What We Learned in June 2018: The Digital Marketing Month in a Minute

You can now see any active competitors ads on Facebook and Twitter

Off the back of claims of interference in the US presidential election by Russian companies using bots, both Facebook and Twitter have taken significant steps to make their ad platforms more transparent. From the end of June you can now see any ads using the Twitter transparency tool or by visiting any Facebook page and clicking ‘Info and ads’ in vertical navigation on the left side of a page.

Facebook and Twitter now let you see anyone’s ads (Distilled)

Google Search Console Analytics API now comes with 16 months of data

The overhaul of Google Search Console continues. Previously 16 months worth of data had only been available via the user interface, but Google has now opened this up to the API as well.

If you’re using the Search Console Search Analytics #API, you now have access to all 16 months of data provided in the UI! If you’d like to integrate the data with your CMS or make your own tools, check out our docs athttps://t.co/cqVVyHIbUp

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) June 18, 2018

Read the full story (Search Engine Land)

Google simplifying branding of Adwords and DoubleClick

After almost two decades, Adwords and DoubleClick will cease to exist as Google look to rebrand their current offerings to better reflect their current capabilities. The major rebranding has resulted in Google Adwords becoming Google Ads, DoubleClick and Google Analytics 360 Suite becoming Google Marketing Platform, and DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange becoming Google Ad Manager.

Read the full story (Search Engine Land)

Supreme Court Rules States Can Collect Sales Tax on Web Purchases

The supreme court has ruled that online retailer can now be required to collect online sales tax from customers. The ruling which will impact retailers such as Amazon, Apple, Macy’s, Target and Walmart, has overturned a ruling which previously meant retailers didn’t have to charge the tax, as long as customers paid it themselves. In the vast majority of instances, customers weren’t paying this tax.

Read the full story (Guardian)

Google releases new URL inspection tool

As part of the ever-changing Google Search Console, a new URL inspection tool has been released. The tool provides detailed crawling, indexing and serving information directly from the Google index. If for whatever reason, a page isn’t indexed you can now learn why.  Additional features that have also been rolled out recently into Google Search Console include 16 months of traffic data, recipe reports (structured data support), and new Search Appearance filters.

Read the full story (Google Webmaster Central)

Instagram now worth an estimated 100 times the amount Facebook paid

Back in 2012 Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion. At the end of June, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that the company is now valued at 100 times that. In that time, it has seen massive growth in users, increased ad revenue, and with the recent announcement of Instagram TV, it has a promising future as a video platform as well.

Read the full story (NY Times)

Breaking up Google

“Google accounts for about 90 percent of all Internet searches; by any honest assessment, it holds a monopoly at the very gateway to information in the modern world.”

In this article, The Boston Globe takes a look at the dominance Google has as a search engine and its ability to consume anyone who becomes a potential competitor and the case for breaking up the company.

Distilled CEO, Will Critchlow shared his opinions on the article over on Twitter arguing that “I am very much not convinced that any kind of Alphabet break-up that leaves Google search intact would really fix anything”. Read his full Twitter discussion here.

Read the full story (Boston Globe)

How Twitter Made The Tech World’s Most Unlikely Comeback

#RIPTwitter was tweeted over a million times in February 2016. Twitter had lost some of its star employees, laid off hundreds more, shares were down to $14, and it looked as though the writing was already on the wall. Another social media platform in the social media graveyard.

Alex Kantrowitz tells the story of how Twitter became the bird that emerged from the ashes.

Read the full story (Buzzfeed)

Site speed still matters

An upcoming speed update in July is due to measure incremental changes to site speed rather than dinging websites as just fast or slow. John Muller said changes will impact rankings “a little bit”.

To clarify on the mobile speed update: a) this only affects the slowest sites, b) those can incrementally improve (though ideally you’d significantly improve the speed…), c) we’re still aiming for this month. If your site is reasonably fast, tweaking won’t change things. https://t.co/4glNAFd0ww

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) July 3, 2018

Read the full story (SE Round Table)

What you need to know about Apple’s war on ‘digital fingerprinting’

At its annual WWDC keynote Apple announced that it would work on blocking another way sites and advertisers track you: canvas fingerprinting. Canvas fingerprinting is used to create a unique profile that can be used in a similar way to cookies, sharing information about browsers, operating systems, fonts and other pieces of data. Apple says that Safari for macOS Mojave will stop this type of tracking by limiting the browser data that sites can access, thus making it harder to track users.

Read the full story (Engadget)

How to Diagnose Your SEO Client’s Search Maturity

One of the stand out posts on Moz this month came from Heather Physioc. In her post, she takes a look at client maturity to make sure that we are pitching projects at the right level, giving us as agencies or consultants the best opportunity to create a successful working relationship and to get things done.

Read the full post (Moz)

2018 Email Industry Conditions

For those of you interested in email marketing, Really Good Emails recently released their industry survey. Data collected from over a thousand email marketers provide oversight of the current trends in the industry.

Read the full story (Really Good Emails)

Google launches Indexing API for job posting URLs

Google has made significant efforts in its abilities to index job content by releasing its indexing API for jobs. The primary aim of this API is to speed up the process of indexing jobs due to the fast-paced way that positions are often filled. On the other side of the coin, they are also stepping up their efforts to remove filled vacancies, thus providing users with a better search experience.

Read the full story (Google Webmaster Blog)

Distilled

As always, we’ll finish this month off with a round-up of what we have been up to here at Distilled. June saw lots of conference-based activities. We wrapped up SearchLove Boston and created a great big roundup, and for the first time ever we have opened SearchLove London to community speakers.  

Elsewhere on the blog, we saw Will argue that we don’t need to be changing our search strategies to accommodate voice searches, as actually there aren’t that many searches to be going after.

New York Analyst, Meagan Sievers made her Distilled debut with her post ‘How to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Instagram’ and creative regular got herself featured in the Moz top ten with her post on free creative resources when you’re short on time.

Finally, our consulting team were out in force over on the Moz blog. Dominic Woodman took a look at some of the strange technical issues we see here at Distilled and provided some actions on how to debug them. Meanwhile, Serge Stefoglo took a dive into the world of JavaScript with his post on ‘The Minimum Viable Knowledge You Need to Work with JavaScript & SEO Today’

Is there any news we missed out in this months round up? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below or hit us up on @distilled over on Twitter. Until next month!