Your off-Facebook activity

Reading Time: 3 minutes

From time to time, people discover that Facebook has become aware of their visits to other websites and freak out. Is that a concern, or is it part of the web experience? To understand this, check your own Facebook account:

Settings & Privacy > Settings > Your Facebook Information > Off Facebook Activity. Then click the icons you can see. This will open up to a list of websites you visited recently.

Off-Facebook Activity entry point
Expanded view of the sites you visited

At this point, it’s best to use Facebook’s own words:

What is off-Facebook activity?

Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organisations share with us about your interactions with them. Interactions are things such as visiting their website or logging in to their app with Facebook. Off-Facebook activity does not include customer lists that businesses use to show a unique group of customers relevant ads.

How did Facebook receive your activity?

When you visit a website or use an app, these businesses or organisations can share information about your activity with us by using our business tools. We use this activity to personalise your experience, such as showing you relevant ads. We also require that businesses and organisations provide notice to people before using our business tools.

How activity is shared with Facebook

Jane buys a pair of shoes from an online clothing and shoe shop.

The shop shares Jane’s activity with us using our business tools.

We receive Jane’s off-Facebook activity and we save it with her Facebook account. The activity is saved as “visited the clothes and shoes website” and “made a purchase”.

Jane sees an ad on Facebook for a voucher for 10% off her next shoe or clothing purchase from the online shop.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/off_facebook_activity

So what should you do?

I can’t tell you what to do, but I have two choices – do nothing and see relevant ads, or clear this history and choose not to let Facebook get this information from third parties. See the images above for a link to do the latter. Choosing the second option does not mean you will not see ads; you will see less relevant ads.

So what did I do?

I decided to investigate. Yes, I did visit those websites – at least the first few of the 500+ listed. Then I noticed my own business site CRM911 Digital. That got my attention, for I have no Facebook presence for that business and have certainly not installed any tracking tags on it.

So I checked the WordPress plugins there:

  • Akismet Anti-Spam
  • Child Theme Configurator
  • Cloudflare
  • Elementor
  • Far Future Expiration Plugin
  • Imagify
  • jQuery Updater
  • PWA for WP
  • Simple Basic Contact Form
  • Site Kit by Google
  • The SEO Framework
  • Wordfence Security
  • WPSSO Core
  • WPSSO Inherit Parent Metadata
  • WPSSO Organization Markup
  • WPSSO Place and Local SEO Markup
  • WPSSO Schema JSON-LD Markup (Premium)
  • WPSSO Update Manager

The SEO Framework has a setting for selecting a default image should your site be mentioned on Facebook. Yes, I had chosen one, but the page source code showed no link to Facebook. I have no tracking pixels.

So why does my own site show up in my Off-Facebook Activity?

I might have found the answer, in the form of a Chrome extension called Keyword Surfer, made by SurferSEO. Its Privacy Policy says:

Your personal data may be transferred to entities cooperating with SURFER sp.z o.o. , in particular entities providing IT services and support, and entities providing to Surfer sp.z o.o. services in the field of PR, to accounting and IT companies serving us, as well as to all institutions defined by applicable law, in particular to Tax Offices and, if necessary, to entities providing archiving services. 

Source: https://surferseo.com/privacy-policy/

Or it could be one of many other extensions I use. I will disable them one by one to find a likely source.

Meanwhile, I have disconnected the data connection.

Deletion of off-Facebook activity.
Managing future data connections
This is the last step
Random ads will show now.

Drive Across the Contiguous 48 United States

Reading Time: 6 minutesThe United States of America is one of my favourite travel destinations. The people there speak a version of English that I understand and they seem to understand me. The natives are friendly and we fight in all wars side by side. A post-retirement trip on my drawing board is the drive across the 48 states that make up the contiguous United States (CONUS); therefore it omits Hawaii and Alaska. This is a drive, not a leisurely sight-seeing journey. Continue reading

Update your Google Analytics tags for site speed

Reading Time: < 1 minuteGoogle Analytics (GA) now has a new feature – Site Speed data. That help page mentions that your GA tag needs one more line (in red) as follows:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageLoadTime']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>

I use the Thesis framework, so I didn’t have to edit the theme php files. There is a handy input window in the Thesis Site Options. It’s as simple as that, but how do you see the data? Continue reading

Wrong words

Reading Time: < 1 minuteMany people use words that are not in any English dictionary (although when a new word comes into common use, it can be added to an official dictionary). Here are some examples.

