Bharati Ahuja

AMP Pages To Be Shown In Main Google Search Results - Preview The Experience

Google posted on its official blog yesterday that the AMP pages shown in the “Top stories” section of

the Google Search Results page on mobile phones are now in the process of being shown across the entire search results page and not just the “Top stories” section. Google says, Since they started working on this mobile experience for users, they have seen incredible global adoption of AMP that has gone beyond the news industry to include e-commerce, entertainment, travel, recipe sites and so on. To date there are more than 150 million AMP docs in the Google index, with over 4 million new ones being added every week. The preview shows an experience where web results that that have AMP versions are labeled with . When you tap on these results, you will be directed to the corresponding AMP page within the AMP viewer. The “Who” page on AMPProject.org has a list of some of the sites already creating AMP content. Google says, they are starting with a preview to get feedback from users, developers and sites so that they can create a better Search experience when they make this feature more broadly available later this year. They also want to give everyone who might be interested in “AMPing up” their content enough time to learn how to implement AMP and to see how their content appears in the demo. And beyond developing AMP pages, Google invites everyone to get involved and contribute to the AMP Project. As the no. of searches from mobile handsets go on increasing at an alarming rate, AMP is

huge and is surely the future which no search marketer can ignore. Speed and optimum content display are the most important aspects for mobile users. Try it out for yourself on your mobile device by navigating to g.co/ampdemo. Please view the screen shot of the preview results as below: AMP-Preview-Results

The preview shows an experience where web results that that have AMP versions are labeled with . When you tap on these results, you will be directed to the corresponding AMP page within the AMP viewer. But if there are errors on the AMP page then the corresponding page is as below: AMP-Errors-Page

AMP - Accelerated Mobile Pages - 08/05/2016

Myntra a FlipKart Ltd. Unit Acquires Jabong for $70 million

Myntra a FlipKart Ltd. Unit acquires Jabong for $70 million. This deal has made FlipKart the no. 1 e-commerce market place. Jabong offers more than 1,500 international high-street brands, sports labels, Indian ethnic and designer labels and over 150,000 styles from more than 1,000 sellers. Flipkart, beat Snapdeal and Future Group in this deal, FlipKart will pay cash for the acquisition, according to a statement by Global Fashion Group (GFG), which owns Jabong. In September 2014, German investor Rocket Internet merged Jabong with four other online fashion retailers in Latin America, Russia, the Middle East, South-east Asia and Australia to create GFG. jabong-myntra

Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, Flipkart's co-founders, confirmed the news by tweeting:

Welcome @JabongIndia to the @Flipkart family. We'll create history together.
— Sachin Bansal (@_sachinbansal) July 26, 2016

Today, @Myntra got bigger! Delighted to welcome @JabongIndia to the @Flipkart group! — binnybansal (@binnybansal) July 26, 2016

Since last one year the sales of Jabong.com owned had been declining and they had stopped offering discounts to reduce its losses to Rs 46.7 crore in 2015 from Rs 159.5 crore in 2014. In 2015 jabong.com was almost sold to Amazon but the deal did not get finalized. “Through the sale of Jabong, we are achieving a milestone in our strategy to refocus and invest in our core markets that show both, significant growth and revenue potential but also a clear and predictable path to profitability,” GFG CEO Romain Voog said in a statement. Binny Bansal, co-founder of Flipkart said: “Fashion and lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of e-commerce growth in India. We have always believed in the fashion and lifestyle segment and Myntra’s strong performance has reinforced this faith. This acquisition is a continuation of the group’s journey to transform commerce in India. I am happy that we will now be able to offer to millions of customers a wide variety of styles, products and a broad assortment of global as well as Indian brands,” he added. For now Myntra has said it will keep Jabong as a separate entity. This deal strengthens the Bengaluru-based company's prospects of competing with Amazon a in this high-margin business. Welcoming Jabong to the group, Flipkart CEO Binny Bansal sent a letter to all its employees. Here's the text of the letter sent by Bansal: Hi, I am happy to inform you that our group company, Myntra, today acquired Jabong from Global Fashion Group, thus creating India's biggest fashion shopping destination.The acquisition of Jabong further strengthens Flipkart Group's position as the undisputed leader in Fashion and Lifestyle segment in India. As you are aware, Jabong is among India's major fashion multi-brand e-store with more than 1500 on-trend international high-street brands, sports labels, Indian ethnic and designer labels and over 150,000 styles from over a thousand sellers. Myntra and Jabong are all set to define the next generation of online shopping offering the best of brands to Indian consumers.Some of the most iconic global brands that will be exclusive to both the platforms include Dorothy Perkins, Topshop, Tom Tailor, G Raw Star, Bugatti Shoes, The North Face, Forever 21, Swarovski, Timberland and Lacoste. Fashion and lifestyle is one of the biggest drivers of ecommerce growth in India. We have always believed in the fashion and lifestyle segment and Myntra's strong performance has reinforced this faith. This acquisition is a continuation of the group's journey to transform commerce in India. I am happy that we will now be able to offer to millions of customers across our 3 platforms even more wider variety of styles, products and a broad assortment of global as well as Indian brands. Ananth will be leading both Myntra and Jabong platforms. Please join me in welcoming the talented team of Jabong to the Flipkart group. It's an interesting coincidence that Myntra's announcement coincides with the launch of Amazon Prime in India. But, Flipkart already has a Prime like service available in the form of Flipkart First. This provides free shipping and other benefits, much like Amazon Prime.

