Five most interesting search marketing news stories of the week

Welcome to our weekly round-up of all the latest news and research from around the world of search marketing and beyond.

This week we have a huge double-hit of news from the world of accelerated mobile pages and a few social updates, one of which proves that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Until the lawyers come in and everything turns sour.

Google AMP is coming to organic search results

As I reported a few days ago, Google has announced that AMP support is coming to organic search results, not just news or top stories.

If you’re currently on a mobile you can just click on the following link for a live demonstration: AMP Demo

Google has reiterated that AMP is still not an actual ranking signal, although time will tell, especially when more and more people realise how much quicker these fast-downloading, stripped-down webpages really are.

AMP will begin appearing throughout the SERPs “later in the year.”

AMP is now available for live-updating pages too

In the second AMP announcement of the week, the AMP Project also launched a beta for <amp-live-list> a new component that “updates page content dynamically without additional navigation or reload.”

As SEJ states, “this brings the power of AMPs to live updating pages, such as news publishers with live blogs used to break news as it unfolds.”

To use <amp-live-list>, all you have to do is:

• While the component is in beta, opt into the experiment by entering AMP.toggleExperiment (‘amp-live-list’) into your javascript console on your testing page. You can also opt in on the AMP experiments page for all pages served from cdn.ampproject.org.
• In the HTML for an AMP page, wrap any live-updating content in <amp-live-list> and its children, ensure that each element has the required attributes and structure, and publish the page.
• Whenever new information comes in, update the HTML for <amp-live-list> with new entries or changes to older entries, and re-publish the page.

Yeah that all sounds straight forward enough. Will get on that. Oh hang on, I just need to take this call…

Instagram takes on Snapchat, and isn’t even shy about it

This week Instagram launched a new feature called Stories, where uses can create connected posts that disappear after 24 hours.

Uh-huh.

When pressed on the similarity between this ‘innovation’ and the entire point of Snapchat, Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said to TechCrunch:

“When you are an innovator, that’s awesome. Just like Instagram deserves all the credit for bringing filters to the forefront. This isn’t about who invented something. This is about a format, and how you take it to a network and put your own spin on it.”

Sure.

Also… CEOs that say “awesome” – that’s where we are right now.

Facebook rolls out new layout for Pages

Now, I actually thought this had happened ages ago as my own branded pages have looked like this for a while, but it turns out it’s only just been rolled out to everyone. AREN’T I SPECIAL?

Changes include: your profile picture no longer interfere’s with you cover image, there are no longer any ads on the right-hand side and you now have a big shiny blue call-to-action.

Coincidentally (I won’t lie and say I planned it, you deserve better than that) I wrote this piece on how to optimise your images for Facebook earlier in the week before the announcement, featuring the new sizes.

For all you ego-surfers

According to Venture Beat, Google has a new easier way to alert you whenever your name is mentioned on the internet.

If you’re logged into Google and you’ve enabled it to save your web activity, when you Google yourself (chortle) it will show a widget at the bottom of the first SERP to help you quickly set up a Google Alert for your own name.

Like this…

FYI: I can’t find a trace of Janelle Murrells anywhere. Google has created the perfect fake name!