Today In SEO & Search News: March 1, 2017

Today In SEO & Search News: March 1, 2017

It’s a great industry to be writing in presently with a ton going on in the space of search and SEO. As if yesterday’s post wasn’t enough to prove that, here’s what happened over the past 24 hours …

YouTube TV Unveiled

YouTube TV stations
TechCruch’s Jonathan Shieber covered the biggest news of the past 24 hours which has to be the confirmation that YouTube TV was launching.  YouTube TV will be a monthly subscription service ($35/mth for a family with 6 accounts) and provide live TV with it.  The service will be limited on launch to cities where they can offer live local broadcasts like LA, New York and Philadelphia however it is expected to rollout across the US and into other countries in the coming months and for some – years.

Mastering Google Operators
Whether you’re an SEO or just an avid Google user Dr. Peter over at Moz published an awesome post on Google operators.  Basically it’s like a crash-course in how Google works and how you can refine your query usingthings like quatations, negatives and pluses to restrict the search results to what you’re looking for.  Great info for the uninitiated and an excellent refresher for those who’ve seen them all (and admittedly – I learned a couple new ones).

Google Assistant Gets More Human
Venture Beat reported on some interesting enhancements to Google’s Personal Assistant. It seems our friend has been enhances with 20 new conversation actions/services and now understands more about slang, beer and men’s fashion.  While the technology is still in it’s infancy it’s clearly evolving rapidly and it’s going to be interesting to see how fast it creeps into our everyday lives.

RIP DMOZ

RIP DMOZ
The veteran SEOs in the crowd will likely look back fondly on the DMOZ directory (or Open Directory Project). DMOZ was a mainstay in directories and despite being antiquated in appearance and brutally slow to deal with submissions (if at all) it still had a kitschy appeal.  Well kids, the dog is dead.  As of March 14th, 2017 DMOZ will no longer be available.  It’s a sad day (sad like when Geocities closed up).  Interestingly I looked up on writing this whether I covered the Geocities closing with a blog post.  I didn’t but I did reference it with the Yahoo! Directory also shut down back in 2014. So let’s give DMOZ the same send off …

 

100+ Google Tag manager Learnings
If you care anything about analytics you need to follow Simo Ahava’s blog. I’m going to be the first to say I don’t always understand 100% of what I’m reading but I always leave smarter and sometimes it’ll be a few posts later that you figure out what you read a couple weeks prior. Well today he published a great post breaking down some of the core lessons he’s covered and how they fit together.  It is awesome and I’ve already added it to my bookmarks (and you should too).

The Value Of Search
Christi Olson of Bing shares research on how search fits into the buying cycle on Search Engine Land.  it’s a very interesting piece that shares information on when different terms are used in a buying cycle, how ad exposure impacts awareness and a bunch more.  Recommended reading for anyone who cares what users are thinking when they enter a query.

And that’s it for the day.  I’ll be taking tomorrow off from blogging to celebrate my 15th wedding anniversary with Beanstalk’s president and my business partner Mary Davies.  I’ll be back Friday with an update to carry you into the weekend.