Google & Bing increase the file size limit of Sitemaps files

Both Google and Bing announced jointly that they have increased the file size limit of Sitemaps files from 10MB to 50MB.

That means, the uncompressed version must now be under 50MB, no longer under 10MB.

Fabrice Canel, Principal Program Manager at Bing, said “while most sitemaps are under this 10 MB file limit, these days, our systems occasionally encounter sitemaps exceeding this limit.” “Most often this is caused when sitemap files list very long URLs or if they have attributes listing long extra URLs (as alternate language URLs, Image URLs, etc), which inflates the size of the sitemap file,” he added.

The 50,000 URL limit per Sitemaps file has not changed, you can still only have up to 50,000 URLs in a single Sitemap file. But the file size has increased significantly.

Here is Google’s tweet about that this morning:

We've updated the Sitemaps protocol with Bing! Sitemaps & indexes can be considerably larger now. More at https://t.co/uygpuywUEh

— Google Webmasters (@googlewmc) November 30, 2016

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Google knowledge panel now showing videos from the web carousel

Google is now showing videos in the knowledge panel. The videos are showing up below the knowledge panel and they are titled “videos from the web.” The videos are related to the knowledge panel information that is triggered based on your query.

This was first spotted by @sergey_alakov. Here is his screen shot:

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MarTech Conference series adds Boston event in 2017

Search Engine Land publisher Third Door Media announced today that it will produce an East coast edition of MarTech^®: The Marketing Tech Conference at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston October 2-4, 2017. A West coast edition of MarTech will take place in San Francisco May 9-11, 2017.

“Marketers are implementing technologies at a breakneck pace in order to improve customer experience, and that’s having profound effects on marketing operations and management. Attending MarTech is an efficient way to evaluate new technologies and learn best practices for implementing and managing them.”

-Chris Elwell, CEO of Third Door Media

MarTech is programmed by conference chair, Scott Brinker. Brinker is a marketing technology industry luminary, author of Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative, and editor of the popular chiefmartec.com blog.

“We’re incredibly excited to bring the MarTech conference to Boston. The Northeast Corridor is a thriving ecosystem of marketing innovation at agencies, brands, and software companies. Our mission is to bring that community together for a vendor-agnostic, graduate-level event that advances practices at the intersection of marketing, technology, and management,” Brinker said.

MarTech is the largest independent marketing technology event. The 2016 San Francisco edition attracted more than 2000 marketing technology professionals and nearly 100 exhibitors and sponsors. Attendance and vendor participation is expected to increase by at least 50% this year.

Companies that want to exhibit or sponsor either MarTech event should contact us here. Registration for MarTech Boston conference attendees will open in April 2017.

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SearchCap: Google’s shift to mobile-first, an interview with a Google doodler & more

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Five marketing automation myths busted!
  Nov 29, 2016 by Digital Marketing Depot
  A study by Forrester Consulting found that just 10 percent of marketing professionals surveyed feel they are able to fully execute mature marketing automation strategies. This may have to do with the fact that some organizations have bought into fallacies about marketing automation.
• Google’s machine learning now writes featured snippets descriptions
  Nov 29, 2016 by Barry Schwartz
  Google recently launched sentence compression algorithms to help surface the best answers for your questions from publisher content across the web.
• Share your obsession with SEO & SEM as a team & score BIG at SMX West
  Nov 29, 2016 by Search Engine Land
  Do you manage the search marketing team at your company or agency? Sister site Search Engine Land’s SMX West is the ultimate team-building experience. Members will get must-know SEO, SEM, mobile and conversion optimization tactics at more than 50 sessions and from 100 expert presenters.
• Google’s shift to mobile-first: mobile moments that matter
  Nov 29, 2016 by Jim Yu
  Columnist Jim Yu outlines Google’s long march toward a mobile-first index and explains why optimizing for mobile devices is no longer optional.
• Google drops the Content Keywords feature from Google Search Console
  Nov 29, 2016 by Barry Schwartz
  It is official. After hinting at removing the Google content keywords report from Google Search Console, Google did it.
• Creating Google doodles that ‘Surprise & Delight’: 5 Questions with Doodler Sophie Diao
  Nov 29, 2016 by Amy Gesenhues
  Offering a behind the scenes glance at the doodle team in action, Diao shares what she appreciates most about her work.
• Here’s an AdWords script to fill empty ad groups
  Nov 29, 2016 by Daniel Gilbert
  Columnist Daniel Gilbert of Brainlabs makes sure you don’t lose traffic due to missing ads.
• Google My Business tests a messaging feature to chat with your customers
  Nov 29, 2016 by Barry Schwartz
  New pilot feature in Google My Business lets you do live chat with your customers directly from the Google search results.
• Louisa May Alcott Google doodle marks 184th birthday of ‘Little Women’ author
  Nov 29, 2016 by Amy Gesenhues
  Designed by doodler Sophie Diao, the artwork pays homage to the March sisters — Beth, Jo, Amy and Meg.

