Good Monday morning. It’s May 4th.  Cinco de Mayo is tomorrow and also falls on Taco Tuesday so enjoy your favorite tacos tomorrow as you plan for Mother’s Day, which is Sunday. This calendar brief intended for people who have forgotten the date, perhaps even the month.

Amanda Brinkman, host of Small Business Revolution on Hulu, said in a Wired interview this week, “The key to remaining viable is to be searchable and active online. People everywhere want to be supporting small businesses, but they need to be able to find them.”

We agree. Watch the rest of her interview on Facebook Live with Wired EIC Nicholas Thompson.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,186 words, about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. Amazon unlawfully increased prices on numerous consumer goods in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, in some cases by more than 500%, a new proposed class action suit in California federal court alleges according to reporting from Bloomberg Law. The Markup has wonderful reporting on Amazon pricing algorithms and how they create huge disparities for consumers and third-party sellers. Amazon beat Wall Street forecasts when it announced quarterly earnings last week. To put their growth in perspective, Amazon announced that it will spend up to $4 billion in worker overtime and personal protective equipment to meet COVID-19 demand.

b. LinkedIn is releasing new tools in response to all aspects of the job hunt going virtual due to COVID-19, including the job interview itself. The company released a test version of a new video introduction feature, as well as an AI-powered tool that gives feedback on peoples’ spoken word responses. Read more at Search Engine Journal

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Trackers

Covidly — my go-to.
Our World in Data — Oxford nonprofit – corrected link
NY Times Maps & Data – free during the pandemic

Tech News

Apple-Google Contact Tracing Tool Gets Beta Release
Companies Equip AI Cameras to Track Social Distancing & Masks
Drones Spread Word About COVID-19 in Rural South Africa
Google Ads Releases Details on $340 Million in Small Business Ad Credits
YouTube to start posting links to COVID-19 Fact Checks

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google executive Gary Illyes said last week that a website’s speed is a “teeny-tiny factor” regarding its overall ranking. Here is what that means because it’s important to understand:

When all other things are equal, website speed can differentiate the ranking success between two sites. More importantly, very slow websites do not rank well unless they are the sole repository of unique information. A government site, for example, will rank well regardless of its speed. Your restaurant, store, or nonprofit website will not rank well against competitors if it is slow. But there appears to be a diminishing return for site speed improvements that are barely discernible from their previous marks. For example, shaving one second off a website speed of three seconds may not be worth the effort or compromise.

Google also debunked a notion that a link’s value changes over time. After first commenting that the questioner might be focused too much on links, Google’s John Mueller observed that a link may decrease in value over time because the originating website content might not be as relevant in the future as it was when the link was created. There’s more about this at Search Engine Journal.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Tech Earnings Soar

We told you last week that the major tech companies were reporting earnings. It wasn’t hard to guess that Amazon is minting money, and most COVID-19 impacts were felt by companies two months into the quarter. 

All the major tech firms smashed through their forecasts. Microsoft was particularly noteworthy in posting $4 billion more in year-over-year revenue and a nearly 40% increase in net income. Even divisions like LinkedIn saw huge increases in revenue. 

Google, Facebook, and Twitter also reported very strong quarterly earnings although analysts are more interested in next quarter, the first full three month period with COVID-19 playing a major role.

5. Following Up: Dot Org Registry Domain Sales

We’ve told you for months about the ongoing concerns the nonprofit sector has expressed regarding the sale of the dot org domain registry to a venture capital firm. ICANN, the organization that oversees the domain name system, announced late Thursday that the separate domain registry could not be sold.

Read more at the Philadelphia Inquirer

6. Debugging: Nobel Prize Winner Refutes Claim

Nobel winner Dr. Tasuku Honjo did not say that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was “completely artificial” and is debunking internet memes circling around social media that claim otherwise.

Read the rest of Dr. Honjo’s story at the AP’s Not Real News.

7. ProTip: Best Hidden Mac Features

Did you know that your Mac’s wallpaper could rotate or that there is a secret dark mode?  How about using an iPad as a second display?

You can thank CNET later for their hidden tips and tricks.