E-commerce / News - 07/27/2016

IT Sector To Lose 1.4 Million Jobs To Automation By 2021. Are You Upgrading Your Skills To Retain Your Job?

According to an HFS Research, it is said that By 2021, the IT industry worldwide would see a net decrease of 9% in headcount, or about 1.4 million jobs, with countries like the Philippines, the United Kingdom and the United States also taking hits.

IT industry body The National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) said that the report may not have taken into account all the jobs being created by newer technologies.

But all is not disheartening, the HFS report states that though "low-skilled" jobs will fall by 30%, "medium-skilled" jobs will increase by 8% and high-skilled jobs will rise by 56%.
impact of Automation 2021

If low-skilled jobs will be adversely impacted the high-skilled jobs will show a promising rise. Low-skilled jobs are jobs which are repetitive in nature and do not require any special expertise and qualification. Such jobs can be easily automated.

"The BPO industry is going to be facing the problem of robotic process automation in the next two years. This is a challenge the industry and the country will face," Asheesh Mehra, CEO of BPO firm Antworks, said.

On the other hand, high-skilled jobs require creative problem solving, analytics and critical thinking. Implementing automation for such jobs is challenging and the industry is not ready for it yet.

Another report highlights another major issue—the huge gap between new IT jobs created and the number of engineers completing their graduation. Approximately more than 15 lakh new engineers enter the job market every year, but the jobs available for them has shrunk to 2-2.5 lakh. This results in a severe competition among freshers and experienced engineers.

Areas which will see high demand and lucrative salaries are:

big data,
analytics,
machine learning,
mobility,
design,
Internet of Things (IoT) and
artificial intelligence.

Due to big data, the demand for data scientists is on the rise.

Data scientists are not only relevant to IT but sectors like the manufacturing, R&D, banking and financial sectors and the expanding e-commerce companies also need their services.

Big data analysts need to have knowledge of:

computer science,
analytics and statistics skills,
strong communication skills and
a working knowledge of business intelligence tools.As Internet speeds increase, the need for maintaining and managing internet infrastructure is also going to grow.

Experienced people with the following profiles will be in demand:

digital marketing expert,
marketing technologist and
solution architects, who have both business and technical know-how and areable to align the two.

The areas where jobs will show an increase in the future are:

mobile application development
cloud computing
IT infrastructure risk analysis
Online security
Developers with experience in user-interface (UI) and
user-experience (UX)
Data visualization experts with the skills to present data with simplicity
healthcare
transportation
real estate
Operations & Logistics of eCommerce Startups

According to one more blog post by Phil Fersht, The jobs aren't "going away" - they've already pretty much gone .

Hence, if this trend and data proves to be true, only innovation and adapting to the new technologies is going to make the companies survive.

