Peggy Ks Tips and Tricks

This week NASA - and the world - celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first “small step for man” on the moon. It was a momentous achievement! It was a fairly quiet week otherwise, with just a few updates for YouTubers, web browsers and businesses.

(If you are interested in the logistics of space travel, and aren’t too squeamish, check out author Mary Robinette Kowel’s discussion of peeing (and other bodily functions) in space. It definitely takes away some of the glamor.)
The official G Suite channel has been posting some tutorials on how to use Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Calendar and Forms. Plus there is a newly revamped G Suite Learning Center, with training and tips for all G Suite core products - which includes useful information for us consumer users as well.YouTube is working on new features that should help creators manage their comments. In particular they are developing filters that can let you view (and respond to) subsets of comments, for example from subscribers, fr…

AdSense announced today that they will be discontinuing their Android and iOS mobile apps by the end of 2019. They will be replaced by an improved mobile web interface:
By investing in a common web application that supports all platforms, we will be able to deliver AdSense features optimized for mobile much faster than we can today. Neither the AdSense Android app nor the iOS app been updated since late 2017. They haven't even been updated to use the current AdSense logo, which was introduced a year ago. 
That said, the current AdSense web experience on mobile isn't great. You can access your account, but it's just the desktop version of the site. For now, if you want to check your page views and earnings on the go, I recommend continuing to use the app.

Timeline

There isn't a solid timeline yet, other than the apps being removed from the app stores by the end of 2019.

"Later this year" AdSense will "announce improvements to the AdSense mobile web interfa…

This week is all about video, with YouTube updates, VidCon announcements and live streaming discussions. Did you know all the hip youth are on TikTok now? I feel old just writing that.
I’ve started trying out services that might replace Hangouts on Air, which will be going away sometime later this year. If you want to see the tests live and join the chat, be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel and enable notifications!And I’m not the only one interested in live streaming platforms, StreamYard co-founder Geige Vandentop joined Michael Daniels and Heather Kraafter on the Tinkering with Tech show. YouTube announced changes that make it easier for creators to resolve manual Content ID claims. Claimants will now have to include timestamps with their claim, so that creators can more easily dispute the claim (if it’s incorrect) or edit the video. Editing the video to remove the claimed content now releases the claim. And to that end, YouTube has made it easier to either mute or replace …

At today's Industry Keynote at VidCon, YouTube's Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan discussed recent updates and some new features for YouTube Creators.

YouTube is emphasizing social features that let creators connect with their audience like Stories, Premiers, and revenue streams like Super Chat and Super Stickers.

Mohan told Variety earlier this week:
“YouTubers have shared that they want to use YouTube to generate funds and contribute resources for things that are important to them,” Mohan said. “My job as chief product officer is to find ways to make that simpler and easier.” Here's what's new:

New Learning Playlists

This is a brand new feature that I'm excited about. It's a way to organize educational content, letting you divide a collection of educational videos into chapters around key concepts, starting from beginner to more advanced.

Recommendations are hidden on the watch page, so viewers can focus on the content.

This is currently only available to a &…

Today YouTube is making two changes that should make it easier for creators to resolve manual Content ID claims: time stamps showing exactly what part of the video content is claimed, and automatic release of claims if they are edited to remove the claimed content.

Content ID is a tool available to copyright holders that own the rights to a "substantial body of original material that is frequently uploaded by the YouTube user community."  Claims can be made by YouTube's automatic matching system or manually. The copyright holders can choose one of three options:
Block the video from being viewed (either in specific countries or worldwide)Monetize the video (in some cases, like cover videos, revenue is shared with creators)Track the video's viewership and other stats Creators can dispute a Content ID claim if they believe the claim was incorrect, or if they have the rights to use the content. You can see any copyright claims on your videos at www.youtube.com/my_videos_…

Ever since consumer Google+ shut down on April 2nd, G Suite for Education users have been unable to create a new YouTube channel on a Brand Account. Eventually many received an email from G Suite that says G Suite for Education users will not be able to be the primary owner for Brand Accounts:
Your G Suite for Education account can no longer be used to create a Brand Account or join an existing Brand Account.On July 10, 2019, Google will delete any Brand Account for which your G Suite for Education user account is the primary owner.On July 10, 2019, Google will revoke membership of your G Suite for Education user account from any remaining Brand Account you are a member of. Since the shutdown of consumer Google+, Brand Accounts are really only used for YouTube channels. The Brand Account lets the YouTube channel have multiple managers, and it can have a name that is different than your personal Google account name.

Many G Suite for Education users have a YouTube channel on a Brand Acc…

I hope summer is off to a great start for you! This was a relatively quiet week, with a few updates for webmasters, AdSense publishers, Twitch Affiliates and Partners and more.
Google announced they are formalizing the “Robots Exclusion Protocol” that allows webmasters to exclude bots and web crawlers from specific pages of their site with a robots.txt file. Google has also open-sourced the library their production systems use for parsing and matching rules in robots.txt files. Of particular note, Google will be retiring “unsupported and unpublished rules” such as using crawl-delay, noindex or nofollow in the robots.txt file. If you have been using that, there are alternatives, such as noindex in meta tags, 404 and 410 HTTP status codes, and Disallow in robots.txt. Both AdSense and Google Ads started showing a notice that Chrome would start filtering “annoying, disruptive ads” on sites globally beginning July 9th. If you have a blog or website, check out the Ad Experience Report for …