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If you’ve been meaning to learn about Google Authorship—what it is, how it works, why it’s important for SEO—you can take that off your to-do list. 

In a Google+ post, John Mueller of Google Webmaster Tools wrote: “We’ve gotten lots of useful feedback from all kinds of webmasters and users, and we’ve tweaked, updated, and honed recognition and displaying of authorship information. Unfortunately, we’ve also observed that this information isn’t as useful to our users as we’d hoped, and can even distract from those results. With this in mind, we’ve made the difficult decision to stop showing authorship in search results. We realize authorship wasn’t always easy to implement, and we greatly appreciate the effort you put into continually improving your sites for your users.” 

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Social media is a great way for a small business to attract interest in its products and services. Once you build your social media community, you can get your prospects and customers excited about whatever it is you’re selling. 

For many customers, there’s a big gap between thinking about buying and actually taking the steps to place the order. Some social media platforms are attempting to close that gap by adding a BUY button. 

This month, Twitter announced plans to “publicly test a BUY button that can be embedded in posts to allow users to buy a product with a couple of clicks.” In July, Facebook started a similar test. 

This is a good time to ramp up your social media marketing campaigns so you’re ready when Twitter, Facebook and others open up these selling opportunities to all businesses. 

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Google. Still Google. According to comScore, Google holds 67.6 percent of U.S. search engine market share. How can any ad network compete with a company that owns about two-thirds of search traffic? 

Despite the bold claims made by Bing (remember the Bing challenge?) and industry speculation that Facebook PPC could be a threat, no other PPC platform has been able to make a dent in Google’s booming PPC business. 

Facebook is showing some strength in the mobile advertising space. According to this article, “Facebook is nearly monopolizing the growth in the global mobile ad industry, having more than tripled its share of the market from 2012 to 2013...but Google remains the dominant force with just under half of the mobile ad market (49.3 percent).” 

In the midst of developing Amazon Prime Air (drones delivering packages to customers in 30 minutes or less. Really!), Amazon has been working on a new ad platform that's designed to be a direct challenge to Google AdWords. Perhaps Amazon will finally give Google AdWords some real competition. 

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According to an article in Time magazine: “Companies have been promising the dawn of the smart home–a futuristic dwelling full of gadgets working seamlessly to satisfy your every whim–since the ’50s. Yet early efforts failed to deliver because of clunky tech and consumer wariness.” 

A company called SmartThings has built a platform that allows the objects in your home–doors, locks, lightbulbs, even sprinkler systems–to talk to one another and prioritize your needs. 

SmartThings has competition from other companies with more familiar names, such as Apple, AT&T and Google. But according to the Time article, “SmartThings, though smaller and less resource-rich than the tech titans, is well positioned to lead the pack. Unlike bigger companies, it doesn’t have an established business model to protect, so it can reimagine the connected home from scratch.” 

This month, SmartThings was acquired by Samsung. 

Click here to read This Startup is Trying to Create—and Control—the Internet of Your Home. 

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Research shows that the internet is now the primary way that most US consumers find local business information and search engines were identified as the primary tool used by consumers to find local information. 

Furthermore, “While the internet has emerged as the go-to source for finding location information and details about businesses ranging from hair salons and veterinary clinics to gyms and restaurants, it is rife with errors. As a result, companies are missing out on customers at their bricks-and-mortar stores, and driving them to competitors, say analysts.” (Financial Times 3/4/13) 

Your business address, phone number, email address, hours, policies, specials and other details—they’re all subject to change. Make sure your local listings are up-to-date. 

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Google’s recent local search algorithm update has no official name; Search Engine Land calls it “Pigeon.” So we’ll go with that. 

According to a Search Engine Land report: “The new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more. In addition, Google said that this new algorithm improves their distance and location ranking parameters. The new algorithm is currently rolling out for US English results and aims to provide a more useful and relevant experience for searchers seeking local results.” 

Click here to read more. 

Upon the arrival of Google+ Local, many small business owners who were attempting to manage their Google local listings finally had to admit defeat. Local listings management has never been easy, but it seems that Google has done more to complicate matters than fix them. The new Google My Business product looks like a big improvement. 

According to Google: 
If you previously used Google Places for Business or Google+ Pages Dashboard to manage your business information, your account has been automatically upgraded to Google My Business. Google My Business makes it easier than ever to update business information across Google Search, Maps and Google+. Google My Business puts your business info on Search, Maps and Google+ so that customers can find you, no matter what device they’re using.

Click here to read Frequently Asked Questions about Google My Business. 

Social media can be the perfect spot for small business owners to communicate with customers and attract the attention of prospective customers. Click here to read “Nine Small Business Social Media Success Stories.” 

Many small business owners have neither the time nor the inclination to become fluent in the language and etiquette of social media. Even those who do attempt to figure it all out will struggle to design, implement and fine-tune the campaign. 

Outsourcing is certainly a good option, but no one knows your company like you do. When you hire an individual or a firm to manage your social media, keep in mind that you’re an important part of the team—the one who ensures that social media interactions are authentic and represent the essence of your company. 

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Three years ago, a company called Aereo began offering subscribers a cloud-based television antenna that accessed live, over the air broadcast television. Membership included a remote cloud-based DVR to set and watch recordings. According to the company’s website, the basic monthly membership was available to consumers in select areas for $8 a month. This is all in the past because Aereo has been effectively shut down. 

On June 25th, in the case of American Broadcasting Companies v. Aereo, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Aereo, finding that the service provided by Aereo violated copyright laws. Click here to read Aereo’s response to the ruling. 

Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito dissented. Scalia wrote: “The Court should be in no position to make judgments on recently new technologies, and it is instead Congress’s job to determine if the copyright laws should be modified to address these issues.” 

Aereo is encouraging consumers to “Contact legislators through Twitter, Facebook and Email and protect your right to use a cloud-based antenna.” 

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In December 2013, Facebook released Premium Video Ads, “designed for advertisers who want to reach a large audience with high-quality sight, sound and motion. Each 15-second video ad will start playing without sound as it appears on screen and stop if people scroll past.” Nice...but not affordable for small businesses. 

Facebook video ads no longer require a Fortune 500 budget. With expanded video capabilities, small businesses can use Facebook’s standard video ads to “encourage people to engage more deeply with their brand and products is by adding a call-to-action inviting people to learn more and visit a destination of their choice, like a specific page on a website, after viewing the video.” 

According to an article on Adweek.com, internet video ads have higher impact than TV ads. Click here to read more. 

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