News - 07/11/2016

With Ad Blocking On The Rise and The Mobile Web Expanding, SEO Becomes More Important Than Ever Before

Marketing Land published an article recently stating, “33 percent of internet users will be ad blocking by next year”. They also shared the following details :

Forecaster eMarketer estimates that this year, 70 million people in the US will use ad blockers, representing growth of nearly 35 percent year over year. Next year, the company estimates that nearly 87 million internet users in the US will be blocking ads.
PageFair released a mobile ad-blocking report indicating that 419 million people around the globe were blocking ads on mobile devices. The majority were located in Asia, fewer in North America and Europe.
According to online polling firm CivicScience, 55 percent of survey respondents had ad blockers on their PCs, and 25 percent had them on their smartphones.

The ads are being blocked but the use of search engines is no way on the decline. ad blocking and SEO

As the no. of online users go on increasing multi fold every minute the need for every business to have a quality web presence across all types of devices being used becomes all the more a priority and a necessity and not an option. According to additional statistics:

Around 40% of the world population has an internet connection today.
In 1995, it was less than 1%.
The number of internet users has increased tenfold from 1999 to 2013.
Today there are more than 3 billion people online.
Mobile access to the Internet will be instrumental in bringing the next billion people online.

In today's digital world, we are all living our lives on multiple screens. With affordable devices and easy data plans mobile usage has grown exponentially, almost to the point where it is becoming increasingly clear that people are now using their mobile devices for doing everything they would previously do on a desktop. In fact, Internet searches on smart phone now exceed desktop searches. The mobile Internet does not just liberate us from the constraints of a wired connection, but it offers hundreds of millions around the world their only, or primary, means of accessing the Internet. Second, the mobile Internet does not just extend the reach of the Internet as used on fixed connections, but it offers new functionality in combination with new portable smart devices. The rapid increase in mobile usage has changed the way users look for information on the Internet — to buy or to interact with brands before making their purchase decisions. Here are some stats that show why businesses can no longer afford to treat mobile as an afterthought:

80% of internet users today own a smart phone.(Global Web Index)
In the past two years, the number of consumers that consider mobile as their preferred device for researching products on the Internet has jumped from 25% to 53%. (Marketing Week)
16 to 24 year olds spend an average of 3.25+ hours per day online on a mobile.(Global Web Index via Heidi Cohen)

For business owners and marketers in India, it’s time to pay more attention to mobile because:

85% of India’s digital population access the Internet via mobile
Average mobile time doubled to 3 hours per day in 2015 from 1.5 hours per day in 2012.
In India, mobile contributes to 60% share of all shopping related queries and
over 50% of all travel related queries.(Google India Report via Economic Times)

Marketers must identify these different patterns of user behavior to be able to boost their chances of attracting their target audience and converting a sale. From this standpoint, it’s critical for them to understand and stay current with ‘mobile search’ trends. Mobile using customers are typically more impatient, and even unforgiving, when it comes to website load times. According to some stats shared by Mobile Marketing Engine:

Over 70% of mobile consumers expect web pages to load almost as quickly or faster, as they do on their PC.
74% of them will only wait for 5 seconds or less for a website to load on their device.
46% of them will probably never return to a website if it didn’t load properly on their first try.

Without a fast-loading website, you’re at a greater risk of losing customers to your competitors. With the change in the user behavior, the search engines too are working on the search experience for the mobile web users . To improve the performance of the mobile web and to aid the creation of fast-loading mobile web pages, Google launched an open source initiative called Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in October 2015. Search at Google I/O 2016 too was Dominated By Updates On Mobile Search, App Indexing And Structured Data. Google-io-2016

Google I/O 2016 discussed:

Introduction of rich cards
New Search Console reports
Real-time indexing
Getting up to speed with Accelerated Mobile Pages
A new and improved Structured Data Testing Tool
App Indexing got a new home (and new features)
App streaming

At the Google AMA talk at SMX Advanced this year, Gary Illyes the Standup Trends Analyst at Google (@methode) gave the audience two things regarding the mobile web. danny-sullivan-gary-illyes-smx-advanced-1920-768x432

danny-sullivan-gary-illyes-smx-advanced-1920-768x432

He said that AMP is going to be big, and SEOs and webmasters should think now about getting ready for AMP.
He also said, Currently, Google’s search results for desktop and mobile use the same index and almost all of the same ranking signals. Google is looking to separate some of them out. Google has told us in the past that they are experimenting with this, and Google is clearly still working on a mobile-only index.

