This month, our Digital Marketing Roundup brings you information about Googlebot, Bing webmaster tools, AdWords Account map feature, off-Facebook activity, Twitter ads 6-second video and much more.
1. Googlebot evergreen rendering in our testing tools
Google announced that the testing tools available for webmasters are now using the new evergreen Googlebot for crawling. Testing tools like Mobile-Friendly Test, Rich Results Test, AMP Test, Rich results and URL inspection will come under this. Google said that their testing tools reflect how Googlebot processes web pages. It offers a better rendering and displays more information about the website during any tests.
More information at:
2. Bing added support for verification through Domain Connect
To authenticate a website with webmaster tools, Bing has added a new verification method which is called Domain Connect. It is an open standard and the website owner can authenticate a website with a DNS provider. The user can do so without understanding any of the complexities of DNS.
More information at https://blogs.bing.com/webmaster/august-2019/Bing-Webmaster-Tools-simplifies-site-verification-using-Domain-Connect
3. AdWords New feature - Account map
Account Map, a newly added feature helps users to view the account structure quickly. It also allows users to view the overall information about the ad account such as clicks, impressions, cost and conversions. This feature has been added in the Tools & Settings section under Setup in Adwords.
4. Now Custom JavaScript can be added in AMP Pages
In a new announcement, Google said “It’s an AMP component that runs your own JavaScript in a separate Worker thread. This lets you to add custom JavaScript to your AMP page while still retaining its lightning-fast speed!”
Read more at https://blog.amp.dev/2019/08/21/amp-script-amp-heart-js/
5. Facebook Launches A new way to control Off-Facebook Activity
The ‘Off- Facebook activity’ section lets the user view the summary of apps and websites that send user activity information to Facebook. It also has an option to clear this information from your account if you want to.
As published in their newsroom announcement, users can now:
- See a summary of the information other apps and websites have sent Facebook through online business tools, like Facebook Pixel or Facebook Login;
- Disconnect this information from the account if you want to; and
- Choose to disconnect future off-Facebook activity from account. A Facebook user can do this for all of the off-Facebook activity, or just for specific apps and websites.
6. 6-second video bidding is now available globally in Twitter ads
With video marketing trend being so high nowadays, Twitter introduced, 6-second video ads, to provide an optimal experience of a short-form. So this way user can experience a fresh, relevant content by scrolling through their feed.
Twitter said ”Advertisers will be charged only once their ad is viewed for 6 seconds, with pixels at 50% in view (6s/50%). This bid unit is globally available on Promoted Video, In-stream Video Sponsorships, and In-stream Video Ads for assets 15 seconds or less in length.”
More details at https://blog.twitter.com/marketing/en_us/topics/product-news/2019/Long-story-short-6-second-video-bidding-is-now-available.html
7. Facebook Adds New Slideshow Option to Facebook Stories
Facebook hasn’t shared much information on why they are stopping this feature. However, the update from the Facebook community leadership is that “Our team knows that it’s really valuable to communities on Facebook to be able to communicate in real-time the way that Chats in Facebook Groups enabled. The current product infrastructure doesn’t support Chats in Groups directly in the Facebook app, which can no longer support the feature. That said, we are exploring new ways to support real-time communication for Groups, but don’t have any details to share about those future plans just yet”
Facebook is killing its ‘Chats’ feature for Groups on 22 August pic.twitter.com/rQc6UOqqVq
— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) August 16, 2019
8. Facebook Adds New Slideshow Option to Facebook Stories
Facebook has introduced a new Stories option, which will enable users to add a still image slideshow to their Story.
Author Bio: Soumya is a Digital Marketing Analyst with 9 years of solid experience focusing mainly on SEO aspects. Her skillsets which were gathered from researches, Google Patent followup, networking with other industry leaders, content creation and link building techniques helped hundreds of clients over a decade. Whenever required, she kick-starts social media promotions and campaigns to enhance her client’s brand reach. Her free time includes reading books and improving her knowledge in the digital marketing industry.
