• Alphabet Offering Shopping Insights Tool
    Alphabet is rolling out a Shopping Insights tool that gives retailers a peek at the products people are searching for in more than 16,000 U.S. cities and towns. “The initial version covers over 5,000 products on sale through [Google’s] Shopping ad service and is updated monthly,” The Wall Street Journal reports.  
  • Google Invests In Chinese Startup, Voice-Search Engine Mobvoi
    Google said Tuesday that it has invested in Beijing-based Mobvoi, an artificial-intelligence startup that provides mobile voice search in Chinese. The company has developed a Chinese voice-search mobile app with two million accumulated users, a Chinese smartwatch operating system and a smartwatch called Ticwear, according to The Wall Street Journal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
  • Rakuten Tarad.com and Google Thailand Ink Search Deal
    Tokyo-based emarketplace Rakuten Tarad.com and Google Thailand have inked a deal to promote ecommerce among small and medium-size businesses, according to the Bangkok Post. Advertisers can now access Google's search tools to help merchants create and manage online marketing campaigns. Rakuten's Tarad.com marketplace has 270,000 online merchants selling 4 million items, per Bangkok Post.
  • Search And Television, Remember The Two-Screen Strategy?
    The holiday shopping season is getting underway and paid-search advertisers are looking for another way to catch the attention of consumers. Phuong Nguyen looks at eBay Advertising’s recent campaign with Co-operative Electrical and the potential for brands to target dual-screeners. Brands that pay attention to micro moments that captivate the nation in real-time with relevant and timely ads will reap rewards. Co-operative Electrical experienced a 40% increase in click-through rates for ads targeting baking keywords during the hour after the final of the Great British Bake Off. There was also a 240% spike on eBay.co.uk in searches for kitchen appliance brand …
  • Google Removes 'OK Google' From Desktop Version
    Users can still say "OK Google" to activate the search capability on Android devices and Chromebooks, but with the release of Chrome 46, Google’s browser lost the ability to trigger the search function with a verbal command on the desktop version of the Chrome browser on Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. Google says the feature does not get used enough. Keeping up with the maintenance to update the code doesn't make sense. Tony Bradley writes that the feature also posses a security risk because an attacker can still exploit it even if it's not used.
  • Google's Plan For Portuguese Startup Digisfera
    Google has acquired a Portuguese startup called Digisfera that focuses on 360° photography projects such as Street View, which now explores locations like Antarctica, the bottom of the Grand Canyon, or Mount Everest base camp. Jillian D'Onfro makes some assumptions about how Google will use Digisfera's technology.
  • Kenshoo Shows Search Spend Up, CPCs Down In Q4 2015
    The cost per click for search took a slight dip sequentially and year-on-year, according to Kenshoo data. The data reflects changes in its clients activities. It shows a 9% drop in the cost per click for Q3 2015 compared with the prior quarter, and 7% drop, compared with year-on-year, although spend rose 1% and 8%.
  • Cuba Enters Digital Age
    The Verge takes a long, artful look at Cuba as it enters the digital age.Over the last two decades, as the Internet spread across the planet, Cuba has been in digital isolation,” it writes. As of 2013, only about 4% of Cuban households had Internet connections, according to the UN International Telecommunications Union, and, as The Verge notes, there is no public cellular data service.  
  • Yahoo Losing Top Exec To Square
    Yahoo is reportedly losing its Chief Development Officer, Jacqueline Reses, to Square. “Reses’s exit comes at a delicate time, as Yahoo is planning to spin off its stake of about 15% in Alibaba by the end of the year,” Bloomberg Businessweek notes. “Reses’ role changed earlier this year when she shifted her focus to Yahoo’s spinoff of its stake in Alibaba.”  
  • Google AMP: Impact On Publishers
    Web sites that opt into the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMO) framework aim to benefit from speed improvements since the content templates share common elements and components, leading to between 15% and 85% improvement in speed and performance, writes Kenny Chung, citing stats from Google. The framework is sort of a Web service meant to simplify HTML, CSS and JavaScript code, resulting in a stripped down page that only includes the most vital content such as text, images, videos, and site ads. Chung takes us through the differences, providing images to demonstrate the changes.
« Previous Entries