Marketing Minute Roundup

Hello fellow marketers around the globe! Last week it was reported that Bing added a new Bingbot mobile user agent so they can crawl mobile sites, webmasters can earn 5 cents per answer in Google Consumer Surveys and that Speaker of the House, John Boehner,  has stopped the Marketplace Fairness Act from being voted on until 2015. Here are a few other marketing stories from the week of Nov 10-17.

According to Search Engine Watch, Google has stopped using the horizontal carousel display for local search results for user queries about hotels, restaurants and nightlife. In its place, Google will now show a so-called ‘three-pack’ of ads arranged among organic listings. This would seemingly be a hit for local businesses that rely on local search results to cater to their customers. However, some argue that it will present an opportunity for organic and paid search to work together. For example, clicking on the organic results will then lead to new details pages where sponsored ads will be present. In short, SEO and PPC will rely on each other in the new search display.

On Friday Facebook announced that beginning in January of 2015, they will be allowing much less promotional content to appear in page news feeds on the social media platform. The decision came amid a study done by Facebook in which users were asked how their experience could be improved. The answer? Less promotional content in their page news feed and more relevant, high quality content that they care about. Following user advice, Facebook has stated that content resembling anything promotional should in fact be a purchased ad. Just how Facebook hopes to police the news feeds on pages for promotional content and the criteria for such is still vague. Nonetheless, apparently the days when brands could post promotional content and reach customers, or followers through the latter’s news feed for free anyway, are gone. What does this mean for marketers? It most likely means that small businesses hoping to reach a follower’s news feed will have to spend a pretty penny – either via an ad or top notch, creative content. For more information be sure to check out this Marketingland post which has various interviews with marketing experts for their insights.

Lastly, there has been much speculation regarding Google’s Director of Spam, Matt Cutts and his return to Google. A little over a week ago on This Week in Google, which airs on TWIT.tv, Cutts was asked if he was going to return to the search giant and if so would it be in the same role as it had been in the past. While Cutts didn’t give a definitive answer, it appears that he may not be so inclined to take on his past responsibilities. This comes on the heels of Matt Cutts’ announcement at the beginning of Nov. that he has extended his leave into 2015. Cutts has been on leave from his Google post since July. Matt Cutts has been educating webmasters on search for years and I for one hope he returns.

What marketing news have you seen lately? Have we missed something that you’d like to have discussed? Let us know and have a great marketing week!