Happy New Years everyone! Here is the Google Doodle, their special logo, for New Year's Day 2017.
Google wrote on their doodle post:
Cheers to a new year! As 2017 makes its debut, we celebrate new beginnings and set our resolutions. Here’s to another year of exploring, learning, and growing!
For those celebrating New Years eve right now - be safe and have fun. To those waking up right now, happy and successful 2017!
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Search Engine Roundtable Stories:
Other Great Search Forum Threads:
Which topics drew the most attention within the search industry this year? From infographics to quizzes to advice, our top 10 columns of the year covered all the bases.
How can you improve your organic search results? Columnist Jason Decker outlines four basic steps to make your listings more compelling to searchers and prospects.
Here is the New Year’s eve Doodle from Google all decked out in jumpy balloons.
Columnist Chris Silver Smith takes a look at what could be a recent policy shift in Google’s longstanding informal policy of granting court-ordered defamation removal requests.
You’ve probably heard sayings like, “Life’s about the journey, not the destination,” but have you thought about putting this philosophy to work in local search? Columnist Lydia Jorden explains how to optimize for this trend.
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more. Google Paradise store: Source: Instagram Google holiday staircase: Source: Instagram Google wine gift: Source: Instagram Google […]
Columnist Jim Yu contends that to succeed in 2017, brands will need to coordinate organic and paid search marketing disciplines and understand how they can work together to build the relationship with customers.
Which stories got the SEO community fired up this year? Check out Search Engine Land’s top “All Things SEO” and “Link Week” columns of 2016 to find out!
Contributor Joy Hawkins warns about the likely unintended consequences of Google’s impending shutdown of Map Maker, calling for the search giant to create more transparency.
Google launched a new way to find new recipes for your New Years feast. The new recipe results are seen on mobile search.
While long-term efforts are SEO mainstays, contributor Julian Connors suggests more short-term reactive strategies can also have significant rankings impact.
Google celebrates the 250th birthday of Charles Macintosh, who invented the Macintosh raincoat in 1823.
This year will be seen as a watershed moment for mobile, with nearly every change reflecting mobile’s now-dominant contribution to search.
For the first time ever, Amazon Product Listing Ads have been popping up in what appears to be an AdWords test.
Product titles are among the most important factors influencing the performance of your Google Shopping campaigns. Contributor Andreas Reiffen shares data on how to optimize them.
Expanded text ads, the removal of the right rail in SERPs, and many other changes dominated the PPC world this past year. Read on to see Search Engine Land’s most popular paid search columns of 2016.
Publishers are asking questions about the effectiveness of Google’s AMP carousel. Columnist Barb Palser analyzed 235 million AMP search impressions to find answers.
Managing online citations, claimed and unclaimed listings, reviews and ratings, landing pages and data feeds for hundreds or thousands of locations has become time-consuming and costly for enterprise brands. Automating these processes can improve search rankings, increase productivity and lower CPCs due to better SEO. Marketing Land’s “Enterprise Local Marketing Automation Platforms” examines the market […]
Have a login form on an HTTP URL? You will need to switch it to an HTTPS URL if you want to avoid security warnings in Chrome in January.
So, your boss just told you that managing PPC is being added to your list of responsibilities. What to do? Columnist Pauline Jakober offers tips on how to get up to speed.
Hungry for some good local SEO content? Satisfy your hunger with Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular local search columns of the year.
Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus … but where exactly is he? Our guide to Santa trackers helps you locate Jolly St. Nick in a flash.
Google’s 2016 holiday doodle series included three separate animated images posted on December 23rd, 24th and 25th.
Initial fix merely bumped denial site down, then failed to work consistently. Now the denial site is gone from first page of results.
Which topics drew the most attention within the search industry this year? From infographics to quizzes to advice, our top 10 columns of the year on our sister site, Search Engine Land, covered all the bases.
While many of us will be thrilled to see 2016 in the rear-view mirror, there’s plenty in the digital marketing world worth remembering about the year.
Look back through a year in marketing technology with our most-read columns of 2016 on our sister site, MarTech Today!
Columnist Seth Price believes that the best martech sits at the intersection of old-school marketing and today’s digital technology, and next-gen CRMs that can manage this balance will help marketers connect with consumers in the most effective way possible.
Contributor Joy Hawkins warns about the likely unintended consequences of Google’s impending shutdown of Map Maker, calling for the search giant to create more transparency.
Columnist Megan Hannay takes a look at four big national brands that are taking advantage of local sponsorships and partnerships to connect with customers and communities.
What can behavioral science teach marketers about digital advertising? Contributor Peter Minnium dives into key learnings from behavioral scientists to help you know how to engage your prospects.
From new brand identities to major ad campaigns, CMOs from StubHub, Peloton and more share their top moments during the last 12 months.
Can Amazon create yet another successful sales day? We’ll find out this Friday.
Which stories got the SEO community fired up this year? Check out our sister site’s top “All Things SEO” and “Link Week” columns of 2016 to find out!
Using martech’s capabilities to deliver personalized content is great, but contributor Josh Todd challenges marketers to reap the rewards of true one-to-one messaging.
Publishers are asking questions about the effectiveness of Google’s AMP carousel. Columnist Barb Palser analyzed 235 million AMP search impressions to find answers.
Contributor AJ Wilcox bucks the conventional wisdom and outlines a process for maximizing ROI for your LinkedIn Ads.
Which social media trends caught marketers’ interest in 2016? Catch up on the topics that dominated our lives — and feeds — over the past year.
Get a 360° experience alongside Periscope broadcasters with new 360 Live video streaming.
It was the highest third quarter for digital advertising spending on record and reflects 20 percent year-over-year growth.
Amazon, Apple Music appear on Nielsen’s list, while Snapchat and Pandora are in the comSore top 10.
Getting email right has never been so important. In an effort to always give you the most up-to-date, reliable marketing advice, Whereoware has updated their Email Optimization Checklist – Capture, Convince, Close to reflect new email best practices. Whereoware’s Email Optimization Checklist walks through tried and true techniques for crafting and sending emails that capture […]
Expanded text ads, the removal of the right rail in SERPs and many other changes dominated the PPC world this past year. Read on to see the most popular paid search columns of 2016 from our sister site, Search Engine Land.
So, your boss just told you that managing PPC is being added to your list of responsibilities. What to do? Columnist Pauline Jakober offers tips on how to get up to speed.
Contributor Erik Matlick suggests new ways of thinking about data and technology that will characterize B2B marketing next year and beyond.
What are the most successful CMOs doing right? Read on for the marketing strategies that caught Marketing Land readers’ attention this year.
From artificial intelligence to Instagram’s latest tools, these three CMOs share the martech they were most excited about in 2016.
