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Following a report based on leaked internal Google documents about plans to launch a censored version of the search engine in China, some Google employees are less than impressed. The project (code named Dragonfly in confidential documents) was started in the spring of 2017 and had been confidential within the company, save for a small portion of Google’s large, multinational workforce, until this week.

Though many don’t realize it, SEO is influenced by every department that touches digital content in a given organization. While you don’t have to be a technical genius to understand how that impacts your marketing and communications efforts, it’s important to be aware that even if you hand off SEO to your resident SEO expert or to an agency, your actions with your brand’s digital content are already affecting your search rankings.

More than 3,100 Google employees have signed a letter asking the company to halt its work on a Defense Department initiative. While the letter has made headlines, it also raises an important question for professional communicators: How should a brand prepare for the possibility that part of its workforce has a political or moral objection to some of its activities?

That idea you have, which everyone is calling crazy and couldn’t possibly work: well, it probably won’t work. But you should try it anyway. Such was the advice of Guy Kawasaki (pictured), venture capitalist and… Continued

When it comes to measuring your PR and communications efforts, more is not always better. Janneke van Geuns, head of insights and analytics at Google, says that she has seen communicators who try to collect and track an overabundance of metrics. But collecting more data isn’t going to bring about better insights, she says. Instead, communicators should break through the clutter of unnecessary (and just plain meaningless) metrics to focus on the ones that truly matter to you and your organization.

If you want to optimize a web page to be front and center on a Google search, there’s so much more to it than just using a couple of keywords in the title. From the time of day your page is posted, to making sure you always follow the 3/100 rule, there are a variety of methods for optimizing a page to make it dance with Google’s algorithm. Here’s a quick 12-step checklist to keep in mind whenever you’re posting a new piece of content to your site.

The rules of search engine optimization (SEO) can change so quickly, by the time you implement yesterday’s best practices, a new set of considerations seemingly take their place. And that moving target is set to move again: Since more searches now come from mobile platforms than desktops, Google will soon roll out a fully updated mobile-first index, which considers the mobile version of a website its primary version.

A previously unreleased report from the Federal Trade Commission’s 2012 investigation into Google’s search practices shows that the company boosted some of its own services over those of competitors even if its offerings did not match customer search criteria.

Recent changes to Google+ focus on the most successful elements of its network, to develop and evolve them further, streamlining the product and increasing overall impact.

If you want your content to be seen by the widest possible audience, then you have to shape it effectively so that it ranks high on Google.