May InveHits

We know which shops are open on Sundays too. And besides that, the latest round-up goes through the news from social, PPC, SEO and development, as tradition dictates.

Social

The shops are open! On Facebook and Instagram

Years of work around e-commerce, combined with the pressure of the coronavirus, have borne fruit. Facebook has launched Shops on Facebook and Instagram. Creating one is simple and free. So any seller, whatever their size, can trade easily. Just pick the products and adjust the page's appearance.

Facebook will give eligible business accounts a link to the new Shop Builder, where they can upload their products or connect them to an existing catalogue.

Do you have your avatar yet?

The most shared arrival of the past month. Facebook has given every user the option of building an avatar among the Facebook stickers. We can choose its gender, face and body shape, eyes and hair — the details of its appearance, so the avatar resembles us as closely as possible.

As we could see, it was the right move. People immediately started changing their profile pictures and making stories with avatars. The question is what new functionality Facebook will gradually add to avatars and how it will start personalising them.
How to create your avatar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PsKsj2fgMg&feature=youtu.be

Step into Facebook Rooms

Facebook has added another feature. You can create your own rooms, first choosing the activity, then the friends invited and the start time. The room appears to those invited in the Facebook news feed, where they can join and hold a video call. Facebook announced that rooms will also be available within groups and events, providing another way of engaging smaller subsets of an audience.

Group admins and members alike will be able to build a group setup allowing video calls for up to 50 people at once. On top of that, creating online events people can attend by video call is being added.

Live stories on IGTV

Until now a video streamed live on Instagram could be watched in real time and then saved to stories for 24 hours. Users will now have the option of uploading a live video to IGTV, and so deciding for themselves how long it stays.

Messenger polls are back

Their removal did not last long, and they are finally back. New and improved. They are available in the desktop app too.

Before and after:

SEO

A new Google algorithm update

Google's May core update began rolling out on 4 May and took two weeks. It is one of the largest updates since the Medic update of August 2018. It brought large changes to organic results: for some sites it meant a 90% drop in organic traffic, while it helped others. The update does not focus on the typical E-A-T area but rather on content and brand factors.

The areas hit hardest are travel, property, health, pets and animals, and people and companies.

Google brings search suggestions based on earlier user activity

Google search is now showing suggestions based on earlier user activity. These appear below the search box with a modified query added in bold italics.

Personalised search suggestions can help users find what they are looking for. In some cases, though, they can shape behaviour by leading users to queries they had not previously considered.

The element has existed for some time in the form of "similar queries" or "searches related to". The difference lies in where these elements sit. Where the earlier ones sit lower down the SERP, this new element is right at the top of the results. Its presence there may signal that Google is testing user engagement, or that it considers these suggestions better search queries.

The Google Search Console API will stop supporting HTTP and JSON-RPC requests.

Back in 2018 Google announced it would stop supporting HTTP and JSON-RPC requests in the API in the near future, and on 15 May this year Google Webmasters announced on Twitter that it would happen soon, and that HTTP and JSON-RPC requests would stop working shortly.

Google recommends that webmasters check whether they use this format and, if so, change it.

Even the largest sites can have SEO trouble

At the start of May LinkedIn, probably through its own error, removed itself from Google's index. That meant a site with more than a hundred million pages in the Google index vanished and stopped appearing in search results. The site was out of the index for roughly 10 hours.

It is a good reminder that even the world's largest websites can run into trouble with Google search and, through an SEO mistake, disappear from the results for hours on end.

PPC

Linking PayPal with Google Merchant Center

When Google announced last month that search results on the Shopping tab would appear free of charge, it also announced integration with PayPal. That integration is now live. If you are a new Google Merchant Center user, connecting PayPal can also speed up verification.

Google Shopping ads gain clickable text

In the picture below, a text block with a blue headline and description is attached beneath the ad (PLA). It is a test currently running in the USA, though on only a very small percentage of results. Either way it is an interesting joining of two ad formats.

Development

What can we expect from PHP 8?

After a long wait, PHP 8.0 arrives with a JIT (Just in Time) compiler. What does that mean? PHP 8.0 will be several times faster, though nobody will feel it all that much. The change it brings is mainly that PHP code will run far faster on websites — but the speed of PHP code does not matter that much. A request usually waits on I/O operations, database requests and the like. It is not slowed by how fast PHP executes. But if you plan to generate 3D images, or something similarly CPU-heavy, there an improvement will be visible. The release is planned for December, so we shall see what else is adjusted by then.

Gutenberg 8.0 is out

Over the past month we have seen Gutenberg 7.9 and 8.0. The updated versions brought new block designs with inline formatting options. The Code Editor's functionality has improved too, which can often speed work up considerably. And of course, as the rule goes, the new releases brought a heap of bug fixes and refinements as well.