Karissa Bell says, “Samsung isn’t the only company looking to challenge Apple Pay’s increasing dominance in mobile payments. Google announced Monday that it has acquired technology from mobile payments app Softcard, and that Google Wallet will soon come pre-installed on Android phones from three of the four largest U.S. carriers. Softcard was launched in 2010 by Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T. Like Google Wallet and Apple Pay, it relies on near-field communications (NFC) for its mobile payments. As a result of the partnership with the carriers, Google Wallet will come pre-loaded... [...]

Pamela Vaughan says, “You may have heard of this little thing called Google. You know, where 1.17 billion people go to find stuff on the web? But Google is more than just a search engine. So much more. In fact, Google offers a ton of tools in addition to its search engine that can be hugely valuable if you’re a marketer. So we decided to round up some of the most essential Google marketing tools at your disposal so you can be sure your business is taking full advantage of all Google has to offer. 1) Google My Business Want to get yourself some free advertising on Google? I kid you... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “Google Wave and Google Reader will soon have some company: Turns out, Google Helpouts is not long for this world. The company will shutter the online expert help service on April 20. Helpouts seems to be slowly dissolving. TechCrunch noticed the disappearance of its iPhone app today, following the previous removal of its Android app. The website still works for now, but will go offline in the next couple of months. In the world of Google services, Helpouts—which uses Google Hangouts to offer live video help from experts on various topics—was just a toddler, havinglaunched... [...]

Adriana Lee says, “Google has now made it easier for armchair physicians to find things to freak out about. The tech giant just announced the inclusion of medical information to its Knowledge Graph searches, allowing anyone to contradict their doctors right in their offices. Essentially, it amounts to Google’s own souped-up version of WebMD, but with a simpler interface and more direct access. (Of course, it could spell doom for the actual WebMD website, which is still alive and kicking, at least for now.)”. Google Now Gives Hypochrondriacs What They Want ReadWrite  [...]

Pete Pachal says, “Google has announced the dates for its annual developer conference, Google I/O. This year the event will be held on May 28-29 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Sundar Pichai announced the dates, published on the Google I/O event site, on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. Last year Google introduced a lottery system for developers to register to attend the conference, and the system is back this year. The Google I/O site’s registration page notes that developers can register from March 17-19. After that, attendees will be selected “at random.””. Google... [...]

Nina Zipkin says, “You can have the right to “be forgotten” online, but only in Europe, OK? Last May, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that Google users had the “Right to be Forgotten,” meaning they can petition Google to remove search engine results about them. In response to the ruling, the tech giant put together an advisory committee, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. Led by executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond, the committee recently released a 44-page reportfollowing public meetings held in seven... [...]

Henry Kim says, “With 2 billion smartphone or tablet users expected to engage in some form of mobile commerce transactions by 2017, brands can’t afford to not be mobile. So why are consumers shopping on-the-go still being directed to sites with tiny text, excessive scrolling or worse – requiring Flash? Google, the undisputed leader in search, has decided websites need to meet the growing consumer demand for mobile performance and is rolling out a new “mobile friendly” label for smartphone search results. The new feature, which could soon affect websites’ search rankings, will... [...]

Derek S. says, “With many Internet professionals working on multiple accounts at the same time, mistakes, like in the form of wrongly deleted information, are bound to happen. Google Analytics has introduced a new feature to help users recover their deleted data called Trash Can. This new feature, a safety net of sorts, allows users to reclaim lost or accidentally deleted information. In order to reclaim their lost information, users simply select the Administration tab followed by selecting the Trash Can. Once users have navigated to this point they can choose which items they wish to have... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “Last week, I looked at how sites could identify that they had been penalised by Google. But how easy is it to recover from a penalty? Does Google provide enough information to aid recovery? Our panel: To answer this question, I’ve enlisted the help of some search engine optimisationexperts. They are: Andrew Girdwood, media innovations director at DigitasLBi. Kevin Gibbons, managing director of BlueGlass. Mags Sikora, an SEO consultant who we interviewed earlier this year on the current SEO landscape. Hannah Thorpe from the media flow”. Should Google do... [...]

Ginny Mrvin says, “Google says that only 1 in 5 marketers successfully completes the remarketing set up process in Google Analytics. Whether it’s tagging problems or other implementation challenges, a 20 percent success rate is a pretty good indicator that the process isn’t user friendly for most marketers. To improve that success rate, Google has released “instant activation” of Advertiser Features for users in Google Analytics. The fine print (or no print on the announcement, actually) is that this instant activation only applies to Universal Analytics users. Standard GA version... [...]