All this proves that with the increase in the mobile traffic the focus needs to be on the mobile search presence. As the maximum ad blocking comes from mobile devices. As the paid media is facing a setback due to ad blocking, the focus needs to be on the earned presence and the owned presence. If the site is optimized well and the business has a good interactive social media presence it surely is not only going to help in reaching out to the targeted audience but also help in contributing to the trust factor. But, all this is easier said than done. One needs to have the right approach, patience and a long term strategy to achieve the goal of being found for the right searches. We need to keep in mind that the search engines started with a purpose of giving genuine organic results and not paid results. If any search engine focuses on paid search only it will be deemed as a paid directory and be abandoned. The web has witnessed the decline of many directories over the past decade. The psychological factor also hints that the users trust the organic search results more than the paid results. The future belongs to a platform where unbiased genuine results will be served to the user for whatever searches he makes. The Power Lies In The Hands Of The People (The User) In Co Relation To Search And The WWW. The search engines too gear and navigate their development efforts according to the peoples demand, likes and dislikes and changing search behavior . Hence, as a business owner currently one needs to focus on:

An extremely user friendly website
Optimize it for search engines
Upload regular, relevant and fresh content
Have an interactive, engaging social media presence
Focus on the mobile presence by having a responsive website or/and a Mobile App. Depending on the need, purpose and the target audience.
AMP is just at the initial stages but, now is the time to prepare for the future.

As Bill Gates has rightly said,:

“WE ALWAYS OVERESTIMATE THE CHANGE THAT WILL OCCUR IN THE NEXT TWO YEARS AND UNDERESTIMATE THE CHANGE THAT WILL OCCUR IN THE NEXT TEN. DON’T LET YOURSELF BE LULLED INTO INACTION”

The importance of SEO can never be ignored. Whenever, someone on the web mentions ‘SEO IS DEAD’, it comes back to life with more vigor and vitality. In fact, with the expansion of the mobile web, SEO has got more extended and more technical. As the search algorithms get more sophisticated, the SEO deliverables too get more technical. As SEO now needs to focus more on speed, privacy, security, app challenges like giving the user a seamless experience from being navigated from the app to the website and back.

Google / SEO - 06/28/2016

How SEO Is Like Yoga for Your Website. Happy International Yoga day !

The first International Day of Yoga was observed world over on June 21st 2015 by PM Narendra Modi. The United Nations has declared June 21^st as the International Day Of Yoga. On this occasion I just thought of listing out the similarities between Yoga and SEO.

Yoga is not about exercise but to find out the sense of individuality within one’s self, the world and the nature. Similarly, SEO is not about rankings but about establishing your brand online

In Vedic Sanskrit, yoga means "to add", "to join", "to unite", or "to attach" in its most common literal sense. Yoga can take on meanings such as "connection", "contact", "union", "method", "application", "addition" and "performance". In simpler words, Yoga also means "combined".

When we optimize a website we literally try to see that our website gets correlated to the targeted search queries and thereby the targeted audience. But, before this happens the site has to be as per the norms of the search engines and needs to be crawled and indexed regularly by the search engines. All this has to be achieved harmoniously via a step by step process .

yoga and SEO

Just as in Yoga the union of the body and soul is achieved gradually with regular practice and patience, the SEO results need patience and regular monitoring of the website.

According to David Gordon White, from the 5th century CE onward, the core principles of "yoga" were more or less in place, and variations of these principles developed in various forms over time:

Yoga, as an analysis of perception and cognition
Yoga, as the rising and expansion of consciousness
Yoga, as a path to omniscience
Yoga, as a technique for entering into other bodies, generating multiple bodies, and the attainment of other supernatural accomplishments

SEO also can be compared to Yoga as per the above 4 points:

SEO helps the search engines in the perception and cognition of the content of the website so that it can correlate it to the relevant search queries.
As a result of genuine SEO the website gradually expands its search presence by adding various formats of content so that the brand can be found on various platforms of search, like image search, blog search, videos, etc.
Hence, genuine SEO helps the website to be found on search engines via any devices and in various formats.
Apart from the content format and the type of search results, SEO also makes the website capable of being found globally by gradually attaining search presence on increasing no. of country domains like, Google.com, Google.co.in, Google.co.uk, Google.com.au, etc. (In short international SEO helps you to achieve international search presence)

Apart from the spiritual goals, the physical postures of yoga are used to alleviate health problems, reduce stress and make the spine supple in contemporary times. Yoga is also used as a complete exercise program and physical therapy routine.

