Category Archives: Google

An Excellent Read: The Verge on how “Google shapes everything on the web”

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If you want to understand how we got to the Web that we have today, I would strongly recommend reading this beautiful piece by Mia Sato at The Verge on the theme of “Google shapes everything on the Web”

It is an interactive piece that explains in both text and animations why it is that search engine optimization (SEO) has driven every website to look the same… why even short articles are being broken up by headings… why author bylines are suddenly expanding into bios…  … and why the #Web is increasingly bland, useless, and untrustworthy

It also explains why increasingly people are using other search experiences (ex TikTok) – or moving content into other systems – purely because the Web is no longer working in the way it used to. It’s now gamed by so many… and filled with generative-AI spawned content farms….

Certainly some of us keep posting to our good old websites or blogs… largely because they were and are labors of love, not profit.

But those seeking profit or fame are all playing the SEO game… and we with our regular old websites will lose out on the discovery.

I thought one of the final paragraphs was on point about the paywalling of content (my emphasis added):

But no matter what happens with Search, there’s already a splintering: a web full of cheap, low-effort content and a whole world of human-first art, entertainment, and information that lives behind paywalls, in private chat rooms, and on websites that are working toward a more sustainable model. As with young people using TikTok for search, or the practice of adding “reddit” to search queries, users are signaling they want a different way to find things and feel no particular loyalty to Google.

People are looking for alternatives, and increasingly they are moving to private communities / walled gardens in large part to avoid the spam… and to avoid the blandness and overall "enshittification" of the Web.

FIR On Technology, Episode 4 – How To Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly

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FIR On Technology logoHow do you make your website “mobile-friendly”? Given Google’s impending April 21, 2015, deadline to start using mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor for mobile search results, what can you do both in the short-term and in the longer-term to both provide the best experience for mobile users – and also retain your Google search result ranking?

In this fourth episode of “FIR On Technology” Dan York explains what you need to be thinking about with regard to “responsive design” of your website, outlines some of the resources Google offers to help, and explains several of the options you have to make your site mobile-friendly.  During the episode Dan discusses the following sites:

Get this Podcast:

The music for the intro and outro is “Early Warning” from Mark Knox and is used with his permission.

Sharing Your Comments

FIR Community on Google+Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future podcasts, in the online FIR Podcast Community on Google+.

You can also send us instant voicemail via SpeakPipe, right from the FIR website. Or, call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype:fircomments. You can tweet us: @FIRpodcast. And you can email us at fircomments@gmail.com. If you wish, you can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all podcasts in the FIR Podcast Network, subscribe to the “everything” RSS feed. To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

NOTE: This podcast announcement was originally posted on the For Immediate Release (FIR) website.

Google Says Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly By April 21 – Or Drop In Search Results

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Mobile friendly testIs your website "mobile-friendly"? Does it display nicely on a mobile device such as an iPhone, iPad, Android or other smart phone? If not, you have until April 21 to make it mobile-friendly… or you will suffer a drop in Google search results!

In a February 26 post on Google's Webmaster Central Blog, Google very clearly indicated their direction (my emphasis added):

Starting April 21, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimized for their devices.

Google does not often clearly state what signals it uses for ranking search results… but here they are.

Get "mobile-friendly" … or drop in search ranking for mobile searches!

This last point is important – they say the mobile-friendly status will be used as a ranking status for mobile searches. I interpret this to mean that if your site is not mobile-friendly you might still rank highly in searches from regular computers/laptops/desktops, but your ranking would decrease in searches from mobile devices.

However, given how many people are now using mobile devices to access the Internet… and how that trend continues to increase over time… NOT having a mobile-friendly site is going to impact people being able to get to your site.

UPDATE: I also recorded an audio podcast, "FIR On Technology, Episode 4 – How To Make Your Website Mobile-Friendly" about this topic. More information and links can be found on that page.

Tools To Help

To help with the transition to a mobile-friendly web, Google has provided several tools. First, they have a "Mobile-Friendly Test" tool at:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

It will analyze your site and tell you if you are "mobile-friendly" in Google's view (which is presumably what they will use in the ranking signals).

Second, Google has a guide to creating mobile-friendly websites at:

https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/get-started/

A key section here is:

where they explain options you have to make your site mobile-friendly.

Moving To A New Theme

In some cases, such as this Disruptive Conversations site that is still hosted on TypePad, my only choice is to move to a new "theme" that uses "responsive design". I've already done this with danyork.com, but haven't yet done that here (but I will before April 21). This can be a larger process if you want to continue to use your existing style and design.

With other content management systems (CMSs) such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, you can also move to mobile-friendly themes as there are many available. When I've been creating new sites on WordPress in the past year or two I've made sure that all the themes I've been using have had "responsive design" as one of their attributes.

