The Ledger
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Schwartz: Paid ad budgets will suffer substantial cuts under GDPR
“The other big advantage is that paid budgets are now going to take a huge hit. Because of GDPR, we've gone to this nightmare scenario where you don't know if your paid budgets are working because you can't track users until users Agree to be tracked.”
Schwartz: Local businesses have a Google ranking advantage over national competitors
“You don't really need to rank on unclogged drains anymore, because Google is very local. So if you're in San Francisco, and you're a plumber, and someone searches unclogged drains, you now have a much higher chance of ranking on unclogged drains than Roto-Root…”
Schwartz: Google dislikes ranking search-within-search platforms like Pinterest
“Google specifically does not like search within search. Google would much prefer that you don't go to Pinterest, that you go directly to where that image was, but maybe that site didn't do a great job of optimizing the image, but Pinterest did, so now Pinteres…”
Schwartz: Google grew Korean search share via Samsung and LG ties
“What Google used to not be dominant in In Korea, and they've been increasing dominance through their Trojan horse of Android. So Google's obviously very closely partnered with Samsung and LG, Korean companies. And as Korean users use these products, they use G…”
Schwartz: Sites penalized by Google can recover within weeks
“Now, like, things are more automated and algorithmic, where if you got hit by the penalty one day, you cleaned it up, did everything possible, maybe filed a reconsideration request, you can be back in a couple weeks.”
Schwartz: Google Play ranks apps based on all visible text fields
“So on Google, the way they rank an app is based on all the visible text. So it's the name of the app, which is sort of like the title. The short description, which is forget how many characters, but a shorter page description of the app, which you see right ab…”
Schwartz: Google will eventually understand images directly without alt text
“Google eventually will figure out what images are, and they're getting closer to figuring out what images are.”
Schwartz: Ranking on Baidu requires local Chinese web hosting
“In order to rank on Baidu, you actually need Chinese hosting.”
Schwartz: Meta keywords are completely obsolete for SEO
“Meta keywords is a great example of something that's no longer useful. And the reason meta keywords existed is because Google and other search engines actually were relevant at the time, didn't have a really good way of understanding text.”