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Apple will be using its September 7 special event to launch the second generation of AirPods Pro alongside the iPhone 14, a report claims, just days ahead of the event itself.
Apple’s special events in September primarily focus on the annual iPhone update, but other products do get launched at around the same time. While AirPods are considered to be a good candidate for a launch during the same event, a report insists that Apple will be bringing out new AirPods Pro this time around.
During the event, AirPods Pro 2 will be unveiled, according to Mark Gurman’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg on Sunday. Though rumors were fairly strong about a launch sometime in the fall, Gurman insists it will happen during Wednesday’s presentation.
Over the months, rumors for the personal audio accessories have put forward claims of a stemless design, some debate over whether there will be some form of built-in fitness tracking, and case changes. There have been suggestions the charging case could include a form of hearing aid functionality, complete with a microphone and a speaker that could help with Find My recovery.
However, it is also entirely plausible that the new AirPods Pro could more closely resemble the first generation in form and function, with internal hardware improvements including changes to the H1 chip and Bluetooth connectivity a possibility.
What is certainly rumored to stay the same is connectivity for charging, with the case thought to continue with Lightning for the moment, but changing to USB-C in 2023.
Online search interest in phrases like “heat wave” hit an all-time peak this summer as record-breaking high temperatures and extreme weather events across the U.S. are increasingly drawing public attention to the climate crisis.
Matthew Carr cools off in the Salmon Street Springs fountain before returning to work cleaning up … [+] trash on his bicycle in Portland, Oregon.
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Key Facts
According to U.S. Google Trends data, online searches hit an all-time peak in July this year as several cities across the U.S. broke decades-old or all-time temperature records.
With the exception of 2020—when most of the focus was on the Covid-19 pandemic—search interest in the phrase “heat wave” has consistently peaked higher every summer for the past five years.
Extreme temperatures across the U.S. have led to unprecedented droughts in parts of the country and this is reflected in Google Trends data showing searches for “drought” peaked twice in the last five years—in June 2021 and July 2022.
U.S.-wide search interest in the term “floods” for the year 2022 also peaked in the last two weeks as at least four separate regions across the country witnessed once-in-a-millennium floods.
Despite the rising search interest in these extreme weather events, searches for “climate change” in the U.S. has remained largely steady except for a very steep spike on Earth Day in 2022—likely a result of the Google Doodle published on that day.
Globally, however, searches for the phrase “climate crisis’ hit a ten-year high in March as parts of South Asia witnessed a deadly and record-breaking heatwave.
Tangent
As Europe witnessed its own unprecedented heat wave this summer, the region also saw similar search trends. The term “heat wave” hit an all-time peak last month in the U.K. as the country faced its hottest day on record. In France, search for “vague de chaleur” also hit a record peak as the country faced hot temperatures and devastating forest fires. The search term “ola de calor” hit an identical peak in Spain—which reported more than 1,000 heat-related deaths in June.
Key Background
Climate scientists have raised the alarm that the record heat waves hitting parts of Europe and North America may soon become the norm as climate change drives average global temperatures higher. An unchecked rise in temperatures could lead to more severe droughts and even more devastating forest fires. President Joe Biden has called climate change “an existential threat” to the U.S. and the rest of the world. Earlier this week, Senate Democrats passed a landmark bill—which the House is voting on Friday—that will earmark hundreds of billions of dollars for energy and climate programs.
What To Watch For
However, global climate action could be complicated by Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and rising tensions between China and the U.S. The energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has forced countries like Germany to reactivate coal plants. Angered by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last week, China has suspended all climate talks with the U.S.
At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company rolled out a series of updates for Android app developers who publish to Google Play. Among these were two high-profile changes to its Google Play app marketplace, custom store listings and in-app events, which follow updates Apple made to its own App Store just last year.
Google had been offering A/B testing for product page enhancements since 2015 — a feature that allows developers to see which text and graphics would best convert users.
Apple later adopted a similar feature when, at last year’s Worldwide Developer Conference, it introduced Product Page Optimization designed to help developers to try out different app screenshots, videos, and even app icons to try to appeal to different types of users. Developers could segment a certain percentage of App Store traffic to these cohorts to see which product pages performed better before deciding which page should be their default.
Apple last year also announced a related feature called Custom Product Pages that lets developers create different product pages to highlight different app features, each with its own unique URL to be used in external marketing channels.
Today, Google is following suit and essentially launching the same thing with Custom Store Listings.
Instead of simply testing different product pages, Android app developers will be able to make up to 50 custom store listings for their apps. Each page will have its own analytics and deep links available. Notably, this is more listings than Apple’s solution offers, which is currently set at 35 per app. Google explains developers can use this feature to display different listings to users based on where they’re coming from. For example, a developer with a recipe-finding app could target ad campaigns to U.S. users based on U.S. holidays, by showcasing recipes for Thanksgiving or July 4th. But it could target users from other markets at different times with recipes related to their own cultural traditions.
