TODAY’S SPOTLIGHT Advertisers on Bing may soon start an “Official” tag by their site’s names for items they create. That’s powerful advertising. If people share your ad or content, they’re probably using Facebook. A new analysis shows 85% of social sharing is happening there. LinkedIn? Not so much. And that is what you need to know this week without the hype.

News You Should Know

Bing Ads Testing “Official Site” Tag to Ads in Search Results – The SEM Post I spotted a new change that Bing Ads is currently testing that are being displayed for big brands in their search results. “Official Site” almost always helps ad results, and Bing is testing an automatic version.

Report: Facebook Pulls In 84% Of Social Shares For Publishers People always ask for comparisons. Here’s a scary market share number: Facebook has boosted its share of sharing activity by 11.9 percentage points in a year for sites on the ShareThis network. to 85%

App of the Week

Google Online Security Blog: Protect your Google Account with Password Alert Why? 2% of messages sent via Gmail are designed to steal one of your passwords. The extra benefit of being written by Google for Chrome browsers.

Ad of the Week

A.1. Sauce: New Friend Requests (Video) Why? A.1 makes a branding change and reaches out to its youngest demographic ever with an ad centered around foods on Facebook and Spotify.

Congratulations!

Amid Conflict and Pain, There’s Still Music in Baltimore For a city in a declared state of emergency, music takes on new roles. Our friends at the Baltimore Symphony played a free concert outside Wednesday to help bring together their community. Bravo!

Today’s Spotlight

Yahoo! and Microsoft got their deal done, but not before Yahoo got a concession to serve 50% of its traffic with its own search results. What search results? Exactly.

Meanwhile the deadline for Google’s algorithm change is Tuesday. Why make such a fuss? One Googler says the impact on search results will be bigger than the company’s famous Panda and Peguin changes combined. And Google is also dropping website domain names on mobile devices in lieu of their “real site name”. No more en.wikipedia.org. Now it’s Wikipedia. This one could surprise lots of folks.

And that is what you need to know this week without the hype.

News You Should Know

Microsoft and Yahoo Make Radical Changes to Agreement

A new deal between Microsoft and Yahoo will allow Yahoo to deliver its own search results. Don’t forget Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is an early search expert from Google.

Google’s Mobile Friendly Algo Will Only Affect the “Ten Blue Links” & Not Advertising

Google revealed that local pack results are not affected by the new mobile friendly ranking algorithm that is due to arrive on April 21. Those 10 blue “organic” (aka natural) links on a Google search result? Yep, those will be. HUGE CHANGE.

Google Mobile Search Drops URL For Site Name & Breadcrumb Navigation

Google announced this week that the mobile search results are no longer going to display your site’s domain name in the search snippet. Instead it will display the Site Name. HUGE CHANGE #2.

Congratulations!

Moms Clean Air Force Scores with Dollar Store Toxics Article

Science and health writer Molly Rauch exposed dangerous products at “dollar store” locations writing at Moms CAF just a few weeks ago. Since then, tens of thousands of people read her work and are discussing the issue, including Woman’s Day, which has approached Rauch about writing for them too.

 

Issue #108 Welcome to Silver Beacon Spotlight. See the bottom of this email to learn how to reply directly to me or stop receiving issues – if you really must. George Bounacos TODAY’S SPOTLIGHT Let the search engine wars begin anew! We’re not channeling Game of Thrones. We’ve just seen more action from search engine giants in recent weeks than we have in months. Brace yourselves. Yahoo! appears to be testing its own mobile search engine, which would sever its deal with Bing this month. And Google is going to demote non-mobile friendly websites while entering the local search space themselves. Finally, a new study shows that America’s top retailer among affluent adults is Amazon. Want to go with the trend? We’ve helped clients sell there too. And that is what you need to know this week without the hype. News You Should Know Report: Google To Launch Search Service To Connect Searchers To Home Service Providers BuzzFeed (BuzzFeed!) broke the story that Google will launch a new service to connect searchers with local plumbers, electricians, contractors and other home service providers.. They were right. It’s coming, and you knew it was coming when you look back at how Google changed their local search results pages. Amazon Tops Among Affluent Customers Two-thirds of affluent adults aged 18-68 (living in households with income of at least $75,000) report having shopped at Amazon during the past year, with this figure higher among affluent Boomers (50-68; 76%) than Millennials (18-34; 56%). Yahoo Testing Their Own Mobile Search ? Yahoo! and Microsoft have less than one month remaining before their search deal ends . That would mean Bing no longer supplies Yahoo with search data. But rumors abound, helped by screen captures, that Yahoo! has built its own mobile search engine. Reverting to a three search engine world is a huge opportunity for every North American organization. Congratulations! Obama Invites Moms Clean Air Force to Climate Roundtable Our friends at Moms Clean Air Force were part of a climate roundtable this week at Howard University. The small group of participants included President Obama, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. And Moms Clean Air Force. We are so proud of their growing national voice on climate change and clean air. Want to chat? You can always reply to this newsletter via email to ask questions about stories here, things in the marketing world or even for advice about your organization.