As part of an ongoing strategy to assist with the rapid evolution of the news industry, Google is introducing its Google News Initiative (GNI).

The GNI is the next step in the tech giant’s 15-year investment in the news industry.  For instance, last year they spent US $12.6 billion to drive 10 billion clicks to publisher’s websites for free. They have also worked closely with the industry to identify and help overcome key challenges, which led to the introduction of open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages, YouTube Player for Publishers, Google News Lab and much more.

But while these initiatives have aided publishers in Europe and the US, little has been done to assist the Australian news industry. The GNI is something that will address the issues facing Aussie journalists today, including the dramatic shifts in how journalism is created, consumed, and paid for. The program will be focussing on three core objectives:

• Elevate and strengthen quality journalism
• Evolve business models to drive sustainable growth
• Empower news organisations through technological innovation

Elevate and Strengthen Quality Journalism

Fake news. It’s something that has been rampant across the internet for years, but Google is now working with publishers to elevate the accuracy and quality of content to stem the flow of misinformation and disinformation.

“On our own platforms, we’re focused on combating misinformation during breaking news situations. Bad actors often target breaking news on Google platforms, increasing the likelihood that people are exposed to inaccurate content. So we’ve trained our systems to recognize these events and adjust our signals toward more authoritative content.”

This is similar to the approach that’s been taken on YouTube, where relevant content from verified news sources is highlighted in the ‘Top News’ shelf. One of the biggest areas of focus for Google in terms of misinformation is to combat fake news during major breaking news moments, like political elections. As such, they launched the Disinfo Lab alongside the First Draft to combat the spread of fake reporting across the net.

Evolve Business Models to Drive Sustainable Growth

Over the last decade, Google has worked in collaboration with publishers to help grow their ad revenue. However, recent insights have shown that consumers are willing to pay for digital news content, which gives publishers the potential to expand well beyond ad revenue. Google outlined a vision to diversify revenue streams for publishers late last year, but now they’re launching Subscribe with Google, which is an easy way for users to subscribe to various news outlets.

“Our goal with Subscribe with Google is to ease the subscription process to get more readers consuming publishers’ journalism, as quickly as possible.”

In October last year, Google announced their dedication to finding ways to grow publisher subscriptions using Google data, machine learning (ML) and DoubleClick infrastructure. Now, they’re in the early stages of testing a clearly defined ‘propensity to subscribe’ signal based on the ML models they’ve been working with. A trial program that was run through the St Louis Post-Dispatch in the states resulted in a 150 per cent increase in page views to their subscribe page, and triple the number of subscriptions on a month-over-month basis.

Empower News Organisations Through Technological Innovations

Google’s top priority for news organisations is to deploy technology that can improve newsroom efficiency, enrich storytelling experiences and protect journalists against cyber attacks from across the globe.

Presently, they’re doing things like using natural language processing API to help sort, label and categorise more than 3,000 articles a day for newspapers. They’ve also made it possible for the South China Morning Post to use Google Earth Studio to create immersive VR experiences.

But, they still want to do more. As such, they’ve launched Outline, which is an open-source tool from Jigsaw that allows news organisations to provide journalists from Australia and across the world with more access to online resources. For instance, this particular program makes it easy for news outlets to easily set up their own VPNs on a private server.

Google has also announced that they will be committing a whopping $300 million towards achieving these goals, while also deepening their commitment to building products and finding solutions for the news industries specific problems.

The post The Future of Digital Journalism appeared first on SEMA.

Google Australia launched the project last weekend by asking people to write a statement about themselves, or someone they love and respect, so the online giant can help people reclaim positive identity labels.

Each statement that was provided will be used to form an open data set that will help coders, developers and technologists across the globe teach artificial intelligence models how the LGBTIQ+ community speak about themselves.

One of the AI algorithms being used to make this project possible is Perspective. This tool is already being used by international news websites to assist with comment moderation. However, up until now, the full scope of its potential hasn’t been fully realised. The tool works by highlighting the toxicity of a comment as a person is leaving it. This will give commenters a chance to reflect on what they’re saying before they post it, and edit it. Google hopes this will help make online conversations more inclusive.

Originally rolled out in Sydney, the tool will be made available worldwide, so the tech giant can gather data that represents the global LGBTI+ community.

Google is a proud promoter of equality, with a number of the Project Respect team identifying as part of the LGBTI+ community.

“It’s been so great working alongside such a talented, passionate team to bring Project Respect to life. Many of us on the team identify as LGBTIQ+ – including me – and so we’ve experienced both the pride of being part of that community, and some of the challenges, first hand.”