Using A Plugin

With some of the CMSs, there may be plugins that can help you make your site mobile-friendly without changing the theme. For instance, with WordPress, there are two that I've used to make sites mobile-friendly:

Both of those plugins essentially provide a responsive-design theme that gets used for your site when a mobile device connects to your site. You may not have all the design capabilities that you would have in having your main theme be responsive (in terms of having the mobile theme look like your main theme), but these plugins provide a quick way to get your site to be "mobile-friendly".

Other CMSs may have similar plugins, modules or extensions – you need to check with your CMS. Google's guide has links to help you get started.

Other Options

If you don't use a CMS or your CMS doesn't offer mobile-friendly themes or plugins… well… you may want to consider moving to a CMS that offers such capabilities (although that can be a huge task). Or you can read up on the principles of "responsive design" and see what you can apply to your website.

Getting To A Mobile-Friendly Web

The end result out of all of this will be a mobile-friendly web… and as all the millions and billions of new users come on to the Internet odds are pretty good that they will be using mobile devices, so the good news is that your content will be readily accessible on all those devices.

The bad news is that you may have some work to do between now and April 21 if you haven't already made your site mobile-friendly. (Well, assuming you care about ranking highly in Google search results – but if you are reading this site you probably do!)

If you've needed a deadline to make this happen… here it is!

Get mobile-friendly by April 21… or watch your Google search ranking drop!

An audio commentary on this topic is available:

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Google+ Finally Gets Photo Sharing Parity On iPhone/iPad/iOS

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In an update to iOS (iPhone/iPad) apps yesterday, Google+ finally got the kind of sharing of photos that Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social networks have had for some time. Now, when I go to share a photo, one of my options is Google+:

Photo Dec 22 1 07 16 PM

I realize that this is old news to Android users, but for those of us on iOS who have wanted to share photos on Google+, it seemed strange that we couldn’t do so from the built in photos application within iOS. Sure, we could do it through the G+ app on the iPhone or iPad, but not from within the native photos app.

This functionality appeared after I installed version 4.8.0:

Googleplus 4 8 0

I did have to tap the ” More … ” button once and then turn on the Google+ sharing, but after doing that I was then able to easily share to G+ the next time.

Great to see G+ finally getting parity with the other social networks. I look forward to being able to more easily share more photos!

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Have You Joined The “FIR Podcast Community” On Google+?

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Fir communityIf you are interested in social media, PR, marketing, podcasting and similar topics, have you joined the “FIR Podcast Community” on Google+? While the community is intended for listeners of the “For Immediate Release (FIR)” network of podcasts it is just a great place to go to keep track of current issues, ideas and trends within the world of PR/marketing/communications.

The community has a good mixture of posts by FIR podcast hosts about their shows and also from listeners and others who post links and engage in topics that are along the lines of the themes of various FIR shows.

It’s one of the communities on Google+ to which I regularly go and participate in as often as I can. Pretty much every time I visit I see some links that I find helpful.

Anyway, if you have not yet joined the FIR Podcast Community on Google+, I’d encourage you to do so!
 

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My Unexpected Comment On YouTube – Via The Google+ Integration

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Today I received a personal reminder of the new strong linkage between Google+ and YouTube.  Given that today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the USA, I posted a link to a YouTube video of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech to my Google+ account.  

I had forgotten, though, that… 

Every post on Google+ about a YouTube link is DISPLAYED ON YOUTUBE as a comment!

So a little while later when I went to get the link again to pass along to someone else, I refreshed the page in my browser and there was my smiling face staring back at me…

Martin Luther King I Have A Dream Speech August 28 1963 YouTube 6

Now, in this particular case, I don’t particularly mind. I just had forgotten that this integration was already in place between Google+ and YouTube. Google rolled it out in November and almost immediately came under fire for increasing spam comments on YouTube (which they are now trying to address through new tools for YouTube creators).

I need to remember this, too, because when posting a YouTube link to Google+ I may be thinking about it in the context of my Google+ page and the content I post there… but I have to remember that my text will also be seen by people viewing the video on YouTube and without the context of having perhaps regularly seen my Google+ content.

Similarly, I need to remember that ANY sharing on Google+ will wind up on YouTube. For instance, on Facebook I have on occasion re-shared a video that I thought friends might be interested in… but that I might not necessarily want to have my name attached to. It might just be a silly video that I found funny.

With this G+ integration, however, any time I re-share a video in this manner on Google+ my name and my comment are going to appear on the YouTube page for that video. I’m not sure how I feel about this.

I will say it will make me be much more careful about what kind of YouTube links I share on Google+.

How about you? What do you think about this integration between Google+ and YouTube?