Recent Headlines From Marketing Land, Our Sister Site Dedicated To Internet Marketing:

• PPC buyer beware: 3 seedy tactics agencies or consultants use to scare you into services
• Facebook adds gaming inside Messenger, News Feed
• Report: Cyber-Monday was the largest e-commerce day in history
• SEO without search results is here with Google Assistant, Home and Amazon Echo. Here’s how to survive.
• Share your obsession with SEO & SEM as a team & score BIG at SMX West
• Lessons learned from Black Friday and Cyber Monday: Retailers must be open to change
• Psychology and personalization: two P’s in a pod
• 6 ways marketers try to manipulate subscribers and why we should stop

Search News From Around The Web:

Industry

• Google boss struggles to answer Google job interview question, The Independent

Local & Maps

• Google Earth now has global Landsat and Sentinel 2 data from 1985 to 2016, Google Earth Blog
• Google My Business Adds Settings For Business Notifications, Search Engine Roundtable
• Our most detailed view of Earth across space and time, blog.google

Search Marketing

• 5 Secret Ways You Can Use Google Tag Manager to Boost Your SEO Strategy, State of Digital
• Rethinking Long Tail Keywords: how to get TONS of traffic from ‘unpopular’ search queries, ahrefs.com

Searching

• Answer: The Greek Islands: Birth and Graffiti?, SearchReSearch
• APIs for Developers Series – Bing Search APIs, Bing Search Blog
• Google Tests More Basic “Back To Top” Button On Mobile, Search Engine Roundtable

SEM / Paid Search

• Account-Wide Goals? Let’s Change That Mindset, PPC Hero
• Bing Ads Editor 11.7 features Audience associations and Product filters, Bing Ads
• Google AdWords Phone Support Number Goes Down, Search Engine Roundtable
• How to Leverage Current Events in Paid Search, 3Q Digital
• Improve Your PPC Targeting with Demographic Bid Adjustments, Metric Theory
• The Benefits of Performing PPC Audits, marketing-mojo.com

SEO

• 1 Year, 100 Updates, 1,000,000 Users: What Was 2016 Like for SEMrush, SEMrush
• 10 SEO Quick Wins to Drive Rapid Rankings Improvement, semrush.com
• Google Recommends Site Speed Below 2 Or 3 Seconds, Search Engine Roundtable
• The 7 Citation Building Myths Plaguing Local SEO, Moz
• Yoast SEO 3.9, Yoast

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Five marketing automation myths busted!

A study by Forrester Consulting found that just 10 percent of marketing professionals surveyed feel they are able to fully execute mature marketing automation strategies.

This may have to do with the fact that some organizations have bought into fallacies about marketing automation, namely that a select set of power users is realizing great success while the masses are left behind.

This DemandGen white paper from Oracle shares insights, gleaned from research and interviews with industry experts, to dispel five common myths associated with marketing automation. It also explores what it takes to unlock its full potential and explains how to apply marketing automation for personalized, buyer-centric marketing.

