Report: Google Assistant beats rivals for questions answered and accuracy

In January, Stone Temple Consulting released a virtual assistant consumer survey showing the majority of respondents wanted the assistants to provide “answers” rather than conventional search results. Today, the firm published a follow-up study that measured the relative accuracy of the four major assistants.

It compared results of “5,000 different questions about everyday factual knowledge” on Google Home, Alexa, Siri and Cortana, using traditional Google search results as a baseline for accuracy. The following table shows the study’s top-line results.

As one might have anticipated, the Google Assistant answered more questions and was correct more often than its rivals. Cortana came in second, followed by Siri and Alexa. Of the questions it could answer, Amazon’s Alexa was the second most accurate assistant. Siri had the highest percentage of wrong answers of the four competitors. (Apple is reportedly “finalizing” its Amazon Echo competitor.)

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

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About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog,

Screenwerk

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How to Create the Ultimate Marketing Plan

Four out of five B2B buyers start their journey with a web search. Nearly three quarters of the buying process is complete by the time a prospect is ready to engage with your sales team. With customers now in control, how do you create an effective marketing plan that resonates with target audiences?

Compelling content, martech solutions that support your strategies, reporting plans that establish and track funnel metrics and KPIs – are all critical to marketing success. But it’s more important than ever to understand how customers make purchase decisions before you can put the right plan in action.

Join our B2B marketing experts as they explain how you can develop a great marketing plan that builds your brand, drives demand, and improves the customer experience.

Register today for “How to Create the Ultimate Marketing Plan” produced by Digital Marketing Depot and sponsored by Act-On Software.

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Digital Marketing Depot

is a resource center for digital marketing strategies and tactics. We feature hosted white papers and E-Books, original research, and webcasts on digital marketing topics -- from advertising to analytics, SEO and PPC campaign management tools to social media management software, e-commerce to e-mail marketing, and much more about internet marketing. Digital Marketing Depot is a division of Third Door Media, publisher of Search Engine Land and Marketing Land, and producer of the conference series Search Marketing Expo and MarTech. Visit us at

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Brandwatch, Crimson Hexagon join Twitter’s Official Partner program

Twitter announced Wednesday two more participants in its new channel partner program, Brandwatch and Crimson Hexagon.

This brings to five the number of channel partners. Sprinklr, Sprout Social and Conversocial were announced earlier this year, and Twitter said at the time:

We are investing in deeper partnerships with a few select solution providers (including Sprinklr, Sprout Social, and Conversocial) to help brands realize greater value from our data and platform. As an example, our new Sprinklr channel partnership is focused on driving marketing innovation for large enterprises. This partnership [with Spinklr] is a multi-year deal, totaling more than $90 million, with collaboration in product development, sales, and marketing.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

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About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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Is Google testing its own jobs search engine?

Google seems to be testing a new search feature. This one is designed to help searchers find new job openings. John Doherty spotted this test for queries on Google that include [jobs online], [data entry jobs online], [newbury street jobs] and so on. Google shows job listings and takes you into what appears to be their very own job search portal to drill down deeper.

Here are some screen shots of the job search results in the core web results:

After you click on “more jobs,” it takes you into this jobs-specific search results interface that gives you additional filters for job categories, titles, dates, types, state, city, company type and employer. The interface looks a little bit like the local results interface, with the listings down the left-hand side and results in the middle.

This story is developing, and we will update it as we have more information from Google. As we wrote earlier today, Google performed 9,800 live traffic experiments last year; this is just one of the many new ones.

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IBM enlists Watson to define customer segments and insights

IBM is now using Watson’s brain to predict customer behavior.

The tech giant has released Watson Marketing Insights, which collects and analyzes data about identified users, generates targeted segments that can be exported to marketing tools and displays cognitive insights in natural language.

Project Manager David Pugh told me that this Watson product is “forming hypotheses at scale,” based on how users with certain attributes have responded in the past. The attributes come from email, website interactions, social media posts, in-store purchases and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Watson might predict, for instance, that users who do not open emails from campaigns may be more at risk of leaving the brand than those who regularly return the brand’s products.

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

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About The Author

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.

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Someone reposted your Page’s Facebook video? You can now take some of their ad $

Publishers, Page owners and video creators can now make some money when their copyrighted videos are reposted by other Facebook users.

That’s one of several new options for video creators/owners that Facebook outlined this week. Users of the Rights Manager tool are getting an expanded set of choices for handling copyright violations. Facebook now offers four actions, including the opportunity to dip into the pockets of the offending user and claim some of the ad revenue generated by the offending video:

Claim ad earnings: Allows rights owners to claim a share of the money generated if an Ad Break runs in a piece of content that matches the rights owner’s reference file. We’re still early days with testing Ad Break, but this option may be something rights owners want to use in the future.

In addition to that, video owners have three other options: block the offending video from being visible on Facebook; keep it viewable but monitor the video metrics and choose a different response later; or set it aside for later review.

Facebook has been under fire since the summer of 2015, when a popular YouTube creator accused Facebook of not doing enough to stop “freebooting” — e.g., taking copyrighted video and uploading it without the creator’s permission. It’s a problem that YouTube has been dealing with for years, and an important issue for Facebook to address given its desire to compete with YouTube as a video hub. In response to those accusations, Facebook launched Rights Manager a year ago to help video owners manage and protect their video content.

Facebook says the new options have begun to roll out already and will be available to all Pages using Rights Manager in the coming weeks.

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About The Author

Matt McGee is the Editor-In-Chief of Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. His news career includes time spent in TV, radio, and print journalism. After leaving traditional media in the mid-1990s, he began developing and marketing websites and continued to provide consulting services for more than 15 years. His SEO and social media clients ranged from mom-and-pop small businesses to one of the Top 5 online retailers. Matt is a longtime speaker at marketing events around the U.S., including keynote and panelist roles. He can be found on Twitter at

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Time for Google Processing Removed URLs from Disavow Files