While no official statement has been made about how any negative comments left in the system will be treated, Google has acknowledged that every step will be taken to ensure the success of the project.

Project Respect is now open online for people to leave their positive comments.

The post AI Set to Promote Equality Online – Google’s Project Respect appeared first on SEMA.

Over the past year, a number of advertisers have expressed concerns over the placement of their ads, with hundreds of advertisers actually pulling their advertising in early 2017 when their ads were placed alongside hate and extremist content.

Jump forward to 2018 and Google has announced three significant changes to YouTube advertising, in a bid to re-instill trust in their advertising network.

New Criteria for YouTube Monetisation

In the past, channels were required to reach 10,000 views before they would be eligible for the YouTube Partner Program (YPP), however, it has become clear that additional signals are required to determine if a site should be able to display ads. Instead of basing acceptance purely on views, channels will now be judged based on their channel size, audience engagement, and creator behaviour.

As of January 2018, new channels will need to have reached 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time over the past 12-months to be eligible for YPP. As of February 20, 2018, these changes will also be rolled out to existing YouTube channels that are already part of the YPP.

However, it doesn’t stop there! The platform will also be monitoring signals like community strikes, spam and other abuse flags, to ensure each channel is complying with YouTube’s policies. New and existing channels will be subject to ongoing evaluations, and any channels who breach their community guidelines will be removed from the program. If a channel receives three strikes, their channel and associated accounts will be removed from YouTube indefinitely, which is in accordance with their current guidelines.

These changes are expected to prevent spammers and irresponsible users from gaming the system in order to monetise inappropriate or unsuitable content. While a number of channels are expected to be affected, 95 per cent of channels within the YPP won’t be.

Updates to Google Preferred

Google is also updating Google Preferred, to ensure it’s offering both the most popular content and the most highly vetted.

The channels included in Google Preferred will now be manually reviewed, and ads will only run on videos that have been verified and meet the platform’s ad-friendly guidelines. Channel reviews will be finalised in the US by mid-February, and by the end of March in all other countries where the program is offered, including Australia.

Simpler, More Transparent Controls for Advertisers

In the coming months, Google will be introducing a three-tier suitability system that allows advertisers to reflect on their view of appropriate placements for their brand, while also understanding potential trade-offs.

Transparency over where ads will be running is also a major priority for the tech giant. They are currently in the process of developing third-party brand safety reporting on YouTube, which will help increase advertisers’ trust in YouTube’s network. This program is currently in beta mode with Integral Ad Science, and a beta mode with DoubleVerify is expected to launch soon.

The post 3 Key Changes to YouTube Monetisation appeared first on SEMA.

According to Google, the speed update will only affect sites that “deliver the slowest experience to users”. This means only a small percentage of websites will be impacted by the update. However, a slow site can still rank well, but only if the page in question has highly relevant, good quality content.

This update was announced after a recent study indicated that the average load time of a mobile landing page is 22 seconds, but 53 per cent of mobile users abandon their search if a page takes longer than a few seconds to load.

More than half of Australia’s overall web traffic comes from mobile devices, however, mobile conversion rates are lower than those on desktops. The study, comprised of 900,000 mobile ads’ landing pages across 126 countries, confirmed that the majority of mobile sites are too slow and bloated with too many slow-loading elements.

From these results, Google determined that 70 per cent of the pages analysed took at least seven seconds to load the visual elements displayed above the fold, while it took more than 10 seconds to load all of the visual content below the fold. During this time, the probability of a user abandoning their search increases with every second that passes.

Of the pages analysed, sites in the automotive, retail and technology sectors were among the slowest to load. It’s believed these slow load times could be attributed to how much data is often crammed into a single mobile page. Of the sites studied, 70 per cent contained more than 1MB, 36 per cent more than 2MB and 12 per cent were storing more than 4MB. Considering it takes seven seconds to load 1.49MB with a fast 3G connection, it’s safe to say that a large portion of mobile websites are storing too much data on a single page, which is affecting loading times.

In light of these findings, Google has reiterated how important it is for developers to consider how performance affects a user’s experience of a page, and to always remember to compress images.

Things You Should do Before July 2018

There’s still time to improve the load time of your clients’ sites before these changes are officially implemented. While there isn’t a tool that indicates whether or not a page will be affected by the new mobile speed ranking factor, there are a number of tools available that can analyse a site’s performance, including:

• Chrome User Experience Report
• Lighthouse
• PageSpeed Insights 

These tools can highlight key user experience metrics, the auditing quality of a web page (performance, accessibility, and etc), and how well a page performs against the Chrome UX Report.

