Business Roundup Week Ending January 26

Google to Significantly Lower Free Recaptcha Tier on April 1

• On January 29, Google began sending emails to users of its reCAPTCHA service informing them of a significant change in terms and pricing.
• Starting on April 1, 2024, the free reCAPTCHA service will be limited to 10,000 assessments per month rather than 1 million.
• The new reduced services will be named reCAPTCHA Lite. 
• Additional reCAPTCHA protection can be added by upgrading to “reCAPTCHA Standard” for $8/month/site for up to 100,000 assessments.
• This change significantly impacts agencies which rely on reCAPTCHA for bot protection. 
• Many are now considering other free CAPTCHA alternatives including hCaptcha and Cloudflare Turnstile.
• Are you ready to move away from reCAPTCHA to other protection options?

26 Billion Records Exposed in the “Mother of all Breaches”

• A massive 12-terabyte database containing 26 billion stolen user records was discovered last week by security researchers.
• While the sheer size is eye watering, the database is a compilation of past platform breaches rather than new hacks, so there are likely no surprises here.
• Major sites impacted include Tencent, Weibo, MySpace, Twitter, Wattpad, LinkedIn, AdultFriendFinder, Adobe, MyFitnessPal, and Canva. Government entities were also affected.
• This news is a good opportunity to remind clients about the principles of good password hygiene and the importance of using a password manager.
• Use online tools like haveibeenpwned.com to check if you or your clients have been affected.
• How do you educate your clients about good security practices?
• Read the full article on Mashable here.

Google Ranking Bug: Sites Go MIA Every Saturday and Reappear on Monday

• Troubling pattern has emerged where sites with certain generic top-level domains (like .media and .club) completely drop out of Google’s search results over the weekend making them unable to even rank for their own domain names.
• “Google Weekend Ranking Bug” was first reported in November 2023 but has escalated dramatically in January 2024.
• Prevailing theory is an algorithm bug now intermittently and erroneously devaluing sites with keyword-focussed TLDs. 
• Reminiscent of “legacy penalties” where low-quality sites got stuck in ranking looks – but this weekend bug affects TLDs with no known history of violations.
• Do you have sites taking a hiatus for the weekend? 
• Read a thorough explanation of the issue on SearchEngineJournal.com.

Worth a Look…

• WordPress Accessibility Day 2023 replays are now available.
• Check out these 8 red flags to watch out for when hiring an SEO consultant.
• Jamie Marsland’s “Billion Dollar WordPress Page Builder” Idea. What do you think?