Updates for Google Docs & Slides let you insert & quickly edit images on Android/iOS

Google is today rolling out updates to its Google Docs and Slides mobile apps bringing the ability to insert images directly from the app on both phones and tablets.

With the update, Android, iPhone and iPad users will be able to access their camera roll or snap a new photo to insert directly into a document or Slides presentation.

In addition, the update includes quicker access to make basic edits in Slides by allowing users to enter crop mode by double tapping any image in a presentation.

Google notes that both of the new features will work in offline mode.

The updated Docs and Slides apps should be hitting the App Store and Google Play today.

Google Docs for Android updated w/ Office Compatibility Mode improvements, more

Google today has started rolling out an update to the Google Docs app on Android
with a few new enhancements. First off, the update adds support for selecting, 
cutting, copying, and pasting text, images, tables, and charts in Office Compatibility 
Mode. The update also adds the ability to insert links into Google documents.

From the Google Apps blog:

A new version of the Google Docs Android app is now available on Google Play.
New features include:

• Support for selecting, cutting, copying and pasting text along with images, 

tables,and charts in Office Compatibility Mode

• Ability to insert links in Google documents

The update is available now via the Play Store, although it is a staged rollout and may 

take a little while to hit your device.

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for Android get 

updated with a slew of new features

Google has announced today that, following a slew of updates that came to the 

Google Drive collection of iOS apps last week, the company’s Android apps for 

Drive are also receiving a few updates today:

Docs has some new, handy line spacing controls that let you choose single,

double or fractional line spacing, Sheets has scrollbars for faster 

navigation, and you can now insert, move, resize and rotate text boxes, 

shapes and lines in the updated Slides app.

All three apps are now even friendlier with Office files with easier 

file creation and other updates, and we’ve added better accessibility 

options and squashed some bugs. The updates coming to this set of apps 

may seem minor, but there are a few notable additions here. Scrollbars 

in sheets is going to make that app much more usable, and the ability 

to create and edit graphics within Slides is going to make it much easier 

to make presentations that are closer to what you’d be able to do on the 

desktop. Google says that the updates should be rolling out today. If you 

don’t already have them, you can get the Docs, Sheets, and Slides Google 

Drive apps over on the Play Store for free.

Source: http://9to5google.com/2015/05/13/google-docs-slides-insert-edit-images-android-ios/

Google's 'phantom' algorithm update hits websites

* Search change costs sites real money

* Websites were not expecting the change
* One site loses 22 percent of traffic overnight

Google's "mobilegeddon" update last month, which was designed to favor mobile-friendly sites in search results, had no impact on HubPages. But a secretive algorithm tweak soon after was disastrous.

HubPages, a collection of more than 870,000 miniblogs covering everything from the "History of advertising" to "How to identify venomous house spiders," saw its Google search traffic plunge 22 percent on May 3 from the prior week. Of the company's 100 top pages, 68 lost visitors over that stretch. 

Unlike some previous updates that hurt HubPages' lower-performing sites, this one was indiscriminate, said Paul Edmondson, founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based company. Furthermore, Google refuses to provide any details.

ead MoreGoogle's secretive updates leave small sites scrambling

"It was just a giant whack across the board," said Edmondson, whose 10-year-old company employs professional editors to work with its vast network of independent writers. "Imagine how hard it is to run a business when you see 22 percent of your traffic evaporate overnight."

Edmondson published a blog post on May 11, titled "The Google update that didn't happen." Glenn Gabe, a digital marketing expert and search engine optimization analyst, called it "Phantom 2" in a blog post, because it's the second significant unnamed update in two years. 

Video: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000374012

According to Searchmetrics, which tracks search traffic, there was a clear pattern of a decline in visibility for certain how-to sites, mostly pertaining to those with "thin content," or lacking much value. HubPages and eHow, owned by Demand Media, are two sites that Searchmetrics identified. WikiHow and Answers.com also saw drops, although not as severe.

Edmondson said the change hit HubPages sites broadly, not just the weaker ones. Representatives from Answers.com and wikiHow declined to comment, and a spokesperson for Demand Media couldn't be reached for comment.

Read MoreWant to lift your Google ranking? Hire writers

Google's algorithms, which take into account more than 200 signalsthat help the search engine predict what a user wants, have been the source of much consternation in recent years. Because Google controls two-thirds of the U.S. search market, its updates with names like Panda and Penguin have led numerous Web-based businesses to see plummeting traffic overnight, siphoning away critical ad dollars.

Panda, which Google rolled out in 2011, ranks sites based on quality and relevance, while Penguin was launched the next year to weed out pages that abuse the use of links to artificially bolster traffic. Last month's mobilegeddon was the biggest algorithm update focused onmobile sites.

About a week after mobilegeddon, emails complaining of mysterious drops in traffic started to flood Gabe's inbox. He began digging into the data, and quickly concluded they weren't caused by the mobile update, because many of the sites were smartphone-friendly.

Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/102669423

YouTube “How To” Video Searches Up 70%, With Over 100 Million Hours Watched In 2015

Google says most popular "how-to" searches include home-improvement, beauty and cooking related videos.

People trying to figure out how to accomplish a home improvement project, fix their hair or prepare a recipe have helped grow YouTube’s “how-to” searches by 70 percent year-over-year.

According to new data released by Google today, not only are searches for how-to videos up, but the amount of how-to content viewed has grown as well, with more than 100 million hours of how-to videos viewed by North American users since January.

Searches related to “how-to” on YouTube are growing 70% year over year, with more than 100M hours of how-to content watched in North America so far this year.

YouTube found its most popular “how-to” searches are related to home-improvement, beauty and cooking videos.

The top how-to home improvement video searches include “how to unclog a toilet,” “how to remove wallpaper” and “how to decorate your bedroom.” For beauty, users are most often searching for how-to videos related to “prom hair,” “balayage” (a hair coloring technique) and “man bun.”

YouTube accounts much of its search growth to mobile, noting 91 percent of smartphone owners turn to their phones to complete a given task.

“Being constantly connected has trained us to expect immediacy and relevance in moments of intent – the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I-want-to-buy moments,” reports Google, “These micro-moments are the new battlegrounds for people’s hearts, minds, and dollars.”

Google says Millennials have also played an integral role in driving YouTube’s search numbers. Citing its consumer study from last month, Google reports 67 percent of Millennials agreed they can find a YouTube video on anything they want to learn.

Source: http://smxpo.com/1JHokfj