P.S. And going back to the original video link that started this all, if you haven’t watched Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech, it truly IS a powerful speech!

UPDATE: Here’s an issue with the integration – my Google+ comment is displayed over on YouTube, but my name “Dan York” on YouTube links over to my YouTube account instead of my Google+ account. While that makes sense: 1) I don’t use that YouTube account; and 2) I left the comment in the context of Google+ and now people have no way to see that. So it’s a kind of a one-way integration…

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My New Podcast: “FIR On Technology” Episode 1 About Google+ Hangouts On Air

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Firontechnology 300What are Google+ “Hangouts On Air” (HOA) all about and how can communicators best use them? How does a “Hangout On Air” differ from a “Hangout”? What kind of technology do you need to know to use them? What are some tips and tricks for working most effectively with a Google+ HOA? What is the linkage to YouTube? How do you get started?

Those were all questions I addressed with my guest Randy Resnick in the first episode of a brand new podcast I’m down doing called “FIR On Technology with Dan York“. You can listen on the episode page (where there are also links to HOA resources) or here:

The interview was fun to do and from comments in the FIR Podcast Community on Google+ has already been a help to multiple listeners.

As I noted in the introduction post on the For Immediate Release (FIR) website, the goal of the overall “FIR On Technology” podcast is to answer questions such as these:

How can communicators best use new tools such as, say, Google+ Hangouts On Air to tell their stories in new ways or to reach new audiences? Are there tips and tricks they should be aware of? What is new in the latest release of WordPress? Why should someone in PR and marketing care about something like IPv6 or HTML5?

For close to 9 years now I’ve been contributing weekly reports into the regular For Immediate Release (FIR)podcast hosted by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson. Now, with the creation of the “FIR Podcast Network” and the launch of new shows, it was logical to launch a technology-focused podcast where I could do a deeper dive than just the 5 minutes in the regular FIR episodes.

Please do note – my regular weekly FIR reports WILL continue!

Nothing changes there… it’s just that these “FIR On Technology” episodes will allow for more time to get into specific topics at a higher level of detail.  I’d love to hear your feedback about this episode or the overall idea either as comments to this blog post or via social media or email: 

In particular, if there are any topics you’d really like to see me address on future episodes… or if you want to pitch me on why it might be interesting to interview you or a client, I’m open to that as well.

The “FIR On Technology with Dan York” podcast will NOT be a “regular” podcast in that it will not be on a specific interval, i.e. weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc. It is instead “a periodic podcast” meaning that the episodes will come out whenever I have time to record and produce them. I’m aiming for at least monthly, but there may be more at different times.

If you’d like to follow along, you can:

A subscription option via iTunes will be available soon.

I’m greatly appreciative of the FIR podcast community who has been very supportive of me doing this podcast – and of course I’m deeply grateful to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson for their support and continuing to involve me in the growing world of “FIR”.

Please do join in and follow along… there is a LOT of technology and tools out there to talk about with communicators!

P.S. The music I am using (with his permission) for the intro and outro comes from my friend Mark Knox in Ottawa, whose music can be found on his SoundCloud account.

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Awesomeness! Jetpack 2.7 Lets WordPress Users Auto-Post Content To Google+

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JetpackNow here is an awesome gift for the holidays! Any self-hosted WordPress users who use the JetPack plugin can now automatically publicize their posts out to a Google+ account… including to a Google+ page. This is all courtesy of the new Jetpack 2.7 release that happened yesterday.

For quite some time, users of Jetpack (and other similar WordPress plugins) have been able to auto-post out to Twitter and Facebook using the “Publicize” component of Jetpack, but posting to a Google+ page always required you to manually go to G+ to post the link. As a result, it was just yet-another-step that sometimes didn’t happen. This was particularly true for scheduled posts that you might arrange to go out at particular times when staff were not available to post the link into Google+. (I’ve scheduled posts like this any number of times when I’m going to be spending a day traveling on planes.)

This changes with Jetpack 2.7 and puts Google+ on equal footing with other services. Now when you configure “Publicize” within Jetpack you see this screen (shown on my Monadnock Curling Club web site):

Publicize settings 2

You then are asked how you want to connect to Google+ for this WordPress site. You can either connect to your own G+ account or to any of the Google+ Pages for which you are a manager:

Google Accounts

You next must approve the permissions and indicate who you want to see your posts:

Gplus permissions 2

One final step is to approve whether you want all users of the blog to be able to publicize the post through this Google+ connection:

Sharing Settings Monadnock Curling Club WordPress 3

That’s it!

