Highlights

• Google jobs, the search engine version, is real.
• Amazon goes big in clothes. And shoes. Again.
• Google stops scanning Gmail to place ads.

Google will now display job postings, including descriptions, from multiple job sites. The company is working with CareerBuilder, Monster, and LinkedIn, as well as smaller sites. Job seekers still have to apply for a job on those sites.

The job listings function like Google’s movie listings. Google displays the showtimes, directions and other information related to a movie. Clicking a showtime link lets a person choose a movie site from which to buy a ticket.

The big deal: people now only go to movie websites for specialty information because facts are shown directly in Google. That will probably be true for job sites. The future value proposition is likely to be some form of signing up businesses and automating their transactions for Google and Facebook.

Learn more fast: Google announcement, Search Engine Land

told you several weeks ago that Amazon’s clothing initiative could disrupt fashion retail. The details are even more impressive. Prime Wardrobe is a new service that will be free for Amazon Prime members.

Amazon will send shoppers clothes to try on at home with no shipping charges. Shoppers then have seven days to return the items in the free box or pay for them.

Discounts start at 10% if 3 items are bought and reach 20% for 5 items. The program’s test starts soon–perhaps soon enough to make back-to-school shopping easy.

We also told you about Amazon’s market share of online shoe sales. Their share will climb after news broke last week that Nike will work with Amazon to sell shoes online through a special Amazon program. 

The big deal: Grocery stocks are still reeling from Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods. Analysis at Bloomberg and Recode shows that stocks for companies like Foot Locker and Dick’s Sporting Goods were hit especially hard by the Nike news. Cash-rich Internet giants now have enough buying power to disrupt any industry.

Learn more fast: Amazon Wardrobe announcement, Recode, Marketing Land

That’s a picture of Diane Green. Her job is to sell Google services, especially email and its office software suite, to businesses.

Green posted this week that “Gmail and consumer Gmail [would] closely align.” The post was blunt. No Gmail product will scan email looking for keywords on which to base ads. There will still be ads in the free version of Gmail. Those ads will be based on what Google already knows about users. And that’s a lot.

Why change now? The trade press says that Green’s business prospects didn’t get the distinction and thought that Google scanned email in all versions. Now there’s no confusion.

The big deal: Besides Gmail messages not being scanned anymore, Ad Age smartly posits that Green was able to limit Google’s ad business. That move shows the company’s growing interest in enterprise software, That’s more interesting than a keyword in email triggering an ad.

Headline Scan

• TimeWarner makes $100 million content deal with Snapchat.
• Microsoft Bing matches Google and Facebook capabilities to target “in-market buyers” of items like mortgage loans, travel services, and clothing.
• Amazon’s 1 hour PrimeNow service opens in Denver, city #30.
• Expedia closes its acquisition of Silver Rail, buttressing its UK ops.
• Google will now remove links to leaked medical records, making them, financial information, and “revenge porn” the only categories of information that Google will remove in the US when requested.

Highlights

• Walmart answers Amazon’s ecommerce purchases
• Google posting guidance on key mobile, speed issues
• The secret printer code still published on all your documents

 

 

 

You’ve probably read too many articles about Amazon buying Whole Foods by now. It’s a big deal for many reasons. 

But Walmart is continuing to fight back with its own ecommerce purchases as we’ve told you all year. This discounter bought Bonobos for $310 million on Friday, one day after Amazon’s splashy move. Walmart has now made 6 major acquisitions in the last 10 months, including stylish fashion retailer Modcloth and Moosejaw, makers of Patagonia and North Face. 

Walmart will not cede the US ecommerce market to Amazon without a costly fight for both. 

Walmart and the major consumer tech companies are holding on to more than $500 billion in cash. About half of that amount belongs to Apple–a whopping $256 billion. Apple has been linked to every company imaginable from Disney and Netflix to Tesla. But don’t count out the others. Microsoft  has $126 billion in cash, Google has $92 billion, and Walmart still has $85 billion. 

Learn more fast: The Economist on tech cash, NY Times on Walmart strategy

If your organization has a website, you need to pay attention now to how it displays on mobile devices and to the website’s speed.

