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Showing posts from July, 2020

YouTube discontinuing Community Contributions

YouTube will be discontinuing Community Contributions .  Community Contributions allows anyone to submit closed captions, and translated subtitles, title and description of your videos. That way your fans could help make sure your content is accessible in multiple languages. Community Contributions will no longer be available after September 28, 2020.  Note 28 September, 2020: YouTube has announced improvements to creator captioning tools in the works . Why are Community Contributions going away? According to YouTube, there are two main reasons for this change: Low usage : in the past month, and was used by less than  0.001% of channels,with less than 0.2% watch time. If there are 30 million channels, that means only about 300 used the feature in the past month. Low quality : not just low quality contributions, but apparently also used for spam and harassment. A year ago YouTube stopped automatically publishing Community Contributions due to abuse and spam, so this has been an ongoing

Opportunity for Bloggers: Google Cameos video answers

If you are based in the US, and blog about Food & Drink, Beauty, Fitness, Home & Garden or Video Games, you may be eligible to share your expertise in Google Cameos. Cameos are short video answers to commonly asked questions that appear in the Google Search results. They display your name and can be shared. Announcement:  NEW! Invitation to Answer Top Searched Questions on Google Cameos are invite-only, and this is a special invitation for bloggers to apply to participate. If you are interested, fill out the application form  with your name, email, blog URL and category, and your country.  Google says this may be open to more blog categories and countries in the future. For more details about Google Cameos, read on. What are Google Cameos? Google Cameos appear in the Google Search results as video answers to common search questions.  For searches where Cameos answers are available, they appear on the right Knowledge Panel under Top Questions Answered. Search results for "

Weekly Update - July 25, 2020: Meet & Chat, Messages, AdSense

This week we learned more about Google’s plans for Meet, Chat and their vision for a “home for work”, learned which playlist features YouTube plans to deprecate, and updates to AdSense content policies, prohibiting medical misinformation and spyware content. Plus there are updates for Messenger, webmasters and more. Google Cloud Next ‘20: On Air: Meet, Chat, Docs and more Week 2 of Google Cloud Next 20: On Air focused on Productivity & Collaboration. G Suite VP Javier Soltaro talked about the new “home for week” with more integration of Gmail, Meet, Chat, Docs and Tasks. Watch a demo of “ G Suite’s vision for content collaboration ” to see how that works.. There was a sneak peek at new Meet features in the works. Watch the Meet session starting at 14:11 t o get a glimpse of breakout rooms, hand raising, polls, virtual backgrounds and more. Meet will be getting new security and moderation tools, that allow the meeting host to control whether participants can chat or present their

Some YouTube Playlist Features to be Removed

Playlists are one of the few features that is still managed in "classic" YouTube, rather than the new YouTube Studio. While playlist management will eventually be available in new Studio, YouTube has announced that a number of playlist features will not be making the transition.  If you are a YouTube power user, you probably know that playlists go beyond manually adding videos to a list. You can select keywords to add videos to a playlist automatically, set a playlist to be the "official" list for a series, and more.  Some of those playlist features will not be available when the classic playlist editor is retired:  Set as official series Auto add video rules Video notes Translate playlist information Remove duplicates YouTube has not given a date this change will happen, so, for now, you can continue to use these features. Which playlist features will be deprecated? Set as official series You can create an official series playlist of your own videos. When someone

August AdSense policy updates prohibiting spyware and dangerous health crisis-related content

The Google Publisher Policies for AdSense will be updated in August . The changes include an apparent COVID-19-related prohibition of misleading medical content and there will be a clarification of prohibitions on content promoting spyware.  There will also be a few other changes to the policy language.  Upcoming Changes to the Google Publisher Policies The following changes will be made in August 2020. Be sure to check the  Google Publisher Policies  in August for more detailed information and examples of prohibited content.  Dangerous and Derogatory Content The policy will be updated to explicitly prohibit "content that relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative, scientific consensus." This would prohibit monetizing misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and probably some coronavirus conspiracy theories.  Related information:  COVID-19-related changes in AdSense site reviews and payments COVID-19-related changes to YouTube monetization

Weekly Update - July 18, 2020: Google Chat, Meet, Live Streaming

This week Google announced their vision for a “home for work” with integrated Gmail, Docs, Meet video calling and Chat. One place with all your apps. There was an AMA with the YouTube gaming team, who answered questions about live streaming, monetization and gaming content. Google Cloud Next ‘20: On Air This week Google Cloud Next On Air kicked off with “Industry insights” . Of particular note is Google’s vision for G Suite as a “home for work” , with deeper integration between Gmail, Google Meet, Google Chat, Docs and more. Sign in to Gmail and you will be able to chat with your colleagues, join a video call, edit documents, and more without switching between different sites. Watch the demo video . There are new safety and privacy features for Google Meet video meetings that will be available in the coming weeks, starting with personal accounts (yay!) and G Suite for Education: All participants in a G Suite for Education-hosted meeting will now need to be signed in to a Google accou

Weekly Update - July 11, 2020: YouTube, Webmasters,

As the summer rolls on, updates are rolling out. This week there are new ad settings and metrics for YouTube Partners, updates for webmasters, and Google+ is finally completely gone.   YouTube and Video Creation If you are an educator with a YouTube channel, make sure your G Suite for Education account is not the primary owner of the channel’s Brand Account. You have until July 15 to transfer primary ownership. You can do that by opening your Brand Account list , clicking your channel’s Brand Account, then selecting Manage Permissions on the details page. You can check and transfer primary ownership there to a personal account if need be. There is a major update for YouTube Partners: videos that are 8 minutes or longer will be eligible for inserted mid-roll ads. YouTube will be inserting mid-roll ads in ALL monetized videos of that length starting at the end of the month. If you do not want your longer videos to have mid-roll ads, you need to indicate that on your monetization settin

YouTube inserting mid-roll ads in monetized 8 minute+ videos at the end of July

Starting at the end of July, YouTube videos 8 minutes or longer can have mid-roll ads. If you do not want mid-roll ads automatically inserted in your existing monetized videos, you need to update your settings by July 27.  Currently only videos that are at least 10 minutes long can have mid-roll ads - ads in the middle of the content - inserted. At the end of July, the minimum video length for midrolls will be 8 minutes.  This will be enabled by default, and YouTube will apply this setting to your older monetized videos.   Starting in late July, videos longer than 8 minutes will be eligible for mid-roll ads. As part of this change, mid-roll ads will be turned on for all eligible existing videos and future video uploads, including those videos where you may have previously opted out of mid-roll ads. Videos that already have mid-roll ads turned on will not be impacted. If mid-roll ads are not a good fit for your videos, you can indicate this preference in YouTube Studio by July 27, 2020.

Weekly Update - July 4, 2020: YouTube, AdSense, Meet

Today Americans celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress. It’s different this year, fireworks shows are (mostly) cancelled, and people have been encouraged to stay at home. But we can still gather with friends online, and maybe consider what the holiday is about.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There are updates this week for video creators, website owners, businesses and more. YouTube and Video Creators Google AI has shared details about how SmartReply for YouTube comments was developed. There are a number of unique challenges , compared to SmartReply for Gmail and other products. “YouTube comments reveal complex patterns of language switching, abbreviated words, slang, inconsistent usage of punctuation, and heavy utilization of emoji.” Are you wondering how your