Table of Contents

Prepone

This is supposed to be the opposite of Postpone, but there is no such word. You bring forward a meeting, not prepone it.

Updation

IT outsourcing companies love this word. The verb “to update” cannot be turned into a noun. Use two or more words to describe what

Softwares

Software is a collective noun, like the weather. It is never plural.

Upto

This word is very popular in India but it is not correct. It should be two words, up to.
Do you know of other examples?

Double Your Internet Speed?

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Have you seen the ads that tempt you to “double” your internet speed? I don’t know what they sell, but there are free options to try first. I remembered Steve Gibson from the early days for his SpinWrite program, so I didn’t hesitate to try out his free program DNS Benchmark – click the name for the download link.

Some articles on this subject recommend changing the DNS nameservers in your router/modem from the default ones (your ISP in most cases) to others, such as Cloudflare, which uses 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1, or Google, which uses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

What are DNS Nameservers?

Websites have human-friendly names, such as https://crm911.com; however, the internet is linked by numeric addresses, such as 104.27.163.39 (which happens to correspond with crm911.com). The number is tied to the web hosting company’s allocation of such numbers. If the website moves to another hosting provider, it would be allocated some other number. End users don’t need to know this, as they only use the human-friendly name.

Users can think of the Domain Name System (DNS) as an analogy with a telephone book, which shows names and corresponding phone numbers. When you type a website address, your internet device (router) goes to the first DNS Name Server stored in it and the request is relayed to the destination along numeric pathways. Your router has its own number, so the requested web page data is sent back to it. Your individual PC or device has yet another number known only to your router, so you get the requested page/movie/etc.

These DNS name servers might be on slow or busy machines, so it pays to find a faster “telephone book”. Enter the DNS Benchmark program. You can run it immediately if you wish, but it’s better to get the two IP addresses of your name servers from your router. Each brand has a different interface – mine looks like this:

DNS name servers in the Netgear V6510-1FXAUS

You’ll need to refer to your router manual to figure out how to reach it – it has an IP address such as 192.168.0.1 and needs a login/password that is printed under the router case. Login and stay at that screen.

Running DNS Benchmark

The program is an EXE file and runs upon double-clicking its name – no installation is needed.

First, click “Add/Remove” and add the two name server addresses found in your router. Then click “Run Benchmark”. The program takes a few minutes to run. The fastest name servers are sorted to the top of the display window. I was pleased that my default ones are the fastest by a country mile (the first two seen in the image below) as I am on a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) connection to our national provider, NBN through one of many resellers, Foxtel Broadband .

As it’s a 10-year-old program now, some of the stored addresses are defunct and can be removed. You might be able to find others to add to the list.

Screenshot of DNS Benchmark program
Free tool by Steve Gibson

Another Speed Trick

First, you need to find out the channels used by neighbours nearby. I used the free Windows program WiFiInfoView by Nirsoft. It shows a lot of details about each router within range. If yours is using the same channel as used by a neighbour, even if your setting is Automatic (selection of best channel), change your channel. This will avoid interference to both of you and your speed should improve.

Wi-Fi channel settings

Good luck!

Automated Facebook "Community Standards" decisions are getting ridiculous.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I shared an article from the Sydney Morning Herald that I saw on Facebook, with my comment ” Interesting analysis of the UK approach” – that is all I said. I think there were some interactions on that post. Today I received a notification (screenshots follow). I had no option to discuss it, debate it, which is no big deal, as it wasn’t a notable comment or article from some dodgy source.