8. Great Data: Visualizing Fine Print for 14 Apps

Great data doesn’t have to be in table, chart, or graph form. This amazing visualization made it into George’s personal swipe file. If you hear him speak in the future, expect him to show this to illustrate some point or another.

Congratulations, Instagram. Yes, Instagram

9.  Screening Room: Coors Light 

10. Coffee Break: Unnecessary Inventions

Are you secretly longing for Instructional Pants or Zoom video conferencing shutters? Vermont product designer Matt Benedetto has been creating “products that solve problems that don’t exist.”

There enough to chuckle over or to lose an entire day watching. 

Here are three ways that we can help you:

1. Get a free SEO audit on our website.

2  Have a simple, fact-based question about digital marketing? Reply & ask George for free.

3. If your organization needs help with search, social media, or advertising, have a look at what we do.

See you Monday.

Good Monday morning. It’s April 27th. Facebook and Microsoft report quarterly earnings Wednesday. Apple, Amazon, and Twitter report Thursday. That means lots of buzzworthy news will be released midweek.

Reach out to George if you need to brainstorm about your organization updating your presence online. We’ve already had these conversations with clients and friends. Now more than ever, we need to all work together and support each other.

1. News to Know Now

a. Facebook Messenger Rooms launched as a Zoom competitor. The service is free, participants do not have to have a Facebook account, and live video chats can hold up to 50 people. There’s tight integration with Facebook and Messenger. The same integration will roll out to WhatsApp and Instagram. Read the announcement or see the video.

b. Google will require all advertisers to identity themselves at an organization and personal level. Search Engine Journal’s (and former Silver Beacon consultant) Susan Wenograd broke the news Thursday. The change will include all advertising categories, not just the political and advocacy categories most platforms now require. Ads will include a message identifying who has paid for the advertising. Read her article here to also see an animation showing the new function.

c. Amazon has been accused of using data from third party sellers to create their own private label products to compete with those sellers. The charges were made in a blockbuster Wall Street Journal article Friday by reporter Dana Mattioli who wrote that she interviewed twenty former Amazon employees, including one who supplied proof. Amazon’s private label business now generates more than $1.5 billion in annual revenue. An Amazon executive testified to Congress last year that the company does not use this data. (Read the story here — paywall)

Last week’s One Click Poll results
75% of you said last week that your workplace was opening at about the right pace. That’s great to hear!

This week, tell us about lunch with one click at the bottom of this week’s newsletter.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Trackers

Covidly — my go-to.
Our World in Data — non profit based at Oxford.
Factbase — has metro area level detail, not just state or county.
RT live — shows average number of people infecting others by state.

Tech News

YouTube bans ‘medically unsubstantiated content
Software monitoring remote employees is seeing a sales boom
3D Printable Ventilators Built for Coronavirus
Boston Dynamics Robot Carrying Equipment to Patient Triage Area
Yes You Can Print Your Face on a Mask
People of the Pandemic Game Simulates Your Town’s Response

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google Shopping is once again free for merchants. Google began charging for the service way back in 2012 after a successful 10 year run as a price comparison service once known as Froogle and then Google Product Search before becoming Google Shopping. 

Google Product feeds were once as ubiquitous at retailers as Amazon product feeds are now. As Amazon gained well over one-third of the U.S. ecommerce market, Google held the line on its own shopping service until online purchasing exploded due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Google will also resume its partnership with PayPal, a new agreement that was also announced last week.

Amazon and Google will continue to sell advertising in their ecommerce products, but in Google’s case, the listing is now free again.  You can read their announcement here.

Google also announced that it will display a new message if its search engine doesn’t find what it calls a “great match”. A new message will appear that suggests alternative searches. The new feature may help Google lead you to very topical information about the COVID-19 pandemic, suggests Search Engine Land’s Barry Schwartz. 

Bing still receives more than 500 million U.S. searches each month and 12 billion worldwide. That pales in comparison with Google but is still a lot of volume. That’s why search watchers were shocked last week to learn that a Bing feature that showed popular related results from websites included inappropriate stock images with NSFW names. Microsoft and Shutterstock confirmed that there was no child pornography as some of the titles suggested. Ars Technica’s Timothy Lee broke the story that you can read here.