Ready to make some New Year’s resolutions for your email programs? Contributor Scott Heimes lays out concrete steps for getting a fresh start in 2017.
Echo Dot was the top-selling item on Amazon.com, with “millions sold worldwide.” Mobile shopping was up slightly over last year.
The authors — who were instrumental in the creation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act — call for governmental and industry safeguards.
Hungry for some good local SEO content? Satisfy your hunger with the 10 most popular local search columns of the year from our sister site, Search Engine Land.
Even many of the titans of the internet could do with a bit of optimization of their mobile sites. Contributor Marcus Miller offers a comprehensive view of how to ensure you’re making the most of the opportunity to forge ahead.
Contributor Jeff Baum explains how you can nurture your prospect through the entire buying journey using search ads and paid social.
Amazon Alexa, chatbots, and connected lightbulbs are now front-ends to business data for this New York City-based company.
The digital display ecosystem continued its evolution this year, with big acquisitions and the growth of formats like programmatic, video and native.
From Facebook’s math mistakes to LinkedIn’s sale to Twitter’s failed sale to Snapchat’s rebrand, 2016 was a weird, unforgettable year.
Google released responsive ads in July and announced cross-device remarketing, display location extensions and store visits in late September. Columnist and Googler Matt Lawson answers the top questions we’ve received on these features.
While the basics of content creation — make it valuable and spread the word about it! — remain static through time, the specific tools and techniques get regular updates. Catch up on this year’s most interesting developments in this essential space.
Columnist Chad White takes a close look at how email has changed since the 1990s and the trends that will shape email marketing in 2017.
I wasn’t exaggerating with that title. Sure, we cover a lot of Google-related news here on Search Engine Land, but now it can be definitively stated that it’s (in part) because that’s what you, our readers, crave.
We tallied all of the likes, favorites, shares, clicks, retweets and so on for every single social post across the Search Engine Land Facebook and Twitter communities over the past 12 months. Out of the top 10 most socially engaging stories across those communities — 20 stories in total — only ONE was not about Google. (Even the honorable mention in the Twitter roundup was from the Google Dance earlier this year during SMX West. It literally was our 7th most popular tweet of 2016. Scroll down and have a watch. You’ll see why.)
From AdWords updates to algorithm changes, the arrival of Expanded Text Ads to the sunsetting of PageRank score… there was a lot going on with the Big G this year. Let’s take a look back at the issues and announcements that scored the most social engagement across the board. (Catch up with all of our Search Engine Land Year In Review stories, while you’re at it!)
Search Engine Land’s Most Social Tweets Of 2016
1. Google officially throttling Keyword Planner data for low spending AdWords accounts — by Greg Finn, August 13
Google officially throttling Keyword Planner data for low spending AdWords accounts https://t.co/QgkyQCMmf9
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) August 13, 2016
2. Confirmed: Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide — by Matt McGee, February 19 (This story actually made the list three times. Three different tweets promoting this story throughout the week of publication ranked on the top 10 list, so… it’s kind of a big deal.)
Confirmed: @Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide by @mattmcgee https://t.co/TEtYEaQNPy
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) February 20, 2016
3. RIP #Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web — by Danny Sullivan, March 9
RIP #Google PageRank score: A retrospective on how it ruined the web by @dannysullivan https://t.co/WWIDXw8uii
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) March 10, 2016
4. Moz trims product line to focus on search, lays off 28% of staff — by Barry Schwartz, August 17
Moz trims product line to focus on search, lays off 28% of staff by @rustybrick https://t.co/1HvNShmfOb
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) August 17, 2016
5. Google expanded text ads are live, and device bidding & responsive ads for native roll out — by Ginny Marvin, July 26
Google has officially launched expanded text ads. https://t.co/271xtkomzD #ppcchat #SEM http://pic.twitter.com/PyTkvwW8aR
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) July 26, 2016
6. Google is completely redesigning AdWords: Offers first peek — by Ginny Marvin, March 28
Google is completely redesigning AdWords: Offers first peek by @ginnymarvin https://t.co/B9Zg98eDKH
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) March 28, 2016
7. Google’s New SERP Layout: The Biggest Winners & Losers — by Larry Kim, February 24
Google’s New SERP Layout: The Biggest Winners & Losers by @larrykim https://t.co/a40OWmnLEh
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) February 25, 2016
8. Saying a third of mobile searches are local, Google brings “Promoted Pins” to Maps — by Greg Sterling, May 24
The Big G is introducing new local search ads on @Google and @GoogleMaps: https://t.co/oDs0NarrCQ http://pic.twitter.com/FII0PHAEXS
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) May 24, 2016
9. Everything you need to know about Google’s “Possum” algorithm update — by Joy Hawkins, September 21
Everything you need to know about Google’s ‘Possum’ algorithm update by @joyannehawkins https://t.co/lVF5VUh59Q
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) September 21, 2016
10. The real impact of Google’s new paid search ad layout on organic search — by Winston Burton, March 28
What is the real impact of Google’s new paid search ad layout on organic search? Check in with Winston Burton: https://t.co/jyPbxyHabe #SEO
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) March 29, 2016
Honorable Mention
.@dchordigian shutting it down at #GoogleDance #SMX 👏🏻👏🏻 http://pic.twitter.com/71JWbay6St
— Search Engine Land (@sengineland) March 3, 2016
Because obvi.
Search Engine Land’s Most Social Facebook Posts Of 2016
1. Confirmed: Google To Stop Showing Ads On Right Side Of Desktop Search Results Worldwide — by Matt McGee, February 19
2. Google Panda Is Now Part Of Google’s Core Ranking Signals — by Barry Schwartz, January 12
3. Google Had A Major Core Ranking Algorithm Update This Past Weekend — by Barry Schwartz, January 12
4. Google has confirmed it is removing Toolbar PageRank — by Barry Schwartz, March 8
5. Google is completely redesigning AdWords: Offers first peek — by Ginny Marvin, March 28
6. Google expanded text ads are live, and device bidding & responsive ads for native roll out — by Ginny Marvin, July 26
7. Everything you need to know about Google’s ‘Possum’ algorithm update — by Joy Hawkins, September 21
8. Google+ Accounts No Longer Required For Leaving Local Reviews In Google — by Barry Schwartz, April 4
9. Study: Quality Backlinks & Comprehensive Content Are Still Biggest Factors In Google Rankings — by Greg Finn, January 20
10. iPhone Users, The AdWords App For iOS Has Arrived — by Ginny Marvin, January 28
Methodology: Top tweets were identified by native Twitter analytics. Top Facebook posts were identified using Simply Measured analytics.
