Your email newsletter can now influence how brands appear across Google’s search platforms.
A new addition to the Google Merchant Center expands Googles index by including marketing emails in its crawled data.
Google will examine your emails and extract sales and promotions, new products, social media content and links, brand voice, images, and videos.
To include Google as a recipient, add [email protected] to your list, or Google may sign up for these communications automatically.
If you’d rather not have Google indexing your marketing communications, you can opt-out in the General Account Options area of the Google Merchant Center
Sucuri researchers have noticed a new trend of malicious code hidden in the WordPress mu-plugins directory.
A Must-Use (MU) plugin is a special type of WordPress plugin that automatically executes on every page load without requiring activation like other plugins in the dashboard.
In order to create an MU plugin, an attacker must gain access to the site by exploiting compromised themes, plugins, or credentials.
Sucuri researchers have found 3 specific payloads being added to MU plugins:
Redirect.php: redirects visitors (other than bots and logged-in admins) to page that attempts to trick them into downloading malware.
Index.php: a particularly dangerous webshell UI that allows execution of PHP code from a GitHub repository. Custom-js-loader.php: replaces all images on the site with adult content and redirects all links to dangerous websites.
While many agencies already have a good process for protecting against compromised themes, plugins, and credentials, adding file change notices and/or regular audits of the mu-plugins directory is something to consider.
Do Exact Match Domains Matter in Today’s SEO?
Back in the day, if you owned the domain name that was an exact match for a search keyword, it was almost a guarantee you’d be at the top of the search results.
While exact match domains no longer guarantee SEO success like they used to, they can still provide value as part of a marketing strategy that prioritizes memorability and trust.
Local businesses in particular can benefit from geo-specific exact match domains, especially in competitive service industries (think chicagoplumber.com or dallaselectrician.com).
Plus, voice search and AI assistants have made memorable, easily pronounced domain names more valuable than ever.
“If your domain sounds like a real brand, people will treat it like one – and so will search engines.”
Automattic has announced a 16% workforce reduction “to protect Automattic’s long-term future,” according to Matt Mullenweg.
ICYMI, Skype will be shutting down for good on May 5. If you’re still using a Skype phone number for VoIP and SMS, Google Voice seems to be the most logical replacement. Skype also supports data export if you want to save old messages.