You can also test a site’s mobile speed to see how it stacks up against user preferences with the Test my Site tool.

The post Google Announces That Mobile Speed Will Become a Ranking Factor appeared first on SEMA.

In the coming weeks, users will begin to see fewer viral videos and news articles from media companies and more content, like personal photos, from people they actually know.

In an interview, the company’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the changes are intended to maximise the amount of content with “meaningful interaction” that people are consuming while using the popular social media site.

Zuckerberg said that after studying the posts that have stressed or harmed users in the past the company wants to reduce the visibility of this “passive content”.

“We want to make sure our products are not just fun but are good for people,” he said.

“When people are engaging with people they’re close to, it’s more meaningful, more fulfilling,” said David Ginsberg, director of research at Facebook. “It’s good for your well-being.”

Facebook has been under fire for months over what it shows people and whether it has negatively influenced millions of its users in the past. There has been speculation that its algorithms have prioritised misleading news and information, leading to political discourse in many countries, especially during the 2016 US Presidential election.

Publishers, non-profits, and small business (among other groups) have expressed concern over the changes, as de-emphasising their posts will impact their ability to reach their customers. Facebook’s vice president of product placement, Adam Mosseri, has acknowledged that “there will be anxiety” from partners and publishers.

There are also questions as to whether these changes will cause users to spend their time elsewhere, as they won’t be seeing as much viral content appearing in their news feeds. Zuckerberg claims to have anticipated this, and feels that as long as users feel their time on the social media site is better spent, the business will ultimately benefit.

Zuckerberg’s announcement comes after his lengthy post on Facebook on January 5. In his post, he outlined how he wants to protect the “community from abuse and hate, defend it against interfering nation-states, and making sure that time on Facebook is well spent”.

“My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues. We won’t prevent all mistakes or abuse, but we currently make too many errors enforcing our policies and preventing misuse of our tools. If we’re successful this year then we’ll end 2018 on a much better trajectory,” he said.

In a recent interview, Zuckerberg said many of the discussions about Facebook’s responsibilities to the online community “prompted the company to get a better handle on some of the negative things that could happen in the system”.

According to surveys the company has conducted, people have said they felt the site has shifted too far from personal content and has been focussing too heavily on publisher content.

“This big wave of public content has really made us reflect: What are we really here to do?” Zuckerberg said. “If what we’re here to do is help people build relationships, then we need to adjust.”

The post Businesses Forecast to Cop the Brunt of Facebook’s News Feed Updates appeared first on SEMA.

Search Marketing Australia is officially opening up submissions to our blog. Dealing primarily with search marketing news, Google updates, and all things social media, we’re a one-stop resource for digital marketing professionals who want to keep up-to-date with industry trends, the latest tech, and all the tricks of the trade.

If you’re keen to get involved with the team at Search Marketing Australia and want to become a voice of authority within the industry, share your insights, or just let people know when something really cool has happened, you can share it right here!

All credit for submitted work goes directly to our contributors, and you’ll even get a neat little author bio and link back to your website or blog.

Want to know more? Check out our guest blogging guidelines here, and email us at contribute@searchmarketingaustralia.com.au. 

The post Become a Search Marketing Australia Guest Blogger! appeared first on SEMA.

Below are some of the main events worth attending in 2018.

January

Growth Hacking Strategies to Grow your Social Media Channels

When: January 17, 2018

Where: Academy Xi, 45 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, Vic 3000

Price: Free, register here!

Suitable for social media coordinators, marketing managers, business owners, account managers, or anyone working on a branded social platform will benefit from this course. Covering growth marketing strategies for Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, an overview of the psychology behind social media, tips for starting viral trends, and how to draw more traffic to your site via social media, plus much more!

Intrigue Summit Melbourne

When: January 31, 2018

Where: The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG)

Price: All Access Passes are $599 (increasing to $699 after January 10), while a VIP Pass costs $799 (increasing to $899 after January 10), and can be purchased here.

The Intrigue Summit offers digital marketers a chance to network with like-minded professionals and hear keynotes from the industry’s leading thought provokers. Covering everything from content generation, new technologies, the future of search engine algorithms and much more, this is a not-to-be-missed event.

March

ad:tech Sydney

When: March 22-23, 2018

Where: The Hilton, Sydney

Price: Starts at $399 to $1,299. You can register here.

ad:tech is the original industry authority for marketing and media technology, where marketing, technology and media communities assemble to share new ways of thinking, build strong partnerships, and define new strategies to compete in an ever-changing marketplace.