Well, dear readers, we are mere hours away from officially making it through one of the more… unforgettable… years in recent memory. You sure were an interesting one, 2016, weren’t you? Sometimes in a good way. Sometimes in a *headdesk* way. And I’m not just referring to politics or pop culture. General ???-ness found its way into the online marketing industry, as well — as evidenced by some of our top content over the last 12 months.
Of course, it wasn’t all strange. Our tried-and-true MarTech Landscape, updated in March, blew minds all around and generated by far the most retweets, replies, favorites and clicks. Product announcements and redesigns were shared far and wide. Still, when one of the most major social networks has to own up to repeated miscalculations, and the tweeting habits of a presidential nominee turn hundreds of heads, you have to say to yourself… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We tallied likes, favorites, shares, clicks, retweets and everything in between to come up with the list below. In continuing coverage of our most popular stories of 2016, may I present to you: The most engaging stories across Marketing Land’s Twitter and Facebook communities.
(Interesting thing to bear in mind: There was barely any content overlap between the two social communities. Different strokes for different folks!)
Marketing Land’s Most Social Tweets Of 2016
1. Infographic: The 2016 Marketing Technology Landscape — by Marketing Land, March 21 (This story has since been ported over to our new sister site, MarTechToday.com.)
Infographic: The 2016 Marketing Technology Landscape by @marketingland https://t.co/3fOvlbSFIj
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) March 21, 2016
2. Google launches its Analytics 360 Suite to provide better marketing measurement tools for “micro-moments” — by Barry Levine, March 15
Google launches its Analytics 360 Suite to provide better marketing measurement tools for “micro-moments” https://t.co/zkQvAlD64k
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) March 15, 2016
3. Facebook Audience Network partners with third-party mediation platforms, including Twitter’s MoPub — by Ginny Marvin, March 24
Facebook Audience Network partners with third-party mediation platforms, including Twitter’s MoPub by @ginnymarvin https://t.co/nFPnh093Od
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) March 24, 2016
4. Trump Mostly Tweeting From An iPhone 2 Weeks After Apple Boycott Call — by Tim Peterson, March 4
Trump Mostly Tweeting From An iPhone 2 Weeks After Apple Boycott Call by @petersontee https://t.co/QMYPT0BxmV
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) March 4, 2016
5. Report: Europe readying “record-breaking” $3.4 billion antitrust fine against Google — by Greg Sterling, May 16
Report: Europe readying “record-breaking” $3.4 billion antitrust fine against Google by @gsterling https://t.co/xs64yB4RB2
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) May 16, 2016
6. Snapchat redesigns Discover tab to grab more attention for publishers — by Tim Peterson, June 7
.@Snapchat is looking to push more attention to its Discover section through a new redesign: https://t.co/0lm0tfJlG3 http://pic.twitter.com/Fn43i28tcY
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) June 7, 2016
7. Google Analytics App now offers Google Now-like automated insights — by Ginny Marvin, September 2
Google Analytics App now offers Google Now-like automated insights by @ginnymarvin https://t.co/0ZJNMUJ6mR
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) September 2, 2016
8. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Reassures #RIPTwitter Worries: Live Timeline Will Remain — by Danny Sullivan, February 6
Twitter CEO @Jack Dorsey Reassures #RIPTwitter Worries: Live Timeline Will Remain by @dannysullivan https://t.co/dESlBbRDxM
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) February 6, 2016
9. Inside Twitter’s video showcase at Tastemade’s Los Angeles studio — by Tim Peterson, May 13
Inside Twitter’s video showcase at Tastemade’s Los Angeles studio by @petersontee https://t.co/wrlEd6smbA
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) May 13, 2016
10. Content about content is king: 2016’s most popular columns on the topic — by Pamela Parker, December 27
Catch up on this year’s most interesting developments in content marketing: https://t.co/w6YYHu356a http://pic.twitter.com/CB7vDxp4CD
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) December 27, 2016
Honorable Mention
FAQ: Everything Facebook has admitted about its measurement errors — by Tim Peterson, December 16
UPDATED: Everything Facebook has admitted about its measurement errorshttps://t.co/CGvrO5kU7g http://pic.twitter.com/BYWZahx6i3
— Marketing Land (@Marketingland) December 16, 2016
Facebook’s errors with metrics and reporting were as numerous as they were frustrating…
Speaking of which — on to Facebook!
Marketing Land’s Most Social Facebook Posts Of 2016
1. Google launches its Analytics 360 Suite to provide better marketing measurement tools for “micro-moments” — by Barry Levine, March 15
2. Google Analytics’ new User Explorer report shows individual, anonymized website interactions — by Matt McGee, April 13
3. Marketers, Welcome To The World Of Emotional Analytics — by Barry Levine, January 12 (This story has since been ported over to our new sister site, MarTechToday.com.)
4. Prime Air: Amazon confirms that it’s launching its own air cargo service — by Matt McGee, August 5
5. 6 custom Google Analytics reports you should use for every CRO project — by Jeremy Smith, July 7
6. Google (finally) launches cross-device retargeting — by Ginny Marvin, September 26
7. Google Home demo video which makes it look pretty awesome #io16 — by Danny Sullivan, May 18 (Not a story, but a video demo natively shared on Facebook)
8. Google Launches Autotrack To Help Sites Get More Out Of Universal Analytics — by Ginny Marvin, February 23
9. Google Files Patent To Replace Social Media Marketers — by Tamar Weinberg, January 20
10. WordPress releases plugin to support Facebook Instant Articles — by Tamar Weinberg, March 7
See ya in 2017, friends!
Methodology: Top tweets were identified by native Twitter analytics. Top Facebook posts were identified using Simply Measured analytics.
Expanded text ads. Mobile-first index. Accelerated Mobile Pages. Possum. These are just a few of the many words and phrases we search marketers became intimately familiar with over the course of the past year.
Both within the search industry and outside of it, 2016 was a year marked by change — and no change got more attention from our columnists than Google’s decision to eliminate the right rail ads from its desktop search results. Readers were clearly eager to learn as much as possible about how these changes would impact their campaigns, as two of our top 10 columns were focused on this topic.
The local search community also dealt with some major changes, as the Possum update caused a huge shake-up within local search results. Local search expert Joy Hawkins wrote the definitive article on this unannounced Google update, which impacted up to 64 percent of local SERPs. Her excellent coverage of this development earned her the top spot in 2016.
After the emotional roller coaster that was 2016, many people are ready for this year to be over. But for those of you brave enough to want to relive it, here are Search Engine Land’s top 10 columns of the year:
[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]
Use my link to get $5 for signing into the Amazon App the first time: https://t.co/eOGgvAkNET #Amazon
— Kevin Hymes (@KevinMich43L) December 30, 2016
What a year it’s been in the digital marketing universe. No matter whether you were in display, social media, content marketing or email, you were likely kept busy by all of the developments that occupied the industry. From Google’s local results and AdWords display changes to the rise of video (including live video) and the effect of mobile usage on marketing strategies, our generous and talented contributors looked at all the angles in 2016.
