Happy Monday! Here are this week’s Search Scoop articles:
 Adam Henige | Google Update January 2020: Latest News and Analysis — Hey look, another Google update! If your head’s spinning from the onslaught of these, you’re not alone. Here’s the latest from Searchmetrics on the January 13th update. |
 Elyse Motte | Yelp cracks down on ‘review rings’ as Google continues to see widespread mapspam — Fake/spam reviews and listings are annoying for other businesses and can be dangerous for consumers. While Google doesn’t do the best job monitoring this type of fraud, Yelp is taking major action to warn consumers while also putting a stop to it. |
 Jerod Karam | Company discovered it was hacked after a server ran out of free space — OK…company gets hacked…data gets stolen…company is “sorry”…yeah…heard that news before. Here’s what gets me. The hackers got away with ONE MILLION user records containing, usernames & passwords (of course) but also SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS, BANK ACCOUNT NUMBERS, and CREDIT CARD NUMBERS! …all of which were stored in plain text! So that’s the giant WTF #1. But it gets better! The FTC comes down on this company and their “punishment” basically amounts to: “get rid of old unneeded user records” and “implement a list of network security safeguards.” WHAT-IN-THE-NAME-OF-ALL-F***S-IS-GOING-ON!?!?!?!? Appoint me as King of the Cyber and I’ll decree that these companies who breach public trust THIS egregiously will be shuttered, force-liquidated, and 100% of the proceeds and assets distributed to the affected users. This goes for all companies…I don’t care about “too big to fail” and other such bullcrap. This is ridiculous and has to stop! |
 Joe Ford | Microsoft Advertising to deprecate average position after all — Microsoft Advertising has followed the lead of Google Ads in doing away with average position in metric reporting. Search marketers will now use the same impression share metrics that they use in Google Ads to gauge how ads are showing. |
 Kelli Kaufman | How to Optimize Your Amazon Product Listings — With the hefty cut that Amazon takes from anyone who wishes to sell their products on Amazon.com, it’s important to take time to opitimize your product listing to ensure potential customers are actually seeing what you’re selling! Amazon SEO has similarities as your standard SEO practices and this little guide does a great job of getting you started with optimizing your product listing. |
 Lexie Kimball | E-A-T and SEO: How to Create Content That Google Wants — A great article on what E-A-T is and it’s importance to Google. It is a great read if you want your content to stand out to Google and your readers. |
 Michael Hall | Google rolls out organic ‘Popular Products’ listing in mobile search results — Google has been experimenting with ways to surface product listings in organic search results. This is a response to increased competition from Amazon and social platforms, and this may allow merchants to get an extra leg-up in SERPs if they take advantage of this new feature. The data relies heavily on schema markup. |
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