Weekly Update - October 12, 2019: Maps, Feedburner, Search Console

It was relatively quiet this week, with a few announcements for Google Maps, YouTube, Webmaster Search Console, Feedburner, small business owners, and more. For Google, it’s the calm before their annual hardware showcase event next Tuesday.

As some of you may know, I live in Northern California, which this week had widespread planned power outages to prevent sparking wildfires in the windy dry weather. Fortunately, my lights didn’t go out (even though my neighbors’ did), but even so I spent a fair amount of time preparing for what could have been several days without electricity. It was sobering to realize how poorly prepared we, local governments, and PG&E - all of us - were. The next time (and there’s sure to be a next time) will hopefully be less disruptive.

For World Mental Health Day, Facebook introduced new Stories filter and Messenger sticker packs. Pinterest is offering emotional well-being activities, pins with resources for suicide prevention and parent resources, and is improving algorithms that identify and hide self-harm content. YouTube promoted their free course on staying well and avoiding burnout.
YouTube is working on new Studio permissions levels. Instead of the current options - owner, manager (who has almost as much access as an owner), and comment moderator (who has no access to your channel’s Studio)- there will be five levels: channel owner, manager, editor, viewer, and viewer-without-revenue. The last two are read-only roles, allowing people to see your account and stats without making any changes.
If you use Google’s Feedburner to automatically share new blog posts to Twitter, be aware that “Socialize” functionality will be removed October 30th. While some might consider this a sign of Feedburner’s imminent demise, it looks to me more like a clean-up of a feature that hasn’t worked well for a long while. There are a number of alternative services that let you automatically post to Twitter you can use instead.
If you use structured data to annotate videos on your website, you can now get a Videos report in Google Search Console that lets you see errors and warnings for the markup and performance of your videos in Google Search. You can use the markup with YouTube videos embedded on your site.
This week in Las Vegas was the Pubcon search marketing convention. There's a lot of chatter and updates on Twitter (natch). If you are interested in Google Search, be sure to read Marie Haynes' write-up of the AMA with Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Gary Illyes.
If you have a small business, Google wants to help you come up with a plan to use Google tools to help your business stand out online. Start here. There’s also a free livestream workshop to help you spruce up your holiday marketing plan on October 16th (register).
If your business is on Facebook or Instagram, you can try the new customizable templates for Stories and customer communication tools. They are also running a Boost with Facebook Holiday Bootcamp in their offices around the world in October and November (see the link for details).
Let the music move with you. Google’s new stream transfer lets you transfer music and YouTube videos between your Google Home, Smart Displays and Chromecasts as you move about your home.
The Google Sheets, Docs and Slides Android apps are getting a new Material redesgin look. No word on dark mode.
Google Maps gets detailed voice guidance for the vision impaired. When giving walking directions, Google Maps will audibly indicate you’re on the correct route, the distance until the next turn and the direction you are walking in.
If you are of a certain age, you will remember when MapQuest was the way to find locations and directions on the internet. It was acquired by AOL for more $1 billion in 1999, but had difficulty competing with Google Maps, launched a few years later. It was acquired - along with AOL - by Verizon, who this week sold it to to System1, “an ad-tech company you’ve probably never heard of for an undisclosed amount, which was “not material enough for Verizon to file paperwork.”” Read Greg Sterling’s eulogy for Mapquest at Search Engine Land for more.
Instagram removed the “Following” tab in its Activity feed. The Following tab let you see the likes, comments and follows of the people you follow on Instagram. That could lead to embarrassing situations, like your dad liking tons of bikini shots or a friend making regrettable comments. Instagram removed the tab from the app for the sake of “simplicity”, but it’s generally an improvement to remove what could be a stalkery feature.
For all the talk from tech providers about preventing the spread of fake news, it turns out Facebook, Twitter and YouTube won’t fact check politicians’ ads. Yes, it would be controversial if they refused to run a popular politician’s ad, but in these contentious times it doesn’t seem unreasonable to ask political campaigns to stick to facts (I know, wishful thinking).

Read on for more news, updates and tips for webmasters, business owners, Android owners and more.

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Image: Monday is Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, which is a holiday in some US States. Image is detail of map of the islet of Guanahani (in present-day Bahamas), site of Columbus’ first landing in the New World. The map was published in Mallet’s world atlas in 1685.

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Weekly Update - October 12, 2019: Maps, Feedburner, Search Console

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