Promptweb.com Search News is your monthly source to keep you up to date on the latest trends in digital marketing and related matters.

This Crowd is Out of Control

Google’s mapping product has hit another rough patch.

According to this article from May 2015, “Google has temporarily suspended Google Map Maker, a service to allow the community to make edits to Google Maps…The reason the service was suspended was because of the recent public edits made to show how easy it is to make fraudulent edits to businesses.”

Now, Google Maps has run into problems from what Danny Sullivan of Marketing Land speculates is caused by use of words in reviews and links: “Google allows anyone to review places for Google Maps. It could be that some people are making use of slurs and derogatory comments about places in those reviews, which in turn causes those places to become relevant for them.” With the Pigeon Update, “Google greatly increased the degree of crowdsourcing it was doing about local places, in hopes that it could better locate those places for words and phrases that might not have been included in often short descriptions submitted by business owners.”

Click here to read about Google’s plans to fix the problem.

Quality Will Prevail (says Google)

Last month, Google made changes to its core ranking algorithm in terms of how it processes quality signals. Search Engine Land calls it the “Quality Update” and reports that, “Google wouldn’t provide specifics about how quality is now assessed. We know from past statements by Google that quality for a particular page or site is determined by a wide range of individual factors. It could be that Google is now weighting some of those factors more and others less.”

Google has always been very clear about one thing: It wants quality. Evidently, the Google bots are now going to greater lengths to find and show high quality content. Do you have it?

Click here to read Google’s instructions on how to create the best possible experience for your audience with original and high quality content.

Pinterest Steps it Up

According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, 70 percent of marketers plan to increase social media advertising in 2015, including mobile ads on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Pinterest wants a piece of that.

In May, Pinterest announced a suite of ad solutions, including a new video ad format called “Cinematic Pins.” Cinematic Pins are motion based video ads (not autoplay) and according to Pinterest, “enables enhanced storytelling for brands while giving users control.”

In addition, Pinterest’s new audience targeting lets advertisers “target Promoted Pins based on interests, personas or life stages like millennials, foodies and travelers.” Click here to learn more about advertising on Pinterest.