Ecommerce Management Advisors
Ecommerce Management Advisors
Study shows Americans trust AI more than social media, with young men expressing the highest confidence.
Google confirmed an outage in business profile reviews that has resulted in missing reviews for many local business profiles and is working toward fixing the problem.
Google Business Profiles are a way for local businesses to add their business to Google and have it show up in local search and Google Maps. It also allows businesses to manage how their site shows up in search, enabling Google to show accurate information about hours, website, contact information, images and reviews.
The reviews is a feature that allows users to share their experiences with businesses. It’s a useful way for businesses to increase earnings through positive word of mouth.
Google Business Profile reviews have gone missing, which is bad news for businesses because of how influential reviews are for building trust.
A Googler acknowledged the outage and committed to updating the community about fixes to the system. She did however ask businesses to read their guidelines about reviews, which could be seen as implying that some businesses with missing reviews may have had reviews removed for a reason.
She wrote:
“GBP Review Count Known Issue Update
Known Issue
We’re aware of an issue affecting some Google Business Profiles, causing some profiles to show lower-than-actual review counts due to a display issue. The reviews themselves have not actually been removed. We’re working hard to resolve this and restore accurate review counts as quickly as possible. We appreciate your patience and will share updates on this thread as they become available.Before reporting missing reviews, please note that there are several reasons why reviews may be removed from maps. Usually, missing reviews are removed for policy violations like spam or inappropriate content.
Read more about our Review policy guidelines here before proceeding. You can also refer to the Help Center Article for more information.”
This is a developing story, this article will be updated with additional information once it becomes available.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/The Image Party
Google has announced an upcoming revision to its Gambling and Games advertising policy, which will take effect on April 14.
The company shared a preview of the new guidelines before the official rollout.
We observed several additions worth highlighting after comparing the preview to Google’s existing policy.
Below is an overview of the changes advertisers need to know.
One of the most notable changes is the more precise way the policy defines “gambling” and “gambling-promoting content.”
Under the new guidelines, any content that provides direct links to online gambling or facilitates gambling services will be labeled as gambling-promoting.
This clarifies that aggregator or affiliate websites must exclusively focus on providing information or comparisons about authorized gambling services. Anything beyond that scope will face restrictions.
While the current policy generally refers to “country restrictions,” the updated policy offers a detailed list of countries that permit or prohibit various forms of gambling.
This includes explicitly referencing nations where offline gambling ads are entirely banned (for example, Bulgaria, China, and Egypt).
The policy also addresses social casino games. It specifies which regions require a separate certification application and confirms where social casino game ads may be lawfully run.
The updated policy has a specific clause prohibiting promoting Mahjong activities involving money in the Asia-Pacific region. In the past, Mahjong wasn’t explicitly mentioned.
Further, the definition of “online gambling” now covers any games traditionally associated with casinos, even if they use virtual currencies or items with real-world value.
In the updated policy, Google advises maintaining valid licenses and registrations.
As an advertiser, you must notify Google if your licenses are suspended, revoked, or terminated. Serving gambling ads without valid documentation can result in account suspension.
Previously, this requirement was in place but less explicitly highlighted.
The updated policy devotes considerable attention to social casino games.
These online games simulate gambling yet do not offer a chance to win money or prizes of real-world value. The preview clarifies that social casino advertisers must apply for certification and keep separate accounts if they also promote real-money gambling content.
Additionally, any real-money gambling ads in social casino games or related websites are strictly disallowed.
Google considers breaches of social casino game regulations “egregious,” meaning they could result in immediate and permanent account suspensions.
While similar penalties existed in the prior policy, the update stresses the severity of non-compliance in the social casino game category.
In other sections, repeated or severe violations can also result in an account suspension.
The updated policy distinguishes between general “online non-casino games” and conventional gambling.
This separate category covers skill-based gaming, offering advertisers more clarity on when special certifications may apply.
Under the new policy, if a skill-based game meets the legal definition of gambling in a particular region, the advertiser must follow all gambling-related restrictions and obtain the necessary approvals.
Advertisers looking to promote gambling, social casino services, or non-casino games need to:
You can view the updated policy and review the changes before they take effect on April 14.