For the in-depth lowdown on what happened in search marketing and martech, be sure to visit our sister sites, Search Engine Land and MarTech Today, for wrap-ups of 2016. Meanwhile, here on Marketing Land, affiliate marketing and its future prospects drew the most reader attention this year, while customer reviews and the sites that host them also sparked a lot of interest.
To be honest, it’s hard to make generalizations about our top 10 columns, because they ran the gamut of the industry and its disciplines. So, to catch up on the year that was and get ready for 2017, I’d recommend you check them all out yourselves:
Methodology: Columns published in 2016 are ranked in order of pageviews measured by Google Analytics. Data includes all columns published through November 30, 2016. Social data provided by SharedCount.
Those working in the field of digital marketing have been utilizing marketing technology (martech) in some way since the dawn of the industry. As the field grows larger and more complex, technology solutions have been necessary in order to organize and make sense of the ever-growing amount of data at our fingertips.
Yet, in many ways, martech is still in its infancy. This past year saw an explosion of marketing technology solutions as Scott Brinker expanded his popular Marketing Technology Landscape infographic to include nearly 3,500 companies, up from ~2000 last year and ~1000 in 2014. This surge of martech — and the resulting interest from the digital marketing community — is part of what inspired us to launch this very site earlier this year.
Our talented columnists here on MarTech Today are boldly exploring this new frontier and imparting their knowledge and wisdom upon the rest of us. From making predictions about what the near-future holds to sharing advice on how best to utilize existing tools, these savvy marketers are illuminating all the ways in which technology can be harnessed to achieve our marketing goals.
Following are the top ten columns of the year on MarTech Today.
[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
Expanded text ads. Mobile-first index. Accelerated Mobile Pages. Possum. These are just a few of the many words and phrases we search marketers became intimately familiar with over the course of the past year.
Both within the search industry and outside of it, 2016 was a year marked by change — and no change got more attention from our columnists than Google’s decision to eliminate the right rail ads from its desktop search results. Readers were clearly eager to learn as much as possible about how these changes would impact their campaigns, as two of our top 10 columns were focused on this topic.
The local search community also dealt with some major changes, as the Possum update caused a huge shake-up within local search results. Local search expert Joy Hawkins wrote the definitive article on this unannounced Google update, which impacted up to 64 percent of local SERPs. Her excellent coverage of this development earned her the top spot in 2016.
After the emotional roller coaster that was 2016, many people are ready for this year to be over. But for those of you brave enough to want to relive it, here are Search Engine Land’s top 10 columns of the year:
Methodology: Columns published in 2016 are ranked in order of page views measured by Google Analytics. Data includes all columns published through November 30, 2016. Social data provided by SharedCount.
The way consumers interact with brands is constantly changing, and with over 3,500 companies in the marketing technology landscape, there is no shortage of CRM tools and marketing software to keep companies up to speed. But mastering how to best leverage customer data and information technology is no easy feat, causing far too many services to lose focus on bringing efficiency to daily tasks and driving strong customer relationships.
For years, CRM tools have been sought after for fine-tuning customer management and easing administrative burdens, but questions still remain around how broad and complex these services should actually be. The direction of CRM has become muddied — it’s trying to be too many things to too many people. These broad offerings aren’t necessarily valuable for your business or unique target audience.
CRMs are focusing too heavily on providing extensive customer management solutions, when tailored customer marketing solutions would be a more effective way to strengthen customer relationships. No two industries or audiences are exactly alike, and your CRM and martech stack should reflect this reality to deliver everyday value to users.
The value of CRM is clear. Digital marketers need tools to help build their brand and connect with their customers. The days of casting a wide net and expecting companies across industries to buy into the “one size fits all” approach are past. The key to moving CRM toward a productive future is focus; we need to zoom in on everyday tasks specific to each industry, unpack how they could be made more efficient and offer unique solutions that bring productivity to the next level.
[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
You’re a savvy digital marketer. You follow Google best practices and read “all the SEO blogs.” You sound like a zookeeper with your extensive knowledge of Pandas, Penguins, Possums and Pigeons. You’re always looking for ways to improve organic search rankings. Instead of investing your time researching some of those gray (or even black) hat tactics that are oh so tempting, I suggest you take a step back and look at the basics of your organic SERP listing.
An area that often gets overlooked by digital marketers is engagement and the click-through rate (CTR) associated with their organic listings. No matter how much you improve your ranking, if your listing itself is not compelling, it’s all for nothing!
Google has not confirmed that CTR is a direct ranking factor, but this slide from a Google engineer at SMX West in March 2016 suggests that click-through rate plays a significant role.
Regardless of Google’s ranking algorithm, all digital marketers strive to make organic listings compelling to searchers and enticing to prospects. These recommendations will help you improve organic search results and drive additional qualified traffic.
In Google Analytics, navigate to Acquisition > Search Console > Landing Pages and export the data into a CSV or Excel document. Identify pages with high Impressions, a low Average Position and a relatively low CTR based on position.
AdvancedWebRanking.com has a great study on average CTR by position that you can use as a guide. This analysis will help you create a list of prioritized landing pages to be improved.
One of the best things you can do to increase the CTR for a listing is improve the effectiveness of the Page Title. Back in 2014, Google changed the Title Tag limit to be based on pixel length (estimated to be 512px) which resulted in a significant reduction in organic Title Tag width. In May of this year, SEOs everywhere rejoiced as Google expanded this limit to 600px, a 17 percent increase!
Take advantage of this increased space and the opportunity to include more high-priority keywords (if you haven’t already). An easy way to view your current Meta Tags is to download them from the free Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool.
The challenge is that the new pixel-based limit is harder to adhere to and more difficult to visualize than a simple character count. For example, a “W” takes up more space than an “l.” It’s all about size now, not number of characters. As you’re improving and expanding your Meta Tags, I recommend using a SERP Preview Tool. This will help you visualize how your listing (URL, Title and Description) will appear on a Google SERP.
After the Google SERP update in May, we noticed that popular SEO tools had not been updated to reflect the new guidelines, so we created our own Google SERP Tool to help SEO experts visualize the new, expanded pixel limits.
The best Page Titles are often written like a newspaper headline. They are intriguing, interesting, descriptive, and often evoke emotion. Here is an example of two boring headlines and one compelling/engaging headline that really stands out.