April

Big Digital Adelaide

When: April 18-20, 2018

Where: The Science Exchange, 55 Exchange Place, Adelaide, SA 5000

Price: Ticket prices range between $449 for a Big Pass and $549 for a Super Pass, plus a $4 booking fee. Purchase your tickets here.

With speakers from Microsoft and Yext, plus a number of the world’s leading digital marketing professionals, Big Digital will cover everything from AI to audience targeting.

May

B2B Marketing Leaders Forum APAC, Sydney

When: May 14-16

Where: Doltone House, Jones Bay Wharf, Sydney

Price: Prices start at $1,195

Targeted primarily at marketing departments, this forum focuses on increasing revenue building capabilities, as well sharing ideas, insights and actionable tips to help strengthen marketing efforts both in the traditional and digital marketing arena.

Search Marketing Summit Australia, Sydney

When: May 28-31, 2018

Where: TBA

Price: Prices start at $1,300

The Search Marketing Summit Australia is yet to release much information about the 2018 conference and workshops. But, if last year is anything to go by, there are bound to be some big names from Google and other major corporations discussing the future of the industry, and what search marketers need to be doing to dominate the rankings in 2018 and beyond.

October

Digital Marketing Innovation Summit, Sydney

When: October 4-5

Where: TBA

Price: Prices start at $600

With more than 25 industry speakers and 100 plus delegates, the Digital Marketing Innovation Summit is held annually in Sydney and brings together Australia’s leading marketing strategists. For two days, attendees can enjoy candid industry discussions, strategy sharing and networking.

Are there any other major conferences you know of? Let us know in the comments!

The post 7 Digital Marketing Conferences You Need to Attend in 2018 appeared first on SEMA.

The results might surprise you…

2017 in Review

Stress balls are a thing of the past, but fidget spinners were all the rage in 2017, and Google’s search queries prove it. ‘Fidget spinner’ appeared in three of the top trending lists, with people asking what they were and if they could DIY them.

Apparently, we’re also quite obsessed with slime, especially if it’s fluffy, borax-free or made from a glue-free alternative.

Not surprisingly, we were all about the AFL, horse racing, and cricket, with Melbourne Cup coming in as the third most searched term in Australia for the year.

It’s also clear that we loved Sophie Monk as The Bachelorette, as she comes in first on the list of trending people in the land down under, with Ed Sheeran and Hugh Hefner following closely behind her on an International scale.

Australians were also pretty keen to read up on the same-sex marriage vote, as well as why Australia Day falls on January 26.

Cyclone Debbie was also a much talked about topic, as well as Bali’s volcano, Hurricane Irma and the attacks in London, Las Vegas, and Manchester.

If that wasn’t already enough, we also tackled some pretty tough issues, like political tension in North Korea, what Bitcoin is and how it works, and thanks to Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, we all wanted to know what ‘covfefe’ is.

To get a little more specific, Google has released its full trending lists for Australia in 2017…

Overall

1. Australian Open 2017
2. Melbourne Cup 2017
3. Wimbledon 2017
4. Fidget spinner
5. Cyclone Debbie
6. iPhone 8
7. North Korea
8. Chris Cornell
9. iPhone X
10. Amazon Australia site

News

1. Cyclone Debbie
2. North Korea
3. Amazon Australia site
4. Hurricane Irma
5. Bali volcano
6. London
7. Las Vegas
8. Manchester
9. UK election
10. Schapelle Corby

Global People

1. Harvey Weinstein
2. Ed Sheeran
3. Kevin Spacey
4. Gal Gadot
5. Floyd Mayweather
6. Jake Paul
7. Post Malone
8. Pippa Middleton
9. Boy George
10. Macklemore

Aussies

1. Sophie Monk
2. Kate Fischer
3. Schapelle Corby
4. Ben McCormack
5. Dustin Martin
6. Cassie Sainsbury
7. Lisa Wilkinson
8. Paul Hogan
9. Katherine Langford
10. Amber Sherlock

Loss

1. Chris Cornell
2. Hugh Hefner
3. Chester Bennington
4. Tom Petty
5. Bill Paxton
6. David Cassidy
7. Nicky Hayden
8. John Clarke
9. Rich Piana
10. Malcolm Young

Sporting Events

1. Australian Open 2017
2. Melbourne Cup 2017
3. Wimbledon 2017
4. Mayweather McGregor fight
5. AFL Grand Final 2017
6. US Open 2017 Tennis
7. Mundine vs Green 2
8. ICC Champions Trophy 2017
9. AFL Fixtures 2017
10. Rugby League World Cup 2017

What is…?