4. Also in the Spotlight — YouTube’s First Video Turns 15

Jawed Karim visited the San Diego Zoo and made an 18 second video outside the elephant area. Jawed, only 25, was an early employee at PayPal and created YouTube with two of his PayPal co-workers. One year later, the trio sold YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion. Today, YouTube generates $15 billion in annual revenue so that was a good deal for Google.

You can see Jawed’s first video here and read more about the founders at Cnet.

5. Following Up: Dropbox Hired Hackers in 2018 to Crack Zoom

A startling New York Times expose describes Dropbox hiring hackers more than one year ago to find vulnerabilities in the software code of Zoom and other products that its employees often used. Dropbox then presented the results to Zoom and its executives were troubled when the company took more than three months to fix them. Dropbox was a pre-IPO investor in Zoom and one of its directors led a $100 million investment in the company.

Read  “Zoom’s Security Woes Were No Secret…”

6. Debugging: Jacksonville Beach Photos Are Real

A Getty photographer’s photo of people walking on a Florida beach without practicing social distancing was edited into a second story about Los Angeles. The doctored document was then circulated on Facebook with messages suggesting that media images were doctored and that the COVID-19 outbreak was not as real as news reports suggest.

Poynter debunks the conspiracy theory with nine sources at this link.

7. ProTip: Zoom Real-Time Meeting Transcription

In more positive Zoom news, the service now has integrated with Otter.ai, a real-time chat transcription service that allows participants to view a live text log of the meeting.

Tom’s Guide describes the service and provides details.

8. Great Data: NYC Sidewalk Widths

This map uses the NYC Sidewalk database to map the entire city’s grid of sidewalks and shows which are wide enough to allow proper social distancing.

See the amazing visualization here.

9.  Screening Room: Every COVID-19 Commercial Is Exactly the Same

10. Coffee Break: Sharks!

I didn’t expect to spend time with Brunswick last week, but I found it fascinating that he was near the Georgia coast in February 2019, went up to Nova Scotia, looped in to New Brunswick for a while, and then came all the way back down, before swinging around Florida and visiting its west coast.

You see, Brunswick is an eight-and-a-half foot white shark that weighs more than 430 pounds. Like the sharks and other critters tagged at Ocearch, his movements are dutifully plotted on an aquatic map. 

Brunswick was hanging out off the coast of Vero Beach on Thursday evening at 7:43. Seeing how far some of these creatures travel and where is fun.

Visit the Ocearch tracker here.

Here are three ways that we can help you:

1. Get a free SEO audit on our website.

2  Have a simple, fact-based question about digital marketing? Reply & ask George for free.

3. If your organization needs help with search, social media, or advertising, have a look at what we do.

See you Monday.

Good Monday morning. It’s April 20th. Wednesday is Earth Day. Parade magazine is featuring 50 Ideas from 50 States to mark the day. Congratulations to Heather McTeer Toney, Moms Clean Air Force’s Field Director, for her inclusion.

Reach out to George if you need to brainstorm about your organization doing new things in a digital way. We’ve already had these conversations with clients and friends. Now more than ever, we need to all work together and support each other. Just press REPLY in your email client to send a note.

Today’s Spotlight is 1,155 words, about a 4 minute read.

1. News to Know Now

a. The Amazon affiliate program is cutting commission rates for partners effective tomorrow. Those are the advertising fees paid to websites that you see with disclaimers about paid commissions if you buy products through their links. Rates for big ticket items like luxury beauty products, pet products, and furniture had the biggest percentage cuts, but cuts to more popular categories like Amazon Fresh groceries and books will have a much bigger effect. 

b. Advertising revenues are flattening across multiple product lines. Expedia reports that its $5 billion budgeted spend for calendar 2020 won’t even reach $1 billion. (CNBC)

c. YouTube announced a beta of Video Builder that targets small businesses without the resources to create videos from scratch. Templates have customizable layouts and colors using your own images and generate a 6 or 15 second video. (YouTube’s announcement)

Last week’s One Click Poll results
You’re (mostly) all one spacers. That might cause Ben Franklin’s printing press some dismay, but it’s a perfectly fine position in a world with laser printers. 

