Good morning. It’s Monday, January 22nd. Amazon Go, the company’s retail store without cashiers, opens today in Seattle.

Highlights

• Facebook plans to have users vote on news sources’ trustworthiness
• The speed of a mobile website is now officially a Google ranking signal
• Bing is adding appointment booking for local services

Facebook Users To Vote on News Sources

Facebook’s Monika Bickert tells NBC that the content appearing online during the 2016 election was “unacceptable”. She later testified with Twitter and Google execs in a nearly three hour Congressional hearing.

Bickert is not only the public face of Facebook during these discussions. She’s in charge of issues like counter-terrorism for the social media site.

But a day after her testimony, Facebook announced that it will ask users to rank news sources that they trust. As much as 5 percent of Facebook content is created by news organizations. Surveys show that the majority of American adults now receive at least some of their news from Facebook. 

Media experts, sociologists, and psychologists doubt that the company can create a process where the wisdom of crowds creates rankings that can be trusted.

“Today we’re announcing that starting in July 2018, page speed will be a ranking factor for mobile searches.”

That was Google’s blog last Wednesday. 

They almost never make those kinds of announcements. 

“The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users…”   

Google execs openly mock search marketers for naming major updates. Then they named their own for the first time in many years. The post ended with links to five tools and resources.

Google’s usual inscrutability is nowhere in sight for this announcement. This is great news for anyone who has used a phone to access a website. And it’s a wake up call to any organization that ever wants people who are using a phone to access its website.

Spotlighted

Amazon Go opens the cashier-free store in Seattle. Recode has details and images

How does Google select which result its Google Voice product uses for search? A new report suggests it’s from a website structure called featured snippets. Search Engine Land has coverage.

Local service businesses will be happy to learn that Bing now has appointment booking directly in search results. Read more. 

Monday Coffee Break

Your organization’s analytics can tell many stories. And the truth is that most data-driven marketers can get lost for hours examining trends and teasing data out of different parts of your business.

We’ve seen content sites like Spotify and Netflix create great advertising around their member usage, but adult website Pornhub (75 million daily visits and 10 million registered users) maintains an analytics blog. And that blog paid off big after the missile scare in Hawaii uncovered a huge drop in traffic followed by a, um, traffic surge after the all clear.

As you look at the data consider this: Pornhub made itself part of the news about what many people thought was an impending bombing of Hawaii. Even better: the data wasn’t a trick or manipulation. It said something real about people.

What stories are hiding in your organization’s data?

Everyone wants their content to be first on Google, Facebook or anywhere online. But Facebook posts will now focus on personal, not commercial, info. What does that mean for you? What does that mean for your organization?

Good morning. It’s Monday, December 18th. Big holidays are coming up. This will be the last issue of Spotlight until January 8th. Unless something important happens like Facebook acknowledging that passively using social media can negatively affect mental health. Or if Google changes its search engine guidelines.

Or maybe the FCC will vote to let Internet providers decide how fast websites and services can appear on your devices.

Since the FCC, Google, and Facebook already did those things last week, we’re not anticipating any more huge events. But it was a heckuva week! Google makes far fewer pronouncements about search than you might imagine. Comments they do make are treated as commandments.So when Google announces that they’ve combined two how-to search resources into one search guidelines document and added new sections, every online marketer immediately starts reading.

Google is not kidding about mobile. That should have been clear by now, but your website’s prominence will suffer if your website does not perform as well on mobile as it does on desktop computers. And don’t use a tablet to check. Google says they consider those more of a desktop experience.

Other important changes cover items like “structured data”–which enables Google to parse facts from a web page and display them in search engine results.

The other shocking news from Google was a round of changes to Google for Nonprofits and the Google Grants advertising program that provides charities with up to $10,000 every month in free advertising credit. The changes were big enough for us to immediately start talking with our nonprofit clients after Wednesday’s announcement. One caveat: maintaining a grant will be beyond the scope of most non-marketers after the minimum click rate quintupled.

Official word from Google: New SEO Guide, Nonprofit Community forums

We told you in November about Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, saying at a conference that Facebook leverages a psychological feedback loop to its users to help fuel growth. Parker said that he would be a “conscientious objector” to social media.

News came out this week about Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook’s former VP of User Growth, doubling down on that sentiment while speaking at Stanford in November. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,” he said. Palihapitiya also says he uses Facebook as little as possible, and his children are not allowed to use it at all.

Facebook immediately countered the 1-2 punch, but by Thursday, the social media giant was acknowledging that “..when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information — reading but not interacting with people — they report feeling worse afterward.” 

There is a lot to unpack in Facebook’s posted defense, from multiple videos to footnotes with links and a lot of words. Get the details at the official post.

Spotlighted

More than Disney-Fox: Softbank is investing $300 million in Wag, a professional dog-walkers app. Target is spending $550 million on Shipt, a same day grocery delivery service.

Veterans, check this out.  LinkedIn is offering vets and active duty military one year of free LinkedIn Premium. The company says it’s a great way to connect for a change in career. Details here.

Google is adding price-tracking features to its travel data. Users will be notified when prices are “higher than normal” based on Google’s tracking of that information.

Three new Facebook functions:
Snooze – 30 days of not seeing someone
Take a Break – blocks exes from view
Account Switcher – for families sharing a computer.

We wish all of you happy, safe, and healthy celebrations. Spending 2017 with you each Monday morning has been fantastic, and we’re honored to be part of your world. 

We’ll see you early on Monday morning, January 8, 2018. Imagine, we’ll be closer in time to the year 2033 than to the year 2002.