Weekly Update: February 23, 2019: YouTube Policy & Enforcement, Merchant Tools

This week YouTube made major updates in how they enforce policy, there are new tools for merchants to get their products seen on Google, and more. In personal news, my YouTube channel is finally back in the YouTube Partner Program. It lost monetization just over a year ago, because my channel didn’t meet the new watch time requirements. Thank you all for watching!

YouTube announced a total revision of how Community Guidelines strikes are enforced, with an initial one-time warning. After that, the first strike results in a 7-day freeze in posting content, the second strike within 90 days a 14 day freeze, and a third strike within 90 days, channel termination. Under the current system, a single strike causes live streaming to be restricted for 90 days. Under the new system live streaming will be restricted for the shorter period. The new system goes into effect on February 25.
In response to reports that pedophiles were networking in the comments of videos featuring children, YouTube has disabled comments on "tens of millions" of videos featuring minors, and limited monetization on videos that feature minors and are at risk for predatory comments. Affected channels can re-enable comments, but YouTube recommends that they review all comments before they are allowed to appear on their video watch pages.
It’s not all bad. YouTube Studio Beta now lets you graph Analytics comparisons, so, for example, you can easily compare the views on several different videos in a particular time frame.
Google presented a white paper describing their work to prevent the intentional spread of misinformation across their products, including YouTube, Google Search, Google News, and Google Ads. It’s not really new information if you’ve been following Google’s actions over the past couple of years, but it’s useful to see in one place. It covers their active support of journalism, work to protect election integrity, development of algorithms that promote “quality” content, providing context to users, and investing in human reviewers.
Social media is not only under pressure to stop the flow of misinformation about politics, but also medical treatments. And they have been responding. YouTube demonetized a number of anti-vaccination channels. Pinterest goes further, blocking "vaccine" and "cancer cure" searches, preventing re-pinning of anti-vax memes already removed from one account and no longer allows pinning links to certain anti-vaccination websites. And Facebook is thinking about taking measures.
If you are interested in the development of Twitter, apply for the Twitter Prototype Program to try out the new prototype app. The first goal is to make it “easier to read, understand and join conversations.”
Google has introduced new ways for merchants to make sure their customers find up-to-date and accurate product information when searching online. There is a “Products” report in Google Search Console, product information uploaded to Google Merchant Center may now appear in Search and Google Images, and there are new features in Google Manufacturer Center.
Google Cloud Next will be April 9-11 in San Francisco. You can check out the official website to see the scheduled sessions, with tracks for G Suite apps for productivity and collaboration, application development, infrastructure, data management, security and much more. You can learn how Spotify uses Google Cloud Bigtable to serve personalized music recommendations, what’s new with Hangouts Meet and Meet Hardware, the future of Google Sites, a panel discussion on Google’s Communication Products, and much more.

Read on for more links, tips and updates for YouTubers, webmasters and more.

Image: We’re coming to the end of the movie awards season. At the Academy Awards on Sunday, movie stars will be dressed to the nines. I’ve chose red beads and sequins for this my formal attire. And, of course Google wants to help “give you the scoop on Hollywood’s big night”. Photo by _Alicja_ on Pixabay (Free for commercial use)

Other social media

Google for businesses

Help customers discover your products on Google (Google Webmasters)
Now on iOS: Follow your favorite places on Google Maps (Google)
A Local SEO Citation, you Never Knew You Had (SEMrush Blog)

Bloggers and Webmasters

.dev domains are now available (Google Developers)
Google Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout (February 19) (Google Webmasters)
Google Webmaster Central Office Hours Hangout (February 22) (Google Webmasters)
WordPress 5.1 “Betty” Released (WordPress)

AdSense and advertising

Hangouts and Messaging

Google Voice adding ‘Anonymous Caller ID’ option in settings (9to5Google)
Easily copy your Gmail holds to Hangouts Chat in Google Vault (G Suite Updates)

Made by Google, Android, Google Fi

Google Play apps with >10 million installs drain batteries, jack up data charges (Ars Technica)

Productivity

Google shutting down Google Fit on the web, focussing on Android and Wear OS (9to5Google)
Stable Channel Update for Desktop (Chrome 72) (Chrome Releases)
Stable Channel Update for Chrome OS (Chrome 72) (Chrome Releases)
Setting a course to the future of cloud computing (Google)

Peggy K's Creator News

Search This Blog