If anyone from Fairfax is reading this – The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, etc, your content has been deemed to be “Spam”. If you are from their digital agency and manage their social media amplification, take note and bring it up when Facebook’s account manager takes you out for a coffee.

Facebook is a free service, since we are the product that is sold to advertisers. So no real recourse for ordinary users and, going by many other reports about their Community Standards enforcement, I don’t think anyone there wastes any time thinking about it. Enjoy the images below.

“Coronavirus” seems to be the magic word

FB dialog box
From my Notifications
FB dialog box
FB dialog box
FB dialog box
FB dialog box
The end.

Added:

I received many more “spam” Community Standards notifications. Most were about shared articles on Coronavirus. Although my comments are not questionable, I suspect that this is all to do with Facebook forcing large Pages to pay for exposure and not rely on readers sharing their content for free. My friends mentioned that Medium.com content is also being taken down as spam.

FB dialog box
One more.
FB dialog box
FB dialog box

Two more were shared articles about Virgin Australia’s decision to suspend flights.

FB dialog box.
FB dialog box.
I had edited my comment, so it triggered two spam notifications.

It’s getting worse

This time, I did not share any link. All I wrote is this: “Death total to date is five.”

FB dialog box

Here I shared a Facebook post by The Age, not an external link.

FB dialog box

It’s apparently a bug!

The Verge has reported that Facebook says it’s a bug and is working on reversing such posts.

DMR-EZ48V recording from an external device

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you, like me, have a Panasonic DMR-EZ48V VHS and DVD writer combo device, you will have had experience in copying from VHS tapes to DVDs, or vice versa. It’s a great way to dispose of old, grainy home videos that were saved on VHS tape. Such devices were hard to find some years ago, so if you find one on eBay or elsewhere, then get one.

What do you do if you have an external video playing device with content that you wish to burn onto a DVD? In my case, this was a Foxtel IQ2 set-top box.

Let me save you some frustration, if you have tried and failed.

Likely Problems

You might want to guess your way to copying to DVD, assuming you have a suitable cable for the purpose. I did and failed. I won’t confuse you with the methods that failed, but they all involved filling up the DVD before the content had finished playing, or the recording stopped after a couple of minutes for reasons I will never know.

If you cannot find the original manual, you’ll search for one online – big mistake! Panasonic uses the same model number for different countries and can offer different features. For example, the manual I found online showed front panel slots for a USB drive and an SD card. My unit has no such slots. Not surprisingly, the instructions for copying from an external device did not work for me.

Longer recording time on a fixed recording surface comes at the expense of quality, i.e. sharpness, so you want to set the upper time limit to something just longer than your source video. So let’s come to the solution, assuming your device is identical to mine (bought in Australia).

Steps to copy:

Step 1: Connect the AV cable to both devices.

Connect the external device to the front panel AV input – I used the Red-Yellow-White cable method, which is not as sharp as an S-Video cable’s capability. I used the front panel to avoid rummaging at the back of the recorder.

Step 2: Choose the Function Menu

Step 3: Select “To Others”.

On the Function menu, choose the last option, “To Others”. Next, select “Flexible Rec”.

Step 4: Choose Flexible Rec

The Flexible Recording menu enables you to set the maximum recording time. In this example four hours was slightly longer than the 3+ hour source video.

Step 5: Start copying.

Click “Start” and simultaneously start playing the external video source. That’s it. When the copying is done, use the “To Others” menu to reach “DVD Management” and then finalise the DVD so that it can play on other DVD players such as your computer or a DVD player.

Amateur Hour – EU DisInfo Lab finds fake Indian news sites

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Many news outlets are reporting an interview with a Brussels NGO called EU DisInfo Lab, (click the link to read the story) which found 265 websites in “65 countries” that posted the same content in an apparent attempt to influence Members of the European Parliament. The material was pro-India.

Three of the sites covering the same article.

I am not too interested in the underlying political story, but my assessment of the tactics of the alleged publisher can be summed up as “amateur hour”. Why? Let me count the ways.