1. What is MSG
2. What is Bitcoin
3. What is kimchi
4. What is a publican
5. What is covfefe
6. What is a fidget spinner
7. What is MSG and why is it bad
8. What is Sharia law
9. What is DACA
10. What is Good Friday

Why is…?

1. Why is Pandora shutting down
2. Why is Club Penguin shutting down
3. Why is Australia Day on 26 January
4. Why is it called Good Friday
5. Why is Nathan Lyon Garry
6. Why is my poop green
7. Why is Messenger crashing
8. Why is Snapchat down
9. Why is two up illegal
10. Why is my internet so slow

Recipes

1. Beef Stroganoff
2. Hot cross bun
3. Hollandaise sauce
4. Chilli con carne
5. Chicken Cacciatore
6. Bechamel sauce
7. Chicken parmigiana
8. Shepherd’s pie
9. Beef Bourguignon
10. Quiche Lorraine

How to Cook…?

1. How to cook tofu
2. How to cook eggplant
3. How to cook pasta
4. How to cook rice in microwave
5. How to cook smoked cod
6. How to cook silverside
7. How to cook lentils
8. How to cook salmon fillets
9. How to cook fennel
10. How to cook rhubarb

And that’s a wrap on 2017. We hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

The post Australia’s Most Searched Topics in 2017 appeared first on SEMA.

Google has recently confirmed that it’s made a change to the way it displays snippets in search results. Meta descriptions used to cap out at around 160 characters, however, now they can be as long as 320 characters.

Google has experimented with snippet lengths in the past, but has only started to roll out official changes since November this year. At the moment, roughly 51% of organic search results are now showing the longer lengths.

For example, a random Google search for ‘doughnuts’ returns a series of listings with meta descriptions appearing in both the new and the old formats.

When people started noticing that longer descriptions were appearing in search results, RankRanger started tracking these changes and determined that the average meta description is now sitting at around 230 characters.

What do These Changes Mean for Digital Marketers?

At the moment, it looks like nothing will change for digital marketers.

According to Danny Sullivan, the longer snippets are formed via “a dynamic process”, so digital marketers shouldn’t start expanding their tags.

To provide the longer, more informative snippet, Google is currently using the existing meta description, and then pulling extra relevant information from the page to bulk it up and provide extra value to users.

The post Google Rolls Out Changes to Meta Description Lengths appeared first on SEMA.

The report, which was compiled by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) in collaboration with the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA), has revealed that the amount of Australian content marketers focusing on building an audience through content is up 16 per cent on last year.

With 85 per cent of Australian organisations now using content marketing strategies to increase their brand awareness and drive ROI, it’s not surprising that the latest content marketing report has found that more and more businesses are experiencing successful content marketing outcomes.

Of the organisations surveyed, those who were the most committed to their content marketing strategies, whether handled in-house or outsourced, experienced the highest levels of success.

Results also found that less Australian content marketers are in the ‘first steps’ phase of their strategies (32 per cent), while more businesses felt they had progressed to the ‘adolescent’ content marketing phase (38 per cent). These results have shown improvement year on year.

It’s also worth noting that three out of five respondents (59 per cent) outsource at least one content marketing activity, while 41 per cent keep everything in-house.

Content creation (written content, design work, video production) is the most commonly outsourced activity (55 per cent), with content promotion and distribution coming in second at 28 per cent.

Of the companies surveyed, 66 per cent of them feel that their overall content marketing efforts have risen over the last 12 months, and 43 per cent described their efforts as extremely or very committed.

As a result, the bulk of Australian organisations are achieving success with their content marketing strategies.

Respondents attributed their increased levels of success to higher quality and more efficient content creation (75 per cent), strategy development (72 per cent), and making content marketing a higher priority (55 per cent). These areas are closely followed by content distribution and organisational changes, such as new content marketing roles or new management staff.

Email marketing, LinkedIn, and other forms of social media were the most successful content marketing platforms for respondents. A staggering 90 per cent of respondents were focusing their efforts on these areas, with research reports and interactive tools being the least popular forms of content marketing.

However, from concept through to the completion stage of any content marketing activities, there is still room for improvement, as more organisations rated this on the good to poor scale than they did on the very good to excellent scale.

To make the most of any content marketing strategy, it seems social media and email marketing are two of the biggest target areas for organisations, both of which are achieving the desired results.

* Data and images have been sourced from ‘Content Marketing in Australia: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends’. 

The post New Report Indicates Content Marketing in Australia is on the Rise appeared first on SEMA.