It’s still crucial to have target keywords in your Title Tag, but don’t ignore the importance of engaging prospects. Optimize for user intent first, and SEO keywords second. Here are a few proven tips for Title Tags:
Don’t forget to have a compelling and descriptive Meta Description as well. Use your Meta Description to complement and expand upon your Title Tag statement. Be persuasive; encourage an action.
Since Meta Descriptions have no explicit SEO value (other than CTR), don’t be obsessive about forcing keywords into your Description unless they fit naturally. Most of all, inspire curiosity and entice searchers to click.
The buzz for structured markup has quieted in the last few years, but this is a powerful strategy that should not be ignored. Rich snippets can really make your SERP jump off the page, increasing your CTR and stealing clicks right out of the hands of your competition.
Using structured markup properly can really make your products stand out. This example below shows powerful information such as star rating, number of reviews, price and if the product is in stock or not. That’s a lot of valuable information in the search engine results!
Using the Recipe structured markup can also be really powerful. In the snapshot below, you can see a large photo and most of the ingredients needed for a recipe. It really jumps off the page as the first result. For the second result, you notice the star rating, number of reviews, time to cook and, of course, a picture! Wow, that’s powerful.
Recipe reviews are so popular that if you’re not using them, you may not make the first page of Google. The good news is that there are a variety of WordPress plugins and free tools to help make implementation very simple.
Some other powerful rich snippets are breadcrumbs, music, (notable) people, video content and events. You can find a rich snippet to improve click-through rate for almost every page imaginable. Google has a great Guide to Structured Markup, a Testing Tool, and even a Data Highlighter to use structured markup from the Google Search Console without having to implement any code. There are no excuses for not using these free features!
Once you expand and enhance your Meta Tags, track progress in Google Search Console. Continue to test and improve your organic listing over time.
You might be shocked by the dramatic increase in organic traffic delivered simply by getting back to the basics of writing a unique, compelling and relevant Page Title and Description. Remember, your Meta Tag is the only thing standing between a search result and a visitor!
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Google’s Map Maker has often received bad press due to the amount of spam that originates from users of the product. In May of 2015, Map Maker was actually shut down to help prevent disasters like this one. So Google’s announcement that they’re shutting down Map Maker entirely in March of 2017 made a lot of people really happy.
It’s the end of spam, right? We should all be celebrating, right?
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth is that users — some with less-than-virtuous motives — will still be able to make edits to business listings, just like before. Instead of doing it on Map Maker, however, they will do it through Google Maps by pressing “suggest an edit” on the listing.
Spammers know this, of course, and have already shifted the majority of their edits to Google Maps because it hides their activity from the general public.
Currently, when a user makes an edit to a listing on Map Maker, the edit history on the listing shows their username, and you can see what other edits they’ve made.
This feature of Map Maker makes it much easier for power Maps users and marketing companies to chase down spammers and report them to Google (there is an option to report the user, as well).
With Google Maps, however, the users are completely anonymous, and there is no way for anyone, other than Google, to see what types of edits they have made in the past and who else they may have sabotaged.
[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
Largely thanks to display ads, social media, your mobile phone and so on, local marketing is no longer a fragmented, piecemeal space. But while many local SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) are moving to automated marketing platforms, some of their national counterparts are slowly and surely building market share via scaled grassroots marketing.
These national brands are using local sponsorships and partnerships as a way to court customers where they are. Rather than approaching local customers with a generic ad from Columbus to Catalina, these companies are sponsoring the t-shirts for your kid’s Little League team, and they’re donating to music schools and local breast cancer support groups.
And they’re seeing returns, in market share, company culture and support in the face of scandal — as in big-bank-in-hot-water kind of scandal.
But that comes later.
Let’s start with the pacers.
Before the mid-2000s, only the most elite marathon participants paced themselves for the entire 26.2 miles. Often, jittery runners started out too fast on race day, then puttered out after a few miles. Clif Bar sponsor teams noticed this trend, so they paid experienced runners to serve as branded pacers at marathons across the US.
These pacers dress in Clif Bar swag and give race participants friendly conversation and group cheers, plus a steady pace to match for their goal time. The service is completely free, save the cost of being bucketed as a potential customer.
In the fall of 2010, Michelle Ferguson, executive VP of Food & Innovation at Clif Bar, spoke to a business school audience on the role of the consumer in brand building. She explained how her employer made a name for itself in the sports nutrition industry, with grassroots marketing as a bedrock of its outreach strategy.
Ferguson cited marathon pacers and other Clif Bar-sponsored race treats, such as dance parties at mile 21 of long races, as examples of their customer-facing strategy. She said:
The premise for our marketing is centered around grassroots marketing, or building consumer relationships. Realizing that in every interaction we have a consumer, we have the chance for that person to become an advocate, a friend, a supporter, [reach] someone who is upset with us, as well, and also have a chance for us to learn something.
Six years later, Clif Bar remains among the top 10 US-based companies whose online footprint reflects active sponsorship of local organizations, and it’s the only business on this list that isn’t in the Fortune 500.
But Ferguson credited Clif Bar’s grassroots strategy with more than outward-facing marketing. She explained that it also provided a culture of customer listening, via IRL (In Real Life) interactions. For example, through customer service and field marketing, Clif Bar learned that women wanted a lower-calorie version of the standard Clif Bar, which led to the creation of the Luna bar and brand.
Dick’s Sporting Goods, another national business named as a top 10 local donor, is also succeeding in many communities where its former competitor, Sports Authority, failed. Sports Authority announced the closing of all remaining stores in May 2016, and while there were many reasons for its demise, including large amounts of debt, some industry experts pointed to the company’s inability to distinguish itself as a brand as a factor.
Meanwhile, Dick’s Sporting Goods employs many community marketing managers who work to dole out funds to youth sports teams in their area. In another move to scale local sponsorships, Dick’s partnered with Donors Choose, the crowdfunding-for-classrooms nonprofit, to help fund sports teams that were using the platform to raise funds, and the retailer has pledged $25 million in donations.
But is local giving a marketing strategy, or simply a “nice thing to do” with profits? Did Dick’s Sporting Goods’ support of local communities take potential customers from Sports Authority stores? Did Clif Bar increase their market share due to swag at marathons and secret handshakes?
The ROI on hyperlocal sponsorships is harder to pin down than with PPC ads, but brands have found ways to include metrics and measure results in sponsorships strategies.
I spoke with Christopher Danz, Marketing Metro Team Leader of Whole Foods in Durham, N.C., who joined the organic grocery retailer from Microsoft. For local opportunities that fit the brand’s mission, such as healthy eating events, they’re pretty liberal with donations, Danz said. But for others, he uses internal models to distribute funds:
There are two of us that handle the requests for all five, soon to be six, stores in the Triangle [region]. Without a formula, it would be hard to know what to do with a request. To make the most impartial judgment you can make, you need formulas.