The domains could well be purporting to be in 65 countries, but they were mostly hosted in the United States at three main hosts, probably VPS accounts, or less likely, dedicated servers. This made it easy for EU DisInfo Lab (and me) to find most of the 265 websites. I searched for one of the articles as pictured above and found that Google had indexed about twenty of them. So that’s another rookie error.

So if you (the website manager) are stupid enough to think that 265 copies of an article (allegedly copied from some Russian propaganda site) will be found in Google or another search engine, then you deserve to be fired by the ultimate client. No, if you are lucky enough to get Google to crawl all the sites, a search result will not list all 265 domains. In fact, you’d be lucky if even one of those sites shows up on the first page of results.

About 248 out of the 265 sites were at three hosts, with many on the same IP address, e.g. 162.241.171.75, which was one of them. There are free tools such as View DNS to get a list of all domains using the same IP address, or the same octet (fourth number from 0 to 255). If you have a VPS or a dedicated server, then all the domains can be presumed to be controlled by you, but if you went to some generic shared hosting provider, your sites would be among tens of thousands of others and much harder to identify, unless you were silly enough to use names resembling news outlets.

Here are the 248 sites that I could find from three hosting providers, Unified Layer, Data Foundry, Four Media Group. I did not waste time looking up these providers or the remaining sites any further:

  • 24hourscalgary.com
  • 24hoursedmonton.com
  • 24hoursottawa.com
  • 24hoursvancouver.com
  • 3newsagency.com
  • 4newsagency.com
  • aberystwythtimes.com
  • acadianrecorder.com
  • accionobrera.com
  • akhbarulusbua.com
  • albanydailydemocrat.com
  • al-insaniyyah.com
  • al-jamahir.com
  • al-mabda.com
  • almalayin.com
  • al-malayin.com
  • al-mukafih.com
  • almustaqilla.com
  • alqaidah.com
  • al-qaidah.com
  • al-watandaily.com
  • badischesvolksecho.com
  • baltimoreeveningherald.com
  • baltimoreeveningsun.com
  • baltimoremorningherald.com
  • barladul.com
  • brightonherald.com
  • brownsvilletimes.com
  • bucharestbusinessweek.com
  • buffaloenquirer.com
  • calcutta-gazette.com
  • cambridgeintelligencer.com
  • canadianillustratednews.com
  • cbs-cable.com
  • ceylondailymirror.com
  • comcast-network.com
  • congregationalherald.com
  • courrierdethiopie.com
  • dailystatesentinel.com
  • derdeutschecorrespondent.com
  • derkampf.com
  • dernordstern.com
  • dernordwesten.com
  • dernord-westen.com
  • derostasiatischelloyd.com
  • detroitsundayjournal.com
  • deutscheshanghaizeitung.com
  • diariodemanila.com
  • dieeinigkeit.com
  • die-einigkeit.com
  • easternmorningnews.com
  • echodelasambre.com
  • eestiaeg.com
  • elbiendelobrero.com
  • essexgazette.com
  • falceemartello.com
  • finnmarkfremtid.com
  • fournewsagency.com
  • foxfootychannel.com
  • frontulplugarilor.com
  • garydailytribune.com
  • gazetteandsentinel.com
  • goldcoastmail.com
  • golostruda.com
  • greateastlandtelevision.com
  • hamevasser.com
  • hardangerarbeiderblad.com
  • hartfordcitycourier.com
  • hartfordcitydemocrat.com
  • hayatechchaab.com
  • heiminshimbun.com
  • houstoneveningjournal.com
  • houstonmorningchronicle.com
  • huashangdaily.com
  • indianapolisdailyherald.com
  • israelshtime.com
  • kansascityjournalpost.com
  • karjalanmaa.com
  • kentuckyirishamerican.com
  • khalsa-akhbar-lahore.com
  • labanderaroja.com
  • ladomenicadelcorriere.com
  • lailustracionfilipina.com
  • lajeunebelgique.com
  • lanouvelleinternationale.com
  • lecanadien.ca
  • lechodukatanga.com
  • lecommuniste.com
  • leedstimes.co.uk
  • legrutleen.com
  • leninshilzhas.com
  • lepaysdefrance.com
  • lereveildutadla.com
  • lereveiljuif.com
  • liverpoolcourier.com
  • ludhiana-times.com
  • lyonsherald.com
  • manchesterexaminer.com
  • manchestertimes.co.uk
  • memphismorningnews.com
  • metroeastjournal.com
  • miamivalleychannel.com
  • minneapoliseveningjournal.com
  • mirat-ul-akhbar.com
  • montrealdailynews.com
  • moskovskykorrespondent.com
  • msnbc.uk
  • nasisten.com
  • neweveningpost.com
  • newyorkcourierandenquirer.com
  • newyorkeveningjournal.com
  • newyorkjournalamerican.com
  • newyorkmorningtelegraph.com
  • newyorknationaldemocrat.com
  • newyorkpressagency.com
  • newyorksundaynews.com
  • niagaranewstv.com
  • northchinadailynews.com
  • northotagotimes.com
  • northwestradio.ca
  • oransocialiste.com
  • pekinggazette.com
  • philippinesdailyexpress.com
  • plymouthtribune.com
  • portlandeveningjournal.com
  • protitisaigialeias.com
  • qatar-chronicle.com
  • quebecherald.com
  • rochesterdailyamerican.com
  • rockportjournal.com
  • rockvilletimes.com
  • russkoyeznamya.com
  • russkyinvalid.com
  • saltlaketelegram.com
  • schweizamsonntag.com
  • shanghaieveningpostandmercury.com
  • shanghaijewishchronicle.com
  • sindhgazette.com
  • singainesan.com
  • socialistweekly.com
  • sovietweekly.com
  • spoknippet.com
  • srilankadeepa.com
  • swatantranepali.com
  • sydney-gazette.com
  • theadaircountynews.com
  • theamericanweekly.com
  • theaustraliancommunist.com
  • thebangkokrecorder.com
  • thebaptisttimes.com
  • thebombaychronicle.com
  • thecanadianspectator.com
  • theceylonherald.com
  • thecharlottesvilletribune.com
  • theclevelandgazette.com
  • thecolombojournal.com
  • thedearbornindependent.com
  • thedublingazette.com
  • thehazletonnews.com
  • thehoovergazette.com
  • thejewishtribune.com
  • thekamloopsdailynews.com
  • thekungsheungdailynews.com
  • theliverpoolherald.com
  • theliverpoolnews.com
  • thelouisvilleheraldpost.com
  • thelouisvilletimes.com
  • themadrastimes.com
  • themirrorofaustralia.com
  • thenevadajournal.com
  • thenewzealandtablet.com
  • thenorfolkweeklynews.com
  • theoregonjournal.com
  • thequebectelegraph.com
  • thesandbornherald.com
  • theseattlestar.com
  • thesenator.eu
  • thestatesman.eu
  • thetimesofceylon.com
  • thetorontomail.com
  • thetulsatribune.com
  • thewellingtonindependent.com
  • thewhitesvilleindependentpress.com
  • threemediagroup.com
  • threenewsagency.com
  • timesofalaska.com
  • timesofambala.com
  • timesofamsterdam.com
  • timesofargentina.com
  • timesofaustria.com
  • timesofazadkashmir.com
  • timesofbali.com
  • timesofbelgium.com
  • timesofbern.com
  • timesofbhutan.com
  • timesofbonn.com
  • timesofbulgaria.com
  • timesofcanberra.com
  • timesofcebu.com
  • timesofchiangmai.com
  • timesofchile.com
  • timesofcostarica.com
  • timesofcroatia.com
  • timesofcyprus.com
  • timesofdefence.com
  • timesofeqypt.com
  • timesofestonia.com
  • timesofhonduras.com
  • timesofhungary.com
  • timesofjakarta.com
  • timesofjeddah.com
  • timesofkazakhstan.com
  • timesoflatvia.com
  • timesoflibya.com
  • timesoflosangeles.com
  • timesofluxembourg.com
  • timesofmacau.com
  • timesofmadinah.com
  • timesofmadrid.com
  • timesofmanitoba.com
  • timesofmecca.com
  • timesofmedina.com
  • timesofmorocco.com
  • timesofmoscow.com
  • timesofnaples.com
  • timesofnetherlands.com
  • timesofnewbrunswick.com
  • timesofnorthkorea.com
  • timesofpalau.com
  • timesofperu.com
  • timesofportugal.com
  • timesofpyongyang.com
  • timesofriyadh.com
  • timesofromania.com
  • timesofsaotome.com
  • timesofseattle.com
  • timesofseoul.com
  • timesofsouthchinasea.com
  • timesofsouthkorea.com
  • timesofspain.com
  • timesoftokyo.com
  • timesofvatican.com
  • timesofvenezuela.com
  • tokyonichinichishimbun.com
  • topekastatejournal.com
  • torontotelegram.com
  • weeklylouisianian.com
  • worldeconomicherald.com