The three prominent types of yoga are:

Karma yoga: The yoga of action
Bhakti yoga: The yoga of devotion
Jnana yoga: The yoga of knowledge

Apart from attaining good search presence for targeted search queries, the main goal of SEO is to help build a brand for the business , win the trust of the users and help in retaining it for a long time.

All this can be possible by working on :

On-page factors
Technical factors and
Off-page factors

While the practice of yoga continues to rise in contemporary American culture, sufficient and adequate knowledge of the practice’s origins does not. According to Andrea R. Jain, Yoga is undoubtedly a movement for spiritual meditation, but now is being marketed as a supplement to a cardio routine. This scope "dilutes its identity." Contemporaries of this faith argue that the more popular yoga gets, the less concerned people become about its origins in history.

While the SEO industry shows a promising growth quantitatively and qualitatively, the true meaning of SEO is tarnished by black hat SEOs and newbies who promise quick results and measure its success by rankings alone. This dilutes the true meaning of SEO and defeats the main purpose of optimizing a site.

Yoga is both an Art and a Science...

SEO too is considered as an Art and a Science...

SEO - 06/21/2016

Test Mobile-Friendliness And Page Speed With Google’s New Tool

Last week Google introduced an easy way to measure your site’s performance across devices. This tool https://testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com/ gives a list of fixes to be made on the site to improve the performance of the site.

The visits from mobile devices are increasing over time and many online customers are lost if the website loads slowly.

google-test-tool

Google says:

You don’t need a lot of technical knowledge to understand your site’s performance. Just type in your web address and within moments you’ll see how your site scores. You can also get a detailed report to give you an idea of what to do next, and where to go for help at no charge. We recommend sharing it with your webmaster to help you plan your next steps and implement our suggested fixes.

This what the scores say:

Mobile-friendliness: This is the quality of the experience customers have when they’re browsing your site on their phones. To be mobile-friendly, your site should have tappable buttons, be easy to navigate from a small screen and have the most important information up front and center.
Mobile speed: This is how long it takes your site to load on mobile devices. If customers are kept waiting for too long, they’ll move on to the next site.
Desktop speed: This is how long it takes your site to load on desktop computers. It’s not just the strength of your customers’ web connection that determines speed, but also the elements of your website.

Search sessions at Google I/O 2016 were also focused on mobile and With Google working towards improving the mobile experience in so many ways, it is needless to say that ‘Mobile Search’, needs to be the current focus for all search marketers and website .

Google / News / SEO - 06/06/2016

Search At Google I/O 2016 Dominated By Updates On Mobile Search,App Indexing And Structured Data

Google today published a recap of 8 things about the Search happenings which were discussed at Google I/O 16 and they are:

1: Introducing 'Rich Cards'

Google announced “Rich Cards” which is a new search result format which uses schema.org structured mark up, just like the Rich Snippets format.

The focus is to provide a more rewarding experience to the mobile user.

Currently this is on an experimental stage and available only for Movies and Recipes but Google seems to be having promising future plans in taking this ahead for other content categories too.

http://www.webpro.in/google-announces-rich-cards-for-recipes-and-movies-for-mobile-serps-an-upgrade-on-rich-snippets/

2: New Search Console Reports

Google launched a new report in Search Console to help developers confirm that their rich card markup is valid. In the report Google highlights,“enhanceable cards,” which are cards that can benefit from marking up more fields. The new Search Appearance filter also makes it easy for webmasters to filter their traffic by AMP and rich cards.

3: Real-time Indexing

Google has always given importance to the freshness index for content. Instead of waiting for content to be crawled and indexed, publishers will be able to use the Google Indexing API to trigger the indexing of their content in real time. It’s still in its early days, but Google plans to launch a pilot later this summer.