Don’t forget to make your voice heard this week on whether you think businesses in your local area are opening too fast, too slow, or about the right pace. The one click poll is at the end of this newsletter.

2. COVID-19 Online Resources and News

Trackers

Covidly — my go-to.
Johns Hopkins — the one you see on the news.
Our World in Data – non profit based at Oxford. Maybe my new go-to.

Education Resources

Burger King Free Whopper for Schoolkids
James Dyson Foundation Challenge Cards for Kids
Google Donating 4,000 Chromebooks & Wifi in California
450 Ivy League Courses to Take Online for Free

Tech News

France Orders Amazon to Only Ship Essentials
Facebook Adds Covid-19 Templates for Small Businesses
YouTube Lifts Ban on Monetizing Covid-19 Videos
MIT Leading Academic Effort on Contact Tracing
Norwegian Telecom Wants Wifi Network Names Changed To Educate

Investor Mary Meeker’s annual internet trends report was replaced this year by a stripped down 29 page report addressing Covid-19 effects. Meeker, a former Wall Street executive, runs Bond Capital, a $1.2 billion firm whose investments include Nextdoor, Canva, Airbnb, and Hippo.

This year’s topics include federal spending, Zoom’s hypergrowth, and professional sports. Read the report here.

3. Search Engine Optimization News

Google Search now links to local testing sites when you are searching for relevant topics, reports 9 to 5 Google. There is also information from the CDC and easy map links so that people are referred to legitimate Covid-19 information. 

Google is also offering health care providers new options like the ability to show virtual care offerings, links for virtual appointments, and information about widely available virtual care platforms, including their pricing.

4. Also in the Spotlight — Washington Sues Facebook Again Over Political Ads

Washington has announced a lawsuit against Facebook for not maintaining required information about political advertisers. The state sued Google and Facebook in 2018 over violations of local campaign finance laws. Facebook settled that suit for $238,000.

As part of that agreement, Facebook voluntarily agreed to stop selling ads to political action committees although it would still do so for candidates. Since that time, the state reports that Facebook has sold more than $525,000 in advertising to more than 170 PACs. 

Read Attorney General Ferguson’s announcement.

5. Following Up: Zoom and the Dot Org Sale

The sale of the dot org domain registrarwe first told you about in December was postponed again after the parties received a last minute letter from California’s Attorney General informing them that the state has “serious concerns that cannot be overlooked.” (The Register)

We’ve also told you a lot about Zoom as it struggles while scaling up 20x growth in a single quarter. Bleeping Computer reported last week that up to 500,000 Zoom accounts and passwords were available for sale on the dark web. Their consultant was able to purchase account credentials at the rate of 500 per dollar. Yes, one dollar. Stop using the same password on multiple sites.

6. Debugging: 40 Million Coronavirus Warnings on Facebook

Facebook added warnings to 40 million pieces of Covid-19 misinformation people posted on its site. The company says that 95% of people do not click to read the misinformation when they see the warning. 

Read Facebook’s announcement here.

7. ProTip: Photopea

There is a new freemium (free with basic functions and ads, premium at $9/month) web-based image editor that has more features than almost any other and works with PSD, XD, and basic image files.

Check it out here.

8. Great Data: Providing Context

Risk scientist Jo Perla created plenty of discussion with this simple annotation to a now familiar Covid-19 slide. She’s not suggesting that the death rate is influenced only by something this simple, but she is arguing for the need for context in your data reporting. Dumping information helps no one. Analyzing information is very different.

9.  Screening Room: Knix Underwear Gets Real

10. Coffee Break: A Beary Good Citizen

Look, everyone’s having a hard time and is more stressed than usual. Be nice to each other and to yourselves. And if you’re of a mind, maybe join this lumbering fella in being a beary good citizen. 

Check out the 17 second video here.