If you plan to continue gambling-related ads after that date, be aware of these updates. For more details, visit Google’s Help Center and check local laws.
Featured Image: SrideeStudio/Shutterstock
Matt Mullenweg, co-creator of WordPress, posted a statement on X (formerly Twitter) announcing that Joost de Valk was no longer speaking at WordCamp Asia and was persona non grata for having “stabbed” him when he was vulnerable and betraying his confidence. Mullenweg cited statements by de Valk to prove his point, but those statements were presented without their full context, which significantly altered their meaning.
Joost de Valk, creator of the Yoast SEO plugin was scheduled to speak at WordCamp Asia on February 21st but was removed from the schedule. He had been scheduled to speak on the topic of marketing WordPress products. A post on X by Matt Mullenweg explaining why he was removed suggests that de Valk was removed on orders by Mullenweg.
Matt Mullenweg posted an explanation of why Joost was removed from the WordCamp Asia schedule, with his motivation being to get ahead of any “drama” stirred up by de Valk, although at the time of writing Joost has been silent about the removal on both X and his blog.
Mullenweg posted:
“Before he tries to make more drama about not being at WordCamp Asia, I just wanted to say that I feel @jdevalk stabbed me when I was down, betrayed confidence, tried to take advantage of a situation for personal clout and influence.
I have given him hundreds of hours of my time and more access than almost anyone in the WP community, including admin access on Google Analytics, a marketing leadership position, and more. This trust was betrayed.
His previous contributions do not “make up” for this behavior, nor has he apologized or taken any conciliatory action. This deeply saddens me.
Because of this, I will not interact with him any further or participate with anything he’s involved with, he’s persona non grata.”
The term persona non grata means that a person is unwelcome. It’s use originated in diplomatic contexts but is now used for any situation where a person is no longer welcome.
Mullenweg followed up with another post with citations of statements published by Joost de Valk that Mullenweg characterize de Valk is trying to “stage a coup” of WordPress.
He continued:
“He’s trying to claim he didn’t want to fork or stage a coup, but wrote:
‘I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership.’
‘But it’s clear now, that we can no longer have him be our sole leader’
‘I’m already talking to several hosts about this, and would welcome anyone who wants to join these conversations, so we’re not duplicating work.’
‘I’m here, and willing to lead through this transition. I do have the time, the energy and the money needed to fund myself doing it.’
X is a micro-blogging format that limited how much context Mullenweg could post. It’s helpful to see those statements in context in order to fully understand them.
For example, the quote in which Joost references the “cult” nature of WordPress leadership takes on a different meaning when viewed in its full context.
Here’s the out of context version:
“I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership.”
The full version of the passage makes it clear that de Valk is merely suggesting the creation of a board (later on detailing that it’s a board with Matt involved in a leadership position).
The full statement:
“I’ve spoken to many slightly outside of our industry over the past months about what was happening and several people, independent of each other, described WordPress as ‘a cult’ to me. And I understand why.
I think it’s time to let go of the cult and change project leadership. I’ve said it before: we need a ‘board’. “
Joost later explains that he isn’t advocating for removal of Matt from leadership but rather giving a voice to all stakeholders, including Matt’s.
He wrote:
“I’m still, to this day, very thankful for what Matt has created. I would love to work with him to fix all this. But it’s clear now, that we can no longer have him be our sole leader, although I’d love it if we could get him to be among the leaders.”
The reality is that Joost was never arguing for a change in leadership. From September to December Joost had largely limited his opinion to suggesting that there should be more transparency about how much of the trademark licensing fee goes to support the WordPress project. Rather than stabbing Mullenweg when he was down and calling for a coup, Joost was more cautious and circumspect in his public remarks.
It was only in December that he published his “Breaking the Status Quo” blog post where he openly advocated that Mullenweg consider a change in governance that reflected the voices of more than one stakeholder, with Mullenweg still in a position of control. Joost was not leading the call for change, others had already been doing that for months. Joost was lending his (considerable) voice to a movement that was already asking for change in how the WordPress project is governed.
Responses to his post were muted because the ability to respond was limited to those he mentions or is following. @arniepalmer responded by explaining that events look far differently from his perspective, pointing out that de Valk was not trying to seize leadership of WordPress away from Mullenweg but discussing a way to expand leadership beyond just one person.