3: Getting up to speed with Accelerated Mobile Pages

AMP or Accelerated Mobile Pages is an open source initiative by Google launched in October 2015.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) are lightweight pages designed to load quickly on mobile devices. AMP-compliant pages use a subset of HTML with a few extensions.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), is a very accessible framework for creating fast-loading mobile web pages.

The AMP project aims at improving the performance of the mobile web. Further, the intent is that the webpages with rich content like video, animations and graphics should work alongside smart ads, and load instantaneously.

I/O 16 attendees could talk directly with Googlers at the Search & AMP sandbox.

5: A new and improved Structured Data Testing Tool

The new Structured Data Testing tool is tightly integrated with the DevSite Search Gallery and the new Search Preview service, which lets you preview how your rich cards will look on the search results page.

structured-data-testing-tool

6: App Indexing got a new home (and new features)

Google announced App Indexing’s migration to Firebase, Google’s unified developer platform. Watch the session to learn how to grow your app with Firebase App Indexing.

7: App streaming

App streaming is a new way for Android users to try out games without having to download and install the app -- and it’s already available in Google Search. Check out the session to learn more.

Revamped documentation

Google has revamped the developer documentation, organizing the docs around topical guides to make it easier to follow.

With Google working towards improving the mobile experience in so many ways, it is needless to say that 'Mobile Search' needs to be the current focus for all search marketers .

Google / News / SEO - 06/03/2016

Satya Nadella , Microsoft CEO Impressed By An 8 Year old Indian app Developer

The Microsoft CEO, recently was on his third visit to India since he took over as Microsoft CEO in February 2014. He emphasized on how Microsoft can help the country in its ‘Digital India’ initiative and build technology around augmented reality and virtual reality.

He recited a couplet written by the poet Mirza Ghalib to express his feeling and passion for the two main passions of his life –

“Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ke har khwahish pe dam nikle, Bahut niklay mere armaan, lekin phir bhi kam nikle”

Satya Nadella

The couplet translates as,

“Thousands of aspirations such, that each aspiration takes your breath away… I had many dreams, but they still weren’t enough.”

Further he said,

“Creativity in India can make poetry as well as technology for the world,”

“I learn something new… there are so many layers there… My interpretation of that is… it’s not just your dreams being fulfilled, it is your ability to dream that is worth dying for. It is a source of inspiration,”

On his recent visit to India, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met the Indian Prime Minister, entrepreneurs and various government officials. But, it was an eight-year-old Mumbai-based student, Medansh Mehta, a gaming app developer who impressed him with his vision of balancing technology and environmental sustainability.

He presented his app "Let There Be Light" during a meeting between Nadella and student developers from India. The boy left Nadella so impressed that the Microsoft CEO later mentioned him in a keynote speech.

“I MET AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD, AND THIS IS PERHAPS THE TIME WHERE I FELT THE MOST INADEQUATE. HIS DREAM IS TO CREATE A SOCIETY THAT KNOWS HOW TO BALANCE ECONOMIC GROWTH WITH ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. THIS IS THE GOAL HE HAS AND THEN HE TRANSLATED THAT VISION, THAT GOAL, INTO A NOVEL GAME THAT HE’S BUILT.”

His game is called ‘Let there be light’ and it focuses on balancing the environment along with industrial development, which lets players build factories, farms and earn coins if the city becomes prosperous.

The kid has solid ambition. He wants to become the CEO of Microsoft and wants to build it into a technology company that can take over all the companies in the world.

News - 06/02/2016

Google app Now Faster for iOS Users with AMP Pages

Google has cut down the loading time and updated the app with some new features for a faster user experience for the iOS users.

These small improvements will save app users a combined 6.5 million hours this year.

Google app faster for iOS users

A few months ago Google announced the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for the mobile web. Google app will be using AMP for news articles from a vast array of publishers and the pages will load instantly for a better user experience. Look out for the lightning bolt and “AMP” next to articles in the “Top Stories” section of your search results and enjoy blazing-fast news.

AMP Results in Mobile Search

For Sports Fans:

You can instantly watch sports highlights right from your Now cards. When you get a card with sports highlights, just tap the and watch it right from the app. Score!

So, whether its news, sports or videos you are interested in, you can be assured of a faster user experience.

Google / News - 05/31/2016