Google Wants to Subscribe to Your Email List

• 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
• Read more about this interesting development in this post from Joost de Valk.

Hackers Are Hiding Malicious Code in MU Plugins

• 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.”
• Learn more about exact match domains and the importance of brand-building in SEO in these 2 helpful articles from SearchEngineLand.
  
  

Worth a Look

• 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.
• SlimSEO has released a new Pro version combining its previous Schema and Link Manager add-ons into a single new premium plugin.
• Adobe Premiere Pro has a new generative AI tool that can extend 4K clips by up to 2 seconds and audio by 10 seconds.
• Learn how to optimize your agency’s Google Knowledge Panel with this helpful guide.
• Microsoft has unveiled an AI-generated version of Quake II you can play in a browser.