He wrote:
“Matt, I can see how you could be offended by someone who has an opinion on how things in WordPress leadership could be improved and mention that project leadership needs a change. Especially when you have led the project for so many years. However, in my opinion, @jdevalk was engaging in a discussion for a wider solution, not a fork, not a takeover, just a start over with you still being A leader – which is again, in my opinion, essential.
I am saddened that Joost has been excluded from @wcasia2025 as it could have been an opportunity for you and him to discuss options in person. An opportunity to build bridges and even if no solution is reached, the effort has been seen to be made to not exclude those that have differing opinions on how this community driven project moves forward. Criticism of leadership is never a pleasant situation for anyone. I believe a walk back on this is possible and as tickets (including airline and hotels) are already booked for all concerned, booking a meeting room is the smallest of concerns here.”
Some time ago, I asked someone how a civil war in his country started. His nutshell explanation was that for decades, citizens, students, and unions had demanded change, but one by one, the government sealed off every avenue for dialogue. Rather than gaining control, it built pressure to the breaking point, leaving no other outlet for change, which eventually came.
Joost de Valk has not made a statement (or drama) about his ouster from WordCamp or his new “persona non grata” status with Mullenweg. It’s unclear what attempting to silence de Valk has accomplished.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ollyy
An SEO posted details about a site audit in which he critiqued the use of a rel=canonical for controlling what pages are indexed on a site. The SEO proposed using noindex to get the pages dropped from Google’s index and then adding the individual URLs to robots.txt. Google’s John Mueller suggested a solution that goes in a different direction.
An SEO audit uncovered that over half of the client’s 1.43k indexed pages were paginated and “add to shopping cart” URLs (the kind with question marks at the end of them). Google ignored the rel=canonical link attributes and indexed the pages, which illustrated the point that rel=canonical is just a hint and not a directive. Paginated in this case just means the dynamically generated URLs related to when a site visitor orders a page by brand or size or whatever (this is usually referred to as faceted navigation).
The add to shopping cart URLs looked like this:
example.com/product/page-5/?add-to-cart=example
The client had implemented a rel=canonical link attribute to tell Google that another URL was the correct URL to index.
The SEO’s solution:
“How I plan on fixing this is to no-index all these pages and once that’s done block them in the robots.txt”
One of the most tired and boring SEO dad jokes is “it depends.” But saying “it depends” is no joke when it’s followed by what something depends on and that’s the crucial detail that John Mueller added to a LinkedIn discussion that already had 83 responses to it.
The original discussion, by an SEO who’d just finished an audit, addresses the technical challenges associated with controlling what gets crawled and indexed by Google and why rel=canonical is not an unreliable solution because it is a suggestion and not a directive.
A directive is a command that Google is obligated to follow, like a meta noindex rule. A rel=canonical link attribute is not a directive, it’s treated as a hint for Google to use for deciding what to index.
The problem that the original post described was about managing a high number of dynamically generated posts that were slipping into Google’s index.
Mueller’s take on the problem was to suggest the importance of reviewing the URLs for patterns that may give a clue as to why unwanted URLs are getting indexed and then applying a more granular (specific) solution.
He advised:
“You seem to have a lot of comments here already, so my 2 cents are more as a random bystander…
– I’d review the URLs for patterns and look at specifics, rather than to treat this as a random list of URLs that you want canonicalized. These are not random, using a generic solution won’t be optimal for any site – ideally you’d do something specific for this particular situation. Aka “it depends”.
– In particular, you seem to have a lot of ‘add to cart’ URLs – you can just block these with the URL pattern via robots.txt. You don’t need to canonicalize them, they should ideally not be crawled during a normal crawl (it messes up your metrics too).
– There’s some amount of pagination, filtering in URL parameters too – check out our documentation on options for that.
– For more technical rabbit holes, check out https://search-off-the-record.libsyn.com/handling-dupes-same-same-or-different “
A topic raised by multiple people in the LinkedIn discussion is the problem of Google indexing shopping cart URLs (add to shopping cart URLs). No answers were provided but it may be something particular to the shopping cart platform and solving that may be limited to the above described solutions.
