A Tribute to Hamlet Batista - SEO community grieves at the loss of an important member. Lily Ray wrote a tribe in Hamlet's memory.

A Tribute to Hamlet Batista
Hamlet Batista was taken from us all way too soon. In this tribute to her beloved friend, Lily Ray says goodbye.
Search Engine JournalLily Ray

Updates to Event structured data requirements. Google updated the Events structured data requirements. If you use Events structured data, make sure that you use all the required elements.

Get your event on Google | Google Search Central | Google Developers
Google Developers
Google Updates Event Structured Data Requirements
Google changed the requirements for the Event Structured Data. Publishers who charge for events need to update structured data
Search Engine JournalRoger Montti

Clarification on Intrusive Interstitials Penalty from John Mueller. John Mueller recently clarified that websites don't need to worry about mobile pop-ups much - especially if they are just temporary and not displayed to all users.

Google: Sites Can Safely Display Pop-Ups On Temporary Basis
Mobile sites can display pop-ups on a temporary basis without being penalized in search results, according to Google’s John Mueller.
Search Engine JournalMatt Southern

Review Rich Snippets no longer available for lawyers and attorneys? Recent news indicates that Google may stop showing the review rich snippets for sites in the layer/attorney industry.

We'll see if this is just a temporary change or not.

Google Drops Review Snippets For Lawyers
It looks like Google has stopped displaying the rich results review snippets for attorneys and lawyers in the Google search results. Joy Hawkins showed a screen shot from January 10, 2021 with rating
Search Engine RoundtableBarry Schwartz

SparkToro now displays press sites that your audience engages with. SparkToro recently added a new tab to its interface - Press. It shows "media sources followed + engaged-with by the searched-for audience".

It's available for the free plans as well (limited by 10 searches a month).

The accompanying blog post contains a 2-minute video where Rand Fishkin showing an overview of this new feature:

NEW SparkToro Feature: Discover the Press/Media Sources That Reach Your Audience | SparkToro
I’m excited to announce that today, SparkToro is launching a new tab, with new data, for all customers: free and paid. When you perform an audience
SparkToroRand Fishkin


Google shares more details on FLoC - the third-party cookie replacement.

Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC) proposes a new way for businesses to reach people with relevant content and ads by clustering large groups of people with similar interests. This approach effectively hides individuals "in the crowd" and uses on-device processing to keep a person's web history private on the browser.
Building a privacy-first future for web advertising
Learn about the latest progress with the Privacy Sandbox initiative.
GoogleChetna Bindra
Google Releases Data on Cookie Replacement Mechanism Called FloC
Google has released some insight into the technology it believes will replace their cookie-based world in the Chrome browser.
Search Engine JournalSusan Wenograd

You can now use AMP components on non-AMP pages. Thanks to the Bento AMP Developer preview, you can experiment with AMP components in classical (non-AMP) pages.

Going forward, we plan to fully launch and allow Bento components on all HTML documents. This allows developers to leverage these high performing components to create great page experiences.
Use AMP Components everywhere – Announcing Bento Developer Preview
One of the top requests we have heard from the AMP community is the ability to use AMP’s highly performant AMP components in non-AMP pages. The AMP Project has been hard at work for 2 years trying …
The AMP BlogNaina Raisinghani

Simmer: New technical marketing courses by Simo Ahava. If you know anything about web analytics, you know Simo Ahava. Today, Simo and his wife Mari launched a new platform for online courses.

The first course available is Server-side Tagging in Google Tag Manager (€599). Check it out if web analytics is your specialty.

Home | Simmer
Online Courses In Technical Marketing Welcome to Team Simmer! Enroll in our courses and enjoy lifetime access to the course content and the support of a community of learners and instructors. View Courses Server-side Tagging In Google Tag Manager begins March 1st! task-based learning.lifetime access…
Simmer
Oops, Simo needs better social sharing tags! 😉

See you on Monday with the next Rewind!