Just cast your eye across some of those names above. Some were chosen wisely, such as legitimate news outlets that once existed but are long defunct. Others are too fanciful to be credible. Visit some of those sites and ask yourself why would someone put up a site with the stories you see there?

There are numerous other SEO omissions that are best left unstated, as there is no value in enlightening the amateurs behind these sites. Many of them are being taken down as we speak, replaced with parked pages.

Some of the coverage of the incident by the news media:

Added: 11 December 2020 – There is a further update:

Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. 2019

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Facebook users. You get this message on the screen, “Account Temporarily Unavailable. Your account is currently unavailable due to a site issue. We expect this to be resolved shortly. Please try again in a few minutes.”

Don’t panic. It’s a recurring problem and it is probably not just you facing the problem. I had this problem and here is what I did:

  • I deleted all cookies and flushed the cache. No difference, except that the error message changed to this.
  • Tried another browser (went from Firefox to Chrome). No difference.
  • Checked my Facebook account from my phone app – works! Big relief.
  • Went back to my laptop. Remember that I flushed cookies, so I am not even logged into the previous session. Problem still there. OK, this is most likely a technical issue somewhere between me and the nearest Facebook server. The site does not come up. Nothing personal. Phew. I did not offend anyone.
  • Checked Facebook (web interface) from another city (my work environment places all of us in another city, while my laptop operates on wi-fi from my city) – Facebook and my account are all working normally. More relief.

Solution?

  • Do all the above where possible.
  • Just wait and do something more productive. The technicians at Facebook will fix it in due course.

In my instance, the problem was resolved by Facebook in less time than it took to write this post.

Captain Phirozshah Byramji Bharucha, DSO

Captain Bharucha
Reading Time: 2 minutes

On Facebook I read the following post:

“Col. Phirozshah Byramji Bharucha, who led the 14th Ferozepur Sikh regiment in the grueling hard fought key Battle of Gallipoli during World War I in 1915. While the 1981 Mel Gibson movie “Gallipoli” glorified the heroics of the Australian battalions during the Gallipoli campaign, the reality is that the fiercest, most difficult first wave of attacks to gain ground on territory held by the enemy was led by the gallant Sikhs under Col. Bharucha, which then cleared the way for the Aussies to advance. In doing so, the brave 14th Sikh front line battalion suffered a 80% casualty rate. “

The wrong person.
This is the wrong person being attributed to this battle.

Being an Aussie of Indian extraction, having served in the RAAF as an officer, I am always interested in the under-documented role of Indians at Gallipoli, so I began to read up on the King’s Own 14th Ferozepore Sikhs, which fought at the Battle of Krithia, with a loss of 80% of its strength, with only three Indian officers surviving. I was intrigued how an Indian doctor attached to a regiment could have “led” it.