And beyond direct ROI, for brands who give, the loyalty of grateful customers has proven a worthy investment. Wells Fargo, for example, tops our hyperlocal giving list, as each branch is given $1,000 to donate locally as its employees choose.
The Wells Fargo marketing team developed a strategy of creating billboards in cities where they sponsor many local nonprofits.
I spoke with three regional Wells Fargo marketing managers on the effects of that program.
“Our mission is to be a part of the community and help the community to be successful,” said Debbie Ragsdale, Regional Marketing Director for Wells Fargo. “Banks are dependent on the community being successful.”
For many brands, “mission” and customer acquisition are intertwined. If a community’s youth are taught the importance of saving, logic follows that they’ll open an account with the bank that started the conversation. If a city’s high schools are able to continue sports teams, the players will need to shop for gear. And if a company finds itself immersed in bad press, its benefactors may remain allies.
Josh Dunn, VP and corporate communications manager at Wells Fargo, said that the brand’s investment in nonprofits has given some news outlets a different Wells Fargo-based story to cover.
Specifically, Dunn pointed to a recent ad run by United Way in USA Today in support of Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo took their sponsorships a step further by launching an advertising campaign in communities where they support local nonprofits.
“In the current environment Wells Fargo is in, we’ve gotten incredible support from the nonprofits and organizations we’ve worked with,” he said. “They’ve seen what’s gone on in the news. And they’ve really stood up for us, saying that’s not the Wells Fargo they know.”
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.
A number of attorneys who specialize in online defamation/libel cases have reported to me that Google has recently suspended its longstanding, informal policy of removing URLs from US search results that are specified in duly executed court orders. This poses a major paradigm shift for many victims of online reputation attacks.
Beginning around August or September of this year, a number of attorneys from across the US began receiving blanket denials after submitting requests to remove defamatory content from Google’s search results.
Since at least 2009, Google has had an informal policy of accepting many removal requests when accompanied by a properly executed court order specifying defamatory/libelous content at specific URLs. I’ve personally seen a number of cases where hundreds and even thousands of URLs have been submitted with court orders, and Google has removed those URLs from search results.
But they’ve now stopped. Not for every single request, but for a sufficient number that it’s clear something has changed.
It’s worthwhile to note that search engines, and various other types of online sites and services, were made immune in the United States from liability for things like defamation/libel by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“CDA”). For hundreds of years of established law, publishers (such as of books and newspapers) could be held responsible for content published through them.
With the advent of the internet age, it was initially unclear how some types of websites should be categorized — were they publishers, and should therefore be held directly accountable for defamatory content, or were they merely distributors of others’ content, similar to libraries and bookstores, and should therefore not be considered liable for their content? There were concerns that categorizing all types of sites as publishers would potentially have a depressing effect on innovation and business in the nascent internet.
As the Digital Media Law Project states, in 1996, Congress elected to clarify any ambiguity and to simultaneously provide protection for many types of sites by legally defining them as not being publishers:
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.“interactive computer service” means any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server.
Most courts have held that through these provisions, Congress granted interactive services of all types, including blogs, forums, and listservs, immunity from tort liability so long as the information is provided by a third party.
Google’s help page for requesting removal of content cites Section 230 of the CDA for US users:
Despite this signpost that outright states, “Google does not remove allegedly defamatory material from our search results…”, in practice, Google has long chosen to act upon court orders and removed libel and defamation from the search results (legally speaking, court orders identifying such content makes it no longer “allegedly”).
For victims damaged by false statements online, Google’s de facto policy of removing defamation from their results has been a godsend.
I spoke with multiple attorneys specializing in online defamation across the country, and they all report similar responses from Google recently where the company declined to act on requests to remove URLs listed in court orders. The responses for these included a brief statement reading:
“At this time, Google has decided not to take action.”
It’s not unusual for Google to sometimes push back on such requests in instances where a court order is not specific enough, where the legal work has been sloppy or where URLs are incorrect. But the current denial responses do not appear to be due to those types of protocol mistakes.
Some requests appear to be still undergoing reviews and consideration, and some related to prior removals appear to be still pending consideration. The door to defamation removals may not be completely closed. But some requests are simply being declined with no indication as to why. And they are the sorts of requests that were previously being reliably removed.
We reached out to Google, but they have chosen not to make any official statement at this time. I’ve been informed that Google may still elect to act upon court-ordered libel/defamation removal requests if they choose, on a case-by-case basis. As their help page established, they consider themselves not legally obligated to do so.
For the professionals who assist companies and individuals with legal removals, the lack of explanation around the apparent policy-shift or process-shift is very disturbing, and makes it difficult to convey reasonable expectations to defamation victims. And, in many cases, lack of action on Google’s part will create greater hardship for victims, or will even eliminate any real recourse at all.
The abrupt change in policy has invited a lot of speculation.
I know from multiple past discussions with various search engine company insiders that they consider removals to be undesirably costly, and that materials published on others’ websites are not particularly their responsibility. Quoting what one insider once told me, “This is a project that does not make money for the company, and does not save money for the company, so it is a low priority.”
Electing to not take action on defamation removal requests seems in line with this. They are a business, and should not necessarily be motivated purely out of altruism, according to this line of thinking.
It is undoubtedly costly. Google processes thousands of URL removal requests and maintains staff dedicated to all types of legal removal reviews.
Removal requests may also be philosophically troubling in many instances. According to their Transparency Report, many removal requests citing defamation originate from government agencies and law enforcement. (Albeit, it seems likely that many of these removal requests may originate from countries that do not have as strong freedom-of-speech laws as found in the United States.)
Perhaps Google is halting many US defamation removals to make a statement against censorship, here at the tail end of what could be the most rancorous political race in the world’s history.
It’s undoubtedly upsetting for fair-minded employees to be in the position of sometimes removing URLs that critique governments and politicians for countries where it may be deemed illegal to say negative things about officials. But this does not seem to explain what is going on here, since the requests being submitted do not appear to be unfair attempts to censor, but rather malicious and untrue attacks on individuals and companies.
Another explanation could be due to revelations from earlier this year that some unethical attorneys and reputation agencies have abused Google’s removal process and perhaps committed fraudulent actions in the process.
In the spring, Pissed Consumer reported that a number of suspicious lawsuits with purportedly bogus defendants were filed in California courts to obtain defamation court orders enabling URLs to get delisted by Google. In October, Pissed Consumer sued a reputation management company and attorneys that are alleged to be behind “sham lawsuits” and “stooge defendants” that were used to fool Google into removing undesirable consumer reviews.
