There was a good bit of digital marketing news during the week of January 24, 2022, with some WordPress theme and plugin security issues, another Google lawsuit, a recent offering by LinkedIn, and more …
The team at Jetpack discovered several severe vulnerabilities in WordPress themes and plugins offered by AccessPress Themes. The vendor has patched or is in the process of patching the affected packages. Note that if your website has been compromised, updating your software is not sufficient to remove the threat. Thankfully, the article shares a fix. If you see a theme or plugin in the list you’re using; you may have been compromised, so check your sites.
Google announced support of a new robots meta tag: indexifembedded. This tag, only supported by Google, allows website owners to have more control over the indexation of content embedded in other places using an iframe or object tag. We would love to see a “noindexifembedded” tag to help prevent content from being spidered if it’s embedded in other sites. Maybe Google will set up that one next.
The District Attorney for Washington DC has started a lawsuit against Google, claiming that the search giant uses location data using “deceptive and unfair practices.” The suit claims that Google uses misleading tactics to get users to share more information about themselves than may have otherwise been intended. Other states may join in, so this likely won’t be the last we hear about this one.
On the opposite end of the privacy spectrum, Google introduced a new way of targeting ads, Topics API. In this move, they will be shutting down the Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) ad targeting process. This new method is designed to allow for more privacy while still offering advertisers a way to get targeted ads in front of people who are more likely to be interested in what they are offering. In addition to the ad targeting part of this program, people can look at the topics their browsers’ data indicates an interest. Users can, then, deselect topics they have no interest in or opt out of the program altogether.
In his latest “Ask an SEO” column, Tony Wright answers a question about backlinks to a competing site. His answer may surprise you, so go check it out.
A month ago, LinkedIn announced a new feature that allows businesses more information about those who visit their site. While there may not have been a lot of chatter about this, we think it could be very valuable. The data is available in the LinkedIn ads account area and offers some excellent information such as job titles, industries, job functions, and more. We will be looking into this for our clients who advertise on LinkedIn.