Google leads organic search with 94.8% traffic, but AI tools and smaller engines show growing competition.
Google has rolled out updated documentation on how to combine data from Google Analytics and Search Console.
The new guidelines recommend using Google Analytics and Google Search Console together. Google Analytics tracks user behavior on your website, while Search Console monitors your site’s performance in Google Search.
This combination gives you a clearer view of website activity, allowing you to compare key metrics like sessions and clicks. Understanding how users find and interact with your site helps improve SEO decisions.
This document explains how to use Looker Studio to view organic search traffic data from Google Analytics and Search Console on one dashboard. It provides steps for setting up data sources and creating charts, using different colors to distinguish between the two platforms.
SEO professionals can track key metrics like sessions, engagement rates, returning users, clicks, and click-through rates (CTR). This visual format helps identify changes in performance and resolve differences between the two data sources.
The documentation explains the differences in metrics from each tool. Both measure website engagement, but results may vary due to session tracking methods, time zone settings, attribution models, and reporting of non-HTML pages.
Google’s guidelines offer insights into these differences and tips to reduce data gaps.
SEO professionals can follow the steps in the new documentation to better assess their website’s performance.
By connecting data on what happens before and after a visitor clicks on a search result, marketers can better evaluate their SEO efforts.
To be clear, connecting Google Analytics and Search Console is a recommendation, not a requirement. If you’re satisfied with your analytics tracking and reporting solutions, you don’t have to do anything different.
For more details, view the official documentation on the Google Developers website.
YouTube updates Analytics with more prominent device data, helping you tailor content to shifting viewing habits.
A new LinkedIn report shows how businesses are changing their approach to measuring marketing success.
The report, based on insights from leaders at Microsoft, ServiceNow, PwC, and other global firms, identifies five key trends reshaping measurement strategies.
Marketers are now focusing more on revenue-related metrics instead of traditional cost-per-lead measures.
Leaders are adopting tools that sync CRM data with campaign engagement. These tools bridge the gap between marketing activity and business outcomes and show how specific efforts drive deals.
Other critical shifts include:
ServiceNow’s Vivek Khandelwal noted:
“You can talk about click-through rate, cost per click, and cost per impression all day long, but what eventually matters to the business are the revenue metrics. It’s all about how many customers we’re winning, how many opportunities we’re creating, and the ROI we’re generating on marketing investments.”
Personio’s Alex Venus emphasized:
“Our North Star metric is qualified pipeline, which means an opportunity that your salespeople care about, which should be converting at a rate of 25% or more.”
CFOs now need proof that brand-building works financially. This means marketers must show how their awareness efforts lead to sales results.
The report reads:
“The emphasis is shifting from the cost of marketing outcomes to the value of those outcomes. For marketers, that means reporting on KPIs that correlate with revenue in a clear and consistent way – at a rate that both sales and finance can believe in.”
To justify brand spend, teams are:
B2B buying groups are getting larger, often including 6 to 10 members.
As a result, marketers are now using machine learning models instead of outdated last-touch attribution methods.
Julien Harazi, Head of Lead Generation at Cegid, stated in the report:
“As B2B marketers, our world has become a lot more complicated. All of the touchpoints are intertwined and it can be difficult to understand the buyer journey and identify where the value comes from in terms of your marketing.”
Emerging solutions include:
Leaders now measure performance across three timelines to balance immediate optimizations with long-term growth:
This approach helps teams avoid over-indexing on short-term gains while undervaluing brand-building.
Sveta Freidman, Global Data & Analytics Lead at Xero, states in the report:
“One of my goals is to build an understanding of lifetime value by channel, segment level and by platform so that we can optimize our approach around the best outcomes for our business.”
With 73% of marketers citing siloed data as a top challenge, integrated analytics tools are becoming critical.
Solutions gaining momentum include:
The report highlights the value of measurement for brand growth.
These three priorities stand out for B2B marketers:
Success in B2B marketing depends on your ability to translate data into language that resonates with CFOs and business leaders.
Download the full report for more details.
Google’s new ads rules demote confusing landing pages and reward those aligned with user intent.