Our weekly digest of what’s happening/trending in the digital world provided by Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and Search Engine Roundtable.

From Search Engine Land

Google officially drops support for several old Search Console reports
As Google promised, some of the old Google Search Console reports are now gone and replaced in the new Google Search Console. Read more

Google adds pay for conversions bidding in Display campaigns
Display advertisers can pay for conversions rather than clicks or impressions. Read more

Do men and women value online reviews differently?
New research suggests there is an opportunity for businesses to get ahead of their competitors by generating reviews from their female customers. Read more

Google Posts decline in traffic leave many to wonder if strategy is worth the time
After Google Posts moved to the bottom of the Knowledge Panel in September, many are reevaluating the strategy as low-impact. Read more

Google’s mobile-first indexing now powers over half of Google’s search results
Google issued an update on the status of its mobile-first indexing initiative. Read more

YouTube ad campaigns target ‘TV screens’ by default, coming to AdWords API in Jan
For YouTube TrueView and bumper ad campaigns, TV screens targeting is enabled as a device type in the UI and can soon be managed via the API as well. Read more

How a physician review site recovered from Google’s ‘medic’ update
A website in the healthcare niche saw improvement after removing the Google auto-translate plugin and rating schema from their translated pages. Read more

From Marketing Land

5 techniques to make free shipping pay off in the holiday season and beyond
Rethink your free shipping offers to better align with larger business goals. Read more

Why every multi-store brand needs a ‘localized social marketing’ strategy
70% of social brand engagement on Facebook is happening on local Pages. Read more

Successful marketing teams tackle this challenge
Successful marketing teams are diverse. They include storytellers, project managers, operations, and technologists. Read more

Study finds 61 percent of electronics reviews on Amazon are ‘fake’
The problem appears much larger than most consumers realize and presents a huge challenge for honest sellers. Read more

3 prospecting features for Google Display campaigns
These relatively new features are aimed at reaching new customers with Display campaigns. Read more

Amazon VP reaffirms: ‘No plans’ for ads on Alexa devices
At least for now, the giant retailer continues to emphasize purchases inside skills and retail sales from its store. Read more

From Search Engine Roundtable

Google Organic Search Doesn’t Have A Negative Keywords Feature
I know this is obvious for most of you but while Google Ads (AdWords) has a way to exclude your site for coming up in the search results for specific keywords, Google organic search does not. Read more

Local SEOs Say Google Posts Traffic Significantly Declining
A group of local SEO experts are saying in the Local Search Forums that the Google Posts traffic has significantly declined over the past month or so. Read more

Google: We Fixed The Date Bug Between Performance Reports & Search Analytics Reports
Remember, for the past year or so, there has been a bug where the old Search Analytics report in the old Search Console did not match the new version called the Performance report. Read more

Google Moved Some Of The Old Google Search Console Reports
As expected, yesterday, Google officially moved several of the old Google Search Console reports to the new interface. Read more

A Google Search Algorithm Update Over December 15th Weekend
It looks like over the weekend, starting maybe this past Friday or Saturday and picking up speed on Sunday that Google pushed out another search ranking algorithm update. Read more

Google: You Can Ignore Negative SEO Threats
Google’s John Mueller said it again, you can ignore negative SEO threats, attacks, blackmail and other manipulative attempts to get you to do something you do not want to do. Read more

Google’s John Mueller On The Medic Update: Improve The Whole Site
It has been a while since we talked about the Google Medic Update, the big August 1st update, that seemed to have been one of the largest core ranking updates from Google this year. Read more

Google: Links Within iFrames Can Be Interpreted Multiple Ways
Google’s John Mueller said that when it comes to links within iFrames, Google can interpret those links in multiple ways. Read more

Google Tests Black URL/Breadcrumbs At Top Of Search Result Snippets
Google is always testing new search results user interfaces, here is yet another test I’ve been noticing being reported over the past few days. Read more

Google Mobile-First Indexing Now Used For Over Half Of Google’s Search Results
Just about two years after Google announced their mobile-first indexing initiative, to crawl the web as a mobile device first versus crawling the web as a desktop device, Google hit a major mile stone. Read more

Poll: SEOs Like The Old Over The New Google Search Console
Most people, by nature, do not like change. Read more

Google: We Can Detect Automated Link Dropping
With all the chatter around links, negative SEO, the tools, etc – Google’s John Mueller said that the tools used to do automated link drops are “old school”. Read more

Poll: Most SEOs Don’t Offer Guaranteed Success
You hire an SEO to typically improve how much qualified traffic your web site gets. Read more

Still Having Google News Indexing & Ranking Issues? Start A New Thread
So you know, Google has been working on addressing issues around Google News publishers with being seen in the Google News and web search results. Read more

Google My Business Products Beta Gets Update Design
Kara from Google said in the Google My Business Help thread that they have done a user interface refresh of the relatively new Product Editor interface. Read more