Happy Holidays! We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!
Here are this week’s Search Scoop articles:
 Abbey Hadar |
Recent changes to organic sitelinks cause major drops in impressions in Google Search Console — Experiencing major drops in impressions in Google Search Console? You aren’t alone. Recently, Google made a few updates to GSC that have created major impacts in impressions, average position, and CTR. These two changes include: removing small sitelinks from search listings and reducing large sitelinks for branded searches. However, this is likely all a test and these changes might not stick around for long. |
 Adam Henige |
Tactical Keyword Research in a RankBrain World — With the advent of Rankbrain it’s high time SEOs take a new approach to keyword research and Dr. Pete does a fine job of walking you through his idea of keyword concepts. Of course, it comes with an obligatory pitch for the Moz Keyword Tool, but with or without it, the message is worth hearing. |
 Jerod Karam |
ImageGate: Check Point uncovers a new method for distributing malware through images — ..and the next “Uh, Oh” we need to watch out for… Apparently, security researchers have discovered a method by which the “bad guys” can deliver an image with ransomware embedded in it. Basically, you download an image from Facebook, click to view the image, and BLAMO!…all the files on your computer are encrypted and you need to pay $350-ish to get them unlocked. Don’t be dumb. Don’t download images from Facebook. |
 Joe Ford |
Black Friday Report: Retail search ad spend shifted from text to shopping ads on desktop — Black Friday has come and gone, and this report details a sample of PPC spending trends in 2016 compared to 2015. The main trend in ’16 was shopping ads taking away clicks from text ads. Spending on shopping ads increased drastically this year, signaling a trend that PPC advertisers will have to figure out how to better capture and retain those visitors which traditionally perform worse than those from text ads. |
 Kyna Garrett |
Google My Business tests a messaging feature to chat with your customers — Google is jumping on the customer messaging train, allowing customers to chat with businesses on Google My Business through the local knowledge graph panel. Select businesses are currently participating in a “pilot feature” to test the new messaging. The feature will likely improve B2C relationships for local businesses on Google. |
 Lexie Kimball |
Think Your Social Media’s Read for 2017? Read This First — 2017 is right around the corner. Is your social media in line with the anticipated trends of 2017? Find out with this article. |
 Michael Hall |
Advanced Marketing Techniques — For visual learners – Ahrefs has a number of great YouTube videos for learning basic SEO tactics. They also created a playlist called “Advanced Marketing Techniques” that go over more advanced link building and content developing strategies, which I’ve linked to. The videos are biased towards using Ahrefs but the concepts are practical for many other website and backlink analyzers. |
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