Verified Google Users Can Now Edit Knowledge Panels
For the first time, Google is now allowing individuals and organisations to suggest edits to their own Knowledge Panels (the curated information about people, organisations, sports teams, events and media properties that shows up in the box to the right of search results).
The information contained in these Panels is taken from trusted sources like Wikipedia. Because this information is automatically generated, there are sometimes discrepancies or inaccuracies in the information provided. Until now, there has been no way to control the information that gets displayed in them. But, hallelujah, users can now suggest edits (after proving that they represent the entity in the panel)!
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Facebook Users Can Now See All Ads a Page is Running
Facebook users can now see all ads a page is running (regardless of how the ads are targeted) – this includes ads on Facebook, Instagram and the business’s partner network. This info can be accessed by visiting any Facebook page and selecting ‘info and ads’. From there, you’ll be able to see all the ads the page is currently paying for. This change is part of Facebook’s efforts to bring more transparency to ads and pages.
“Giving people more information about any organization and the ads it’s currently running will mean increased accountability for advertisers, helping to prevent abuse on Facebook.”
Users will also be able to report ads if they seem suspicious and see information that wasn’t easily accessible before, like recent name changes and the date the page was created.
“The vast majority of ads on Facebook are run by legitimate organizations… But we’ve seen that bad actors can misuse our products, too. These steps are just the start — we’re always looking for more ways to improve. By shining a bright light on all ads, as well as the Pages that run them, we’ll make it easier to root out abuse – helping to ensure that bad actors are held accountable for the ads they run.”
Facebook says that it will be adding even more info to pages in the coming weeks.
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Search Console – Check When a URL Was Last Crawled & More
A new Google Search Console update will let users check when a specific URL was last crawled. This ‘URL inspection’ tool will provide a detailed crawl as well as index and serving information about pages (with information being pulled directly from the Google index). According to Google, this tool aims to provide some of the most commonly requested new features.
“One of our most common user requests in Search Console is for more details on how Google Search sees a specific URL. We listened, and today we’ve started launching a new tool, ‘URL inspection,’ to provide these details so Search becomes more transparent.”
In Search Console, users can enter a URL that they own and Google will return the last crawl date and status as well as any indexing or crawling errors and the canonical URL for the page. As long as the URL is successfully indexed, users will also be able to see information about any enhancements found on the page, included a linked AMP version or rich results like jobs and recipes. If a URL has not been indexed successfully, the tool will explain why, and can also provide a report that includes info about noindex robots meta tags and Google’s canonical URL for the page. Using this report, users will be able to discover whether other pages are affected by the same issue. This should enable site owners to track down and fix bugs and resolve issues with new or existing pages in the Google index.
This tool has begun rolling out and will be available to all users in the coming weeks.
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Studio Culture
If you have any questions or concerns about the updates mentioned in this post, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Studio Culture today. You can contact us online or give us a call on 1300 200 113.