Apple last year also introduced an App Store feature, in-app events, to allow developers to promote real-time happenings going on inside their apps — like special events or even just seasonal deals.
Google Play is now rolling out its own take on this feature, as well.
With the launch of what it’s calling “LiveOps,” developers will be able to submit content for featuring on the Play Store, including major updates for their app or game, in-app events, and limited-time offers.
Google says LiveOps can drive 5% more 28-day active users to apps and deliver 4% higher revenue for those using the feature compared with those who don’t. The feature is in an invite-only beta testing phase for the time being.
While these changes were the highlights among those designed to help developers target, acquire and re-engage their users, Google also announced a few other notable Google Play updates.
The company said the Play Store would be updated to help people find the best tablet-optimized apps with new large-screen focused editorial content and a separate review and rating system for large-screen applications. Google Play will also later this year be updated to look better on tablets and foldable devices.
Image Credits: Google
For developers, Google also launched the Google Play SDK Index which lists over 100 popular SDKs and which app permissions they use, so developers can determine if they adhere to Google Play policies and help fill out their app’s privacy labels.
The company said it will soon launch a new Play Console page dedicated to deep links to put all the information and tools for deep links in one place. It also improved its Store Listing Experiments feature (aka A/B testing) to allow developers to see their results more quickly, with more transparency and control so they can better understand how long each experiment may need to run.
And beyond this, it rolled out features focus on improving app quality, including a new Developer Reporting API for accessing Android vitals metrics and issues data outside the Play Console; support for viewing vitals data at the country level; and Google said it’s making it possible to view vitals alongside Firebase Crashlytics. It updated the Play Console by adding revenue and revenue growth metrics to Reach and devices and overhauling its device catalog to include install data and filters by new device attributes like shared libraries. It said it’s now easier to test apps on different form factors including Android Auto and soon, Wear OS.
Play App Signing was updated to use Google Cloud Key Management and the ability for any app to perform an app signing key rotation in the event of an incident or as a security best practice from the Play Console.
And finally, Google’s In-app Updates API will now let users know if there’s an update available within 15 minutes instead of up to 24 hours.
After updating the primary tab with interactive device toggles inspired by Android 11, the Google Home app wants to redesign the “Feed” to be more useful.
The Google Home app consists of two main tabs. There’s the “Home View” with a list of all your devices laid out in a grid that Google just updated to allow for quicker actions. Next to it is the “Home Feed” tab that’s meant to show alerts from your smart devices.
These “Priority events” include Home & Away changes and other updates, like the recent one to Speak Group functionality. Underneath that is a “Recent events” section, while a few promotional “Discover” cards round everything out.
Google this month will redesign the Home Feed to “help you better understand what’s happening in and around your home.”
The update automatically sorts your home’s recent and most important events in an updated clutter free layout. Grouped events will help you understand what happened around the same time instead of scrolling through a list of repetitive events.
There looks to be much less scrolling with a new card design that immediately identifies the type of alert at the left. Each notification includes the name, time, and what room the device originates in. Camera cards are accompanied by images, while each has an overflow menu. Lastly, there’s a “History” shortcut at the top-left of the feed to see everything.
This should be available in the coming weeks, while version 2.49 with the Home View redesign is not yet widely rolled out for Android via Google Play.
More on Google Home:
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Google Search Console’s rich results report may now show you more warnings for event structured data markup if the event is missing a location. The search company posted this update here, stating “Google will start enforcing location requirements for events.”
The notice. Here is what Google posted:
Google will start enforcing location requirements for events. For events marked as virtual only (eventAttendanceMode = OnlineEventAttendanceMode), providing any physical locations will trigger a warning. For any event with a physical address, the address must be of type Place, not PostalAddress, or it will be an error. Therefore you might see an increase in errors and warnings in Event items on your site.
Location matters. Google clearly is saying that it wants you to fill in the location of the event so it can properly show those events in the search results. If the event is virtual, you can define the event location as being online with the “eventAttendanceMode = OnlineEventAttendanceMode” reference. If it is a in-person event, you should add the physical address.
What is event rich results. Event rich results is when Google Search uses your structured data on your event pages and shows richer search result snippets in its search results. Google said this can provide More interactive result by showing your logo, description of the event, and also increased chances of discovery and conversion by improving click through rates.
This is what these results can look like:
Why we care. If you use event schema on your pages, you may soon notice a spike in the warnings the rich results report displays in Google Search Console. All you need to do is add the location data to your schema and validate the error in Search Console.
You can learn more about troubleshooting these errors in Search Console or over here.
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About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.