It seems likely that the revelations around these abuses may have factored into the company’s decision to decline to act on some removal requests. Could it be that Google is now applying some more restrictive requirements around court orders that it will accept in the wake of the unethical manipulation?
Possibly. But, having reviewed some of these requests, I don’t see sloppiness or commonalities with the sorts of things that Pissed Consumer has complained of. If motivated by the abuses alleged by Pissed Consumer, Google could merely be starting to demonstrate that they are autonomous in their decisions about whether or not to remove something.
For the attorneys and their clients who are now failing to procure intervention on the part of Google after they have gone through ofttimes-lengthy and costly litigation processes, the abrupt apparent change in policy and lack of explanation are upsetting and confusing. Is this shift temporary? Should they continue to submit the requests again later? Should they modify the requests in some way? Does Google desire different verbiage in court orders now?
Google is currently silent on the matter. But the statements that Google will not take action may be communicating all that victims may now expect: Your removal requests may be futile.
To a very large degree, search engines have become the internet. If something is not indexed by Google or Bing, or it isn’t searchable and prominent within the search engines, it might as well not exist.
When people are seeking information about a subject, they turn to search engines. So, if the listings on the first page or two of search results contain false, negative and damaging items about a subject, this is where people are often most likely to encounter them. The search engines are the starting point, the gateway to the internet.
Being able to remove results directly from Google largely snaps the connection between the public and the libelous/defamatory content. This option has been the best path for obtaining relief for many victims in terms of comprehensiveness and speed.
Google’s suggestion that one should seek relief by going directly to a webmaster to get the damaging content removed at the source will not work for victims in many cases. If the originating site is also immune under the CDA, then one may not be able to get materials removed, and they will live on in the search results.
Consider Ripoff Report — a site that allows people to post any claims, false or otherwise, about individuals and companies, but does not allow people to subsequently delete what they wrote. Ripoff Report’s policy is to never remove materials, even where one has court orders establishing that content is completely false and defamatory.
Heretofore, one could obtain a court order to present to Google (read the definitive article on the subject, “How To Remove Ripoff Reports From Google — Not Just Bury Them“). Where sites like Ripoff Report are concerned, Google’s willingness to remove URLs with court orders has been the only source of relief available. The Section 230 protections of the CDA have resulted in many similar situations where no one may be legally required to correct or remove misleading and harmful materials.
In yet other cases, websites hosted in foreign jurisdictions may also be beyond the reach of victims based in the US; the internet is a global economy, and without a global solution for false and damaging libel, people simply can become harmed in perpetuity.
Few victims can afford to hire attorneys in other countries where defamation may be hosted, and some other countries may not provide the legal protections established through hundreds of years of tradition and precedent that are found in western countries. (Ironically, a person with dual US/EU citizenship might be able to legally require Google to remove damaging materials from being viewed by searchers within Europe, but not from searchers located within the United States.)
If the only solution available is to take court orders to the websites where defamatory materials are published and persuade them to remove the stuff, then costs increase for victims, as their attorneys or online reputation agencies must go to many sites to remove stuff, rather than to a single source.
I’ve seen multiple cases where defamatory content was spread across hundreds and even thousands of URLs. Instead of communicating with one entity, representatives must go to many, monitor them to see if they comply and follow up when they don’t.
Inevitably, removal of defamatory content will also take longer if Google does not assist. Even if you persuade an originating website to remove something, the listing for it and cached version of the page can live on in Google’s search results for months or even years, continuing to damage one’s reputation. (Professionals may also circle around to ask Google’s automated system to remove the URL due to the page being removed, or one may request the Googlebot to respider the page to update the cached copy to eliminate removed content.)
Most people do not feel strongly about online reputation attacks. That is, until their own reputations become impacted by some negative things.
Those of us who work on these sorts of cases are aware that everyone is vulnerable to significant damage from misrepresentation. Many have a notion that they are good people, and therefore do not expect to have their reputations attacked in any way. But it only takes one obsessed customer. One crazy ex-girlfriend/boyfriend. One disgruntled employee.
Once someone libels you on the internet, there’s a very good chance that the materials may find their way up on the first page of search results. Many people make the mistake of thinking that if they avoid having much about themselves on the internet, their reputation and privacy are protected. But privacy and reputation are separate and frequently unrelated entities. So, when something negative gets published into the mix, it can abruptly become prominent.
Your data privacy is maybe intact, but your public reputation can be trashed. Even when one has a strong and established web presence, negative materials can often have an unfair advantage in rankings. Tomorrow, you can wake up and have your reputation ruined.
Online lies can be horrific to endure. They can be so malicious.
Imagine you’re the brilliant doctor who is falsely accused of malpractice. You are the business accused of being a scam and cheating your clients. You’re falsely accused of doing shoddy work. You’re accused of being a Mafia collaborator, a Nazi sympathizer, a pedophile, a nymphomaniac, a rapist or an adulterer. (This isn’t merely melodramatic hyperbole on my part — I’ve worked on cases where people were falsely accused online of each of these things.)
When the lie is the thing that defines your identity, then you lose business, your company fails, and you cannot make new relationships. It can affect everything about your life.
Defamation victims experience deep depression and sometimes consider suicide. Due to the frequency of psychological distress associated with online reputation issues, I interviewed a psychologist, and I refer my reputation clients to them. This stuff takes an extremely heavy toll on people. I’ve had clients who genuinely feared going out to restaurants because they had been accosted by people who had read and believed misrepresentation posted online about them.
In a completely opposite direction last year, Google announced that they would accept removal requests for revenge porn — without even a court order being required. However, a number of porn revenge victims I’ve assisted had instances of defamatory written statements on various web pages in addition to images and videos published to harm them. So, ironically, Google’s current policy shift will make it so that these victims can theoretically get their images taken out of search with just a note to Google, while related defamatory written content might not be removed, even with a court order.
If this new paradigm becomes status quo, the attorneys expert in these matters will likely halt assisting new clients, because there will be no way to reasonably predict positive outcomes, and risk of failure will be too high. If you’re defamed on Ripoff Report, which has over two million reports posted, you’ll be out of luck. Your only recourse in that case may be to change your name, as Google’s Eric Schmidt once infamously suggested. So, defamation victims in the future may find less legal representation available to assist them.
In multiple cases I’ve worked on, reputation attack victims were subjected to extortion. They were threatened that if they did not pay or do something demanded, then an individual would ruin their reputation online by posting falsehoods or private information about them. When they did not pay up, the extortionist followed through, harming them severely.
Here’s an example: “Convicted Search Engine Optimizer Indicted For Retaliating Against Former Victim.” While dramatic, this sort of case where the threat of online damage is used to extort people is not all that uncommon. In another example, one of Google’s own employees was arrested and convicted for attempting reputation extortion to compel women to send him nude photos.