Now all your future posts will be publicized through Google+! I’d note that you do have the option to control on a per-post basis what services your content is auto-posted to. When you are in a post you can see right in the “Publish” box an area for “Publicize” and by clicking on an “Edit” link you can have control over what services get the post automatically and what the message will be:

Add New Post Monadnock Curling Club WordPress

In a very nice feature I found that you can click “Add New” and go through the process again to connect additional Google+ pages or accounts. Here I’ve configured posts to this blog to go not only to the Monadnock Curling Club page but also to my personal Google+ account:

Sharing Settings Monadnock Curling Club WordPress 6

All in all a very cool addition to Jetpack! Well worth the upgrade to 2.7 (or the installation of Jetpack if you’re not using it yet). Looking forward to now being able to more regularly get my content into Google+.

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Google+ Changes Cover Photo Size Again – Removes Huge Image, Moves Profile Photo to Left

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If you haven’t looked at your Google+ profile or page for a bit… you might want to do so because Google has changed the image size again. It used to be a huge image that took up a great amount of your screen – and then “collapsed” in a funky way when you scrolled down the page. Your name and your profile photo appeared at the bottom of the photo and the photo was greyed out a bit.

That’s all gone.

Now your photo is a good bit smaller and does not collapse as the page scrolls… it just disappears off the page as you would expect it to. Most significantly, though, your profile photo and info is on the left side of the photo, taking over about a quarter of the image. Here’s what my Google+ page looks like now:

Dan York Google 2

You’ll note that the profile photo and info now blurs the image behind them. But… if you had taken the time to create a cover photo with something centered in the middle of the photo, you’ll probably want to adjust that to shift the image over a bit.

I’ve not seen any formal specifications out of anyone at Google about this new image size. The only real note I’ve seen is this Google+ post by Google engineer Karthik Nagaraj just indicating the change was happening. He indicates that basically any 16:9 image should work.

On my Mac using Google Chrome I did a screen capture of that part a G+ page and that told me that the overall image was 1060×438 and the main visible (non-blurred) part was 780×438 (which math then says leaves 280×438 behind the blurred part. That, however, is just how it was displayed in Chrome on my Mac… I don’t precisely how it will appear on other browsers on other operating systems.

The main point is that about the leftmost 25% (actually 26.4% if those numbers I measured) of the image will be blurred, so keep that in mind when choosing an image.

Given that I find myself using Google+ a good bit more these days, I do like these changes… it just would have been great if Google gave all of us a bit more of a clue about the change rather than just waking up to find that it had been done. Ah, well… given how much I’ve paid for Google+ (i.e. nothing) I guess I can’t really complain, eh?

What do you think of the new cover photo size? Do you like this better?

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Finally! Google+ Starts Rolling Out Custom URLs To Regular Users

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Dan York About Google 2Finally! We can now get “custom URLs” for our Google+ accounts! As of this morning you can now find me at the nice and easy URL of:

https://plus.google.com/+DanYork/

One of the supreme annoyances of using Google+ has been the horribly ugly long URLs you have had to use for your profile. You couldn’t give people an easy URL to find you on the service and there was no way that normal people would realistically remember the long numbers. Google rolled out “custom URL” support for some brands and celebrities earlier but all of us “regular users” were left with the ugly URLs.

That changed yesterday and was noted with a post on Google+, “Expanding the availability of custom URLs“. Tipped off to the change by Neville Hobson’s post on G+, I went into my Google+ profile and nicely found this message waiting for me at the top of the page

Google custom url 2

I was delighted to see that “+DanYork” was being offered to me and so I clicked the “Get URL” button to see this screen:

Google get custom url 2

One more click brought me to a confirmation screen nothing that I can’t change the URL or transfer it to anyone else:

Google custom url confirm 2

And that was it! My Google+ profile now is at https://plus.google.com/+DanYork/.

Very cool to see and this will definitely make it so much easier to refer people to my profile on the service (and therefore will make it much easier for people to find me and use Google+).

Now, what I really want is this kind of custom URL for my Google+ Pages, and I’m seeing from comments on G+ that some people have this for their pages already. The post from Google says the criteria for custom URLs will be:

If your profile meets the following criteria, you’ll now be able to claim a custom URL:
– Has a profile photo, and
– Has at least 10 followers, and
– Has an account that’s at least 30 days old

Meanwhile, any brand or business that has a linked website or is a verified local business can claim a custom URL for their Google+ page.

I do have linked websites for some of my Google+ Pages … but I’m not yet seeing the option to get a custom URL. As Google indicates, this feature is being rolled out this week, so hopefully I’ll see it soon.

I’ve been using Google+ a great amount these days, and so I’m thrilled to see this new feature that will make it much easier to find people and to refer people to my profile and content.

What about you? Have you been offered a custom URL on Google+ yet? Have you claimed it?

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