Barry Levine says, “While IBM’s Watson supercomputing service is named after former IBM chairman and CEO Thomas Watson, the name also recalls another famous Watson.“Mr. Watson, come here,” Alexander Graham Bell reportedly yelled into the mouthpiece of the first working telephone in 1876, summoning his assistant and marking the first call ever.So, it’s completely appropriate that IBM’s Watson — representing the transmitted availability of supercomputing to anywhere on the planet — bears a name that has played a central role in the emergence of both computing and telecommunications.But... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “In a very nice update, users can now use the same email to access multiple Google Merchant Center (GMC) accounts.GMC users may have already noticed an update about the change in their accounts, and Google Advertisers Community Manager CassieH posted a notice about it on Tuesday.Per the Help Center page: “Multiple users are able to access a single Merchant Center, and users can connect their individual Google account with multiple Merchant Center accounts as needed.”Admins can invite people by clicking on Users from the three-dot icon in the upper right corner.... [...]

Janet Driscoll Miller says, “Like any marketing channel, SEO is an investment. Whether you’re using in-house resources or hiring an agency to do the work, SEO isn’t free. To make the most of your SEO time (and perhaps direct financial) investment, it’s helpful to have an SEO strategy established to be your road map for execution.However, one of the bigger challenges to creating an SEO strategy is that the search engines (primarily Google) are shifting ranking factors and introducing new updates fairly regularly. Therefore, an SEO strategy has to be a living document, allowing for... [...]

Ben Davis says, “One of the most practical and inspiring talks at last week’s Brighton SEO came from Anita Valentinova, on the topic of using Python to automate SEO.Valentinova is a senior SEO specialist at VistaPrint, a company that runs 21 websites with over 40,000 webpages.Unsurprisingly, automation is an attractive prospect when working at that scale and though Valentinova is a relative newcomer to Python, she explained how excited she was to try out new scripts in her day-to-day role.At a conference where artificial intelligence and voice search seemed to be the topics on everyone’s... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “It’s a hard thing for a writer to admit, but sometimes, it can be downright tricky to find the right words. When it comes to searching for products online, it’s usually much easier to imagine what you want than describe it.Luckily, visual search is helping to change this, making it much easier for consumers to find exactly what it is they’re looking for.I attended Brighton SEO last week, where Purma Virji from Microsoft gave a talk all about this topic.So, what exactly is visual search, and more specifically, how is it changing the way we buy online? With... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “Quality Score reporting in the AdWords interface leaves much to be desired. Only the current Quality Score is available, and granular details are contained in individual pop-ups that make analysis cumbersome. That could be changing.Avner Pinchover shared a blog post on the Israel version of the Inside AdWords blog with Search Engine Land that describes a series of new columns of Quality Score metrics coming to the AdWords UI. It was posted back on March 10 and seems to have received little attention. It was removed for some reason yesterday. (The archive can be found... [...]

Nate Dame says, “Effective content marketing is a vehicle for modern SEO.Just as wheels without an engine leaves you pedaling, content without an SEO strategy can’t keep up in a digital marketplace. And just like an engine with no wheels, SEO without content is a shiny machine that goes nowhere.Content needs SEO to stand out in the din of mediocre blog posts clogging up the internet these days, and Google has said that one of the top three ranking factors for organic search is “content.”But what does that mean? Not any content, surely. Unfortunately, search engines are not handing... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Dark patterns are deceptive parts of a digital user interface, designed to trick the user into making a decision that benefits the business involved.Darkpatterns.org is a terrific website conceived by Harry Brignul as part of a campaign to raise awareness of dark patterns. The site includes a roundup of the most common categories of dark patterns, as well as a hall of shame with examples submitted by the UX community.I thought I would select some examples of dark patterns found in ecommerce checkouts to highlight the issue. Most of the examples are taken from the #darkpatterns... [...]

Nikki Gilliland says, “Can influencers and affiliate marketing be a match made in heaven? Online retail’s 800-pound gorilla is apparently interested in finding out.Last week, it was revealed that Amazon has launched a beta of an invite-only Amazon Influencer Program “exclusively designed for social media influencers with large followings and a high frequency of posts with shoppable content.”According to TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez, the program functions like the company’s affiliate program in that participants are paid a commission for product sales that they... [...]

Dave Davies says, “Two patents were recently granted to Google that paint a very interesting picture of the future of search. These patents are:Detecting and correcting potential errors in user behaviorGuided purchasing via smartphoneBefore we dive in, I feel it’s necessary to point out that having a patent granted does not mean that Google will be implementing everything (or even anything) contained therein; however, it does illustrate areas they’re considering and willing to invest significant time and money into protecting.That said, these two patents contain ideas and technologies... [...]