Google’s switch from a desktop-based index of websites to a mobile-based index is reportedly now delayed until 2018. That means your developers only have to work very hard and fast instead of sleeping at the office. This is important stuff. Get it wrong and your website’s traffic will drop.

Google also announced this week that it will resume letting the search community know when “major” changes are made to its ranking formula. Such changes happened a few times a year a decade ago and are now done multiple times each day. Google didn’t define what creates a major change, but did say that they won’t share details on the 800+ changes it makes.

In a surprising peek behind the curtains, we learned this week that Google will use a website’s speed “as a tiebreaker” when two sites qualify for the same ranking. That news came courtesy of Googler Gary Ilyes speaking at a search conference last week and was reported by Jennifer Slegg of The SEM Post.

Learn more fast: Search Engine Land on mobile, SEM Post on page speed

By time you read this, a new nonprofit template will be available on Facebook. Administrators and moderators have been sent email for the past several weeks about the changes.

Donations and events have a much bigger presence on the template. The key thing to remember is that just as people visit other pages on your website instead of your homepage, they also interact with your content on Facebook without visiting your organization’s page.

Having everything look good and be accurate is important. Creating content that people want to read and share is much more important.

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The best thing that we read all week is the BBC’s reminder that virtually all modern printers spray a pattern of dots invisible to humans on printed documents. This program has existed for more than 20 years and gained new attention when federal agents arrested Reality Winner for leaking classified information to The Intercept.

“Why Printers Add Secret Tracking Dots“

Highlights

• Google Chrome will start blocking intrusive ads
• Store employees delivering for Walmart
• Free newsletter gives you heads-up on Netflix streaming dates
• Amazon manufacturing more items

Google says that its Chrome browser will block intrusive ads starting in 2018.
 
About 15% of computer visits to websites are performed with ad blocking software installed. The software hasn’t caught on with mobile users yet, and the world’s largest online ad company is being proactive fast and filtering what it calls intrusive ads. Intrusive ads include those with audio or video that automatically plays or those that cover up the content.

Usability experts confirm that “autoplay” ads and any ad that forces a user to close it are among the least popular among users. Also high up on the list are ads within content and deceptive links.

Google updated its publisher guidelines this week to alert publishers which ads are at risk of being blocked. Industry watchers don’t expect Google ads to be blocked in the first version.

The Wall Street Journal in an unrelated development removed non-subscriber access to its content this week and has publicly complained that Google’s search engine has reduced its visibility. A best practice of search engine optimization is that all people should receive at least limited views of content indexed in a search engine.

Learn more fast: Google announcement, Nielsen Group on “most hated” ads, Vox coverage, Bloomberg on the WSJ changes

Households receiving US federal assistance such as the SNAP, TANF, and WIC programs can receive Amazon Prime services for $5.99 monthly instead of $10.99. Government funds can’t be used to pay for Prime but can be used for food and other covered items, which Amazon would then deliver in two days with no shipping charge.

Amazon has broadened its offerings and now sells its own branded items. Amazon now has 15% of online market share for sales of baby wipes and batteries. Amazon currently sells about as many of its batteries online as Duracell and Energizer combined according to analyst Mary Meeker in the report we covered last week.

Struggling to keep up with Amazon online, Walmart is testing deliveries made by store employees on their way home. Walmart is paying employees in three stores to take the items from the store and use a phone app to deliver them on their way home. The voluntary project is still in its earliest testing phases, but analysts are intrigued with Walmart’s 4,700 store locations within 10 miles of 90% of the country’s population.

Learn more fast: Amazon announcement, Recode on Amazon private label sales, CNBC on Walmart

How about having a spreadsheet make a chart of your data by simply typing a plain language command? That’s only one of several announcements Google recently made to improve its Sheets, Docs, and other office suite programs.

There is also a new SORTN function that automatically displays top values, as well as the ability to keep data in multiple documents automatically synchronized.

Get all the details in the Google announcement

One last fun item is a free subscription to our sister newsletter from Movie Rewind.

Sue runs that site in addition to her Silver Beacon work and has built it into an online giant that receives tens of thousands of visitors. More than 13,000 people also subscribe to the weekly newsletter featuring hand-curated Netflix streaming dates.

You can join them and get a fresh look every Thursday at new Netflix streaming data. Start receiving your newsletter at this link.