Weekly web industry updates – 11th July to 17th July,2015

Lots of new features and announcements are waiting for you in this weekly tech news update. So, here we go… Let’s start the ride with an important announcement by biggest social media platform – Facebook. Facebook now lets retailers create mini storefront to sell products. Google has launched ‘buy it now’ button for the mobile users. Majority young Americans are finding Social Media as a significant news source in 2015. Google AdWords now lets webmasters to track conversions between Web and Apps. And many other interesting stories of the week (11^th July to 17^th July)

Social Media grows as a news source in America

According to latest social media consumption survey by Pew Research, Facebook and Twitter are the significant news sources among the Americans. Almost 10% adult Americans out of 17% active twitter users in America get the breaking news from Twitter. 41% Americans consider Facebook as a prime source of news and updates. More than 50% users under 35 years of age use social media for their regular updates. Current year Twitter news consumers are increased by 11% and use of Facebook as a news source is increased by 16% as compared to 2013.

Google lets you measure conversion across Web and Apps

As an advertiser, it is important to get the insight for all clicks and conversions. The conversion can be happened in any way, by phone calls, by site visits, in-app purchases or it may complete by using different devices. Now, Adwords has   started displaying more insights about conversions that happen between mobile app and web. The update started performing from last Tuesday. You can measure conversions that happened between mobile app and website in Estimated Total Conversions column.

Twitter introduced new dashboard for users

Twitter has launched the new Twitter Data Dashboard on Wednesday. This new dashboard gives the detail insights about the user’s Twitter data accessed by third party apps and other services. Users can find new dashboard from the setting menu. You can have a look over your login history, devices connected with the twitter account and the information of the third party apps consuming your Twitter Data from this new Data Dashboard.

Google AdWords to drop Broad Match (Session-Based) reporting label

Google AdWords is going to remove Broad Match (Session-Based) label from the AdWords Reporting around 24^th August 2015. Google has announced on Google+ that they are going to replace Broad Match (Session-Based) label with the “Broad Match”. It will change the label in all current and historical reports. Because it is just a reporting change, it won’t affect the Broad match serving behavior. According to Google, company is making this change to simplify the understanding of the search terms report in AdWords.

Google launched Buy It Now button on Mobile

Google has announced several updates in “Shopping within Google” on Wednesday. Especially for mobile searchers, Google offers “Buy on Google” option from now. Users can directly purchase from Google when they Google search for any product. Google is testing this with sample merchants yet. Even if they find it successful, online merchants have to wait for Google to approach them to get this feature. There is no alternative to request Google to get “Buy on Google” button for your store.

Facebook introduced in-page store for retailers

Facebook is no more the place where brands can only connect and communicate with the audience. Facebook is planning to provide all new buying experience to the users. Retailers can develop a Facebook store to sell products within website or application. BuzzFeed has first reported on Thursday that Facebook lets retailers create mini storefront in their fan page now. Facebook has also confirmed the news by saying that they are currently testing with this shopping feature.

Wait for panda and penguin updates still continues

It’s been a long time now since Google has updated the Panda or Penguin algorithm. Webmasters have noticed significant fluctuations in traffic and ranking on Wednesday. Barry Schwartz from seroundtable has approached Google officials for the confirmation of probable panda update. But the answer was negative. They said it is “coming soon”. Gary Illyes from Google has recently posted about the status of Penguin update on Twitter. According to him, Penguin refresh is months away yet.

So, these are some of the most discussed stories of the week (11^th July to 17^th July). I will catch you again next week with weekly web and tech industry news round up. Till then happy surfing and have a wonderful weekend.

Have you something more to add in the story? Share with us in the discussion box below.