Skip to main content

Posts

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 be...

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...

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...

Policy Update: YouTube allows linking to approved gambling sites

YouTube now allows links to gambling websites that have been approved by Google  Ads or YouTube. Links to gambling sites that are not approved are not allowed. YouTube says:  We only allow links to online gambling sites that have gone through checks to make sure they meet local legal requirements. If you want to link to an online gambling site, you’ll need to make sure the domain is  certified by Google Ads  or  reviewed by YouTube . If you find content that violates this policy, please report it. Instructions for reporting violations of our Community Guidelines  are available here . If you find many videos, comments, or a creator's entire channel that you would like to report, visit our  reporting tool . YouTube also notes : Important: The Google Ads gambling certification status is not static. Make sure your channel follows our Community Guidelines and only links to or promotes g...

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...