Captain Heerajee Cursetjee

Yes, there was a Parsi doctor with the 14th Ferozepore Sikhs , but it was Lieutenant (later General) HJM Cursetjee, DSO. (Link here). His great grandfather’s statue in Bombay is best known as “Khada Parsi”. A detailed account of his service life is at the British National Army Museum. Do check it out.

Yes, Lt Cursetjee also earned a DSO and he was the Parsi with the 14th King’s Own Ferozepore Sikhs, but a different Parsi also with a DSO to his credit has been incorrectly identified with Gallipoli.

So where was Captain PB Bharucha during WW1? He was in the Indian Expeditionary Force “D” in Mesopotamia (link here, Page 4) (also here, Page 440). He was later a prisoner of war (link 1 here) (continued here). He did fight the Turks, but in a different theatre of war. He was indeed the first Indian to win the Distinguished Service Order. I salute his service.

So here is a corrected image below that should be shared if you want to attribute the right person.

This is the correct person who should be attributed the honour.

SEO Implications of Google Ads’ New Exact Match

Reading Time: 2 minutesBrad Geddes has published an excellent post entitled “Exact match is no longer exact match – are you managing the changes correctly?” Although it is about PPC, can SEOs learn from it? It is a timely reminder for those of us in SEO and content writing to be aware of Search Intent versus Keyword Intent.

I’ll also point out that there is no connection between the algorithms for Google Ads and organic Search. Nevertheless, it does not hurt to infer a connection for the purpose of tightening up our organic keywords. After all, many permanent web pages also serve as ad landing pages. Keywords are part of the Quality Score, so why not look for synergies.

At my day job I have been updating our master keyword list and will look for such potentially conflicting keywords. The concept of exact match does not apply directly to SEO, other than the rare searcher who does searches using quote marks, but tightening up our keywords can only be beneficial.

To pick an example, a Google search for “credit card app” triggers organic results about:

  • Phone apps (probably the search intent)
  • Card readers by several suppliers
  • Card processing by Square
  • Apply for a credit card – ANZ

But the searcher might be thinking of something not related to any of the above. Is it a Google Pay or Apple Pay (no Apple results showed)? Is it an app that keeps track of your card spend across several banks? And so on.

Incidentally, three ads appeared only at the bottom of the SERP and were ANZ/Woolies/Commbank bank credit cards.

Brad’s article mentions the use of the search term “Yosemite camping“, which Google used as an example when rolling this out. A searcher could type:

  • Yosemite national park ca camping
  • Yosemite campground
  • Campsites in Yosemite

From Australia, the only two ads I see relate to:

  • Yosemite’s official website page about camping and campgrounds.
  • Save the Woods web page with a map of the area (leaving me wondering what to make of this info)

Granted, “Yosemite camping” is a vague search term, but one has to allow for such searches. So what’s the challenge here for the SEO?

A content writer should consider the possible use cases for someone who is interested in camping in Yosemite. For example:

  • Wild animal hazards and preventive steps
  • Time of year considerations
  • Campgrounds
  • Rules for lighting fires for a barbecue or campfire
  • Do they mean living in a tent, RV, cabins or even a motel?
  • Environmental care

One clue about the algorithm comes from the “Searches Related to Yosemite camping”, which are:

  • yosemite camping prices
  • yosemite camping cabins
  • yosemite camping map
  • yosemite camping permits
  • best yosemite campgrounds
  • yosemite valley camping
  • rv camping near yosemite
  • best rv camping in yosemite

The actual organic results in the SERP seem to be focused on accommodation rather than the other aspects of camping. So do the ads.

The (closely related) keyword suggestions in Google Keyword Planner are also accommodation-centric, so the writer can safely assume that Google has made this close association at the moment.

So what are the writer’s options? “Yosemite camping” is, therefore, not a good keyword if you don’t want to be accommodation-centric. If you searched Keyword Planner for the other terms, such as Yosemite bears , you will get a good set of related keywords. Then let the usual SEO guidance for content kick in. Headings, title, images, videos, captions and so on.

Mastodon