By revoking recourse to have defamatory listings removed, Google will be effectively enabling more criminally minded people to use the search engine’s inflexibility as part of their extortion schemes. Google’s policy change is exposing the large legal loophole created by the CDA: One may launch terrifically damaging materials, and those can rocket up in visibility and never be removed.
Companies threatened by this may decide to simply pay up, rather than risk having to shutter, go bankrupt or lay off employees. It’s satisfying to have extortionists arrested and convicted, but from a business point of view, it’s a losing proposition if you can’t undo the evil damage that has torpedoed your company.
There’s always the “Eric Schmidt solution”: change your name. But changing one’s name to side-step online reputation damage is very costly, too — in terms of money and/or emotional currency.
If you’ve witnessed the costs for a company with a well-established brand name to change that name, you’ll know that this can be extensive and risky — replacing all signs, logos on letterheads, business cards, products, websites — all while losing the equity and recognition built in the name. I’ve also had a porn revenge victim that elected to change their name; it’s not an easy process, fraught with all sorts of issues you can’t foresee, and very difficult to explain to all who have known you by your original name.
Even when you go through a business name change, the loss of identity can sink your company. As I described in “When Brand Names Are Destroyed By Damaging Doppelgangers,” some companies don’t survive this process, since it’s like starting all over with an unknown name.
So, there’s nothing simple about a name-change, and one may not have the necessary amount of money on hand to even make that work.
I’ve long thought that Google chose to act upon defamation removal requests out of a desire for self-preservation. I thought it was a calculated strategy both to avoid risks of legislature removing some of the immunity provided by Section 230 of the CDA and to reduce lawsuits that they might have to face from desperate people. The immunity provided by the CDA is a huge value to Google, and processing of defamatory removal requests is a relatively small price to pay.
It’s possible for the legislature to modify the Section 230 protection. As I described above, it has enabled situations where horribly damaging false content can be published, and there’s no effective way to help the victims.
It’s possible for legislators to wake up to this and to try to address the lacuna in the current laws. I think all it might take would be a handful of defamed children of congressmen and senators, and legislators might become very motivated to take action.
There is also the fact that the largest search engines are quite different in nature than smaller forum operators, and even the social media services. The search engines are not the equivalent of small libraries or booksellers (which are considered “distributors” and therefore not responsible for the content they have under offline defamation assessments); they are frequently the doorway of the internet.
And the search engines are large enough to be able to afford the costs and the scale of evaluating removal requests. Demonstrably, Google has been absorbing these costs for the better part of a decade, at least, while their stock value has consistently risen across this period. So concerns about absolving them from the costs of handling defamation are likely minor and irrelevant.
Assisting online attack victims should perhaps be considered the cost of success. The search engines bear responsibility for the policing of the internet by making themselves so very central to people’s online activities. They created this large, public marketplace, so they inherently bear some responsibility for it.
Why should they declare themselves responsible for making the internet faster, or for safeguarding privacy by browbeating webmasters into using SSL (secure sockets layer), or trying to make the internet more secure by flagging or suspending websites for malware — and then turn about to disavow any responsibility at all for defamatory content they index that destroys companies and lives? The omnipresence they’ve created means they must share some responsibility.
The search engines have to employ removal evaluation staff anyway, because they are also receiving many other types of legal removal requests, such as in instances of trademark infringement, copyright infringement and personal privacy issues. There has been something of an imbalance in how the US has provided a high level of immunity around defamatory liability to online distributors/publishers of third-party content, while simultaneously ensuring the interests of big business are represented by making those same types of sites handle copyright infringement claims.
There are also alternative options for addressing the costs, if that is the driving reason for suspending assistance. As I pointed out last year, it should be possible for Silicon Valley companies to set up a commonly supported online reputation clearinghouse that they could all utilize to share the evaluation costs.
Take-down requests could be sent to a single location, evaluated, and then acted upon by the major players in concert with one another. This would potentially save on costs for all of those companies and also reduce some costs for reputation attack victims. Sure, this requires a level of cooperation among big tech companies, but the rewards could be significant. Costs of evaluations of removal requests are not going away.
One attorney I spoke with stated that he would even be happy to pay a fee to Google for submitting removal requests. He acknowledged that there are costs involved for the search engines, and a handling fee might be reasonable — especially if the alternative is to lose any real substantive recourse.
There is a possibility that Google’s abrupt about-face on these requests may open them up to legal liability now, in spite of the CDA protections.
One might argue that Google’s long practice of honoring court-ordered defamation removals was an implicit acknowledgment of responsibility and liability for content presented through search results. Or a claim could be made on the basis of promissory estoppel — that attorneys and individuals have been reasonably assured by long practice that Google will remove content based upon court orders specifying defamatory content, and this abrupt and seemingly arbitrary suspension of that policy is wantonly damaging.
Some of the instances where Google denied take-down requests have happened after victims pursued months or years of litigation to obtain court orders, and they did this with the reasonable expectation that Google would take action. These people are arguably damaged because they based their decisions to litigate on Google’s years of consistent policy.
The timing for Google’s change in practice is surprising, because the legal climate around defamation laws is less certain right now. Back in February, Donald Trump made a campaign promise that he would “open up” libel laws, making it easier for famous persons to sue the press.
Even more recently, Melania Trump is involved in a defamation lawsuit, claiming the press and a blogger have made false and damaging statements against her. As things currently stand, it’s conceivable that Mrs. Trump could win her case, but if her defamatory content were replicated on sites like Ripoff Report and elsewhere, then the content could live on, easily accessible via Google search results.
Is it realistic that Trump might be able to change libel laws, and, if so, could it provide greater protections for all individuals or lessened immunity for web companies? It’s purely speculative, but the incoming administration definitely has a conservative philosophy about unfettered speech, and their party is in charge of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government. One has the feeling that they can enact any changes to the law that they might wish. And one can imagine they might be motivated if Mrs. Trump were to find herself balked subsequent to winning her case in court.
So, how should the online reputation management industry respond to Google’s recent de facto paradigm shift? Will they begin to grant such requests again, with the same level of consistency?
Some types of websites and online services will respond to court-ordered defamation removal requests. I suggest that one first send those court orders to every single site and ISP where defamatory material is specified.
After you’ve gotten as much removed at the website level as possible, then follow up with a submission of remaining URLs to Google, explaining you have attempted to get everything removed but you cannot do anything about the remaining URLs, and plead for them to take those last URLs out of search.
Please let me know if you are successful, and I may post a follow-up report later.
Likewise, if Google later responds, we will try to post an update on this article.
Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
