14th June 2021- What articles you need to be reading
Here are the articles that are making waves in digital and search that you should be aware of because they are going to be game changers
Learning about SEO?
GSC query analysis tool
Greg Bernhardt has released a new Python SEO app that allows anyone to label queries by intent, entities but also count keyword frequency. Part of the tool using Google Knowledge Graph which has an API that offers 100k free calls per day.
Software of Note?
Ojoy allows you to enlarge a low-resolution photo
Do you have a small low-resolution image you need to increase in size without reducing the quality. Using TensorFlow.js, UpScalerJS + Waifu2x proof of concept tool Ojoy can now enlarge images using machine learning without significant reducing in quality in your browser.
Social Media
QR codes and payment links arrive in FB Messenger
In a desperate attempt to try and stay relevant and slow the growth of super apps like WeChat Facebook has finally made some headway in enabling payments in it’s Messenger platform. The platform is only available in the US as that is the only market uses mobile payments, in the rest of the world we still use beads and shells as currency…. Once again it shows how unprepared Facebook is to compete with platforms like PayPal or WeChat when it comes to enabling mobile payments outside it’s safety net in the US. Facebook is several years behind a large number of apps on the payment front and the new feature doesn’t really set the world on fire. To further limit the potential audience size Facebook has decided users have to be 18+, have a debit card or PayPal account and currency must be set to USD.
Media + Tech
AVIF image format is 50% smaller than JPEG and 20% smaller than WebP
AVIF has been supported in Chrome since M85 was released July 2020 and is on it’s way to Firefox. AVIF is a new image format based in AV1 video codec it offers developers significant compression gains over older formats like JPEG & WebP but has the advantage of also offering progressive decoding. The example image size shown below has actually been reduced by 91% from the original size vs a 57% reduction for JPEG.
Google to prefetch websites built using signed exchanges
Signed Exchanges (SXGs), Google Search can now crawl, cache, and prefetch them when applicable. Pages are prefetched and stored on the user’s browser, ready to be loaded when the user clicks on the result, leading to near instant loading using Google’s fast cache servers around the world without any additional cost.
Ecommerce
What are the top 100 most search items on Amazon?
Semrush has finally rolled out the long anticipated Amazon keyword tool within Sellzone. But they have also created a bit of a link bait piece by showing for FREE what are the top 100 Amazon searches in the USA. Amazon doesn’t actually provide volume unless you are buying Amazon Ads on that keyword it just gives you sales rank so combined with Semrush search volume it could be a powerful tool for ecommerce teams.
Google is wooed by WooCommerce
Last week Google announced that the 4.4 million merchants using WooCommerce would no have the ability to integrate their product inventory across Google for free in just a few clicks. WooCommerce merchants can now upload their products to Google, create free listings and ad campaigns, and review Shopping performance metrics without having to leave WooCommerce.
Conversion Rate Optimisation
Victoria & Albert museum optimise Hugo for speed!
V&A development team decided after 11 years on their old tech stack it was time to move forward and while dynamic platforms were the growing choice for many they decided static pages were the way forward. Powered by Hugo and open sourced static site generator they could create 1.24 million static pages using a combination of markdown docs and using open sourced GO as the templating language. The results are something of an amazing 100% score in Google Lighthouse.
Security, Data + Privacy
McDonald’s hit by data breach!
On the 11th June McDonald’s confirmed to WJS that hackers had gained access to it’s systems in USA, South Korea and Taiwan. Some of the data breached involved business contact information for US franchisees and employees but also information about square footage of play areas and restaurant seating capacity. In South Korea and Taiwan the hackers accessed customer emails, phone numbers of delivery addresses but also employee information (name + contact details).
RockYou2021 is the largest leak with 8.4 billion entries!
Cybernews covered the news that a user posted a 100Gig file that contains 8.4 billion passwords that seem to be a consolidation of existing data leaks. The original post was 82 billion passwords but when de-duplicated it worked out to be 8,459,060,239 unique entries. This leak was 262 times larger than the original RockYou leak that happened 12 years earlier.