Vist MarTech Today to get your copy.

The post Five marketing automation myths busted! appeared first on Search Engine Land.

Google’s machine learning now writes featured snippets descriptions

A Wired article explains how Google is now using machine learning to understand and produce featured snippets in the Google search results.

Google “just went live” on their desktop search results, with what they call “sentence compression algorithms.” This sentence compression is able to learn how “to take a long sentence or paragraph from a relevant page on the web and extract the upshot – the information you’re looking for,” Wired added.

In short, Google is getting better at looking at content on the web and extracting the specific nuggets of information that directly answer the query.

How did they get this to work:

To train Google’s artificial Q&A brain, Orr and company also use old news stories, where machines start to see how headlines serve as short summaries of the longer articles that follow. But for now, the company still needs its team of PhD linguists. They not only demonstrate sentence compression, but actually label parts of speech in ways that help neural nets understand how human language works. Spanning about 100 PhD linguists across the globe, the Pygmalion team produces what Orr calls “the gold data,” while and the news stories are the “silver.” The silver data is still useful, because there’s so much of it. But the gold data is essential. Linne Ha, who oversees Pygmalion, says the team will continue to grow in the years to come.

With Google Home, Google Assistant and the increase we see featured snippets in the search results, there is no surprise Google is advancing their technology around this challenge.

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Share your obsession with SEO & SEM as a team & score BIG at SMX West

Do you manage the search marketing team at your company or agency? Search Engine Land’s SMX West is the ultimate team building experience, where members will get must-know SEO, SEM, mobile, and conversion optimization tactics at more than 50 sessions and from 100 expert presenters.

Not only will you and your team be learning, you’ll also have an opportunity to network with industry leaders and be inspired by case studies and incredibly knowledgeable and experienced speakers and brands.

Is your team sophisticated?

Search marketing is constantly changing so there’s always something new to learn and changes to prepare for:

• Your advanced SEMs can sharpen their skills with the latest tactics for Enhanced Text Ads, audience targeting, scripts and match types.
• Your advanced SEOs can develop strategies for coping with Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages, recent mobile-first approach and leveraging the power of link-building and advanced SEO tactics.

Do you have new members on your team?

Have them attend our SMX Boot Camp which teaches your inexperienced team members all the search marketing basics — SEO, SEM, copywriting and link building in just 1 day.

Conversions need a boost?

Send your analysts for a deeper dive in KPIs, attribution, and ROI-maximizing tips in the Analytics & Conversion track!

Does your site need restructuring?

Send your developers for deep dives into the technical aspects of SEO and SEM. They will learn how to optimize site architecture for maximum search results and to keep up with ever changing and increasingly complex technical solutions.

With more than 50 sessions, keynotes, panels and clinics, there’s always a session happening at SMX West that benefits your team members.

Don’t take our word for it, attendees rave about SMX West.

“Sending team members to SMX has many benefits. They learn, network and are inspired by their experiences at SMX. That translates into better ROI for our customers and reinforces our commitment to their careers.”

-Benu Aggarwal, Founder & President Milestone Internet

If you and your colleagues share an obsession with SEO and SEM, bring them to SMX West and score deeper discounts as a team:

• Teams of 3-5: save 10%
• Groups of 6-11: save 15%
• Parties of 12 or more: save 20%

To get your group signed up, all you need to do is complete this team registration form and email it to registration@searchmarketingexpo.com.

Flying solo? You’ll still benefit from incredible savings with our super early bird rates. Register for an All Access Pass and pay only $1,695 — that’s $300 off on-site rates. You’ll get full access to conference sessions, keynotes, networking, WiFi, and hot meals — the ultimate experience for search marketers.

-The SMX West Conference Team

P.S. Your satisfaction is guaranteed. Attend SMX West with confidence! If you are not satisfied with the experience we’ll give you a credit towards a future SMX event of equal or lesser value.

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