Five articles that have us buzzing this week
Google postpones page experience update rollout
Google announced that it is postponing the rollout of the page experience update, specifically the ranking change, from May 2021 to be a gradual rollout that won’t start until mid-June 2021 and won’t be fully rolled out until the end of August. Google is pushing off the rollout timeline for this update to “help you continue to make refinements to your website with page experience in mind,” the company said. Truth is, I suspect most site owners who cared about making changes for the page experience update were already on schedule to make those changes by the end of this month.
Brands could lose fickle Gen Zers over poor digital experiences
DuckDuckGo announces plans to block FLoC, Google’s new way of tracking users’ web browsing activity in Chrome. As Google transitions away from using third-party cookies in Chrome, its developing a new technology called FLoC (Federated Learning of Cohorts). Google claims FLoC offers more privacy than third-party cookies because it monitors activity at a group level rather than an individual level.
Nextdoor will alert users if it thinks they’re about to post something racist
Nextdoor is introducing a new anti-racism notification, which asks users to reconsider posting content if the app thinks it may be offensive. As with its previous Kindness Reminder, if a user tries to post something with words or phrases Nextdoor thinks may be objectionable, it will give them the option to edit the post before it actually goes live. The users can, however, ignore the warning and post it anyway.
Google Dispels Rumors About Bid Strategy Changes
Last month, a post on Google’s Developer blog about bid strategy updates spurred some controversy when it was misinterpreted to indicate that two smart bidding strategies were going away. This morning, Google confirmed what many PPCers had speculated: that the bid strategies aren’t going away, rather the Google Ads UI is getting a small face lift.
Facebook Will Let Users Eliminate ‘Like’ Count in Expanded Test
The social network has been testing hiding likes on its photo-sharing app Instagram in several countries, including Canada, Brazil, Australia, Ireland, Italy, and Japan. Now, the company said Wednesday it will expand that experiment globally on Instagram in the coming weeks and explore implementing a similar opt-out test on Facebook’s main site in the future.
